I Samuel Lesson 1
Introduction – Judges 2
We will begin with the books that have to do with the kings. The first one is 1 Samuel but we’re going to
start in Judges 2. In Judges 2 we have
some of the background for this period of history. Again we have to go back because so many of
us have such poor senses of history that we have to go back in time and look at
some dates and see where this fits; 586 BC was the end of the kingdoms, both
north and south, had terminated by that time.
1400 BC was the actual conquest of the land, Exodus happened before
that, 1440 BC. So 1400 is the time of
the conquest, 586 BC is the time of the destruction of the kingdom. And for a time there, approximately 400 years
you had an era known as the period of the Judges. This was a time after Moses had died, a time
when the constitution given in the book of Deuteronomy was the backbone of the
nation; this defined what the nation was, it established God’s relationship
with the elect nation, and then we have the book of Joshua, which is a
historical book and is the first book that treats the Bible as a completed
canon of Scripture.
In other words, Joshua is the first book of the Bible where you have the
believers looking back upon an already finished set of Scriptures, so that in
Joshua you have the norm and standard for believer’s attitudes toward the Word,
and this is why the book of Joshua begins, “Let not this book of the law depart
out of thy mouth.” In other words, we have
then, even though Joshua was able to receive direct and continuing revelation
from God, still in Joshua’s day he used the established canon of Scripture as
his ultimate norm, supplemented as necessary by further word through the
prophets. But his basic norm and
standard was the Bible and this shows us why fundamentalism is correct and
liberal theology is wrong because in fundamentalism the Bible is or should be
our norm and standard.
Then we have the book of Judges and the book of Judges is important
because the book of Judges is the first historical analysis ever done by the
human race. This may shock some of you
but actually in history the book of Judges was probably done under the tutelage
of Samuel, or some of his students, and Samuel was the man who was the world’s
first historian. This may seem strange
to you because you say well certainly there were historical records before
this. Yes there were, but these were
chronicles, they were what you usually get in a history course, you know, what
happened in 1836, what happened in 1840, what happened in 1865, memorize it,
pass the exam on Friday, forget it on Friday.
And that’s chronicles but memorizing dates and events associated with
dates are very necessary incidentally, so I’m not knocking that, it’s just when
you leave that by itself that it becomes something obnoxious. And Judges takes the analysis of the 400
years in here and says what happened because by 1000 BC the nation was in the
middle of a morass, we would say the dark ages.
And the book of Samuel is going to be the nation being delivered from
the dark ages. But all during this time
something happened; something very wonderful had started out as, back in 1400
BC, and yet within four centuries of time the nation went down.
Now that shouldn’t shock you, four centuries may sound from this point
to be a very short time but ask yourself, how old is the
So the book of Judges is the first history book ever written. And it’s interesting that this first history
book that was ever written was made possible because it had first the entire
preceding six books of Scripture behind it.
In other words, the book of Judges, the first history book, could never
had been written had it not had before the historian set down a framework of
history given by divine revelation. So
the book of Judges is a historical analysis done by a group of men using as
their controls the norms of Scripture that they had already had before this
history started. And in chapter 2 you
have the first and probably the most primitive view of history; it is the view
of history given in this first history book, the cyclic view of history, but
you have to be careful and let’s look at it.
Let’s look at it, in verses 11-19.
The cyclic view of history has three parts to it and you can visualize
it as just going round and round.
Actually these cycles go like this: you have a cycle, part one would be
the apostasy and this is when the nation goes on negative volition. Then part two, down about the
Let’s look at verses 11-13, “And the children of Israel did evil in the
sight of the LORD, and served the Baals, [Baalim].” The “im” ending is a plural ending in the
Hebrew. [12] “And they forsook the LORD
God of their fathers, who brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed
other gods, the gods of the people who were round about them, and bowed
themselves unto them, and provoked the LORD to anger. [13] And they forsook the
LORD, and served Baal and Ashtaroth.” So
verses 11-13 give you the first part of the cycle. That expresses the negative volition of the
people and the prophets who are writing this historical analysis, Samuel and
his seminary students, these are students that had lived in the latter part of
this historical era and they must explain what has happened historically to
their nation. And they’re going to go
back and look and verses 11-13 gives you the spiritual causes. It is not that they are feeling sorry for
themselves; it is rather that they analyze the history of the nation inside the
terms of the Law, that is, Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28. Also they used Deuteronomy 32 and 33.
Those key passages were used by these historian, this is known as the
Deuteronomic school of history, and the reason all the liberals like to use
that, misuse it, they do have a point in that this historical school is totally
colored by the intellectual framework of the book of Deuteronomy. So these men
go back and they say how did we get smashed, what was the trouble? Why did we go down as a nation? And so they go back and they say well
Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28 tells us that when we engage in idolatry, a
violation of the first commandment, we have a God other than Jehovah, who is
the God-King of the nation, then we are in trouble. So the first step in the cycle is a violation
of the first and great commandment.
The second step in the cycle, verses 14-15, “And the anger of the LORD
was hot against Israel, and He delivered them into the hands of spoilers who
spoiled them, and He sold them into the hands of their enemies round about, so
that they could not any longer stand before their enemies. [15] Whithersoever
they went out, the hand of the LORD was against them for evil, as the LORD had
said, and as the LORD had sworn unto them; and they were greatly distressed.”
Verses 14-15 show how these historians wrote and these are very
interesting verses. Look at how verse 14
reads, “The anger of the LORD was hot against Israel,” stop right there; that
is an interpretation by the historian. So the first part of verse 14, the hand of the
Lord was hot against Israel, now the historian didn’t see the hand of God,
literally, come down and spank the nation. He observed something in history and
this is his interpretation of the cause and effect. So the first part of verse 14 is the
historian’s interpretation. But after
that, when it says “and He delivered them into the hands of spoilers who
spoiled them,” there is a historic event, he could observe that, he could watch
the nation fail on the military battlefield, he could watch the nation fail
economically, so those were historic events to which he is giving the
interpretation that God’s hand is hot against them.
Now verse 15 tells you why the historian interpreted the data this way,
because “the hand of the LORD was against them for evil,” notice this phrase in
the middle of verse 15, “as the LORD had said,” and that proves to you the
historian is going back to Deuteronomy for his framework. All he is doing is he
is encountering the historical data, so he has the data out here, the date, the
events, who beat up who, when, where, and who was the leader, who assassinated
somebody, etc. That’s all the historical
data. He adds to that the Law, or we
would say the Word of God, what God says He’s going to do, how God is going to
rule in history, and then out of these two factors, the historical data and the
framework supplied by Scripture, he gains his interpretation.
