1 Samuel Lesson 4
Samuel’s increase/Eli’s decrease – 2:11-36
Deuteronomy 17 provides the background for understanding what’s going to
happen in the rest of 1 Samuel 2. We
have said that the first seven chapters of Samuel deal with God’s preparation
to deliver
We might just do a little review.
You remember the analogy; Elkanah was the woman’s husband and Hannah was
her name, but she had Peninnah and Peninnah was another wife and they tried to share
the same thing and it could only be shared by one and that was an analogy with
the fact that the Philistines and Israel are both trying to share the same
land, which is only good for one person.
So then having seen this, and seen this parallel, Hannah deduces that
her experience matches the experience of the nation and so there is an analogy
built between Hannah and
So Hannah offers a prayer that is partly a very selfish prayer, it is a
prayer that has very little doctrine in it, but nevertheless, has enough at
least to get her into the presence of the Lord and she throws her problem at
His feet and that’s all she thinks that she has done. Except for the fact that we now know, and she
does too, that she started the wheels in motion of a fantastic process of
deliverance toward the nation. And so we
find both of these in this analogy sharing the same thing that can only be
shared by one; both of them complaining about a problem, both of them pray to
God about the problem only in terms of the problem, not in terms of God’s
glory. But in both cases God is going to
advance the cause of the kingdom through these prayers.
Now another feature of this, having Samuel brought into existence first,
is that the prophet must always precede the king. In every case of the Old Testament it is
always the prophet first, then the king.
This answers today in a power structure of a society that the Word of
God must precede an allegiance to the secular state. So therefore, though we do have passages such
as Romans 13 which command us as believers to give allegiance to the state, these
commands are always qualified by such passages as Acts 4, when if it does come
down to the point of having to choose between God and Caesar, we choose God and
take the consequences. So the Christians
loyalty to the state is conditioned and it goes back to this principle.
And in Deuteronomy
Now verse 18, very important, “And it shall be, when he sits on the
throne of his kingdom, that he shall write him a copy of this law in a book out
of that which is before the priests, the Levites; [19] And it shall be with
him, and he shall read therein all the days of his life, that he may learn to
fear the LORD his God, to keep all the words of this law and these statutes, to
do them, [20 That his heart be not lifted up above his brethren, and that he
turn not aside from the commandment, to the right hand, or to the left; to the
end that he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he, and his children, in the
midst of Israel.]”
So verse 19 is a very powerful verse that gives you the Bible doctrine
of politics, and in verse 19 we are faced with a Biblical admonition that all
civil officers in the nation
So that is the basis for the king, notice that the king is under the
law, the king doesn’t make the law. But
then in chapter 18 the king is to be provided, verse 15, with a source of guidance. “The LORD thy God will raise up unto thee a
Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him ye
shall hearken.” In other words, the
state will be given guidance and the guidance will be supplied by a
prophet. So the prophet is needed.
Now what does this tell us immediately about Christ. Remember, Christ is a title, not a
person. When we are using the title
Christ in 1 Samuel we are talking about an office of the king; that’s what that
is, the king. What does this mean? It means that Jesus Christ must be under the
Law; the Law dictates to the humanity of Christ. And therefore Jesus Christ could be measured
by His obedience or disobedience to the Word of God and therefore Christ was
declared to be sinless in John 8:34. So
if this is the case and Christ is subject to the Law, Christ would also be
subject to the prophets. Of course,
however, Christ Himself fulfills the role of a prophet too, but that prophet
was John the Baptist. So John the
Baptist was the one who was responsible for getting Christ into the position of
being anointed. So this defines the
humanity of Christ and this is why these passages are so important.
One final notice about what we have seen so far in 1 Samuel 1:1-2:10, is
the fact that this first mention of Christ in the Bible comes through the lips
of a woman. And this will be true
forever in the stream of prophecy, it will always be the woman who first sees
it because it was through the woman that the light is given into the
world. The reason for this answers back
to Eve; Eve introduced sin to the world and as the woman was the first one to
sin, so the woman is the first one to announce redemption, and you will see
this again and again and again. And Hannah
is one illustration.
Let’s turn to 1 Samuel
Now what is the point here? That
God always makes a means of getting through the trials that He throws into our
life and here is just one of the innumerable examples of Scripture where God is
going to face the nation with a catastrophe.
In the next several chapters we are going to see one of the greatest
catastrophes of all time in a nation’s life, but before that catastrophe comes
God has made provision in the role of raising up a man who knew what was going
on, who was teaching the Word of God.
And if judgment comes upon this nation you can never accuse God of not
preparing the way. Men have taught the
Word of God and the Word of God has gone forth throughout this national entity
so that if this nation is destroyed the means by which individuals in the
nation can roll through the crisis has already been announced and taught.
So in 1 Samuel 2:11-4:22 we have God destroying the old order. Tonight we’ll finish chapter 2;
All right, the conquest goes on for about seven years; at the end of
those seven years believers are again failing so that God announces in Judges 2
that the full expanse of the land promised in the Old Testament will never be
reached; the land promise of the Abrahamic Covenant will never be totally
fulfilled. This is an important thing to
notice in Judges 2 because the amillennialist, the person who denies there will
be a millennium builds his whole case… his whole case is built on the
assumption that Abraham’s promise came true in the Old Testament, therefore we
don’t have to look for a future fulfillment.
