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Don Filcek; 1 Samuel 2:12-36 Bad Boys, Bad Boys...
Of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak preaches from his series in 1 Samuel, Timely Prophet, Tragic King. Let's listen in.
Well, good morning, Recast Church. I'm Don Filsak, I'm the lead pastor here, and I wanna start off by welcoming you and just saying thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule to meet together here in Matawan as God's people.
I'm glad that we are here together and that we have this opportunity. We come together each week. Hopefully, part of your reason for being here is to hear from God about himself in his word. We come together to sing as an expression of our worship together from our hearts.
I hope that worship begins this morning in your hearts and not just merely with your mouths or your vocal cords, but actually that it begins from a place of recognizing how awesome and glorious and majestic and merciful and gracious God has been to us.
And then we come together to recognize that we're not isolated in our faith, now, I don't know about you, but there are weeks that sometimes it feels lonely to be a follower of Christ, maybe in your workplace, maybe out where you live, maybe even in your neighborhood or in places that you roll, that it feels kind of like others don't have the same values as me.
Others out there don't roll the way that we roll. They don't believe the things that we believe. They don't have the hope that we have. And so sometimes you can get down just in the feelings of isolation.
And so I hope that you can, in this gathering place, look around you and see that you're not alone in the faith, but God is putting us together in community. He's growing a body of people together so that we know that we're not isolated, so we know that there are others that we can reach out to and share about what's going on in our week and do life together.
I would suggest to you that without accountability and relationship, we could get into trouble pretty quick. How many of you have identified that in your own life, that you need others in connection, in relationship, and that you could easily go a couple months without attending a church service and that could turn into a half a year and eventually you could just fall off the table on this kind of thing.
But we need each other and being connected in community helps to restrain our wayward and wandering hearts. And I believe that that's true of all of us. I don't need to see a raise of hands of how many of you would say you have a wayward and wandering heart.
I think that's a human condition that all of us would go to the path of least resistance and would eventually wander off were it not for the Spirit's work in our lives and connection with others. So this morning in our text, we're gonna see an Old Testament example of two men who were unrestrained in their wickedness.
They abused their roles and they were in a very significant role in the Old Testament. They were the sons of the high priest and held the office of priest themselves. They were giving God a bad name by the things that they were doing and the way that they were doing them.
And so they serve for us as an example of what not to do. And we're gonna get an opportunity to see that in the text. Examples often in Scripture will either run down the lines of hey, kind of follow this or hey, don't do this.
But I don't know if you've ever considered this about your own life. But do you consider the fact that you're an example to others around you? I believe that everybody in this room, that God is using you as an example in the lives of others around you.
It's either a good example or a bad example, but you are an example. And I personally don't want my life to be summed up in the end by what not to do. Like hey, pay attention to this guy and don't do those things, right?
So we're gonna kind of see that here in the text. But more than merely an example of what not to do, we will see that the lives of Hophni and Phineas, or as Dave might say, Phineas and Ferb. I'm gonna stick with Hophni and Phineas here.
They serve the overall story of God in pointing to the need for a better priesthood. So there's a bigger picture. In scripture, there's always a bigger picture than merely act like this guy or don't act like this guy.
Scripture always has a bigger picture for you than live like David or don't live like Saul or behave this way. And I think many of us, if we were just honest, we sometimes just come to scripture for it to tell us what to do.
Just tell me what to do. And a lot of times, it serves to tell us what God has done. Because that's the main point of scripture is what God has done. Not what you do, but what he has done for us. It's a message of grace, a message of hope.
Not just merely a list of examples to follow or people to act like and people to not act like. The moral of the story, by the way, throughout scripture and even our text this morning is not behave yourselves to be better than these two bad boys of the Bible.
The moral of the story is God will provide a better priest. Just like the consistent message of scripture is not be better, do better, live better, but instead is we need help or we're hopeless. We need someone to rescue us.
We need a savior. The people of Israel during the start of the life of Samuel in the context where we're looking at here at the very beginning of the book of Samuel, they were desperately broken all the way up to the highest religious leaders.
All the way up to the priesthood and even the high priest himself. Everybody broken. And I think there's a picture there for us. We are all broken. To a person in the room, we are broken. And I don't mean to say that we're doing, all of us are doing the same things.
That Hophni and Phineas are doing here. God forbid that that would be the case and I don't believe that that's true of us. But when I say that we're all broken, I don't mean to imply that we are to be okay with being broken or that we should be lazy about it or not seek to do better or even that we don't have the power to do better because I believe that everybody who's in Christ has the power to do better.
We have that through Christ and we are called to a higher standard in Christ. But the reason I point out that we're all broken is to make sure that nobody in this room leaves this morning with the impression that the message is one of self-improvement.
That is not the message that Recast wants to bring forward. That's not the message that I as a pastor want to communicate to you. Is that this is all about a self-improvement project. The Bible doesn't belong in the self-improvement on the self-improvement shelf in the bookstore.
It belongs in the revelation from God. It's in a category of its own. God showing us who he is and what he has done on behalf of sinful humanity. What he's done to rescue you and me. It's not fundamentally about you and I improving ourselves.
It's not a self-improvement project. At Recast, we seek to follow the Bible and the truth. And the truth, the Bible reveals at every step and every turn that we need a savior. We need a greater priest.
A higher king. A better sacrifice. We need something more than our own effort, our own strength, and our own religious behaviors. We need the faithful priest that God promises to raise up for himself.
We need a priest who does all that is in the heart and mind of God. Does that sound familiar? A priest who did all that was in the heart and mind of God. We need an eternal priest who will make an eternal sacrifice for us.
