31.01.07
God and the Family (3): God Works in Families
Read: 1 Chronicles 3
Kenny MacDonald, the former minister of Rosskeen, has a memorable phrase, borne and coined out of his own experience in seeing the Lord working through his ministry in the North. His phrase is ‘God Works in Families‘. He saw many parents coming to faith through the witness of their children; he saw many wives becoming Christians through the witness of their recently converted husbands, and vice versa. Our great covenant God, works in Families.
Families are beautiful things. But they are also complicated things. Our bibles contain very few references to beautiful families; it contains many references to dysfunctional families, marked by fighting and strife. Perhaps the greatest visible consequence of the fall of man is the disruption sin causes in families - where man and woman no longer feel comfortable in each other’s company and brother murders brother.
There are many stories of family life in the Bible - Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Ishmael and Isaac; Isaac, Rebekah, Jacob and Esau; Jacob, Rachel and Leah and their children and so on. But the family I want to focus on tonight is the family of King David. I want to focus on the family in order to impress upon our minds that every family, and David’s typifies it, has problems, but every family also has promises which outweigh the problems. David’s family had terrible problems, which I hope none of you have. But they also had tremendous promises from God. I want to focus on this passage in 1 Chronicles 3, which on the surface looks like another piece of boring genealogy and family tree, but when you get down to studying it reveals God’s passion for family life.
[A] Family Problems
David’s was a mixed-up family life. It was marked by 2 major things: first, it was marked by the sins of the father being passed on to the sins of the child. As we go through the problems which David’s family caused themselves, you find a pattern whereby the sins of the father also become the sins of the child. This is now a well recognised social phenomenon - where, for example, a child who has been abused is far more likely, even though it hated the abuse it was subjected to , to abuse his children. Second, David’s family is marked by serial and serious unfaithfulness, and we shall see in what areas in a minute. It has been said that there is no perfect family - and that’s true, but only because mum isn’t perfect and neither is dad and neither are the 2.4 children. There are no perfect families, because there are no perfect people.
David’s family displayed their unfaithfulness in 4 areas:
1. Marital Unfaithfulness - the first area of unfaithfulness concerns the practice of polygamy - that is having many wives. The Bible is clear that in the beginning God made them man and woman, and together they became one flesh (Gen. 2:24). Marriage is the estate in which 1 man marries 1 woman and together they become one flesh. They are no longer distinct people, but before God are 1. The teaching of the New Testament is even more rigorous on this matter - with Jesus being the strongest protector of marriage there ever was. The pharisees and saducees had relaxed the conditions under which you could be divorced - Jesus tightened them, making adultery the only condition under which divorce was legal. The apostle Paul, in 1 Corinthians 6, builds on the teaching of Genesis 2 to show that if you unite yourself with a prostitute you become one with her and you, by doing so, are uniting the Holy Spirit, whose temple you are, to her. The Bible clearly sees 1 man and 1 woman as being the only acceptable base for marriage.
David was most terribly unfaithful in this respect. We read of him in 1 Chronicles 3 having at least 7 wives - Ahinoam, Abigail, Maacah, Haggith, Abital, Eglah and Bathsheba. He must also have had other wives, to have had these other 9 children by them. And then, vs. 9 tells us, he also had concubines. What kind of family life would that have been? And if we thought it couldn’t get any worse, his son Solomon, we read in 1 Kings 11:3 “He had 700 wives, princesses, and 300 concubines.” The same is true, though not to such an extent, for the other Kings of David’s line. We are left with the impression in the OT that society was mainly patriarchal - that it was governed by the men. But as you read deeper, you begin to realise how manipulative the different wives were in order to push their children forward. For example, think of Rebekah and Jacob, who fooled Isaac. The men may be the heads of the families, but its clear that the women are the neck which turns the heads. So David, and his successors, by marrying so many women were storing up trouble for their family life.
