The Darkness of a Broken Family - Part A

Blemished is better than broken. Blemished is better than broken. Everybody has a blemished family. Not everybody has a broken family. And so if you have a blemished family, do everything you can to stop short of it being a broken family. This is Connect with Skip Heitzigan.

And today, Pastor Skip begins a message about broken families, examining King David and how he dealt with brokenness in his own family. But first, here's a resource designed to give you a clearer picture of eternity. Hell. Here's what C.S. Lewis said about this subject.

C.S. Lewis wrote in his book, The Problem of Pain, these words, There is no doctrine which I would more willingly remove from Christianity than this, if it lay in my power. But it has the full support of Scripture and especially of our Lord's own words.

It has always been held by Christendom and it has the support of reason. Ecclesiastes says God has put eternity in our heart. To help you understand what awaits both believers and unbelievers in eternity, we've put together an exciting resource called The Eternity Package, featuring Skip's booklet, Hell, No, Don't Go, and seven of his strongest teachings about eternity, including The Truth About Hell and What Most People Don't Know About Heaven. This powerful new resource package is our thanks for your gift of $50 or more to support the broadcast ministry of Connect with Skip Heitzig. So get your copy of The Hell, No, Don't Go booklet and The Eternity Package on CD or as a digital download today when you give a gift of $50 or more.

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Give online securely at connectwithskip.com slash offer or call 800-922-1888. Now we're going to 1 Samuel 24 for today's teaching. You know, everyone's family is a bit wacky. All of us have somebody in the family that will cause us to roll our eyes over. It could be a weird uncle or a crazy aunt or a creepy grandpa. I read about one girl who said, I thought every family was like my family. She said she had an uncle who every time they went to a restaurant took a piece of silverware home from the restaurant, like a fork or a knife or a spoon. And she said, it wasn't until I had grown up and went to a friend's house and noticed that all their silverware matched that I had the weird uncle. Remember the show on TV, The Addams Family? So that whole idea was taken to an extreme.

You've got Uncle Fester who can put a light bulb in his mouth and it lights up because he has an electrical charge or Grandmama who makes potions and flies around on a broom or Pugsley who hangs from tree limbs with his teeth. I mean, it was a weird family. Well, that takes us to what I want to show you in 1 Samuel chapter 24. This is a message I'm calling the darkness of a broken family. We're in a series, we call it Dark Room, and by now you understand the idea behind it is how God takes the negatives of our lives and develops us and does some pretty positive things through our lives, even though we have had some pretty bad experiences. We began by looking at the life of Joseph and we saw the dark room that he was in, a dark room of jealousy and hatred by his brothers, a dark room of misunderstanding, false accusation, a dark room of imprisonment. But how the Lord developed his life, to him being second in command over the world, the Prime Minister of Egypt, and came up with an ingenious plan to save the world from famine. God developed the negative into a positive. Then we looked at the life of Moses and we saw how Moses chose his dark room.

That's what the Bible says. He chose rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin. He refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter and rather he identified with the people of God in suffering. But how God developed him into that great deliverer of the children of Israel out of bondage. Today I want to draw your attention to David in the Bible.

Everybody knows about David. This is the dark room of a broken family. David had a broken family and I want you to see that and I want you to see how he handled a very difficult situation, a life-threatening situation. Now you might be wondering why is it that we have chosen to do a series where we examine people in the Bible at the lowest moment of their life, the most difficult season of their life. Why do we do that? Well I'll put it to you in the words of a proverb, an old woodsman's proverb that says a tree is best measured when it's down.

A tree is best measured when it's down. You want to see who a person really is? Examine their life when they're down, when things fall out from underneath them, when they're in a period of darkness.

Examine that life and you will see how shallow or how great that person is. Moreover you will see how great their God is at those times and how God can rise up like a hero and take the worst situation and make something great out of it. Well David, David is one of the heroes in the Bible. He's an A-lister.

He's on the A-team. When people talk about people they know in the Bible that are famous, who are great and what they accomplished, David comes to mind. David and David alone is called a man after God's own heart. David was anointed from his youth. He was the guy who goes out and kills a giant of the Philistines named Goliath.

Perhaps that's what he's most famous for. He becomes the commander of Saul's armies. He becomes the subject of a national song. He becomes the sweet psalmist of Israel and eventually the second king of that nation. A city was named after him, the city of Jerusalem, and to this day the flag in Israel still bears the sign of the star of David, the star of David.

They still pay tribute to that man to this day. Even though David was far from perfect, in fact he was highly imperfect, in fact boy did he make a lot of dumb choices. In fact I would say that that David later on went into the dark room of bad choice. We don't have time to look at that today, but he committed adultery, then he committed murder, then he was a passive father and his own family fell apart.

But that's later. Now I want to show you an episode in David's life in this chapter, 1 Samuel 24, a season of David's life where David is a fugitive. He's running from the king who also happens to be his father-in-law. His father-in-law is trying to kill him in this chapter. I'm so glad I have a good relationship with my father-in-law. What I want to show you in this chapter briefly are four principles for resolving family conflict.