And he has. And Hophni and Phinehas in this text, Old Testament, 1 ,000 years before the birth of Christ, serve as a reminder that we need something more than any man or woman has to offer to us. So if you're not already there, I would encourage you to please open up to 1 Samuel.
1 Samuel chapter two, verses 12 through 36. We're gonna read that passage. It's a little bit longer. We're gonna read it in its entirety. You can find that on page 129. If you don't have a Bible or a means to navigate to the Bible on your device, grab the Bible that's under the seat in front of you.
And that's on page 129 there, so it's easy to find. And then again, I say this regularly. If you don't own a Bible, you don't have one at home, then take that one that's in the seat in front of you. You can take that home.
We encourage you to walk out of here with it, and then we'll just replace it. We got a box to replace any that are taken. But we want everybody to have a copy of God's word to be able to read at your own leisure at home.
But 1 Samuel chapter two, verses 12 through the end of the chapter. Now the sons of Eli were worthless men. They did not know the Lord. The custom of the priests with the people was that when any man offered sacrifice, the priest's servant would come.
While the meat was boiling with a three-pronged fork in his hand, and he would thrust it into the pan or the kettle or cauldron or pot, all that the fork brought up, the priest would take for himself.
This is what they did at Shiloh to all the Israelites who came there. Moreover, before the fat was burned, the priest's servant would come and say to the man who was sacrificing, give meat for the priest to roast, for he will not accept boiled meat from you, but only raw.
And if the man said to him, if the man said to him, let them burn the fat first and then take as much as you wish, he would say, no, you must give it now, and if not, I will take it by force. Thus, the sins of the young men was very great in the sight of the Lord, for the men treated the offering of the Lord with contempt.
Samuel was ministering before the Lord, a boy clothed with the linen ephod, and his mother used to make for him a little robe and take it to him each year when she went up with her husband to offer the yearly sacrifice.
Then Eli would bless Elkanah and his wife and say, may the Lord give you children by this woman for the petition she asked of the Lord. So then they would return to their home. Indeed, the Lord visited Hannah, and she conceived and bore three sons and two daughters, and the boy Samuel grew in the presence of the Lord.
Now, Eli was very old, and he kept hearing all that his sons were doing to all Israel and how they lay with the women who were serving at the entrance to the Tenem meeting. And he said to them, why do you do such things?
For I hear of your evil dealings from all these people. No, my sons, it's no good report that I hear the people of the Lord spreading abroad. If someone sins against man, God will mediate for him. But if someone sins against the Lord, who can intercede for him?
But they would not listen to the voice of their father, for it was the will of the Lord to put them to death. Now, the boy Samuel continued to grow in stature and in favor with the Lord and also with man.
And there came a man of God to Eli and said to him, thus says the Lord, did I indeed reveal myself to the house of your father when they were in Egypt? Subject to the house of Pharaoh? Did I choose him out of all the tribes of Israel to be my priest, to go up to my altar, to burn incense, to wear an ephod before me?
I gave to the house of your father all my offerings by fire from the people of Israel. Why then do you scorn my sacrifices and my offerings that I commanded for my dwelling? And honor your sons above me by fattening yourselves on the choiceless parts of every offering of my people Israel.
Therefore, the Lord, the God of Israel declares, I promise that your house and the house of your father should go in and out before me forever. But now the Lord declares, far be it from me, for those who honor me I will honor, and those who despise me shall be lightly esteemed.
Behold, the days are coming when I will cut off your strength and the strength of your father's house, so that there will not be an old man in your house. Then in distress you will look with an envious eye on all the prosperity that shall be bestowed on Israel, and there shall not be an old man in your house forever.
The only one of you whom I shall not cut off from my altar shall be spared to weep his eyes out, to grieve his heart, and all the descendants of your house shall die by the sword of men. And this that shall come upon your two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, shall be assigned to you.
Both of them shall die on the same day. And I will raise up for myself a faithful priest who shall do according to what is in my heart and in my mind, and I will build him a sure house, and he shall go in and out before my anointed forever, and everyone who is left in your house shall come to implore him for a piece of silver or a loaf of bread, and shall say, please put me in one of the priest's places that I may eat a morsel of bread.
Let's pray. Father, I pray that you would be honored and glorified in our midst, that you would be lifted up and you would be highly exalted, and we would recognize the way that you work in and through and around the history of your people as well as in our presence even today.
Father, I pray that you would be exalted in the singing of songs and in the way that we think of you in our hearts first before we even open our mouths to sing these songs, that we would see you as high and exalted and lifted up, working your plan for the good of your people in the end.
Even to the degree of protecting your people and calling out sin and letting your word interject in our broken, sinful relationships and even in our own lives, Father, that we might come away convicted this morning, even as the man of God came into Eli's family and spoke the words that they needed to hear and they didn't wanna hear, but they needed to hear.
Father, I thank you that you do not leave us in our sin, but you are faithful to convict, you're faithful to draw your people back to yourself, and you are faithful to bring a call of repentance to your people.
Father, I pray that that would be a reality in our midst today, but ultimately, that in the midst of all that we're facing, all the things that press in on us, that we would most importantly recognize the need that has been fulfilled in Jesus Christ for a faithful high priest, one who has made an eternal sacrifice for us, that we would not take that for granted, that we would not go on sinning because of grace, but instead, grace would compel us to love.
Grace would compel us to love God and love others more. I pray that that would be a reality here this morning, in Jesus' name, amen. Amen, yeah, you can go to be seated. And I do encourage you to get comfortable.
Keep your Bibles open, please, to 1 Samuel 2, verses 12 through 36. If you lost your place there, set your Bible down, and it's not open to that, navigate back over to there so that you can see that the outline that I'm walking us through is the text itself.