So therefore we have in the book of Judges the first history book
written by man, and I want you to notice how historians can write, they can only write such a clear
history as we have depicted in the book of Judges if and only if they have
available to them the Word of God and they know God’s plan and they can read it
in the historical process.
Then verses 16-19 is the third part in this cycle. “Nevertheless the LORD raised up judges, who
delivered them out of the hand of those who spoiled them. [17] And yet they
would not hearken unto their judges, but went a whoring after other gods, and
bowed themselves unto them; they turned quickly out of the way which their
fathers walked in, obeying the commandments of the of the LORD: but they did
not so. [18] And when the LORD raised them up judges, then the LORD was with
the judge, and delivered them out of the hand of their enemies all the days of
the judge;” now in the middle of verse 18 there is historic evidence. In other words, they experienced in history
the historical data, all of a sudden some guy would pop up out of nowhere, he would
be successful on the battlefield, he would have leadership ability and he’d
lead the army out and all of a sudden they’d start winning. And so the historian would say just a minute,
what’s going on here. Here’s what’s
going on, God raised that man up to deliver us, and so the historian is
preaching doctrine to the people through history. And he is actually examining this.
This is what you should be doing as a believer; this is a lesson for
you. Every believer in Jesus Christ should be a historian of your personal
life. Maybe you never thought of that
but you have the framework of the Word of God to explain why things happen to
you and are happening to you in your life and you will come a lot closer to
knowing the Lord personally on a daily basis if you just simply watch what is
going on in your mind, what is going on in your home, what is going on in your
environment. And then ask why, and go
back to the Word like this historian, or historians did. They saw things go on in their nation and
they went back to the Word to find out why these things are going on. So every believer has a mandate to be a
historian of your own personal life.
So then we have in Judges this simple cycle, but then something
happens. If you look in Judges 1-5 we
have a sentence of doom pronounced on the nation. This actually is the introduction to 1
Samuel. “An angel of the LORD came up
from Gilgal to Bochim,” this is the Lord Jesus Christ in His preincarnate form,
“and said, I made you go up out of Egypt, and have brought you unto the land
which I swore to give unto your fathers; and I said, I will never break My
covenant with you. [2] And you will make no covenant,” that word “league” is
the same word, berith, “with the
inhabitants of this land; ye shall throw down their altars. But you have not obeyed My voice. Why have you done this?”
Now Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. Do you think that Christ is any less
nitpicking today than He is here when He’s saying this in verse 2. If Jesus Christ never changes then this means
that you as a believer that are faced with your Lord and He is being just as
picayune as He is here, “you have not obeyed My voice, why have you done
this?”
Verse 3, “Wherefore I also said, I will not drive them out from before
you, but they shall be as thorns in your sides, and their gods shall be a snare
unto you. [4] And it came to pass, when the angel of the LORD spoke these words
unto all the children of Israel, that the people lifted up their voice and wept.” So you have a sentence of doom; the sentence
of doom, actually given in Judges 2, was historically pronounced at the end of
the period. So you have judge after
judge and you have this cycle set in.
And finally we come to the last cycle.
We start going down and down and down, and we get down to the last cycle
and it hits the number one position, we’re on apostasy now, we’re on negative
volition; it hits the number two position, and that is that the nation begins
to suffer but they do not go to the number three position because the nation
does not repent, does not have confession, and so the last judge, Samson, is
one who cannot deliver his nation. Where does Samson die? He dies inside a pagan temple. How does he die? The last judge dies as a
slave to Dagon. And thus ends the 400
era of history and the last judge breaks the cycle. The cycle can’t function,
it has hit rock bottom, and so the whole thing stops.
And this is the sentence of doom and this sentence of doom is important
for prophecy students because this sentence of doom proves that Israel never
occupied all the boundaries of the land in the Old Testament. The sentence of doom in Judges 2 proves
premillennialism because it shows that the boundaries of the Abrahamic Covenant
could never have been satisfied in any time of the Old Testament.
Now when we come to Judges 13:1, there are some things that are
different about Samson. All the other
judges it’s the same cycle, point one, point two, point three, point one, point
two, point three, point one, point two, point three, the same old thing over
and over again but the cycle stops with Samson, and in verse 1 “And the
children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the LORD; and the LORD
delivered them into the hand of the Philistines forty years.” Now look at the words “forty years.” So Samson is born pretty much during the
early part of this period. And it says
in verse 5, “For, lo, thou shalt conceive, and bear a son; and no razor shall
come on his head; for the child shall be a Nazirite unto God from the
womb. And he shall begin to deliver
Israel out of the hand of the Philistines.”
Samson began but Samson can’t finish the job. Samson and Samuel are going to be two
parallel men; one does the job and the other flunks the job. Both men started out the same way, verse 5
speaks of how Samson was dedicated by his parents to the Lord; he didn’t have
any hair cut by the way, he was one of the long hair boys but still the
interesting thing about this is it shows you the rest of the men didn’t have
long hair because this is the exception to the otherwise standard rule. Samuel was also this way as we’ll see in 1
Samuel 1, so both of these men are very close, they lived at the same time. And Samson winds up dead in a pagan temple
and Samuel winds up anointing the king.
So both men live at the termination of this dark age period; Samson
never lived to see the light, Samuel does.
But the interesting thing is at the end of Samson’s career, in Judges
16:31, he judged Israel 20 years, so you see the forty year duration of the
Philistine oppression was unbroken by the time that Samson died, “Then his
brethren and all the house of his father came down, and took him, and brought
him up, and buried him…in the burying place of Manoah, his father. And he judged Israel twenty years.” A summary, Samson met a violent death; Samson
was a violent man. Samson’s job was
basically to be a professional troublemaker.
During Samson’s time and during his ministry you had a rise of
ecumenical religion which was to plague Israel for many centuries after
that. The ecumenical religion was
powered toward all viewpoints, and so you had divine viewpoint mish-mashed
together with human viewpoint. And they
weren’t separated, and because they weren’t separated people were not making
clear choices; they were making mixed choices and so God had Samson come along
and deliberately start brawls, start fights, irritate the Philistines, start
wars, do anything he could to irritate the two sides. So this is Samson’s job, and God picked a
good man for it because Samson was specially fitted to start fights, and he
usually finished them real well, except his last one.