2. Parental Unfaithfulness - if you think David had lots of wives, then multiply that by 10 to get his children. According to 1 Chronicles 3:1-9, David had 19 boys, without mentioning the girls or the children of his concubines. I know that the creation ordinance stated that we are to be fruitful, but you could be looking at 50 or 60 children here. How can David possibly give a father’s love and guidance to them all. It is fairly clear throughout David’s life, that parenting was one of his serious weaknesses. You begin to see that when you notice how many of his children go off the rails. Indeed, the split in the nation of Israel may fairly be laid at his feet. His lack of discipline and guidance for these his children, led ultimately to the demise and destruction of the nation of Israel. Never underestimate the impact your parenting has upon your children and upon the world they will make for themselves.
One of the lovely things you often hear at weddings is the groom thanking his parents and those of his new wife, for making them into the people they are. Just drawing that analogy a little further, don’t you think as we see Amnon raping Tamar we are seeing the person David has made him, or as we see Absalom trying to kill his father, we hear his proud boast ‘You made me into the man I am today’.
Another one of David’s flaws in this regard was his favouritism of Solomon. He adored Bathsheba, Solomon’s mother, and she had King David’s ear and influenced him heavily. It was natural for her to want to promote her son, and so she gerry-mandered an opportunity for him to get pronounced as heir to the throne - see 1 Kings 1 for more details. David showed favouritism. But it was no more than his father had shown him in 1 Samuel 16:1-13, where Samuel comes to anoint the new king of Israel, and Jesse, David’s father lines up his seven sons. But David isn’t there - he is called the youngest son - a term which does not mean youngest in age, but one not respected - David is out in the fields. Jesse showed favouritism against David - and how David must have hated it, but here we find David repeating the sins of the father upon his own children.
3. Moral Unfaithfulness - the next thing we see about the unfaithfulness of David’s family is their great moral unfaithfulness. Perhaps we shouldn’t be so surprised when we are talking about moral unfaithfulness, because after all, we are all sinners, and therefore are all morally unfaithful. However, David’s family takes the biscuit. We read of his eldest son Amnon in 2 Samuel 13:1-22 raping his sister Tamar. We read of his son Absalom in 2 Samuel 13:23-29 murdering his brother Amnon. We read of both Absalom (2 Samuel 15) and Adonijah (1 Kings 1) rebelling against David and trying to kill him. So, David’s family comprises one rapist, one murderer and two rebels.
But David himself was a lad in his younger days - hadn’t he committed adultery with Solomon’s mother Bathsheba, and then had her husband murdered to cover up his crime. He was an adulterer and a murderer too. See how the sins of the father pass down to the children.
4. Religious Unfaithfulness - the last area, but perhaps the most major area of their unfaithfulness, was in the area of religious loyalty. Now it could not be said of David that he was anything else but purely devoted to the Lord God all the days of his life. He was a man after God’s own heart - he was the ‘man of God’. Yet, this trait was not passed onto his children. Even mighty Solomon, godly Solomon whose reign was marked by prosperity and blessing, let his affection for the women cloud his religious judgement - we read in 1 Kings 11:5-8 that he went after the Ashtoreths and the abomination of the Ammonites. He built a high place for Chemosh, the Moabite God, and for Molech, the Ammonite God..
This was nothing compared to Ahaz, Davids great grandson many times removed, who we read of in 2 Chronicles 28. He was good King Hezekiah’s father, yet we read there that ‘He even made metal images for the Baals, and he made offerings in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom and burned his sons as an offering, according to the abominations of the nations.‘ This was a man who offered his children as sacrifices to foreign Gods. His grandson Manasseh, and his son Amon were just as bad. This was a family with a real problem when it came to religion. Even though the Lord had been faithful to them, they didn’t want Him - they turned their backs on Him and worshipped other gods - gods who were no Gods at all.
So you see the problems of David’s family - it was a crummy way to live. There was no real family life at all - it was all a sham. This was a family with real problems.
[B] Family Promises
It would seem that David’s family had severe problems characterised by their total unfaithfulness. Man sees only problems, but for every problem of men, God gives a promise. And the promises he gave to this family, the faithfulness he showed them, was awesome.