We're gonna talk about that passage that I read earlier. And then remember that if any time during the message you need to get up and get more coffee or juice or donuts, you're not gonna distract me. Just take advantage of that.
That's back there at any time. I suggest to you that we live in a day and an age when the religious establishment has come under hard times. Would you agree with me? How many of you have had a conversation with somebody or know somebody who said, I believe in God, but I don't believe in religion.
I don't believe in the established religion. I don't go to church. I don't really believe in that kind of stuff. I've been burned by the church, or I've just read too much about the church, or I've seen too much in the headlines, that kind of stuff.
I think that's a reality of the world we live in. Denominations are failing. The Catholic Church was rocked by scandal after scandal. Some high-profile evangelical ministers down through the ages and decades, and even right here in the Kalamazoo area have fallen to adultery or greed.
And probably all of us know someone or some church or something in our past or something in our history that we've had every reason to not be sitting in a church this morning. That's probably a reality for many of us is that there have been experiences that you've had where Christians treated you poorly, or Christian leaders treated you poorly, or you were the one treating others poorly.
But whatever it might be in the past that at the end of the day, you have all kinds of baggage that you bring into this idea. And so then we come to a passage like this that's gonna give us a little bit more of that, and it's gonna talk to us about that, and face it head-on versus trying to sweep that under the rug.
But I would suggest to you, if you wanted to judge Christ according to those who claim to be his followers, or even those who, many who have been his leaders, he would not come out looking great. So we come to an Old Testament text that highlights the bad behavior of two priests, two priests that are in very high standing in the nation of Israel.
Hophni and Phinehas are two sons of the high priest whose name is Eli. And they serve as historical examples of religious leaders and religious people behaving wickedly. They also serve as a contrast in the text to innocent young Samuel, who we're gonna see a back and forth play, as you saw me read that, you saw a little bit of back and forth play between the sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, and little Samuel who's growing up there in the tabernacle, being groomed to replace them.
But also we see that this text, and Hophni and Phinehas serve as a reminder that our hope ought never to rest in the human religious establishment of church denomination, church leadership, or any other human institution.
But our hope is to rest solely on the provision of God for our salvation through his son, Jesus Christ. That is where our hope is to rest. So our outline this morning is simply this, if you're a note taker, verses 12 through 21 we're gonna be looking at the wicked, worthless sons.
Verses 22 through 26 we're gonna be looking at the weak rebuke of their father, Eli. And then in 27 through 36 we're gonna be looking at the word that breaks in. So wicked and worthless sons, weak rebuke, and the word breaking in at the end of the text.
So let's first set the stage with the bad boys of Eli, the high priest. The word worthless might stand out to you in verse 12, and it might strike some of us as too strong a word. Does that seem like a strong word to use for a person?
Anybody kind of struggle, you read that and you're like, is there such a thing as a worthless person? I thought we were all made in the image of God, right? Well this is a word that has at its very root a deceptive nature to it.
So although it's translated worthless, and I don't think that's a terrible translation, it has in it a wicked deception, a living in a way that is not forthright or direct or clear. In other words, they were hiding behind some things.
They weren't clearly conveying themselves forward in the way that they should as priests, being transparent, being honest with their people. And so that's what's going on. Interestingly, I don't for a second believe, by the way, it says in the text that, in verse 12, it clarifies, by the way, that worthlessness of these two sons of the high priest is tied up, this dishonesty is in the nature of the next phrase, they did not know the Lord.
Now how many of you think that your assumption would be that a priest would know the Lord? How many of you would have the assumption that a pastor would know the Lord, would be in relationship to God?
And so do you see how that phrase worthless, if it's understood in terms of deception, they're putting forward a front of representing God to the people, and they don't even know who he is. So that's the nature of what we're looking at here in verse 12, the description of these guys.
They are not in any vital way connected to their Heavenly Father, but they are proposing to lead others in worship. And I don't for a second believe that the phrase they didn't know him means that they didn't know of him, they just were ignorant, they had no knowledge of God, and nobody had ever taught them, nobody had ever told them who God was, or anything like that.
I believe that they even know about the Lord, they know of him, they know about him, but the fact that they did not know the Lord implies a lack of living in the real recognition of who he is. How many of you would admit that there are times where you know facts that God is judged?
Have you known that he's the judge? And have you still sinned anyways? That's living, when we sin, we are living as though we are ignorant of God, like we are living in a way that is without the knowledge of God every time that we sin.
It's like, we're pretending that he's not there, we're pretending he doesn't see, we're pretending that we're never gonna give an account before him. Well, these two guys worked in the tabernacle of God, the tent, the holy place that was carded all around during the exodus where they would make sacrifices and offerings, it was the center place of the worship in the Old Testament prior to the temple being built.
And they were two of the highest religious leaders in the world during their lifetime. Their position in the family of the priesthood put them in the place of leading others in worship. And they did not know the Lord or even live in the fear of the knowledge of him.
I believe that that right there is our very first, very first application, our very first thought that we need to take on, a caution from the opening verse, really ultimately to each and every one of us, it is possible to play religion.
It is possible to even play religious leader, to even play the I'm worshiping God game or I'm leading in worship and not really even be mindful of who the God is that you're supposed to be worshiping.
Because let's be frank for a minute, if you're really gonna know God as he truly is, if you're gonna know God moment by moment in his power, his holiness, his justice, his grace, his sovereign rule, then that is going to impact the way that you live.
It's gonna have an impact on the way that we live moment by moment, it's gonna have an impact on the things that we say, the things that we do, the way that we behave in our families, the way that we treat our spouse, the way we treat our parents, the way we treat our children, all kinds of relationships, the way that we interact with friends.