But Judges 2 deals a death blow to this because in Judges 2 God says
huh-un, you will never attain all of the land that I promised you originally,
except in the future with Christ. So
that’s the second thing. We saw the
first failure of the nation in the forty year delay. We saw the second failure during the
conquest, the half-hearted lackadaisical attitudes, the quick assimilation of
pagan religion and human viewpoint led to the second great disappointment for
the nation. They lost out on their great
promise of tremendous blessing.
Now we come in 1 Samuel 2-4 to the third great catastrophe the nation
faced. Each time you see this you are
watching the nation give up its theoretical destiny. In other words, the nation could have been
much better off. But they always want to
take the second plan. For example, we
start with the Exodus, there’s plan A.
They didn’t want plan A so they accepted plan B, forty years later. They didn’t like plan B, that was too hard so
they accepted plan C, with Judges chapter 2 and the refusal to conquer the
entire land. And now you’re going to see
them retreat and accept plan D, in other words, every time the nation failed
they must have their spirituality lowered, and the enjoyment and blessing is
lowered.
Tonight we are entering a section in Samuel that speaks of this fourth
plan and this fourth plan was a plan whereby God destroyed the entire testimony
of the tabernacle. Now one of the places
of blessing in the original format under plan A, and this extended through plan
C, was that we were to have a divinely designed tent of meeting. This then looks something like this on the
inside. In the outer courtyard you had
various articles of furniture that spoke of sacrifice, that is, that you could
not come to God without sacrifice.
Inside you had the holy place and the Holy of Holies. And the priest would go into the holy place
and there you would have the showbread and various articles of furniture that
would talk of worship. And in the Holy
of Holies you would have the ark, which looked something like a long
coffin-shaped thing, and you had two angels, two cherubs, pictured on this ark,
and the ark was suspended there, and in between these two angels came the
Shekinah glory. In other words, God’s
glory stayed in the Holy of Holies in that tabernacle. Every piece of furniture, every part of that
tabernacle was divinely designed. It was
a perfect piece of architecture, God was the architect behind this. And He designed that building to mirror every
facet, every area of Christ’s person and work.
So Christ was perfectly presented in this tabernacle. It was the perfect receptacle for the presence
of God.
Now the nation, although it has rejected plan A, it has rejected plan B,
it now rejects plan C; now when the nation rejects plan C this means they are
going to lose out on this very, very fantastic system that God had for
worship. They are going to lose that and
this means they are going to go over to a system where the presence of God is
much less. And this means that God will
be there with the nation but not in the spectacular way that He was. For example, turn to 1 Samuel 4:22, a woman gives
birth to a child and she names him Ichabod, because Ichabod is a word which
means the glory has departed from Israel.
Chabod is the Hebrew word for
glory, “And she said, The glory is departed from Israel; for the ark of God is
taken.” So now we’re in plan B, now the
nation has given up their land, their full expanse of the land, and now they
have given up that precious presence of God.
And from now on instead of an ark, the ark never does get back to the
tabernacle, the two coexist but they never get together again. Finally David comes along and he decides that
we ought to have a temple and then Solomon builds the temple and the temple is
a magnificent structure, and inside this temple of Solomon they put the ark and
it’s true, the glory of God is in there but this temple is designed by
Phoenicians. And these are actually Canaanites,
so that tells you how accurate Solomon’s temple reflects God’s glory. In other words, it is second best, actually
third, fourth, fifth best to what originally was there.
So the whole point of these chapters that we’re studying is to watch
believers, just like ourselves, systematically condemn themselves to lack of
blessing by their rejection of God’s grace.
At every point they have been offered grace, at every point offered to
provide them with total, perfect and complete blessing, and at every point
these believers, they are not unbelievers, believers as a nation,
rejected. And as a result they
experience less of God’s blessing.
Let’s look at 1 Samuel 2:11 and begin looking at some of the details of
this chapter. This section, 2:11-36, is
God’s reaction to the sinful old order while announcing its coming
judgment. It can be divided into three
parts, verse 11-21 which is the sinfulness of the old order, it’s a portrait of
what’s going on with the religious establishment at the time. Verses 22-26, here we have the poor
leadership of Eli, the failure of a believer in an apostate religious
organization. Verses 27-36 the prophetic
announcement of judgment.
Let’s look at the first section, verses 11-21, “And Elkanah went to
Ramah to his house. And the child did
minister unto the LORD before Eli, the priest.
[12] Now the sons of Eli were the sons of Belial [worthless men]; they
knew not the LORD.” Verse 11 obviously
takes up the narrative where it was left at the end of chapter 1, because the
first ten verses of chapter 2 were Hannah’s song. “And the child did minister” is a Hebrew
participle and it means that Samuel is continuing to minister while what goes
on in these verses goes on. In other
words, the author is saying look, while all this corruption that you are going
to see graphically portrayed is occurring, the child Samuel is growing up in
the midst of religious corruption. And
this chapter is a beautiful study on apostate religion. It is because of the apostasy of the
religious establishment that God’s presence must be removed from this
society. The religious organization is
responsible for this effort.
So the child ministers in the middle of all of this, and “the sons of
Eli were the sons of Belial,” now this is an expression or an idiom in the
Hebrew and it simply means they were worthless, it means they had no moral
value whatever, they were discards. It
is usually used of unbelievers, people who have no worth whatever in God’s
sight. Now the second phrase, “they knew
not the LORD,” is a sign they were unbelievers, and this is always a tip off to
apostate religion. Whenever you have an apostate religious organization you
will have it started gradually, the first stage is usually believers get on
something and you have the formation of some sort of a religious
organization. The second thing that
begins to happen is that you gradually have the acquisition of negative
volition at the point of the gospel. So you have people within the organization
that are not true born again believers, but they are religious and therefore
they get by inside this religious organization.
