This phrase “life and times” speaks to the firsthand experiences and events associated with a person’s life within the historical context of the time in which they lived.

A Tale of Two Cities famously begins, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”

In every ‘time’ there is the thread of sonship.

The identity of our father and the legacy we give our sons shapes our society.

Thus, the theme for todays post. The life and times of Noah and Eli.

Scripture gives us two sobering accounts.

These are not distant stories; let’s consider them present warnings, especially for those entrusted with leadership.

In Genesis 9 Noah and his family had only recently survived the flood; judgement had come on the entire world population.

In the first chapters of 1 Samuel, judgment on Israel was about to take place!

The times in which we live are of great importance.

Jesus said the last days would be just as in the days of Noah. People would be eating, drinking, and getting married.

Oblivious to imminent judgment.

Unaware of their day of visitation.

So, Noah.

After producing his first crop of grapes, Noah gets naked and drunk in his tent.

His son Ham goes in sees him and comes back out and tells his brothers.

But verse 23 tells us his brothers “Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it on both their shoulders and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were turned away, so that they did not see their father’s nakedness.”

Before we go any further, we must say this plainly, we cannot take the response of Noah’s sons in a moment of personal failure and apply it as a pattern for how leaders respond to ongoing, unrepentant sin among those entrusted with spiritual authority.

In contemporary charismatic churches a “culture of honor,” plays a significant role. The story of Noah’s son uncovering his father’s shame is used as direct application to moral failure in today’s church. But this is misappropriation of the scripture.

This is a picture of two sons covering their father’s shame not a comment or instruction manual on church discipline.

In contemporary church culture greater weight is placed on Ham’s exposure of his father’s shame than on the blatant sins of Eli’s sons.

Yet it is the sins of the latter sons in todays post that are more urgent for leaders to rightly discern and confront.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not asking you to consider Noah a model of virtue.

He sinned against his family and even cursed his own grandchildren.

He was not the best father by any stretch!

Noah and Eli were equally guilty of sin and lack of fear of the Lord during serious times of judgment on idolatry.

The house of Eli

You can read in my earlier post; Mothers, Priests, and Unnamed prophets how Eli’s sons Hophni and Phinehas were desecrating the very place they were meant to confront and repent of their own sin.

Instead of ‘coming clean’ they double down on their rebellion and abuse of power.

Worse still, they prevented others from obeying God.

Eli heard of it and did not restrain them.

He did what many leaders of today still default to, a private quiet conversation where dad says son, this is not good, while the damage to people continues unchecked.

1 Samuel 2: 22 Now Eli was very old; and he heard about everything that his sons were doing to all Israel, and that they slept with the women who served at the doorway of the tent of meeting. 23 So he said to them, “Why are you doing such things as these, the evil things that I hear from all these people? 24 No, my sons; for the report is not good which I hear the Lord’s people circulating. 25 If one person sins against another, God will mediate for him; but if a person sins against the Lord, who can intercede for him?” But they would not listen to the voice of their father, for the Lord desired to put them to death.(sit and ponder that one)

So, Eli’s sons die, Eli falls and dies. The priestly line was cut off.

When I read the story, the greatest heartbreak comes in 1 Samuel 4: 19

Now his daughter-in-law, Phinehas’ wife, was with child, about to be delivered. And when she heard that the ark of God was captured and that her father-in-law and her husband were dead, she bowed herself and gave birth, for her pains came upon her. 20 And about the time of her death the women attending her said to her, Fear not, for you have borne a son. But she did not answer or notice. 21 And she named the child Ichabod, saying, The glory is departed from Israel! because the ark of God had been captured and because of her father-in-law and her husband. 22 She said, The glory is gone from Israel, for the ark of God has been taken!

I have cried in intercession many times for the ‘loss of the ark’ the lack of His Presence in the church.

Some of you who lead have felt this but have not said it out loud.

The meetings continue, the spiritual lingo is recited; we might be hyped.

But the weight of His presence is missing.