Every relationship that you have is gonna be impacted if you are living your life in the knowledge of God. But according to the text, these guys, Hophni and Phinehas, they were wicked. The priests, by the way, their wickedness, it might be a little bit mysterious to us here in verses 13 through 16, like what is going on with us?
Three pronged fork and taking meat out of a boiling pot and stuff like that. You have to know a little bit of the Old Testament. How many of you have ever, how many of you have ever went through the Bible in a year?
If you've attempted to go through the Bible in a year. Maybe you didn't make it all the way through, a couple more hands, come on. And my hunch is that those of you who on the second round raised your hand and then put it back down quick and I tried, Leviticus might be the stopping point for some of us, right?
Like you get into Leviticus and it's like oh, and sacrifices and blood and animals being offered and this, that and what does this have to do with me? And it trails off and you fall behind. But this is why maybe this is mysterious to us is we're not very versed in Leviticus.
Actually, all of this ties into a passage and I'd have you write this down and read it. It's something that you could actually learn from Leviticus here to have an understanding about a text that we're looking at now.
Leviticus 7, 28 through 36. You don't need to turn there, I'm not gonna quote it, but that is where you find what the arrangement was for the priest at each sacrifice, the portions he was allowed to take from each offering.
So there were portions of every sacrifice that were given to the priest. A portion was burned on the altar and another portion was given to the family and that's why they would have a feast every year.
They'd go down to Israel, they'd make their sacrifices and then there'd be this big feast that happened and everybody would celebrate and there'd be good food and it was like a big barbecue. I don't know what you think about the things that were going on at the temple.
Some of us think it's gross and some of us think it's a barbecue, right? Like if you have the right understanding, this was a festival time of celebration of your sins being covered by the blood of an animal and then they would eat and I mean, you're kind of going, oh, I bet it's stunk.
No, it smelled like roasted meat. Like how many of you like a barbecue? You like that, okay. If you like that, then you would have liked this. This would have been a time of celebration. But these two priests acted wickedly in this context.
From each sacrifice made, the priest was to be given and I looked up some of these portions, some of these cuts to try to figure out in modern day what we would call it. They would be given some of the shank, they'd be given some of the round, they'd be given some brisket and even some chuck, okay.
So that was a portion of each animal, some of the chest meat, some of the rump and then some of the shank off of the thigh. So those were the portions of the cut that would be given to one thigh and it would be given to the priest.
So they were getting some meat off of each one of these, each cattle, the ox that was offered or the lamb or the goat, they were being given some meat from this. The priestly family made off pretty well with this arrangement.
There's still plenty of meat to go around, some of it was sacrificed. But before the priest got his cut, he was supposed to burn off all of the fatty portions on the altar as a sacrifice, that he was to dispose of all the guts and the bones and all of that and then the family received the balance of the meat for their own feast which they would often boil before they ate.
But according to verses 13 through 16, Hophni and Phinehas were not, hear me carefully, not satisfied with what the Lord gave to them. They were not satisfied with the portions that God had allotted to their family.
They would go to the families after they had taken their cut, then they would go on to the families who were preparing their feast and with this three-pronged fork, they would go and they would steal more choice portions for themselves.
That's what you see happening in verse 13. And worse, they even began to demand the meat before the fat was burned before the Lord. In essence, they were not only stealing, and it's very clear in this text, they were not only stealing from the Israelites who were making their offerings, but they were stealing from the very sacrifices that belonged on the altar to God and they were eating the portions that were supposed to be burned to the Lord.
How many of you can see the writing on the wall in this one? At this point in the stage, you have some idea how this is gonna end for these guys. You kind of see this not going very well. They're stealing from God and I don't ever see that going well in scripture.
It's not gonna end well for these guys. Further, these wicked priests were sending their lackeys to threaten and take meat by force, it says in the text, even if needed. The image we have, just think in terms of the religious establishment during this time, this was the place that you went to worship if you were an Israelite.
Every year, you were supposed to go on this pilgrimage, you were going there for this festival and going there to make sacrifices. It's a devastating religious environment around the tabernacle during this era.
There was theft, intimidation, hostility, and dishonor toward the Lord and toward his offerings going on there in Shiloh during this time. And so when we come to the indictment of these guys in verse 17, we find their wickedness is described in these terms in the text.
The sins of the young men was very great. It was grave, it was very serious, and it was like a huge pile of sin in the sight of God. For the men treated the offerings of the Lord, it says in the text, with contempt, with disdain.
They were pushing God aside in this and his offerings. And I believe that we ought to take a moment to bring this into our modern context. We don't make offerings or give or take meat in sacrifices any longer, and I'm kind of glad for that.
I wouldn't want to have to slaughter your animals. I'm glad that I'm not a priest in that sense. But living our lives with the knowledge of God is an important aspect of our relationship with God through his son Jesus Christ where we live today.
You see, I believe that we treat the Lord and the offerings of Jesus with contempt when we testify falsely about him, when we speak in ways that soften his claims, whenever we give false advice to others around us based on our own preferences, our own thoughts, or the culture around us, or when we mislead them into thinking that God will never judge.
God will never judge, God won't put people out. He loves everybody. These priests stood up in the presence of Israel and without saying a word were teaching and showing everyone that it's okay to disdain and show contempt to the Lord.
As if to say, we can do all these things and get away with it. God's not gonna do anything, he won't judge. As if to say God is just a big grandfather in the sky who loves everyone and is just gonna accept and embrace everyone.
Sound familiar? It sound like a problem that maybe is more modern? A problem that we might face in our own culture? Further, the text goes on to be explicit about the things that these guys were doing.