Some example of religious organizations like this would be the World
Council of Churches and the National Council of Churches, and these are simply
repeats of the same thing that you see here.
Why? Because both of them have
made the same mistake; both of them have violated the divine design of God’s
work in this age. In this age there is
to be no authority higher than the local pastor and the local church, apart
from the Word of God. But what happens
we have various organizations develop some sort of a high superstructure and
that’s not authorized by the Word, where do you find this in the Word of God. The only structure you find authorized in the
Word of God is the local church and the pastor-teacher, period. There aren’t any references whatever in
Scripture to any other kind of organization.
Now obviously throughout the ages God has raised up temporary
organizations because the local churches weren’t doing their job, but the
mainstream in our Church Age is always the local church; always! And when you see some sort of a religious
movement that is not local church centered you watch out because you are
looking at some sort of a power grab which will ultimately result in this same
kind of thing, where you have a top-heavy religious organization and sooner or
later you’re going to have unbelievers in that organization and when you do you
are in trouble.
So the two sons of Eli here, were unbelievers and they were in charge of
the worship of the nation. Verse 13,
“And the priests’ custom with the people was,” now this describes what they
were doing, from verses 13-16 we have a graphic portrayal of these two sons and
the religious organization they headed up.
Now it looked like this: Eli was very old and he let his two sons
control this organization but under these two sons was a fantastic number of
servants. They, the two sons, were the bosses of this. They were the bosses somewhat like Caiaphas’
outfit in the time of Jesus Christ. We
know now from secular history that Caiaphas and his goon squad that operated in
the temple netted about three or four million dollars in bribes and extortion,
that was their job. And they had all
sorts of money-changing activities where they manipulated the currency and they
literally earned themselves about three or four million dollars a year. Caiaphas and his family ran a fantastic
syndicate in the city of Jerusalem. It
was this syndicate that Christ personally crashed into in John 2, “Why have you
made My Father’s house a den of thieves,” and the gentle Jesus walked in and
beat them up, and the reason why Jesus Christ beat them up was because He was
faced with sort of an ancient version of the mafia, headed by Caiaphas, and
Christ just single-handedly, mind you, walked in there and cleaned them out.
And the religious organization retaliated, of course, by having Him
crucified.
So the religious organizations always like strong esthetic large
buildings, they always love situations where they can get in power. This is why we have the independent church
movement in church history, because the independent church movement is a
movement that has directly reacted toward this kind of thing. It’s the independent churches that are last
on the list of targets simply because who wants to take over an independent
church, you don’t get enough power that way.
You take over religious organizations where you can influence many
churches, so therefore you have the influx into the denominational
hierarchies. We have had a graphic
lesson of this, very parallel to Eli and his two sons operating an apostate
religious establishment, to modern day in the 20th century and I’ll
show you the analogy. Eli is a believer,
his two sons, the second generation, are both unbelievers. Now God is going to hold a believer
responsible for staying in it, and Eli is like a lot of 20th century
Christians, why I know my church denomination is apostate but I think I can
just stay in and be a testimony to the people.
Does that sound familiar? The
point is that it never works, it NEVER works.
In fact, God holds you responsible for the works of the organization. How do you like that one, try that one on for
size. In 2 John, John says if you give
your money to an apostate organization you face God’s judgment for financing
it.
Here you are going to watch Eli and he’s going to get it and get it
good, because he is one of these believers that’s involved in apostate
religious organization but he doesn’t want to make waves. He doesn’t want to speak out for the Word
because he might upset the religious peace that they have in their
community. And so for the sake of peace
the Word of God is always trashed and Eli is this kind of individual, and
shortly we will see God’s attitude toward believers like that. We’ve had them,
we probably have a few here tonight that still have this idea in their head
that they’re going to straighten out some apostate organization. Let me save you a lot of trouble, you’re not
going to straighten out any organization, you need straightening out. In the first place, if you go back into an
apostate religious organization you are violating the authority of the people
in charge; they don’t want to go your way, and you don’t have the rank to straighten
them out so you have no business going inside an apostate organization to
straighten them out because you are violating their authority; you have no
business going in an apostate organization anyway because you are a partaker of
their deeds so it behooves you to straighten your thinking out about where you
belong.
So Eli is one of these people and he’s sort of an early day example of
this kind of action, let’s look at him and his sons. Verse 13, “And the priests’ custom with the
people was that, when any man offered sacrifice, the priest’s servant came,
while the flesh was boiling, with a fleshhook of three teeth in his hand, [14]
And he struck it into the pan, or kettle, or caldron, or pot; all that the
fleshhook brought up the priest took for himself. So they did in Shiloh unto all the Israelites
who came there.” Now to gather what is
happening here you have to have some understanding of what it was, what God’s
norm was for the priests, so turn to Deuteronomy 18:3. Here’s what they should have done by the Law
of Moses.
In Deuteronomy 18:3 are instructions to the priests; “And this shall be
the priest’s due from the people, from them who offer a sacrifice, whether it
be an ox or sheep; and they shall give unto the priest the shoulder, and the
two cheeks, and the maw [stomach].”