The prophet privately grieves, and the pastor attempts to manage the public.

History does not hide its patterns, and each generation chooses whether to fear the Lord.

Yet we repeat the same mistake; we indulge the same recurring instinct.

Protect the reputation of the leader or the movement. Manage it quietly. Don’t expose.

It is called a culture of honour, but it is no honour at all.

What is called honor is in truth fear and self preservation dressed as spirituality, and leaders must take responsibility for discerning the difference.

If we studied history, we would know the result is predictable.

When victims are silenced sin festers and gives birth to systemic corruption.

When exposure finally comes, the collapse is greater than it would have been if the situation were handled correctly! James 1:14, 15

This is the pattern of Eli’s house.

And it is not behind us.

We find it in Matthew 23 Jesus warns the Pharisees the religious leaders of the day.

There are many warnings to these leaders. Here are three:

15 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, pretenders! For you travel over sea and a single proselyte, and when he becomes one you make him doubly as much a child of hell as you are.

27 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, pretenders! For you are like tombs that have been whitewashed, which look beautiful on the outside but inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything impure.

28 Just so, you also outwardly seem to people to be just and upright but inside you are full of pretense, lawlessness, and iniquity.

I would venture to tell you that our current era equates to the times in which Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for reproducing disciples twice as evil as themselves.

Leaders must take heed to what they are forming in those who follow them.

We are living in the times of fulfillment of Jesus’ prediction; people live completely outside the frame of imminent judgment.

Everything continues under the same-old, same-old.

We are living in a mirage that as long as numbers increase the church is growing.

The global disruption of Covid gave us a once in a lifetime opportunity to change our trajectory.

But we misjudged the moment and did not examine our own hearts as we should have.

We prayed and made our decrees, tried to crowd rush the enemy’s ‘corona’ out the door; but we did not humble ourselves.

There was an outcry to ‘return to normal’ but normal was already compromised.

So just as in the days of Noah, life went on as usual.

So we don our gay apparel that belies the struggles within.

Sin continues unaddressed because appearance is all that matters.

It’s a Pharisaical outlook to be concerned only with how things appear, the outside of the cup.

We need to develop places where transparency and vulnerability is treasured.

Transformation is impossible if I cannot show you my weakness without fearing loss of your respect.

But that kind of environment cannot exist where abuse is tolerated and repentance merely damage control.

And so here we are.

The exposures happening in the church today indicate a need for a time of weeping between the porch and the altar.

But the church still kills the prophet sent to her like Zechariah in 2 Chronicles 24:21

The system still resists correction.

Challenging times will continue; we cannot build what is true while protecting what is false.

We cannot apply the strategy of Noah’s sons to today’s sons of Eli.

There is a better way than following the examples of silent sons or rebellious priests.

I find an alternative in another biblical story, that of Nathan.

He loved David enough to risk everything to confront the road he had been taking.

For the sake of David’s integrity and the future of the nation, he exposed.

In a way it reminds me of the NT injunction to restore in a spirit of gentleness that allowed David to see his selfishness and sin.

Nathan took the path of the prophetic son who fears the Lord more than man’s opinion.

He honoured the king by helping him remain honorable.

It’s the correct route to take for those who like to talk about restoration.

Leaders need to be restored into right relationship with God and that only happens through true repentance.

And the only way to ensure repentance is genuine is take the return to ministry off the table.

New testament leaders are not kings with absolute control and right to reign.

If they fail to meet biblical standards for leadership they should be denied that place.

The way out of this mess is for individual accountability to obey the word of God and fear Him.

Next, there needs to be corporate culpability to the same.

There was a song that was popular in my youth, ‘Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.

Let us start with ourselves and stay close to the word.

Finally, earlier in this post I mentioned intercession and it deserves a place in the list of cures for our ills.

We need God. We have to lay down self-reliance and earnestly seek His intervention.

It is my belief we need a serious season of sorrow before Him to repent of our ways.

That can only happen if we stop the business as usual.

Come, let us return to the Lord!

All the love my friends.