They were carousing with the ladies who came to do legitimate work around the tabernacle. They were womanizers. Their reputation was spread far and wide that the priests were swindlers and playas. And they were the shilo religious gangsters.
And who was gonna stop them? Who's gonna stop them? There's drama in this. Do you see the drama in the text? Can you imagine putting yourself in that scenario, in that situation, and they're abusing everybody who comes through and they're stealing and they're putting pressure on people and intimidating them and threatening them in the religious context.
They're above the law. They're above everything that anybody can accuse them of. And they are there just carousing and stealing from God and from the people. And then suddenly, in verse 18, suddenly in verse 18, you're reading about a little boy.
It seemed to kind of, even when I was reading it, does it kind of wrench your attention? It's kind of like, is this out of place? Did somebody, did the copyright, did the editor forget to put this in another place in the Bible?
Is this where this belongs? But I believe it's there with full intention. Verses 18 through 21 serve as a peaceful, calm contrast in the midst of the storm of the religious establishment of this era. All this mess, all this sin, all this wickedness swirling around that religious establishment.
And it's like God doesn't want to leave us alone in the wickedness, but wants to remind us that he is indeed on the scene. He is working his plan. The wicked, carousing sons are contrasted with a little boy in a little linen ephod.
Hey, picture that, cute little guy. He's like a little boy in a firefighter's outfit. Or a little boy who's following dad around with his tool belt as dad's fixing stuff and working around the house and he's hammering on stuff with his little toy hammer and he's working and he's growing in the knowledge of what it takes to be a priest of God.
And his mom had a hard time keeping him in clothes. I've raised two boys and I know that it can be hard to keep boys in clothes that fit them. And so he was growing, so each year she brought him a little priest outfit to wear.
And he was ministering before the Lord. This little boy, Samuel, was there in the tabernacle. And if you put that in context, he's there in the very tabernacle where Hophni and Phinehas are stealing from the people.
And he's there as a beacon of hope. There's a future that God has planned for his people. And it's not Hophni and Phinehas and Eli any longer. Samuel's family is blessed. See the contrast? Eli's family is gonna receive a curse.
Samuel's family, by contrast, is blessed here in the text. And even the high priest prayers, even the sinful father who will not sternly rebuke or push his sons out of the priesthood, it's his role. Eli's role is to not just merely rebuke them but is to remove them.
And he refuses to and he's gonna be judged for it. But even his blessing, even his prayer of blessing, it's like, even in that wickedness, even Eli's prayer is heard on behalf of Hannah and Elkanah, Samuel's parents.
And God's blessing of Hannah didn't end with the birth of Samuel. Remember, we talked a couple weeks ago about her barrenness and then she is granted a son through prayer and through wrestling with God.
But she went on to have three sons, three more sons and two daughters after that. All while we receive this information about Samuel, he grew physically and spiritually in the presence of the Lord. The contrast of the quiet, simple growth of a young boy with the support of his family who brings him stuff every year and the wicked and vile practices of the family of Eli are intentional in the text.
It's on purpose that we see these two contrasted. And this contrast serves to highlight the depravity of these two priests, what they were meant to be versus what they are. So as we wrap up this first movement of the text, it's good for us to look squarely at the wickedness of these religious leaders and take an assessment of our own hearts.
Are we merely doing some of the religious external things without really living in the knowledge of the Lord? Are we, like Hophni and Phineas, playing at religious things or even standing to gain from acting religious?
My hope and prayer for each one of us is that we come alive to who God is, that we come alive to what he's done for us and then we live out our lives Sunday through Saturday of each week with the reverent awe and respect that comes from knowing that God loves us and has provided for us everything that we need in his son, Jesus Christ.
He's given us everything that we need. Are you satisfied with what Christ has done for you? Is that enough for you? Do you walk around life with a three-pronged fork in your hand, plunging it into every boiling pot you find, trying to get more and more and more and more?
And God says, is my son not enough for you? Is he enough for you? Or are you out striving and stressed to get more? Seems like the American way to me. I don't know about you, but it just seems like there's a lot of tension even in this heart right here to just think, man, I need more, I need more, I need more.
God's given us enough. He's given us more than what we need. You see, for Hophni and Phinehas, the awesome roasts that God had already supplied for them, it's just not enough. They're not satisfied with what the Lord had given them, which technically was even more than they could eat.
But instead, they wanted it all. And that, we're gonna find by the end of this text, is gonna cost them everything. In verses 22 through 26, we see the weak rebuke of an old and tired father. A weak rebuke that should be a canning his sons.
They should be gone from the priesthood the moment that these things are validated. We talk about accusations, and are they true, and are they not true? These things are validated, and therefore, they should come to bear on the future of these two sons.
But Eli was very old, which doesn't serve to give an excuse for him. It's not like, oh, he was really old, though. It's actually the opposite. He should have had wisdom to be able to handle this issue because he's older.
The implication is he's old, and therefore, he should know better than to allow his sons to do these things and get away with them. He caught word through the grapevine that his sons were doing all of these wicked things.
And he said to them, are you ready for it? Fatherly wisdom, fatherly question. Why do you do these things? Why are you doing this? This maybe makes the top 10 list of things that fathers still say to their kids.
What were you thinking? Why did you do that, right? Any of you fathers ever ask your kids that? Why? What are you thinking? What are you doing? How many of you know that that's not the best question to ask?
It's not a very productive question. Pretty common question, but not a very productive one. But Eli has received a not good report from the people. It's humorous in the words that he uses here. There are many indications that Eli is using intentionally soft language.