Those are parts of the sacrifice for the priest and only those
pieces. And furthermore, they were to
give these pieces to the priest after they sacrificed. Notice it says “from them who offer a
sacrifice,” so these pieces had to be given to the priest after the
sacrifice. Here’s the principle, the
people are coming and they are offering a sacrifice to Yahweh or Jehovah, God;
they take their sacrifice and that is to be given to Jehovah, it is at the
point it is burned; it is obviously killed and it is being consumed. After the burning, well, before the burning
on some of the offerings, and some of the meal offerings this wasn’t the case,
but somewhere in this time after it had been officially sacrificed to Jehovah, then
a part of it went to the priests. Why?
Because these priests were serving Jehovah and they should share in what was
given to Jehovah. Jehovah shares that which He receives. So here we have the priests sharing in what
has been given to Jehovah. Now watch the
line or the chain here; first you have the person coming to Jehovah, then it
goes to the priest.
Now turn back to 1 Samuel 2 and see the order, “And the priests’ custom
with the people was that, when any man offered sacrifice,” no problem yet, “the
priest’s servant came,” now the servant here were these hired goons of the two
sons of Eli, this was his God-squad that he sent out to milk believers who had
some. And when “they offered sacrifice,
the priest’s servant came, while the flesh was boiling,” and they took “a
fleshhook with three teeth,” they took this thing and they’d walk up and they
say oh, you’re offering today, fine, and they’d just stab it and they’d pull up and if they pulled the whole thing up
all right, this is mine, and they’d walk off with it. Now this is what was going on.
But further, in verse 15, not only did they do that, but you see the
word, “Also,” “even more than this” would be the proper translation, “before
they burned the fact, the priest’s servant came, and said to the man who
sacrificed, Give flesh to roast for the priest; for he will not have boiled
flesh of thee, but raw.” This was an
attempt to bypass Yahweh. The priest
then would come immediately to the believers and before the sacrifice was ever
even offered to God they wanted their grubby little hands on it. So this was the racket that was being
run. Now it may seem a little far away
for you to think in these terms about cooking a nice piece of meat and having
some guy come up with a fork and pull it out of the oven, and unless you’re
very hungry at the moment this won’t strike too much of a familiar note.
But let me show how this principle operates today. We have, say a religious organization A;
religious organization A has many local churches. And so believers come here on positive
volition to one of these local churches and they begin to give money to one of
these local churches. Why do they give
the money to the local church? Because
they give it as an act of worship, they give it to God. In the Old Testament analogy God would take
the gift and he would use it, He would either consume it for His own glory or
He’d turn around and use it. But what
happens in an apostate organization? A
certain percent is raked off and brought up into the denominational hierarchy
so we can finance apostate Sunday School material, so we can finance new
provisions on why it’s spiritual to be a homo and a few other things like
this. This goes on and it’s always this
rake-off method.
And this is why one of the greatest scholars in the 20th
century, J. Gresham Machen had a break with one of these great
organizations. Machen was a Greek
Scholar, he was a genius; Machen’s Greek textbook is still used by beginning
students in New Testament Greek. What
Machen found as a pastor in this particular organization was that he was
accepting money and he began to say where is all this money going, the
denomination gets a certain rake-off and we want to find out what they’re doing
with it. And lo and behold, it turned out after some investigation, that they
were sending it to missionaries who denied the virgin birth of Jesus Christ;
they were shipping it off to some that weren’t even too sure about the deity of
Christ. Machen said just a minute, I am
a pastor of this local church, I receive these funds in the name of
organization A from my people and you people are turning around and using it
for an apostate work, and I’m not going to do it. So Machen started taking the rake-off and
financing independent missions with it, to which the denomination said sorry
Machen, you’re out, and they defrocked him, one of the most humiliating, foul,
hours in American 20th century religious history. J, Gresham Machen, one of the great godly
men, a man who wrote the standard work on the virgin birth of Jesus Christ, a
work that has never been answered, and a man who was a great New Testament
scholar was defrocked by a major denomination because he refused as pastor to
send the rake-off up to the higher authorities who were then turning around and
using it for the same king of things like you see in this passage. Now that goes on so don’t get hung up in the
meat and the hooks; this principle carries over into financing and religious
apostasy today.
Verse 16, this is another little lulu that always along with religious
apostasy. “And if any man said unto him,
Let them not fail to burn the fat now, and then take as much as thy soul
desires;” in other words, he would see this character walking up to the pot and
he would wander what’s going on, and hey, I want that meat, I want it right
now, he’d say no, let’s burn it to Jehovah first and then if you want it go
ahead and take it. No, we’re not going
to do that. Notice the last part of
this, “then he would answer him, Nay; but thou shalt give it to me now; and if
not, I will take it by force.” And this
is always characteristic of unregenerate religion. And by the way, please notice the control we
have in verses 13-17, how do we know this is apostate? How does the author in verse 12 know that
these two sons didn’t know the Lord. Do
you want to know how? He measured their
overt behavior by the Word of God. These
priests habitually violated Deuteronomy 18:3.
And because they habitually were in violation of the Word of God what
conclusion did this analyst come to?
They knew not the Lord, and it’s the same thing today, if you see a
person and they’re habitually, I mean habitually out of it, you have good
reason to suspect something’s wrong some place.