But Samson was a person who was an agitator, to use a modern
expression. Samuel, however, is of an
utterly different character and so now we are going to turn to 1 Samuel. We’ll skip the book of Ruth, the book of Ruth
is set during the time of the Judges, and it is a book that proves to you what
the loyal believers were doing when all this stuff was going on. Judges gives you the overview, Ruth is a
snapshot of what happened in one family where the Word of God was honored,
there were some light areas during all the rest of the dark ages.
Now we have to understand the situation when we start the book of Samuel. First you have to understand that Israel was
dominated by nations all around her.
Egypt, by the way, was not in dominance during this period; Egypt isn’t
even mentioned during this which proves some trouble with modern chronology
here because Egypt just doesn’t show up and if there was one likely candidate
for an oppressor it would be Egypt, but she’s not there and this is why if
Velikovsky’s revised chronology is true and he says that this was the time of
the Hyksos in Egypt, the second intermediate period, then the Hyksos which he
identifies as the Amalekites, were the ones who were all down in this area and
they apparently made alliances with the Philistines, with the Canaanites, with
the Tyraneans, and up in here with the Moabites, the Edomites, etc. so you had
a lot of these tribes, these Semitic tribes, and Hamitic peoples all around
here and they were the troublemakers.
There were a whole collection of them and they were kind of nomadic, and
so forth, and some of the Midianites, they were a real nice group, they got
together with the Amalekites and they’d leave you alone until you had all your
crops just about ready to harvest, and they had a neat little trick they used
to pull every year at harvest time; they’d just mass thousands of head of cattle
and just drive them forward and their soldiers would be riding in back of the
herd of cattle and they’d stampede hundreds and hundreds of these cattle across
the fields and you can imagine what that did to the harvest. This is how they conquered, this was one of
their favorite little tricks, and you can gather that they were not too well
appreciated.
The Midianites, as well as other of these tribes, kept Israel under
dominion for many, many years. Now the
problem in Samuel’s day is that the nation had passed through cycle after cycle
after cycle and negative volition has set in very much. So therefore, since the nation is elect by
the Abrahamic Covenant, since God has promised the nation three things, He has promised
them a land, He has promised them a seed, He has promised them a worldwide
blessing, and since this is an unconditional covenant, which means that God
can’t change it, then He is in a problem, God is in a problem because these
people are on negative volition they are going to go into cursing stage and yet
at the same time God promises them that He is not going to utterly cast them
out. So therefore God is going to try a
new approach and this approach is going to be through developing a new office in
the nation.
The old-fashioned way which was a time of tremendous freedom, was
associated with the judge; the judge was what we would call… he had a charisma
in the true sense of the word, he was a gifted man, he had a gift by the Holy
Spirit of leadership, and these people would just kind of pop up, lead the
nation, die and then there’d be somebody else pop up to take their place, then
die, and you could never tell who it was.
There was no family dynasty or anything, you had to trust the Lord to
raise up leaders.
Well because the nation is so much on negative volition by this point,
the carnality has set in so much that they can no longer trust God to provide
leaders. And there are a number of other
problems and so what God is going to say, All right Israel, you can’t trust Me,
so here’s what I’m going to do; I have elected you as a national entity, I have
destined you and therefore you are going to be saved in history, whether you
like it or not I will save you, but the means I am going to use to save you is
to destroy part of your freedom, and you’re going to lose your freedom and
we’re going to have a centralized bureaucracy centering in a king. And this was the first movement in the nation
Israel toward centralized power. And I
want you to notice the reason for it; it was because of apostasy; the
collection of power at high levels and the development of the monarchy was
simply due to the negative volition of the people.
Now when we get into this kingdom, although the kingdom has gone on from
1400 down to 1000, from this point on to 586 we go into the monarchial form of
God’s kingdom. At this point the details
of God’s Kingship become clearer, so although it’s something bad that
introduces the period, it’s negative volition of the nation over many
centuries, and although in one way it’s bad because they have to give up their
freedom, in another way its cursing turned into blessing as God always does,
and that is that out of all of this disaster God is going to create an office
which we are going to study, and when we get through studying that you will
understand why Jesus is the Christos,
or the Mashach. Do you realize that these books define what
this term means, Christ. “Christ” is not
Jesus’ last name, in case you want to know.
“Christ” is His title.
This is why this Jesus, Jesus, Jesus business just doesn’t cut it. That’s like walking out here and saying John,
John, John or Joe, Joe, Joe, what does that prove; that doesn’t prove anything,
it just proves you can say a one-syllable name, that’s all. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus is simply a common
everyday name in the ancient world and has no theological significance by
itself. This is why when you use the
term “Jesus” it must always be entitled Jesus who, what is this Jesus? This Jesus is the Mashach or the Christ. And
so it is that part of Christ, so to speak, it is His title that is going to be
under examination in these four books. We’re not going to go through all the
four books, but we’re going to study 1 and 2 Samuel together. These books were originally one and we will
study them as one together. And here is
the outline that we will follow:
1 Samuel 1-7 we would summarize the content of these first seven
chapters as God prepares to deliver Israel by a great change. Remember they are in the dark ages and God is
going to deliver them and He’s not going to do it like He used to do it back in
the book of Judges, by simply raising up a judge. Things have gotten too bad, more drastic
means are necessary. So now He is going
to introduce a great change. God
prepares to deliver Israel by a great change, that’s 1 Samuel 1-7.
The next section goes from chapters 8-15 and we would summarize the
content of chapters 8-15 as God establishes the office of King and its first
incumbent, Saul, fails. This, by the
way, is to introduce a wonderful principle of God’s grace. Saul is going to be a testimony to the fact
that the energy of the flesh doesn’t make it and that the only kings that are
going to survive are those that depend on the Lord all the way, just like the
only way we survive in the Christian life is to depend upon Him in every
area. So 1 Samuel 8-15, God establishes
the office of King and its first incumbent, Saul, fails. Those are very, very important chapters
because those chapters are what is going to introduce you to what Christ’s
title means. So this part of history is
very important. When we get through here you’ll have a much deeper appreciation
for the person of Christ. And when you
read that thing and John’s Gospel, do you believe that Jesus is the Christ,
that’ll take on fantastic meaning because now you will look at it the way an
Old Testament person would. Do you
believe this man, born in Nazareth, is the Christ that will fulfill this
office.