1. Covenant - Where man is unfaithful, God is faithful. The story of David’s family - the story of 1 Chronicles 3 - is one of the depravity of human beings but the determination of God. It is a story of the unfaithfulness of man, but the faithfulness of God. Just like for a play, the stage requires a backdrop in order to give perspective and throw light onto the actors, the storyline of this play is the great love of God, the actor is God himself, but the backdrop is the unfaithfulness and rebellion of mankind.
In 2 Samuel 7 God makes a covenant, or deal, with David, and it climaxes in vs. 16 with God saying, “And you house and your kingdom shall be made sure for ever before me. Your throne shall be established forever.” The covenant God took the initiative with David and entered into an agreement with him to establish his throne so as to have a descendant of David upon the throne of Israel for ever. God makes an outstanding promise of grace to David, saying ‘your house and your kingdom shall be made sure for ever‘. Despite all the family problems David faced - principally its unfaithfulness, David had God’s sure and certain promise of blessing and favour. God’s faithfulness would shine through their unfaithfulness. The story of David’s family catastrophes provided the backdrop for God’s covenant mercy to him. Many of David’s successors, for example Ahaz, would be evil kings, yet because of God’s covenant mercy, they were followed by good kings, in this case Hezekiah. There are many times, as we are reading through the books of Kings and Chronicles, which chart the history of David’s royal line, we want to give up on them, because how can anything good possibly come out of them - they are a bunch of ‘wasters’ - yet despite themselves, God never gives up on them. He doesn’t give up on them, not because there is some personality trait in them which gives God pleasure, or they have lived good and upright lives, because patently that is not the case with most of them. He doesn’t give up on them because He remembers the promise he made to David, and God always keeps his promises.
God doesn’t give up on us, even when we give up on ourselves. Because, just as when he looked on David’s descendants he saw David and remembered the promises he had made to him, when he sees us He sees Christ and remembers the covenant he has made to Christ. Likewise, if I may be so daring, when He looks on our children, He sees us and He sees our Christ, and He remembers the covenant of grace. Don’t give up on your children, however wayward they are, because God doesn’t give up on them. Praise God, for He is the Covenant God, who never breaks his promises.
2. Christ - but the second, and greatest promise which belonged to David’s family, was that through them, would come Jesus Christ. One of the names of Jesus was ‘Son of David‘, and indeed, Jesus was descended from David both on his mother’s side and his earthly father’s side. You can see Joseph’s genealogy in Matthew 1, which runs through David, Solomon, Hezekiah and Zerubbabel. Mary’s genealogy can be found in Luke 3 and it runs through David and Nathan (Solomon’s brother). It is difficult to believe, but it is true, that Christ had the blood of these men running through his veins. His family tree was shrouded in controversy and scandal. He was blood related to rapists, murderers, rebels and prostitutes.
But the only reason they were able to bring forth Jesus in the fulness of time, was because of God’s gracious preservation of the line. His covenant with David meant that God was under obligation to keep the line of David going until David’s greater Son would come forth. The story of Christ’s coming forth from the family of David, is the story of God’s grace working through his covenant.
The message is that God used this dysfunctional family, as every family in the Old Testament, it would seem are dysfunctional, to bring forth Jesus Christ. And Jesus succeeded where they failed - he was the perfect child - there was no sin in him. And on the cross, he bore the sins of a sinful world - including the sins of his ancestors - David’s sin of adultery with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband Uriah, the sins of Solomon and those of Manasseh.
This was a family which, despite all their problems, because of God’s covenant, pointed physically to Christ - their blood was in his veins. Now the great question for all of us here is this - do our families point to Christ. As we live and move and have our being through God’s gracious covenant to us, as we draw strength from the Holy Spirit, is our family pointing spiritually to Christ. Can it be said of us that, despite all our problems, our faith and the faith of our family is headed towards Jesus? Do our marriages point to Christ, does our parenting point to Christ? Does our family life point to Christ? May God bless Christian families. AMEN