Now here in verse 16 you have what the unregenerate religious
organization will always do. You see,
they lose their power when they lose their contact with the Lord, and so we
have minus spirituality, but if you’re going to have minus spirituality you’re
also going to have minus power. So
you’ve got to have something to replace the power and what you have to replace
the power is human power instead of God’s power, and so what are some examples
today of this same kind of thing, “I will take it by force.” We have the gimmicks, money raising
gimmicks. You should see the kind of
trash I get in the mail, how to raise money for your church by selling
basketballs or how to get everybody to knit a mitten for somebody and to ship
it in the mail and somebody will send back a contribution, or how to have a
rummage sale for God, as though God were in the junk business or
something. All of this stuff, it’s
ridiculous, all these gimmicks that are used.
We’ll come around and we’ll solve all your financial problems, just give
us a 25% cut and we’ll solve your problems.
So the gimmicks go on today and they go on even within, pardon the
expression, evangelical circles. So
beware of gimmicks, that’s one way that religion and unregenerate religion substitutes
human power for God’s power. Another way
is the idea, as we have seen, is certain clergymen leading revolts, clergymen
who finance revolts such as they have in certain major metropolitan areas. This is no different than you see in verse
16, “give it to me, I’ll take it.”
Verse 17, “Wherefore the sin of the young men was very great before the
LORD; for men abhorred the offering of the LORD.” Notice why verse 17, why this was very great
before the Lord. It is not because
believers are getting sucked; that is wrong but that isn’t what most offends
God. What most offends God is that they
are doing this right in front of the tabernacle; they are doing it right in
front of His very presence. This is the
buildup for the chapter, why they’re going to lose the presence of God. God says when I was here, My Shekinah glory
inside the tabernacle, what did you do?
You ran a religious con game right under My nose; that’s how much you
appreciate My presence here. So like a
gentleman, if you’re not wanted leave, you don’t stick around if a group of
people don’t want Him around, fine, there are plenty of other people in the
world. So this is what God is going to
do.
Now in verses 18-21 we have a little notice about what Samuel is
doing. This is much of a contrast but it
shows you… “But Samuel ministered before the LORD, being a child, girded with a
linen ephod. [19] Moreover, his mother made him a little coat, and brought it
to him from year to year, when she came up with her husband to offer the yearly
sacrifice.” Now these are all habitual
imperfects, and it shows that Hannah has gotten the message. Hannah, in verses 1-10 announce that Messiah
was going to come somehow. This woman
had three years while she was pregnant, after she delivered her child and as
she nursed him she was constantly thinking what God was going to do, that that
selfish prayer that she’d made in a moment of adversity was working into a
tremendous thing of God, and Hannah, apparently, was the kind of woman that
would not say too much, you never find her saying too much in this thing, you
find her kind of withdrawn but she was the kind of a person that goes and does
a lot of thinking, and she has a lot of depth to her character, and here that
depth of character comes out because she knows that something is going to
happen. And this little coat that she
makes in verse 19 was during Samuel’s early years, and as he grew up each year
she would come because he had grown some, and he’d grown out of it and she’d
make him another one, and each year she’d come there and she’d have this little
coat. And this little coat is very
significant because this tells us what was on this woman’s mind. She knew that her son was going to replace
the high priest; she knew that God was going to destroy the old order, and so
she starts dressing her son as a priest, knowing that this corruption that’s
going on, she doesn’t fight it, she just knows God is going to take care of it
and it’s going t be through my son, and so she comes each year with this clothing.
In verse 20, “And Eli blessed Elkanah and his wife, and said, The LORD
give thee seed of this woman for the loan which is lent to the LORD. And they went unto their own home.” In verse 21 Hannah has three sons and two
daughters. [“And the LORD visited
Hannah, so that she conceived, and bore three sons, and two daughters. And the child, Samuel, grew before the
LORD.”] There’s the fringe benefits that she gets later on for trusting the
Lord; that’s a latter day illustration of Matthew 6:33, “Seek first the kingdom
of God and all these things shall be added unto you. When she sought the Lord and she turned her
first son over to Him, I’m sure that was something that she might have thought
later on that she made a big sacrifice, and here God is providing for her
need. That’s the information on Samuel
and his family in contrast to Eli.
Now we get to a very interesting section on how not to raise your
children, verses 22-26, remember what this is now, this is Eli who was a
believer and he’s going to stay with it, and he has the two sons and they are
unbelievers. And they are consoling the
religious organization but Eli has the right to straighten them out. So what does he do. “Now Eli was very old, and heard all that his
sons did unto all Israel, and how they lay with the women who assembled at the
door of the tabernacle of the congregation,” these were women servants in the
organization that took care of the tabernacle and so on.
Verse 23, “And he said unto them, Why do ye such things? For I hear of
you evil dealings by all this people. [24] Nay, my sons; for it is on good
report that I hear; ye make the LORD’s people to transgress,” now doesn’t that
really sound profound, and you’ll see that God takes him to task. He’s trying the “convince them” approach,
like they teach you in child development, little Johnny comes up and he spits
in your face and you say oh, I see that you have a problem Johnny; don’t ever
touch them with a rod, you might hurt their personality or something, as though
their personality was located in that place.
But we have Eli trying to straighten his sons out, and obviously he does
a messed up job and the pathetic thing about this is in verses 24-25 is that
one remark this man makes in verse 24 tells us that he knows the entire
dimension of his sons sins. In other
words, it’s not the case of an old man, well, whatever, boys will be boys and
they’re having a good time down at the tent.