From 1 Samuel 16 through 2 Samuel 1 we have a very interesting portion
and we could summarize the content as Saul decreases but David increases. And out of this you have a tremendous
typology of Satan and Christ. As Satan
was the first anointed one, Satan was the Mashach, he was the anointed cherub,
and Christ replaces him. Satan was known as Lucifer, Christ is known as
Lucifer. And so therefore you have a
Satan/Christ motif that runs through 1 Samuel 16 through 2 Samuel 1 and it is
during this period that most of the Psalms were written. Most of David’s Psalms were written during
this era of history.
2 Samuel 2-8, God blesses David and prepares for His worldwide
kingdom. This is an astounding section
because this deals with the prophecies of the millennium and shows you the
tremendous future ministry that the person of Christ had. Again, 2 Samuel 2-8, God blesses David and
prepares for His worldwide kingdom.
2 Samuel 9-20, God curses David and his court. You’ll see a portrait of a believer under
discipline. This is known, a technical
term for 2 Samuel 9-20 is the so-called succession narrative.
2 Samuel 21-24, a closing divine viewpoint profile of King David. There
are just miscellaneous things in there, it’s a closing divine viewpoint profile
of King David, chapters 21-24.
The remainder of our time we’ll begin this first section, God prepares
to deliver Israel by a great change. And
this is the overall outline, we’ll be working off of that from time to time as
we go on. But tonight we’re
concentrating on the first section, 1 Samuel chapters 1-7 and we’re going to
break those first seven chapters up into some sub sections.
The first section that we are going to deal with will be from 1:1
through 2:11. We’re going to entitle
this subsection: God causes Samuel to be born.
I have a reason why I’m phrasing it this way because when we get through
with this I want you to see and be able to think your way through the book so
this won’t just be a set of stories tacked on to each other, sort of like links
on a chain. I want you to be able to
think your way through the book, there’s a movement to this thing. So we’re
going to entitle 1 Samuel 1:1 through 2:11, God causes Samuel to be born.
This is a major shift in God’s strategy and this brings out a very important
principle and it goes back to a philosophical principle behind government. And this is the problem. Where does
sovereignty come from? For example, in
the days when the kings ruled Europe, you could point to the king and say well,
he is the sovereign, what the king says goes.
In the west we have constitutional republics, or at least in some areas
we have them. So we have in that
situation where does sovereignty reside.
You say the constitution; fine, who made the constitution? You see, there was a prior thing to the
constitution. It was the people, and
they’re expressing themselves through government. So out of this we have a problem and that is
somewhere you’ve got to locate sovereignty if you’re going to have government.
Where is sovereignty located. Now the
most beautiful thing about Samuel is who comes first? Saul, the king or Samuel
the prophet? Samuel the prophet, and
this is the divine order of history. The
prophet must always precede the king and this will is kept all the way into the
New Testament. Who appears first in the
New Testament, Jesus or John? It is John
the Baptist and Jesus Christ, even as the ideal King, must be anointed by John.
So, the same here, Samuel is going to be the king-maker. You’ve heard of that term in politics and it
has a nasty connotation, but in the Bible it has a good connotation. Samuel is the king-maker, and from this point
forward the kings are to be under the control of the prophets. Why? Because sovereignty resides in God alone
and it must be transmitted to the king; the king is never an unlimited monarch,
and this is the difference between Israel and all other forms of monarchies, in
that Israel’s king was hemmed in by the Law on one hand, and if you want the
passage it’s in Deuteronomy 16, 17 and 18, that whole section in there deals
with the boundaries upon the monarch ruling in the nation, and he has a second
and that is the prophets. So the king has two things hanging over his
head. He has the Law of Moses, the
Torah, to which he must submit, and he has the word of the prophets who bring
it up to date.
So therefore Samuel comes first and this is why we entitle these first
seven chapters of the book, God prepares to deliver Israel. In other words, He hasn’t delivered Israel,
He’s going to but before He can establish the king that is going to deliver the
nation He must first establish a line of prophets. So see the prophecy of what’s happening here,
turn to Deuteronomy 18:15. Here you have
a fulfillment of a prophecy made in Moses’ time. “The LORD thy God will raise up unto thee a
Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; and unto him you
all shall hearken,” second person plural and that means the king too. So the
king must hearken to this prophet. The
prophet, then, is the man in charge. And
this is why you have something go on in the Hebrew courts that you do not have
go in Assyria, you do not have go on in Egypt, and that is you have the
spectacle of a man by the name of Nathan, walking in and chewing out the king. Now how could that ever happen? Can you imagine somebody walking in and
chewing out Pharaoh? Or can you imagine
somebody walking in and saying hey, Tiglath-Pileser, you just goofed and really
administering the riot act to him, like Nathan does to David. No-no, that is unknown in the ancient
world. Only in Israel do you have a
prophet walking in and telling off the king.
And this is why the tradition has gone on down through history. And the most famous one in recent history is
John Knox walked into the Queen and told her, you bloody whore, and he said it
good and loud right in her court, and probably everybody fainted, and Knox
didn’t care, he was a believer and to be absent from the body was face to face
with the Lord. So he told her off. And the tradition for telling off the state
in the name of the Word of God comes from right here; it all starts with
Samuel.
Now I want to show you in a series of verses how Samuel is looked at in
the rest of God’s Word. So let’s turn to 2 Chronicles 35:18, I just want to
give you a flavor of how the rest of God’s Word looks back on this man Samuel
whose life we’re about to study. “And
there was no Passover like that kept in Israel from the days of Samuel, the
prophet; neither did all the kings of Israel keep such a Passover as Josiah
kept, and the priests, and the Levites,” etc. so the point, something has
happened in Josiah’s day that was fantastic.
They had a tremendous restoration and a Biblical revival in that generation,
but notice how it is dated “from the days of Samuel the prophet.” In other words, what we are facing here is a
second George Washington. Moses was one
of the founding fathers of Israel and Samuel is actually looked upon as
another. The nation sees itself as
having two beginnings; one was Moses and one was Samuel.
In Psalm 99:6 you see the same thing.
Try to follow through as we go through these verses because I want you
to see the stature of the man Samuel in God’s sight, and then you’re going to
get shocked by going back to 1 Samuel and seeing the stature in the sight of
man and the contrast will be resolved in 1 Samuel 2. But first let’s look at Samuel as how God
evaluates the man. “Moses and Aaron
among his priests, and Samuel among those who call upon His name; they called
upon the LORD, and He answered them.”