I'm not a therapist, but I want to show you from Scripture, because I am a Bible teacher, four principles of resolving conflicts in the family. I'm going to do that by making four comparisons. Four comparisons. That one thing is better than something else.

So I'll begin with the first. Blemished is better than broken. Blemished is better than broken. Everybody has a blemished family. Not everybody has a broken family.

And so if you have a blemished family, do everything you can to stop short of it being a broken family. So in chapter 24 of 1 Samuel, we begin where it says in verse 1, Now it happened, when Saul had returned from following the Philistines, that it was told him saying, Take note, David is in the wilderness of En Gedi. That's down by the Dead Sea, one of the places we'll visit. If you come to Israel, you'll see the very caves where this took place. Then Saul took three thousand chosen men from all Israel and went to seek David and his men on the rocks of the wild goats. This is a period in David's life, it's about 10 to 14 years, where he is fleeing from King Saul. King Saul, who at this point is his own father-in-law.

So just think about that. They are in-laws who have become outlaws. Unfortunately in families, that sometimes happens. In-laws can become outlaws. Somebody once said, you know the difference between in-laws and outlaws, right? And the answer is, it's because outlaws are wanted. That's the difference between in-laws and outlaws. Out-laws are wanted.

I heard about a man who so hated his mother-in-law, he didn't know what to do. One day he's walking on the beach, he finds a bottle, he rubs it, out comes a genie, grants him three wishes. And so he's thinking, what could I have? Now the genie then says, now I want to warn you, whatever you ask for, I'm going to give double to your mother-in-law. So he goes, well I wish for a million, a billion dollars. Genie says, okay here, gives him a billion dollars, but I'm giving your mother-in-law two billion dollars. So he continues, he goes, well for my second wish, I'd like an island off the coast of Greece.

Genie says fair enough, but your mother-in-law gets two islands off the coast of Greece next to your one island. So he goes, oh boy. So he thinks about it, thinks about it, and finally he says, I'd like you to beat me half to death. There's a guy who really didn't like his mother-in-law.

And again, I'm so glad I have a good relationship with mine. David was the poster child of a broken family. He goes from one bad family into another bad family. It's my belief that David's original family that he was raised in was relationally cold, relationally cold.

You may not read this when you read the Bible, but if you look at it closely, you will see it. You remember the story how the prophet Samuel comes to Bethlehem to select the next king. He goes to the house of Jesse. Jesse has eight sons. The prophet says, line up all your boys. One of them is going to be the next king of Israel. He lines them all up except one.

Who's that? David. David's out watching the sheep. Dad didn't even think David was important enough to be numbered as one of his own children in the lineup.

Well, he's the one that gets picked, but Jesse doesn't put him in that room. I think that the brokenness of David's family is hinted at in Psalm 27 when David says, when my father and mother forsake me, then the Lord will take care of me. I think he knew he had a family that was pretty busted up, pretty blemished, pretty dysfunctional, and he knew that father and mother had somehow forsaken him, but he knew that the Lord was in charge of his life.

And I just want to say, your own family may have overlooked you. Your heavenly father will not. God knows you. God sees you. The Bible says, the eyes of the Lord go to and fro throughout the entire earth that he might show himself strong on behalf of those whose hearts are loyal toward him. God's got you.

He sees you, and he wants to use you. Well, David goes from that family, Jesse's family, into this family, Saul's family, from a relationally cold family to now a relationally calloused family, because he marries Saul's daughter. Saul the king said, whoever beats the Philistines, this big giant guy named Goliath, whoever beats that guy gets my daughter.

Now, there's a little bit of insight into a dad. A dad is willing to give away his daughter to whatever soldier wins a battle. Now, you might say, well, that was always done in ancient times. Maybe so, but not in Israel. This is God's people.

These are people that are devoted to God, and the Torah, the law of God, was to govern the kings of Israel. But Saul is willing to give away his daughter, and he does, to David. That's how David gets in the family. Something else about Saul. We read in the Scripture that when Saul's own son, by the name of Jonathan, is in a battle, that because Jonathan gets a bit of honey, not the candy bit of honey, a handful of honey, and revives himself during a battle, when Saul finds out about it, when dad finds out, he goes, I'm going to kill him. I'm going to kill my son for having honey in a battle, because I said, nobody should eat anything until we win this war, which is dumb anyway. He finds out his son did that because he didn't hear the order, but he won the war, but that's okay.

Dad didn't care if he won or not. I'm just going to kill my son. Then David, who worked for King Saul, was playing music for him, and on two occasions, Saul tried to play, pinned the spear on the musician, right? He chucked the spear twice in David's direction to pin him to the wall. And so David flees, he runs, and that takes us to this period. For a decade, he is running from his father-in-law, who pursues him to kill him.