That’s not the case, he knows exactly what his sons are doing because
one thing we know this, in verse 22 “heard” is an imperfect, habitual
imperfect, it means that he constantly heard this over and over and over
again.
And in verse 25 he says this to his sons, not this may seem
inconsequential to you but this is going to pay off later in the understanding
at the end of the chapter. “If one man
sin against another, the judge shall judge him; but if a man sin against the
LORD, who shall entreat [mediate] for him?”
Now in the Hebrew this can’t be rendered into English properly, no way
because in the Hebrew this is a play on words.
What he’s saying is if one man sin against another, then the umpire
shall umpire between them, God shall umpire between them. In other words, you have two men down here
and they’re in an argument... [tape turns]… who is going to judge, and they are
literally called the elohim, because
the judges in the Old Testament were sometimes called gods and here’s one case
where they are. The reason for that is
they reflect the Word of God, their word was equal to God’s word in any court
decision: no court of appeals. So in
this situation these two men who were fighting among themselves had hope that
the case would come out in their favor, but Eli says when you’re down here
kids, God is up here and you’re sinning against Him, there’s no way the case is
going to come out in your favor, no way whatever. And Eli, therefore, we can deduce from verse
25, knew exactly the full nature of the sin, that this was done under the very
nose of God. [“Notwithstanding, they
hearkened not unto the voice of their father, because the LORD would slay
them.”]
Verse 26, “And the child, Samuel, grew on, and was in favor both with
the LORD, and also with men.” You can
see the very clever historian here, how he [can’t understand word/s] the two, the
rise of Samuel and the decline of the priesthood.
Now in verse 27-36 we have the final section, the announcement of God’s
coming judgment. This is one of the
first times in our studies that we have come across a prophetic announcement. And since this is the first time we’ve come
across a prophetic announcement I might as well stop and give you the structure
of a prophet’s message. A prophet’s
message always begins with an appeal to a covenant. The idea here is to show that God has been
faithful and has gone beyond the terms of the covenant, that God is a gracious
God. In other words, God is totally
innocent. The second thing, usually, in
the course of the discussion, there are more parts but let’s just look at these
two tonight, the second thing, after the prophet appeals to the covenant as a
yardstick for behavior, he then goes to the announcement of doom. The announcement of doom is important
theologically for you to understand as a believer; once the announcement of
doom is made, no amount of confession will ever change it. Now this is an important principle. This is why, as Christians, this can happen
to you. God can make an announcement of
doom upon you. And from that point
forward it means that your life will be run under the restrictions of that doom
sentence. In other words, God is going
to restrict your freedom, because of your past behavior, and He will put up
with it and tolerate it and tolerate it and tolerate it just so long. And He will give us an ample chance,
opportunities to change it. But finally
there comes a time when He says NO, you can have blessing within the boundaries
of this but I will never let you out of this; you have gotten yourself in a
hole and that is it.
And here’s God’s doom is announced and it is irreversible. Sometimes it can be postponed, but from this
point forward and the rest of Samuel and in Kings you’ll see this principle
operate, that when the prophet announces the sentence of doom it is
irreversible, it will never be released; it’s a very somber, very sober
thing. That’s why I point the structure
out to you so you see what kind of a God with whom we deal. Let’s look at the appeal to justice, verses
27-29.
“And there came a man of God,” this is the word for prophet before the
days of Samuel, this was an isolated prophet, “And there came a man of God unto
Eli, and said unto him, Thus saith the LORD, Did I plainly appear unto the
house of thy father, when they were in Egypt in Pharaoh’s house? [28] And did I
choose him out of all the tribes of Israel to be my priest, to offer upon Mine alter, to burn incense, to wear an ephod
before me? And did I give unto the house
of thy father all the offerings made by fire of the children of Israel. [29]
Why trample you upon my sacrifice and upon mine offering, which I have
commanded in my habitation; and honorest thy sons above me, to make yourselves
fat with the chiefest of all the offerings of Israel, my people?” Now this is an appeal to God’s loyalty. I imagine some of you have read Exodus, you
should immediately know of whom it is that he speaks in verse 27, Aaron and
Moses. Do you know what their tribes
were? The tribes of Levi. And so he is talking about God speaking to
Aaron, and when God spoke to Aaron He made a covenant with Aaron. Now there’s a lot of lessons to learn in this
little section, so let’s take one at a time.
He comes and he appears plainly, verse 27; verse 28, he chooses or he
elects him. Now you watch this, here we
have a document of election and eternal security, in connection with election
we also have the doctrine of discipline.
So I want to show you how eternal security and discipline are put
together in the Bible. If you’ll keep
this balance you won’t go off on one hand thinking so much of the discipline
you wind up an Armenian who doesn’t believe in eternal security, but on the
other hand you won’t become some person that says well, I’m elect so therefore
I can raise hell.
Turn back to Exodus 29:9, this is the election of Aaron and his
descendants to the priesthood. It’s
actually one of the great covenants, the covenant of peace which we don’t
mention too much, but it’s amplified in Numbers 25. Exodus 29:9, here is a sovereign election by
God, now this answers to your election.
If you’re a believer tonight God has foreknown you and He has
predestinated you. So let’s look at it;
“And thou shalt gird them with girdles, Aaron and his sons, and put the bonnets
on them,” now it really doesn’t look as bad as it sounds, “and the priest’s
office shall be theirs for a perpetual decree.”
Now watch something: what is
God? God is sovereign, God is righteous,
God is just, God is love, God is omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, immutable
and eternal. What attribute?