You see how Samuel is taken out and he’s elevated together with Moses
and Aaron; Moses and Aaron the founders, Samuel the co-founder, so it’s as
though the nation has a new lease on life in Samuel’s day. God is doing a drastic thing in Samuel’s
life.
Now let’s come into the New Testament and see how the people in the New
Testament looked back on Samuel. Acts
3:24, and here in the New Testament you read of the tremendously high office
that Samuel held. Again keep in mind as
you look at this reference the one I started off with in Deuteronomy 18:15;
18:15 is the prophecy and here you have in Acts 3:24, “Yeah, and all the
prophets from Samuel and those who follow after, as many as have spoken, have
likewise foretold of these days.” You
see how the line of prophets begins with Samuel.
Acts 13:20, the previous Acts reference shows you that the line of
prophets begins with Samuel, so Samuel is the start of a new line of prophets
in response to the prophecy of Deuteronomy 18:15. But this reference in Acts 13:20 shows you
that Samuel is at the last of a line of judges, “And after that He gave unto
them judges for about the space of four hundred and fifty years, until Samuel,
the prophet.” So you see, Samuel is at a
juncture in history; before him you have the judges. The New Testament recognizes that he stood on
the boundary of history.
Hebrews 11:32, the famous faith passage, notice again in this other New
Testament passage how Samuel is linked to the prophets. “And what shall I more say? For the time
would fail me to tell of Gideon, and of Barak, and of Samson, and of Jephthah;
of David also, and Samuel, and of the prophets.” Notice, it is not
chronological because the word “David” precedes “Samuel” and so therefore when he
concludes “David, and Samuel, and the prophets,” don’t you see how he collects
them together. David must have his
Samuel. There would be no David without
a Samuel; there would be no Jesus Christ without John the Baptist. There will
be no king without a prophet and this order will be preserved. So this is the rule that is observed down
through Scripture.
Now let’s observe this in our modern scene, just for an application to
make this a little more real to you. What is the source of law? Basically there
are only four sources of law and we can divide these into two large
categories. The first source would be
anarchy; that is, when the individual is the source of his standards and his
rights. Now nobody seriously accepts
that, so that is out. The next group
would be some sort of an elite or a powerful segment of society that dictates
what is the standards. Another would be
the 51%, the third source of law. All of
those emanate from men. Israel was an
exception because in Israel the Law was the Law and the Law came from God. Now you have to choose… YOU have to choose,
and this is the problem we face as Christian citizens operating in this fourth
divine institution. We operate in a situation where theoretically we’ve got
this thing, 51% of the people determine, fine, now the Biblical Christians
operate at about 3%-4% of the population, what does that do. Do you see what you’ve got to do in a
democracy? You’ve got to get a large
number of believers before you can begin to influence policies and they’ve got
to be biblically informed believers. So
in Israel’s day, before they had strong centralized government, they had a
prophet check on it. Now
question—where’s the prophetic check today. See, we’ve got the strong
centralized government but where’s the prophetic check? We don’t have any.
So let’s go back to 1 Samuel and see how God dealt with it at that
time. 1 Samuel 1:1, this section that
starts in 1:1 and goes to 2:11 can be subdivided, this subsection, God causes
Samuel to be born, is made up of actually two parts; the first chapter plus
chapter 2 verse 11, that is the historical part, that gives you the history and
then the second part is made up of 2:1-10 and it’s a psalm of declarative
praise by Hannah. It’s Hannah’s praise
psalm that that is the theology. And
here you’re going to watch how a psalm is generated inside a historic event
because the first chapter is going to give you the historical event and the
second chapter will show how they responded to that event by writing a psalm.
“Now there was a certain man of Ramathaim-zophim,” by the way, the
Hebrew in this is atrocious, and I had done some work on it before but I had
forgotten what they told me in seminary, that this particular book is one of
the worst preserved books in the canon of Scripture as far as the original text
is concerned. So you have to read the
Septuagint and the Greek on the one hand and then read the Hebrew on the
other.
In verse 1, “Now there was a certain man of Ramathaim, and the rest of
that is ambiguous in the original text, “of Mount Ephraim, and his name was
Elkanah,” and now he is listed by son of so and so and son of so and so and son
of so and so. Now this is just a comment
but it’s useful to notice this. The
Hebrew people had one of the most fantastic systems ever devised for naming
people. They had the only system that perfectly describes the person. Here’s why; the Hebrew system of names starts
with your name, say n, and your
father’s name is n1, n2 and so on, and they would say ben, this is the son of, n1 who was the son of, n2, all the way back to Adam. And that’s the full name of the person. Can you imagine it’d get kind of long to sign
their signature so they obviously just signed this last name and maybe their
father’s name. But the point of the
Hebrew system of names is better than anything we’ve got because it pegs the
person in history. It shows you the
uniqueness of every individual; there can never be a duplication of names on
this basis, never, because each name is a perfect line all the way back to
Adam.
And even today, scholars used to laugh at the Bible and say oh, look,
they made up all these genealogies. And
then Nelson Glick did some surface expeditions in the eastern part of Jordan
and he hired a bunch of Arabs to help him out and do the digging, etc. and
around the camp fires they would sit and start talking about the various Arab
tales, the Arabs are Semites, and they named themselves, particularly the
Bedouins, much like this. And Glick just
about dropped his teeth because he started listening to these Arabs and one
night they were around the campfire and one of the Arabs started telling his
name, I am the son of so and so and son of so and so and he could remember it
back forty generations. And Glick
couldn’t believe it and so he started around, what’s your name, give me your
name, and they just rolled it right off.
And he discovered something that the liberal scholars just were
astounded when they found this out, and that is that the Semitic Bedouin
tribes, even today, can go back in their genealogies about forty
generations. The son is required to know
his name from his father, and his father drilled and drilled and drilled and
drills his son until his son knows it all the way back and can memorize it
cold, all the way back. So the presence
of the genealogies in Scripture are very important from our standpoint.
Now what do we have in front of our names; well, when our ancestors were
trotting around Europe they discovered that they had too many first names and
so they came up with all sorts of systems and you can analyze your name and see
what’s happened. Basically there are four things for which we are named. Your surname, or your last name, is usually
named after a location, after an occupation, so you have somebody like Crook,
Carpenter or something, and that surname was just designating their occupation
and then it came to stick in the family; a characteristic, even somebody by the
name of Lange, actually that’s a distortion of “long,” they’re a tall person. So they named him John Lange, he’s the long
one. Then we have the location system,
my name is a location, Clough is an old English word that means valley. And so you have the various reasons for
naming.