People tell me, you know, people, some people out there, I'm not gonna mention names, sons, but there are people who would say that you're doing wicked things or evil things. You know, I'm not getting a very good report from the people about you.
Really? That's all that you can say, Eli? I'm not getting a good report? That's not so good, guys. You know, maybe you need to shape up a little bit and, you know, act a little bit nicer. There's implications, by the way, in an indictment that a man of God brings here in just a moment that we're gonna talk about that Eli himself was growing fat off of the offerings.
He himself is benefiting. He himself is eating those choice portions that his sons are bringing in. He's a beneficiary of his son's deception, evil, and threat, and stealing. And then in verse 25, in this weak rebuke, he reports that if your sins are merely against another person, well, God will stand in between as an arbiter.
But if God is the one that you've offended, now you're in deep trouble. What he says is something that might not make a whole lot of sense to us at first, but what he basically is getting at is if you have a plaintiff against you, and you're the defendant, and God is the judge, then God will stand in between the two of you and determine the issue.
But what Eli is saying to his sons is be careful, because in your situation, God will be both plaintiff and judge. God is the one filing suit against you, and he is the judge. I know you think that's kind of chilling, a chilling thought, God filing suit against you, and also judging you.
That's what he's saying. And there's a question that Eli asks that I'm glad that I know the answer to, and that I can share that answer to you as well, and I hope you already knew the answer. And the question that Eli asks is a very direct question.
Who can intercede for the one who has sinned against the Lord? You see, Eli doesn't have what even some of the other people in the Old Testament had. He plays his hand, and he's got no trump. Well, I didn't, trump is a bad word, isn't it?
But anyways, he plays his hand, and he's got, he does not have a good hand. It's not a good hand to play, because he doesn't have the answer that even some others in the Old Testament had. If you sin against the Lord, who is your hope?
God will provide one. That was what many people in the Old Testament would say, but Eli doesn't have it. Well, you guys are toasted. If you're sinning against God, who could possibly intercede, says Eli?
He should have the answer. He's the high priest. He should know that God will provide a way. The hope was that God would provide a Messiah who would stand in the gap for us, but we have the answer. The answer is God in flesh.
Who can stand when God is your, is plaintiff and filing suit against you, and he is the judge, who could possibly intercede for you? Who could be the right lawyer? Who could get you off on that case? The answer is God in flesh, the one mediator between God and man, the man, Christ Jesus.
He is the one who can intercede on behalf of those who have sinned against a holy and righteous God. Anybody say amen to the fact that you have a mediator, one who intercedes between you and the plaintiff and your judge?
Are you glad for that? The sons of Eli refused, though, to heed the weak rebuke of their father. They're too far in. For whatever reason, we don't get all the details here. We just know that they refused to repent, and it says they would not repent, for it was the will of the Lord to put them to death.
Anybody's mind melt down when you read that phrase? Does it concern you? Does it worry you? Does it make you kind of like, what's God doing behind the scenes again? How did that work? It doesn't say that they rejected it so God endorsed their decision.
It doesn't say, first and foremost, they chose to not repent, and therefore, God kind of said, I'm gonna go with you on this one. That's not how it reads. God's mind, it says, was made up. His desire, his will, was to put them to death, and they didn't repent because of it.
Now, don't get bothered by adding more than the text says here. It never says, Hophni and Phinehas desperately wanted to repent. They were tears and a hunger and a desire to honor God, and they wanted to make things right, and they wanted to give back to those that they stole from, and they wanted to rectify the entire situation and apologize to everybody, and God wouldn't let them.
It's not what the text says, but what I believe this text exists to do is it shows us behind-the-scenes work that God does indeed do. Shows us something that makes us uncomfortable, but he's doing it.
So should we prosecute God for having a sovereign will? Should we demand that he let us know how all of this works behind-the-scenes? Should we do that? I contend that he lets us look into the backstage of the production from time to time, and he does so throughout Scripture, and peels it back, and our minds turn to mush, and we're like, I don't get it.
And by the way, I don't think you are supposed to get it. I don't think that's the intention of it. None of us, by the way, none of us are smart enough to understand the interface between God's will and our will and the way that the whole thing works.
We can argue about it. We can talk about it. We can try to figure it out, and everybody's got their camp and their position, and the phrase is Calvinism and Arminianism and all of that. At the end of the day, it's beyond us.
Would anybody raise your hand and just testify? It's supposed to be. He's the almighty, sovereign God over all. If we can wrap our minds around him, then guess what? We are understanding all that is God.
That's just not us. We can't do that. But he does it. He does pull the curtains back. He does let us into the backstage from time to time to show us what's going on in the production, and I believe that he does so with the intention of evoking awe and reverent fear.
Consider what verse 25 is declaring to be true to us. Just at face value, what is it stating? What is it saying? It's saying God is the one who can justly make a sinner deaf to the call of repentance if he so chooses.
He can justly, rightly maintain his integrity and make deaf the ears of a sinner when they're called to repentance. They are fully responsible for their evil. And there came a day when God had had enough with Hophni and Phinehas and said, I will no longer allow you to repent.
And rather than try to understand how it works, I would encourage you that what we are supposed to do is trust by faith that it is true and then take it as a warning for our lives. Don't get caught up in the academics of trying to figure it out.
Don't get caught up in the academics of trying to prosecute God on it. Take it as truth and then let it be a warning to your life. You see, here's the way that I take this. If you're here and you're planning to sin today, you're planning to sin with the attitude that I'm gonna sin today, and then maybe tonight or tomorrow I will repent.
You know, I'll just apologize for it and I'll say, God, forgive me, and off we go. And how many of you have ever encountered, maybe not yourself, but you've encountered a friend who had that attitude?