Immutable. If God is immutable
then Exodus 29:9 can’t be controverted in 1 Samuel 2, if God is immutable. Eli is part of Aaron’s house, so how is God
going to discipline Eli without endangering his election? Here’s how he’s going to do it; now you watch
for this. Just remember he is elect, so
the first thing you want to understand about 1 Samuel 2 is verse 28 where he
elects Aaron’s house. Here is the
eternal security, even of Eli’s house.
So we have eternal security but God announces a judgment of doom.
Secondly, if you look at verse 29, the last part, you will see what it
is that God sees and which God is going to turn around in His prophecy of
doom. 1 Samuel 2:29, “Wherefore do you
kick upon My sacrifice and upon Mine offering, which I have commanded…and you
honor thy sons above Me,” now look at that, “honor thy sons above Me,” that is
a somber warning to every parent. Do you
know what that is saying to you? That
when you let your kids develop –R learned behavior patterns and you do nothing
about it because you’re chicken, that means you are allowing your children a
higher status that God Himself; you honor your children more than you honor
God. Now there has to come a time
sometime when you might as well recognize that children may or may not love
you; that’s not the point, the point is whether they respect you or not. A child can’t love anybody, not until they’re
an adult do they really know what love means, so don’t worry about your
children loving you. You have to
engender respect for your position as a loving parent, and always remember this
passage, this should stick in your minds, “do you honor your children above
Me?” That’s what God is saying and
that’s what we do whenever we refuse to [can’t understand words]. Sure it’s hard, and sure it’s tough to get
into some situations. Eli had it tough, imagine
having Eli have to crack down. Do you know what it would have cost Eli to lower
the boom on his sons by the time things got as bad as 1 Samuel 2. He would probably have had to organize a
militia to come in and slaughter them.
That’s probably what would have had to have happened and Eli probably
knew it, that my sons are beyond my control, the only way I can restore
sanctity to this holy place is by killing my own sons, and I’m not going to do
it; God, I am not going to do it. God
says all right, then I’m going to do something.
So beginning in verse 30 God is going to do something. “Wherefore the LORD God of Israel saith,” and
from verse 30 to 36 you have the announcement of doom. “Wherefore the LORD God of Israel saith, I
said indeed that thy house, and the house of thy father should walk before Me
forever,” see, God refers back to His eternal decree, “but now the LORD says,
Be it far from Me; for them who honor Me I will honor, and they who despise Me
shall be lightly esteemed.” In other
words, God is saying yes, I elected the whole house to the priesthood but there
are portions of that house that are on negative volition and those portions
that are negative volition I’m eliminating.
Now that applies to your soul and to mine; God elects us as individual
people in Jesus Christ but that doesn’t mean He elects all of the crud that now
exists in our souls, and that means that God, although He has elected us, and
if you’re a believer you know that He’s elected you, then you also know that He
is going to remove obstructions to His work in your life and it may be a very
painful removal; some teeth come out easy, others don’t, so similarly in the
soul, certain –R behavior patterns will be yanked out and it will hurt, and
others will come out slowly and less painfully, but they will be removed. And this is how God is operating on this
house.
The word that he says “far from Me” is a very interesting word, and it’s
a very shocking word. It is the
strongest term of abhorrence in the Hebrew and the King James says “be it far
from Me,” and it sounds like some sort of a very weak individual. Actually this word means I will be damned if
I’m going to allow this to go on! Now
that is a translation that truly communicates what the Hebrew means, “I’ll be
damned if I’m going to allow this.” Now
when I translate it this way I don’t do that just to irritate some of you; some
of you really think I do that for that reason, but when you hear it said that
way, what does that tell you about God’s personal character? It means that He reacts, that’s what it
means. It doesn’t mean He stands up
there, well I see ole Eli’s having a bad time so we’ll have to do something
about that. That’s not the way God
reacts, I’ll be damned if I’m going to allow this to occur any more! That’s how God reacts. And this is what this announcement of doom
is. God reacts personally and this is
what you see over and over in these sentences of doom.
Verse 31, “Behold, the days come, that I will cut off thine arm, and the
arm of your father’s house, that there shall not be an old man in your house.
[32] And thou shalt see an enemy in my habitation, in all the wealth which God
shall give Israel, and there shall not be an old man in thine house
forever. [33] And the man of thine, whom
I shall not cut off from mine altar, shall be to consume thine eyes, and to
grieve thine heart; and all the increase of thine house shall die in the flower
of their age.” Now summarized, what this
prophecy is, is he is saying two things.
First, from this point forward the ark and the tabernacle are going to
go on decline. The ark is going to go,
the tabernacle is going to go, and do you know what that is? That is the home of the priests. You are going to watch the decline of thy
habitation, that’s what you’re going to see.
The second thing is, verse 33, “a man of yours,” this means there will
always, in every generation, be some descendant of Eli there watching the
progressive decline. He said your family
is destined forever to watch the slow decline of this. Very shortly, in the next chapter you will
see that Eli himself bears witness to some of this; his two sons are going to
die in the famous battle of Aphek. And
they will be replaced and the man will just drop dead as he is horrified by
what happens to his sons, he sees the ark removed and he dies. But that isn’t all, this prophecy in verse 33
says this will go on and on and on and on and on and on and on, every
descendant of Eli will watch the decline as it goes on down through
history.