Now some nationalities have gotten close to the Hebrew. For example the Scotch, when they put “Mac”
somebody, that is “son of.” Or another
area, we have Fitzgerald or something, that is a designator of a son. So some nationalities, some of the Gentiles
have sort of mimicked this patronymic system.
But only the Jew here in the Bible, in God’s Word, sees himself spotted
inside history. And this is tremendous
because you see, we inherit sin from our fathers, and the Jew knew and could
snap out his whole life by his line. So
when you look at verse 1 don’t get discouraged before you hit verse 2, I’m just
trying to encourage you so when you see so and so begat so and so, who begat so
and so and son of somebody, you’ll just remember that the Holy Spirit put that
in there for a reason. And it’s to
reaffirm the tremendous historicity of these people, that they knew where they
stood and they measured themselves from all points.
Verse 2, “And he had two wives,” that was double trouble, “the name of
one was Hannah, and the name of the other was Peninnah. And Peninnah had children, but Hannah had no
children.” And of course the trouble
there was that one was childless and the other had a child and you had jealousy
develop. And of course this reminds you of the Chinese problem, the Chinese
symbol for trouble is two women under the same roof and this poor man had it
and it was just about to drive him crazy, as we will see in the text as we go
further.
But in verse 3 it shows you the tremendous spirituality of this man,
Elkanah, he obviously was the glue that held the family together because
neither of these women knew anything.
They were panicking and worrying and fussing and complaining and it was
this man who kept his cool that held that family unit together. And this man went up out of his city yearly
to worship and to sacrifice unto the LORD of hosts in Shiloh.” Now tonight we’ll have just about enough time
to finish with the term, “the LORD of hosts.”
This is why I selected the hymns tonight because these hymns all have to
do with singing about the Lord of hosts.
So we want to stop and look at this and conclude with this.
“The Lord of hosts” is a title which is first introduced at this point
in Scripture. It does not occur in the
Pentateuch and will not occur until this point is reached. Those of you who have the New Scofield Bible
have a most excellent note on page 322, down at the bottom, and is a very clear
note* on this. Here’s what it looks like in the Hebrew, Yahweh Sabaoth, and the
last one should be with a “Z”, Zaba,
this is the Z and there’s your B, Zaba,
and then oth, and this is a feminine
ending on the Hebrew noun; Zaba is an
army, and so here’s Jehovah, so it’s the Lord and there’s something missing in
between, it’s a popular title. Literally
it should say, “the Lord, the God of armies,” is what it’s saying. And this is the first time this title is used
for God.
Now let’s look at what this means.
What do we learn about the essence of God from looking at His name and
His title. We go back to the essence of God.
God is sovereign, God is righteous, God is just, God is love, God is
omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, immutable, eternal. That’s the character
of God. Now from this name, because a
name depicts character, two attributes are emphasized, God’s sovereignty and
His omnipotence. So the emphasis of the
name is upon these two attributes in connection with… notice it doesn’t say “Elohim Sabaoth,” it says “Yahweh Sabaoth.” Now what do you think is the difference
between Elohim Sabaoth and Yahweh Sabaoth. Yahweh Sabaoth has to do with the
covenant and it means His relationship to believers or the elect. And so in particular this name shows us God’s
omnipotence and His sovereignty on behalf of believers. And it is a very precious name of God in the
Bible and you will see in the Psalms and in the late prophets that when
believers are in a jam, inevitably when they call upon God they call upon Him
as “Yahweh Sabaoth,” my God, the God
of armies, the Lord, the God of armies.
And this is a title that is precious to believers in a jam. It means that God has the ability,
omnipotence, and has the desire, sovereignty, to manipulate the nature and be
able through His angelic command and hierarchy to come to your aid. That’s what the Lord Sabaoth means.
Where are the armies, let’s go to this, we’ve got God, we’ve discussed
Lord, now let’s look at what are the armies.
The armies in the Bible are many things.
If you have the New Scofield note you have plenty of verses to look at
there, summarized it includes angels, it includes astronomical bodies and human
armies. So we have three things that can
be meant by armies. The Lord is in
charge of angels, the elect angels; He is in charge of the astronomical bodies,
and by the way, the reason the Bible refers to astronomical bodies is because if
God can control the astronomical bodies in outer space He can control
anything. These are the greatest known
cosmic forces to man. So what it’s
saying is that God can totally control the physical nature. This one, God is in total control of
spiritual nature, and this is physical nature, and then of course the human
armies; He can work in and through government, and so forth. So we’ve got “the Lord, the Lord of
armies.” Now I’m going to conclude by
taking you through a verse chain to show you a flavor for this term and how the
saints of the Old Testament employed this in their every day life.
Each one of these verses I am about to show you in this chain
illustrates how God uses one of His three armies to come to believer’s help, to
come to your aid as believers. My
purpose in taking you through this is that if you will sympathetically go
through these verses with me, read them, possibly write them down and look at
them later, this will do a lot to shredding any naturalistic view of the world
when you get in a jam and God seems about 80,000 miles away and somehow the
links are broken. If you will just take
your mind and submit it to this chain of verses you will see how God is able to
move right into your life and come to your aid, no matter how much of a jam you
may be in; you may be in a situation where you are surrounded physically, you
may be in a business situation, a political situation, war, whatever the
situation is and if you have this down you have something precious as far as
perception of who and what God is and how He loves you and how He can come to
your aid.
This chain starts in 1 Samuel 7:10, “And as Samuel was offering up the
burnt offering, the Philistines drew near to battle against Israel: but the
LORD thundered with a great thunder that day upon the Philistines, and
discomforted them, and they were smitten before Israel.” Now the word “discomforted” is a sweet little
sounding thing, it means He scared them…, and you can fill in the rest of it. So that’s what God did in 1 Samuel 7:10 and
there He is using His second army, He is using astronomical bodies to come to
their aid.
2 Samuel 22:7-17, here’s David, back in David’s time. I want you to see, all these people are using
this concept, the Lord Sabaoth. Here is
a practical illustration of a believer in a jam and because he knows the Lord
as the Lord Sabaoth, he does something and here’s what he does: “In my distress
I called upon the LORD, and cried to my God; and He did hear my voice out of
His temple, and my cry did enter into His ears. [8] Then the earth shook and
trembled; the foundations of heaven moved and shook, because He was angry. [9]
There went up smoke out of His nostrils, and fire out of His mouth devoured;
coals were kindled by it. [10] He bowed the heavens also, and came down; and
darkness was under His feet. [11] And He rode upon a cherub, and did fly, and
He was seen upon the wings of the wind. [12] And He made darkness pavilions
round about him,” and so on. And it goes
on and David relates all the way down to verse 17, “He sent from above, He took
me; He drew me out of many waters.” [18 “He delivered me from my strong enemy,
and from them who hated me; for they were too strong for me.”]