All of us have one of those friends, right? You've never done that, but a friend has. And they've come to you and they've been like, well, can't God just forgive me? I've had people literally tell me, I wanna divorce my wife, but God can forgive that, right?
He'll forgive me for it. I wanna do that thing and I wanna go off and do this or that, but God's grace is big, right? God's grace is wide. And what I wanna say to you this morning and what I'm learning from this text is that tomorrow might come with no more desire on your part to repent.
You might start off into that sin with every full intention of apologizing tomorrow, and you know what, tomorrow comes and you just don't feel it. You don't feel like repenting anymore. You don't feel like turning back to God anymore.
And that's what this text is teaching us. There comes a point in our lives where we sin and if we continue on in that pathway, God sometimes just says, you know what, enough. That's enough. Your heart's not gonna be soft to me anymore.
And that came for Hophni and Phinehas. These bad boys are rejecting God. They're rejecting Eli, their father. Tells us in the text, all the while Samuel continued to grow in stature and favor with God and with man.
God was pleased with the little guy and so were the people. He was a favorite and they loved this little mini-priest who was growing up to honor his Lord, the King God. And so we come to this last section and the circumstances are really jacked up.
Remember, Eli's sons are behaving wickedly. He offers a weak and half-hearted rebuke. He kid gloves their sins because he loves his sons. Every indication is that he didn't wanna hurt them or didn't wanna remove that blessing from the family of the priestly line through his sons.
And so lastly, we come to the word of God breaking in. Who's gonna fix this? Who's gonna make this right? Who's gonna remedy this broken religious establishment? And God's word mercifully breaks in to fix this public scandal.
When the people were too weak to fix it and when dad was too weak to fix it, God broke in with a man of God to bring the truth, someone he had raised up, we don't even get his name, but somebody that he raised up to bring the truth and the discipline of God.
And the Lord, reminds Eli, starts off through this man of God, it's God speaking through him. It's a prophetic voice, speaking on behalf of God into the life of this family. And he says, God called your ancestor, God called your great-great-great-grandfather Moses, called his brother Aaron, rather, to be the first priest over Israel.
And his family line has served as priest before the people ever since. And I even gave them a portion of each and every sacrifice along the way. But now, Eli is indicted in verse 29 for honoring his sons above the Lord himself.
God says, I called you, I called you out from among the people to live distinctly, to be different, and now you're honoring your sons over me. Interestingly, the sins of Eli, the sin of Eli really, ultimately, is one of not taking sin serious enough.
He doesn't take sin seriously. He should have at least removed his sons from the priesthood when all of these accusations proved to be true. But instead, he chose to be loving and compassionate instead of solid and true in the face of the sins of his sons.
I think this word from the Lord to Eli speaks to our culture pretty directly. We live in a culture that is becoming increasingly confused with how we are to respond to sin. And let me just say that if you're confused about how to respond to sin, at least have this as part of the start of your understanding.
Sin is always mortally dangerous to your soul. It's always dangerous. It's always poisonous. It's a poison to our spirit. It breaks relationships and leads to spiritual death. The most loving thing we can do is to never make light of sin.
I want you to think of it in terms of like making light of cancer. A friend is diagnosed with cancer and we tell him, it's fine, no worries. You don't need to get treatment. It's just a little cancer, right?
It's just a, you'll get over it. I mean, how loving would it be to tell them that if they don't take care of this, it's gonna take their life? I think that would be very loving. To just kid glove it and just kind of push it off to the side, it's not that big of a deal.
We wouldn't want to come off as heartless and unkind, would we? So we just pretend that sin isn't a big deal. Eli didn't want to dishonor his sons. He didn't want to offend them or call them out or to come across as one of those people who are always concerned and talking about sin.
So he let it go, but God didn't let it go. And therefore, the Lord has had enough of the priesthood of the house of Eli. He decides to go in a different direction. And God keeps his promise that he made to Aaron, but he detaches that promise from the Eli family branch.
There's other parts of the family of Aaron that are kicking it around during this time. The priesthood can go to them. They can still be faithful. God can still be faithful to his promise to Aaron that someone from his line is gonna be in the priesthood, but it's not gonna be this family branch.
This branch is cut off from the priesthood. The sins of Eli's family come down in judgment on their heads, and they will no longer have any old men to serve the Lord. The indication is that longevity is no longer a family trait for the Eli family.
Many of his descendants, it says, will die by the sword, and only one will be left to weep in the ashes of the former fame as the priestly family. All of these prophecies, by the way, come true. Eli's two sons, again, it's held up as the evidence for him that all of these things are gonna come true.
Sometimes God, in prophecy, says I'm gonna show you something more current so that you know that all that I say to you is gonna come true in the future, and so he says both of your sons are gonna die on the same day.
We're gonna see that in just a chapter or two here. I think it's in the next chapter, actually, and so we're gonna see both of his sons die on the same day, and under King Saul, a couple decades later, 83 members of Eli's family are struck down by the sword in one day.
One massive cataclysmic event under King Saul. Saul gets angry at the priesthood and slaughters 83 of them. One escapes. His name is Abiathar. He survives, and the priesthood is taken from him later. It's all recorded for us in Scripture later in 1 Kings chapter two.
Abiathar's priesthood is removed from him, and he basically lives on, and Zadok becomes the priest, and he gets to live in the shadow of a new high priest all the while. And it actually says in 1 Kings two, I think it's verse 27 or somewhere right around there, it actually says, and this was done to, the kingdom, or the priesthood was removed from him to fulfill the prophecy made to Eli.