And notice the last of verse 33, “All the increase of thine house shall
die in the flower of their age,” in other words, what he’s saying is just as
you used to milk the believers when they came to you to offer sacrifice with
your little pitchfork, just as you lived off the fat of people who
sacrificially gave to Me, in the time of the dark ages, when the Philistines
were around and they were oppressed, you people were living off the fat of the
land. You religious apostates milked
suffering believers, now I’m going to turn the tables and your family is going
to suffer and the believers are going to be blessed. And so when prosperity hits the nation around
1000 BC with David and Solomon, everybody is going to share in the prosperity,
except the priests. And this sets up the
fact that they will always exist as a very humble group, for the rest of the
history of the nation. They had a
fantastic opportunity, they blew it, and God said it’s over. You can still go on with Me and have a
relationship with Me, but you’re never going to have one like you could have
had, had you stuck it out.
And then finally in verse 34, “And this shall be a sign unto thee,” now
if you understand verse 34 this will help you understand every sign of prophecy
from this point forward in the Bible, including the prophecy of the virgin
birth. But you are introduced in verse
34 to how signs were given to a generation; watch this and there is no problem
with Isaiah 7 and other passages. Here’s
what God is saying: he’s Eli, point in time.
Down here are all the judgments that God is going to bring upon his
house. Let’s put some dates on this, say
from about 1050 BC, and from 900 to 500 BC, four centuries later, this is going
to go on and on and on and on and on.
And Eli, do you think you’re going to drop dead before I start
this? Huh-un, because before you drop
dead you are going to see something happen in your family and that is going to
be a preview of coming attractions. So
the sign that is given in verse 34 is an empirical sign given in the generation
of the prophecy. You watch that, that’s
a rule you can apply for the rest of your Bible study from this point forward,
that every prophecy will be indicated by a prophecy that comes true
immediately, and God is saying if the part that is due to come true comes true
today, then you can rest assured that the part that’s going to come true in the
future will also come true. That’s how
God works, He will always give a token fulfillment in the same generation the
prophecy was given. So that’s what it
means here, “they shall be a sign unto thee.”
“And this shall be a sign unto thee, that shall come upon thy two sons,
Hophni and Phinehas: in one day they shall die, both of them.” That is answered in the battle of Aphek which
we will study. In verse 35 “And I will
raise up for Myself a faithful priest, who shall do according to that which is
in Mine heart and in My mind; and I will build him a sure house, and he shall
walk before My Christ [mine anointed] forever.”
Now verse 35 is important for several reasons. This is predicting the rise of a new
priesthood, Zadok; Zadok is of the house of Aaron but not of the house of
Eli. Turn to 1 Kings 2:27, you’ll see
that within a century this came to pass.
At this time in history they had a high priest by the name of Abiathar;
Abiathar was a descendant of Eli.
Abiathar was the high priest and he engaged in a little problem, he had
some political intrigue that went the wrong way, and so verse 27, “Solomon
thrust out Abiathar from being priest unto the LORD, that he might fulfill the
word of the LORD which He had spoken concerning the house of Eli in Shiloh,”
there’s the prophecy, there it has come true, part of it. And then later on in this same passage, in
verse 35 you see that he put Zadok, the priest, on the high priest throne. Why is this important?
Turn to Ezekiel 40, for a look at the conditions in the millennium and
during the millennium though Christ reigns, there evidently will be a temple
that will be a memorial to His past work and in Ezekiel 40:46, the priest that
will be there ministering in that millennial temple will be the sons of
Zadok. And this means that this new
faithful priest will rise, and the house of Zadok, that will never be rich and
famous, will be the kind of faithful priesthood that is necessary for
Messiah.
Back to 1 Samuel 2 and we’ll finish these last two verses because these
tie it in with the person of Jesus Christ.
“And I will raise up for myself a faithful priest,” we have seen that,
Zadok and his house, “…I will build him a sure house,” you’ve seen that from
Ezekiel 40, that will last all the way into the millennium, “and he shall walk
before Mine anointed forever.” This is
the second time the word “Christ” occurs in 1 Samuel. The first time was in the song of Hannah; the
second time is here, and why is this important?
Because here before Christ can come He must have a worthy
priesthood. You cannot have Christ
coming to an apostate religious organization.
This is why Zadok, as we’ll study later, is a man who is faithful
through thick and thin to David; Zadok risks his life for King David. He is always a faithful priest to the king
and this is the nature and the quality of the priests that will surround
Christ. Do you know who those priests
are? They are believers. This is why in 1 Peter 2:9 Peter identifies
us as every believer is a priest, and we must have this quality spoken of; the
priest that “will do according to that which is in Mine heart, and will do
according to that which is in mind.” So
you know what that means? It means to
fulfill the Word of God. How do you know what’s in the mind of God except by
looking at the canon of Scripture, obedience to the word, “and he shall walk
before Mine anointed forever.”
Verse 36, “And it shall come to pass, that every one who is left in your
house shall come and bow down to him for a piece of silver and a morsel of
bread, and shall say, Put me, I pray thee, into one of the priests’ offices,
that I may eat a piece of bread,” they’re going to starve in other words. Now that’s the horrible discipline that God
waged upon this apostate religious organization to clear the way for His final
deliverance. Next week we’ll see another
step in this process and watch how God is working, here through a woman
bringing a man child into the world and her song, now He severely condemns the
apostate religious establishment. You
can see all of the intrigue and the motions are getting ready to adjust to the
new reign of the king. With out heads
bowed…