Now what is David saying? That
God had the ability to work in a catastrophic, fantastic way through what we
would call natural forces. Next time you
get trapped into thinking, this is a fallacy, by the way, Satan would love to
delude you on. You get in some sort of a
jam and you can’t think of a human way out of it and so automatically you think
God’s jammed too. Your jammed but God
isn’t jammed. God can do fantastic
things. Here is the Lord Sabaoth, the
Lord of armies.
1 Kings 22:19, here God comes to the aid of believers but not with
natural elements this time. This is what
Micaiah… Micaiah had a tremendous privilege as a believer, very few believers
get this privilege, but he went and attended a session of the heavenly
councils. And we don’t know where this
is held but apparently the entire cosmos, every once in a while, has a meeting,
and the Lord calls together, apparently all the major chief angels or something
that run the lower echelon and He calls them to a general meeting, including
the bad ones; both the elect and the fallen angels are gathered together in one
of these council meetings. And Micaiah,
through a vision, was able to listen in to what was happening.
And here’s his report of what he saw in verses 19-22. “And he said, Hear thou, therefore, the word
of the LORD: I saw the LORD sitting on his throne, and all the host” there’s Saba, there’s the army, but here the
army is number one army, it’s angels, and I saw “all the host of heaven
standing by Him on His right hand” those are the elect, “and on His left,”
those are the fallen angels or the demons.
So they had a massive meeting.
[20] And the LORD said, Who shall persuade Ahab, that he may go up and
fall at Ramoth-gilead?” Now this is a
believer in trouble and he’s going to be disciplined for it, “And one said on
this manner, and another said on that manner.”
Notice it’s very, very personal, look at this verse 20, God does not
operate the universe like an IBM machine; get that out of your mind. That is not the way the universe runs. If you get that out of your mind you will
have a lot easier time in prayer.
Just take this verse slow and let it sink in what you’re looking
at. God is calling a meeting, and He is
suggesting a course of action and the angels are discussing the course of
action around the council. In other
words, you can be there with your watch and watch the meeting take place and
there would be a decision made, as it is here, verse 21, “And there came forth
a spirit,” this is an evil one, “and stood before the LORD, and said, I will
persuade him. [22] And the LORD said unto him, with what? [by what means]? And
he said, I will go forth, and I will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his
prophets. And he said, Thou shalt
persuade him, and prevail also; go forth, and do so.” And so you see, out of this came forth
something that affected history and it all was done in this council, this
secret angelic council. But I want you
to see the extreme personal interaction that’s going on here.
Another verse in this chain, 2 Kings 6:15, this is an incident that
happened with Elisha; the king of Syria was after him, and he sent an army
after Elisha, he didn’t have to, Elisha was just a single person along with his
helper, he and his buddy had stopped at the motel here and when the alarm went
off and he looked out the window and he said say, I see a few tanks on the road
out there, and then he looked out the other window and he saw some infantry,
and he got the impression the place was surrounded. So here, “And when the servant of the man of
God was risen early, and gone forth, behold, an army [host] compassed the city,
both with horses and chariots. And his
servant said unto him, Alas, my master! What shall we do.” Now what do we do?
So here you have a believer in a physical jam. Now watch the concept. “And he answered,” this is Elisha, “Fear not;
for they who are with us are more than they that be with him.” Now if you just stopped there you wonder if
the guy is off his rocker, here is an army out there and we’ve got two inside
here. What do you mean, more with us
than with them? So verse 17, “And Elisha
prayed, and said, LORD, I pray Thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the LORD opened the eyes of the young
man, and he saw; and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of
fire round about Elisha.” Now who is
that? The Lord Sabaoth, and there’s one
of his armies and He’s protecting Elisha.
And now look what happens. Verse
18, “And when they came down to him, Elisha prayed unto the LORD, and said,
Smite this people, I pray Thee, with blindness.
And He smote them with blindness according to the word of Elisha.” So needless to say it solved the problem;
it’s hard to drive a chariot when you’re blind.
So here you have God operating in history through these angelic
meetings. And this is what it means,
“the Lord Sabaoth.”
Another reference, Zechariah 1:7, this should be extremely comforting to
you if you are a believer and understand really what’s going on here, this
should be extremely comforting. These
are one of your assets that you have as a believer; if you see this you’ll get
rid of this naturalistic business that stalls you out and jams you so your mind
won’t function on the promise; oh you know the promise, but it don’t work or
something. Well it doesn’t work because
you can’t approach it by faith. See what happens here is this, I’ve noticed
this in myself and many believers with whom I counsel. Here in our minds we’ll have a clog, a whole
bunch of stuff of human viewpoint, and normally, under every day operation we
don’t even notice it. But watch what
happens, all of a sudden bang, we get hit.
We’ll make it a simple thing, we get hit three places at the same time,
and then the pressure is on, and then all of a sudden somebody comes along,
“Cast your cares upon the Lord,” and yeah, I remember that, there’s only one
problem, I don’t believe it right now.
You are aware of it, it registers in your memory but what’s
happened? Under the pressure of the
moment you have been eaten up by that residual human viewpoint; it was
recognized up until the crisis hit and then when it came to be a crisis, bang,
you found you couldn’t believe. Now this
is why going through these verse chains, you should actually take these verses
down and go over them and over them and over them until you have a
supernaturalist view of how God answers prayer.
This verse chain is one way to do it, and just get rid of this plug
before you get hit with something. And
then the next time you get hit with it there won’t be that Trojan horse on the
inside that eats away your faith.
Zachariah 1:7, Zachariah faces the same problem, Zachariah has a group
of believers, they have come back in 516 BC, they face a desolate, very sad
situation. The once great nation of
Israel was now just a bunch of huts, they tried to build a temple and it just
really doesn’t look anything like Solomon’s temple, and they’re really
downcast; it’s a really sad day for believer.
Not only that but they’re victim between the great international
political machines of the Persians and the Greeks. Very shortly after Zechariah
writes, within a century or so, these believers are going to have to face
Alexander. And they’ll face the other
problems in the ancient world, the Medo-Persian Empire and so on, so it’s a
time of tremendous international intrigue.