Like, it literally says that in the context. So it tells us, this is fulfilled, this is done. The prophecy that was made is done. But all of this points to a bigger purpose than just discouraging us about religious leaders and our own sinful hearts.
If we leave the text right here, right now, the message would be something like, act like Samuel and not like Eli. And let me suggest that that would be an excellent civil message. It'd be okay to say that.
Let me tell you why I mean that, what I mean by that. Our society could use more Samuels and fewer Hophnes. Would you agree with me on that? How many of you think that's a pretty good thing? But it's not the best thing.
It's not the best thing that the text says. Verse 35 is the best thing. The theme of broken religious institutions can be found all throughout the Old Testament, even leading up into the New Testament where you find the most religious people that Jesus encounters are the ones who oppose him the most.
It's the Pharisees, it's the Sadducees, it's the people who thought that they were better than everybody else and very pious and religious and crossed all their T's and dotted all their I's. And who did Jesus reach out to?
He reached out to the lowly, the downtrodden, prostitutes, drunkards, sinners, tax collectors, the dragons of society, and it's the religious leaders that opposed the Messiah, which is kind of interesting.
But the theme of broken religious institutions throughout the Old Testament, leading on into the New Testament, points us to the need for a better priest. We need a better priest, we need a better sacrifice.
We need a real hope for the sin-sick hearts of humanity, of ourselves. The message is not pull yourself up by your own bootstraps so that you can elevate yourself to heavenly places, so that you can act more like God and you don't act like Hophni and Phinehas and you don't do these things anymore because you should know better and so whip, whip, whip, get into shape, you know, and we could hit each other over the head with two-by-fours and just be like, you're an idiot, you do all these bad things, you should do better.
How many of you know that that's just a hamster wheel cycle of, any of you lived long enough to identify your own hamster wheel? Not getting anywhere, but you just keep, I like to call it the sin whack-a-mole game, right?
Every time I bash one sin down in my life, God is faithful to show me another, you know, and just trying to knock those things down and one comes up to replace the others. How many of you feel like that in life?
And sometimes it can be discouraging, but that's why we need a sacrifice, that's why we need a savior, that's why we need a high priest to come and strengthen us in the spirit that would live in us and guide us into the truth because based on his great love and sacrifice for us.
He loves us. So verse 35, the man of God uttering the word of God promises a faithful priest to come and notice that God himself will raise up, it says in the text, I will raise up for myself, I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do what you guys can't do, I'm gonna raise up for myself a faithful priest.
It's a faithful priest on his way and notice that God will raise him up and he will do what is in the heart and mind of God. He will do what God thinks to do, he will do what God has a heart to do and he will be the sacrifice that all of us needed.
He will be eternal in his ministry and he will never cease to go in and out of God's presence and on behalf of God's people. Verse 35 points to Jesus, the true and faithful priest. And so this morning I wanna just encourage all of us to remember his sacrifice.
Each week we close out our service by taking communion together and I wanna start off just by asking you a fundamental question, do you know him? If you know him, then feel free, it doesn't matter if this is your first time here or you've been coming here for a while, if you know him and you've asked him to save you, then come to one of the tables and take a crack at it, remember his body broken for you.
And the second question is, are you responding to his rebuke and his correction? Not that you're perfect, but when he draws your attention to sin, are you responding to it? Are you eager to allow his word to break into your sinful life patterns?
And I'd encourage you to come and take the cup of juice to remember his blood shed for you. And as we go out this week, let's walk in the knowledge of God, following him, obeying him, let's take sin seriously, starting in our own life and then branching out into wherever we see it, let's take it serious, let's be open to the correction of the word of God.
He is faithful to correct us. And for Eli, that proved to be a devastating correction. You see that in the text. So let's not make God do radical things to get our attention this week, but let's go out into this next week rejoicing that he has made a way of forgiveness for each and every one of us in the sacrifice of his son, Jesus Christ.
Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for the sacrifice that has been given to us in Christ. It is the place of our only hope. Our hope is not placed in a religious institution, it's not placed in a recast church, it's not placed in denominations or any human institution that can be invented can be and is corrupt, it's broken at some fundamental level.
Even though it can have good civil influence and some good positive things can come out of it, at the end of the day, our hope cannot rest in it. It will always disappoint. So Father, I pray that you would help us to turn to you as the provider of our great high priest, Jesus Christ, and that we would look to him as our hope.
Father, I just ask that you would protect all of us from getting distracted by the things that your followers do that are outside of the bounds, that are broken and messed up, and Father, that you would help us all, each one of us, to a person, connect to Jesus Christ in a life-giving and vital way.
Father, if there's anybody in this room who hasn't come to you by faith and asked Jesus Christ to save them and recognize their own brokenness and their sinfulness and their need for a savior, Father, I pray that today might be a day of repentance, a day of turning from a life of sin, a life of brokenness, and coming to you by faith, recognizing the hope that we have, the hope that we can all have through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, that you are indeed making things better and that our hope here is a progressive growth in our lives of love for you and love for others through your spirit that dwells in us by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
Father, I pray that you would empower us and that if anybody here is here with a sensitive conscience and just all of a sudden is struck with, oh no, what if I'm not saved, what if I'm not in, I pray that you would help everybody to come back to the root, which is Christ on the cross for us.
That is our only place of hope, not in what we've done, not in how much we've done, not in how we've done it, not in how much we look like Hophni and Phineas, but at the end of the day, it is how much you have loved us and forgiven us and given us a fresh start at the cross.
Father, I pray that today might also be a day of fresh starts for anybody here who is living in sin, that they might come and get accountability and relationship with others, that they might be able to grow and be strengthened and be encouraged in you.
I ask this in Jesus' name, amen.