Now, when he runs away, two people help him. Number one, Saul's daughter. Saul's daughter, now David's wife. Number two, Jonathan, Saul's son. Both kids help David escape, because they know their dad's a wingnut. He was a wingnut, because when Saul finds out that his two kids have helped David, here's his words to his daughter in chapter 19, verse 17, why have you deceived me like this and sent my enemy away so that he has escaped? And then, he says to his son, Jonathan, in chapter 20, verse 30, you son of a perverse, rebellious woman. That's a father speaking to a son. You son of a perverse, rebellious woman.

If you have a new living translation, it's even more crass. You stupid son of a whore. That's the family David is now in. Welcome to the family, son. He said again to Jonathan, you son of a perverse, rebellious woman. Do I not know that you have chosen the son of Jesse to your own shame and to the shame of your mother's nakedness?

So here's what I want you to see. David goes from one family where he is marginalized to another family where he is terrorized. This is a broken family. You may have a blemished family. This is a broken family.

One author said there's three marks of a broken family. Number one, broken families do not trust. Trust has been broken. They don't trust each other. They don't trust anybody. Broken families do not trust. Number two, broken families refuse to talk about their brokenness. They don't admit it. Nothing to see here.

Nothing wrong here. Number three, broken families do not express their feelings. Very low when it comes to emotional intelligence.

They don't talk about how they feel. So whatever dysfunction or baggage or shortcomings or blemishes your family might have, don't let it get to the point where it is broken. Broken meaning spirits are crushed and relationships are severed.

That's broken. We are all humans. Thus, we are all sinners. Thus, we all manifest imperfect behavior. But let me say blemished is far better than broken. And if you have a blemished if you have a blemished husband, an imperfect blemished husband, do everything in your power wives to keep that husband from being a broken man. Refrain from overly criticizing him and put downs that make him feel lower and lower and lower. Or husbands, if you have a blemished wife and she drives you crazy with those antics of hers, do everything you can to make sure she doesn't end up broken. Try to manage the conflict.

Now I'm not here to give you all the ins and outs of that except to say there's a few ways that will help you do that. Number one, it's called forgiveness. Forgiveness. Be big on forgiveness. Be ready to forgive. Jesus taught us the Lord's Prayer. Forgive us our debts as we forgive those who are debtors against us. But then He said this, if you refuse to forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father in heaven forgive you yours.

Forgive. Another added thing to that I would say is learn to look for good traits. If they're driving you crazy and all you can see is the flaws in your mate or your relationships, learn to spot the good traits.

1 Corinthians 13, love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things, love never fails. And then the third tip I would add to that is make the first move. If there's tension, make the first move. If there's a wall, make the first move.

If there's coldness, make the first move. Matthew 18, our Lord said, if your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you will win over your brother. So blemished is better than broken. David is now in a very broken family system. The second principle, the second comparison, is that respect is better than revenge.

Respect is better than revenge. So get the scene. David is fleeing from Saul. Saul has 3,000 men. David has 600 men.

He's outnumbered five to one. Saul finds out he's down by the Dead Sea in En Gedi. Saul goes to chase him.

Now the story gets a little bit humorous. Verse 3, so he came to the sheepfolds by the road where there was a cave. And it says, Saul went in to attend to his needs. You know what that is, right?

I don't have to explain that to you. He went in to attend to his needs. He's using the restroom.

David and his men were staying in the recesses of the cave. So this is funny. Saul's there and goes, excuse me, I got to go use the restroom. He goes in the restroom not knowing there's 600 soldiers in the restroom. Then the men of David said to him, remember they're in the darkness of the cave, this is the day of which the Lord said to you, behold, I will deliver your enemy into your hand that you may do to him as seems good to you. And David arose and secretly cut off a corner of Saul's robe.

Can you picture this? Saul's in the darkness, on his haunches, taking care of business, staring out to the cave. David comes sneaking up, snip, cuts a little piece of the robe off. Now verse 5, now it happened afterwards, David's heart troubled him because he had cut Saul's robe. Now his men are saying, cut his throat, never mind his robe. But he feels guilty that he took a little piece of his robe off. And he said to his men, the Lord forbid that I should do this thing to my master, watch this, the Lord's anointed, to stretch out my hand against him, seeing he is the anointed of the Lord.

So David restrained his servants with these words and did not allow them to rise against Saul, and Saul got up from the cave and went his way. This is David's golden opportunity to take revenge. And as he gets close to Saul, maybe all of the feelings of the past start coming to the surface, like he's remembering those two times when Saul threw a spear his way. And his blood starts to boil and he thinks, now is the time to take revenge. I don't know what feelings he was struggling with or overcoming, but he didn't take revenge.

But he didn't take revenge. That concludes today's message from the series Dark Room. Find the full message as well as books, booklets, and full teaching series at connectwithskipp.com. Right now, listen as Skip shares how you can share life-changing teaching from God's unchanging Word with more people around the world. If you're going to hold firmly to biblical truth, then you must study God's Word.

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800-922-1888. Thank you for your generosity. We hope you'll be back tomorrow for Part 2 of Skip's message, The Darkness of a Broken Family. Make a connection at the foot of the crossing. Cast all burdens on His Word. Make a connection, a connection. Connect with Skip Hyten is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.