Now look at how God provides for believers.
“Upon the twenty-fourth day of the eleventh month…the word of the Lord
came to Zechariah….” Verse 8, “I saw by
night, and behold a man riding upon a red horse, and he stood among the myrtle
trees that were in the bottom; and behind him there were red horses, sorrel,
[speckled] and white.” You see, this is
a picture of an officer, and he’s leading, he’s got a lot of soldiers behind
him. Verse 9, “Then said I, O my lord,
what are these? And the angel who talked
with me said unto me, I will show you what these are. [10] And the man that
stood among the myrtle trees answered and said, These are they whom the LORD
has sent to walk to and fro through the earth.”
The word “earth” here means the land of Israel. And these are patrols, angelic patrols that
are patrolling the land; that’s what it means to “walk to and fro.” And Zechariah, just like that boy back in
Elisha’s day, suddenly he had his eyes opened to what was happening all around
him. He was being surrounded by angelic
patrols. How comforting. Now he normally couldn’t see it; we can’t see
it, but under certain circumstances in history God takes the scales off the
believer’s eyes when they are extremely discouraged, see, don’t worry about it,
we’ve got it covered. And if you look
further, in 2:5 he describes this angelic force. “For I, saith the LORD, will be unto her,”
that’s unto Jerusalem, in the midst of all these political problems, “I will be
unto her a wall of fire round about, and will be the glory in the midst of
her.” In other words God is describing
the fact that He’s got His angelic patrol and they’re just walking back and
forth, they’re like a cop on the beat, and they’re just walking around,
constantly patrolling. So He says
Zechariah, what are you so shook about?
See what God is doing? He is
calming and relaxing believers that face tremendous adversity.
Two more references to show you this isn’t just in the Old
Testament. Matthew 26:53. Jesus Christ had this same concept. This is the scene of His arrest and His
disciples are all shook. So verse 51,
“And, behold, one of those who were with Jesus stretched out his hand,” that’s
Peter, “and drew his sword, and struck a servant of the high priest’s, and smote
off his ear.” It was a mess, what he was
trying to do was brain the guy and he just cut his ear off, and obviously with
a bodyguard like that, the Lord needed something superior to that kind of
operation. Verse 52, “Then said Jesus
unto him, Put up your sword into its place, for all they that take the sword
shall perish with the sword.” And now
look at verse 53, “Do you think that I cannot now pray My Father, and He will
presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?” What do you think this is, Jesus just playing
games mystically or do you think Jesus really means it. Do you know how much a legion is? It varies from about three thousand to six
thousand. Multiply it by twelve and
that’s how many angels God the Father could have dispatched, just like that, to
His Son. Jesus isn’t shook in that
sense; Jesus is shook about facing our sins, that’s why He shook in the Garden
of Gethsemane but He’s not shook about the political force; He knows that He
has that many angels at His disposal, fantastic, all He had to do was ask the
Father, twelve legions of angels right there.
Finally, Acts 12:7, this is when the angel delivers Peter and I want to
conclude with this and a passage from David, to show you that this applied
after Pentecost to born again believers in Christ. And here’s an illustration. In verse 7 we have Peter in prison, he is
physically bound, he needs physical deliverance. By the way, that’s another thing, the angels
usually give physical deliverance, the Holy Spirit’s involved in the spiritual
problems, but generally speaking the angels give the physical deliverance. “And, behold, an angel of the Lord came upon
him, and a light shone in the prison; and he smote Peter on the side, and
raised him up, saying, Arise quickly.
And his chains fell off his hands. [8] And the angel said unto him, Gird
thyself, and bind on thy sandals. And so
he did. And he said unto him, Cast thy
garment about thee, and follow me.” And
the angel took him out, and then in verse 10, at the end, [“and immediately the
angel departed from him”] as soon as he got out of jail the angel
disappeared. In other words, the angel
did for Peter what Peter couldn’t do for himself, solved the problem.
So we have then a steady stream of verses and this is what is meant by
the Lord Sabaoth. There’s one final great
promise in God’s Word and it’s 1 Samuel 17:47, I want to finish with that
one. This technically isn’t part of the
chain but it’s an application of the truth of all these verses. A promise that you can claim as a
believer. 1 Samuel 17:47, “And all this
assembly shall know,” this is David facing Goliath, “And all this assembly
shall know that the LORD saves not with sword and spear; for the battle is the
LORD’s, and He will give you into our hands.”
Now how could David make that kind of a claim. Do you want to know why? Look in verse 45, that’s why. What does he say in verse 45, “Then said
David to the Philistine, You come to me with a sword, and with a spear, and
with a shield; and I come to you in the name of the LORD Sabaoth,” now what
does that mean? David walked up to
Goliath and David had confidence that all around him he was protected. That’s the confidence that David had facing
Goliath and that’s why verse 47 can be a promise. I want you to see that. The concept of the Lord Sabaoth enables the
believer to believe the promise in a crisis.
Now the last passage is not going to be found in Scripture, it’s going
to be found in one of the hymns we sang. After all this background I want you
to look at what Martin Luther did with this concept and show how accurate he
was. This is one of the rare hymns,
something accurate in it. The second
stanza is the one where he uses this name; I want you to notice how he uses it. “Did we in our own strength confide, our
striving would be losing,” so Luther recognizes there must be a reliance upon
grace by faith. “Were not the right man
on our side, the man of God’s own choosing,” obviously referring to
Christ. Then notice how he takes that
Old Testament concept and marries it to the person of Christ, “Dost ask who
that may be, Christ Jesus it is He, Lord Sabaoth His name,” and then to make
the connection between “Lord Sabaoth” and the person of Christ, he finishes the
stanza, “from age to age the same,” in other words, Christ was God in the Old
Testament and Christ is God in the New Testament, therefore if God was the Lord
Sabaoth in the Old, then Christ is the Lord Sabaoth in the New. Shall we bow for closing prayer.
*[Scofield note: (1:3, LORD of hosts (Heb. Jehovah Sabaoth). For the
distinctive meanings of LORD (Jehovah)
see Exodus 34:6, note. Sabaoth means simply hosts, but with special reference to
warfare of service. In use the two ideas
are united; Jehovah is LORD of
(warrior) hosts. It is the name,
therefore, of the LORD in manifestation of power. “The LORD of hosts, he is the King of glory”
(Psalm 24:10), and accordingly in the O.T. this name is revealed in the time of