Day 98: 1 Samuel 1-3

Welcome to 5 Minute Bible, your daily guide for your daily reading. Today's April 8th and we'll be looking at 1

Samuel 1 -3. We move out of the period of Judges and into the opening chapters of the book of 1

Samuel, but this is not a clean break from what came before. This is the answer to it.

We're still roughly 180 -200 years after the death of Joshua and the conquest and the time where the people were supposed to conquer the entire land so that they would get rid of the

Canaanites so that they would no longer be tempted to worship idols. And everything that we've witnessed in Judges have left

Israel spiritually fractured, morally unstable and leaderless because they didn't do what

God told them to do. So the entire book of Judges you see the collapse of the people as they've not obeyed and now we're in a period where God is moving again, speaking again and restoring again.

1 Samuel 1 -3 shows us what God does in the aftermath of the collapse of Judges and He does not begin with a military deliverer.

He does not immediately establish a king. He begins by raising up a prophet, a man who will hear

God's voice and speak God's word. Just as God once raised up Moses at the beginning of Israel's life as a nation,

He's now raising up Samuel at a moment when the nation must be rebuilt from within.

And 1 Samuel 1 opens up not with national reform, but with personal anguish.

Here you have a woman, Hannah, who is barren, provoked and deeply distressed. And in her desperation, she cries out to the

Lord, vowing that if He gives her a son, then she will dedicate that son back to Yahweh.

And the Lord answers her prayer and Samuel is born. And in an act of remarkable faith,

Hannah weans the child and follows through with her vow, bringing Samuel to the tabernacle and entrusting him to the service of God.

What appears to be a private story in reality is the beginning of national renewal because God is preparing a servant before He restores a people.

Then in chapter 2, Hannah responds with a prayer that rises far beyond her own circumstances.

She declares that the Lord overturns human expectations and brings down the proud and lifts up the lonely and raises the poor from the dust and gives strength to His King.

And at the same time, the narrative exposes the corruption of Eli's sons who treat the worship of God with contempt and exploit their position for selfish gain.

While Samuel grows in favor before the Lord, the priesthood that should have been guiding

Israel is rotting from within. And God's promises of judgment against it are swift to take place.

Chapter 3 then marks a decisive turning point in a time when the word of the Lord was rare and when visions were infrequent.

God speaks and God calls Samuel and the call is personal and it's persistent and it's unmistakable.

Like a brand new Moses, Samuel is summoned out of obscurity as a child to hear the voice of God directly and he is entrusted with a message that will reshape the future of the nation.

He receives a word of judgment against Eli's household and he faithfully delivers it to the old man himself.

And by the end of the chapter, Samuel is established as a prophet in Israel and the long silence that marked the end of the judges is broken.

God is speaking again and His word is bringing and spreading to His people again.

As you read the chapter today, I want you to ask the following question. How does God rebuild

His people after a prolonged period of spiritual and moral decay?

And 1 Samuel 1 -3 is going to answer that question by showing us that restoration doesn't begin with outward power or physical strength, but with God reestablishing

His word through a faithful servant who will hear Him and who will speak for Him to the people.

You see, the central tension in these chapters is the collision between corrupted leadership and divinely appointed renewal.

Eli's sons represent everything that has gone wrong in Israel during the period of the judges. They're priests in a position of power, but they're pagans in practice.

They abuse the sacrifices, they dishonor God, and they lead God's people into deeper corruption.

And their failure helps explain why the word of the Lord had become rare during that period of time, because when the leadership is defiled, the revelation is diminished.

And at the same time, God is quietly raising up a boy named Samuel, a child born out of barrenness, set apart from the beginning and raised up in the presence of God and yet largely unnoticed.

While the visible structures of Israel are collapsing, God is preparing a new mediator of His word.

Like Moses before him, Samuel emerges at a time when the people are disordered and drifting, and he's called to stand between God and the nation, hearing from the

Lord and bringing that word to bear on a people who have forgotten how to listen.

And just like Moses, he's brought into a pagan household. And you can say that Eli is not pagan while his household is pagan and his people are doing dastardly things.

So like Moses, he's brought into the home of a leader who is corrupted and then he will be raised up and elevated to lead his people from within.

This is how God works. He often allows corruption to fully reveal itself and fully metastasize before he prepares the instrument of renewal in the background.

And when the time comes, he brings that servant forward not to preserve what is broken, but to call his people back into covenant faithfulness under his word again.

And in that way, Samuel stands as a Moses -like figure at a critical turning point in the history of Israel.

But he also points forward to Jesus Christ. He is a prophet who hears God clearly and speaks his word faithfully, restoring revelation to a people who've been living in silence.

And yet Samuel's role is preparatory. It is not final because Jesus Christ is the greater prophet who does not merely receive the word of God, but is himself the word made flesh.

Where Samuel listens and speaks, Christ embodies and fulfills perfectly. Where Samuel calls

Israel back to covenant fidelity, Christ establishes a new covenant that secures it forever.

And where the priesthood in Samuel's day is corrupt and judged, even Samuel's own sons turn away from the

Lord, Christ becomes the perfect priest who offers himself once and for all and who will raise up many sons who are faithful unto glory.

Even Hannah's prayer in these chapters reaches forward to Jesus because her declaration that God is going to bring down the proud and exalt the humble finds its fullest expression in the kingdom of Christ.

Where the last become first and the weak are made strong and the king himself conquers not through domination, but through sacrifice.

And Samuel may stand at the beginning of Israel's kingship, but Christ is the king that the story has been moving toward all along.

So when you read 1 Samuel 1 -3, pay careful attention to the moment where God begins to speak again, because tomorrow we're going to see what happens when

Israel, instead of trusting God and his word, tries to control his presence and it's going to lead to devastating consequences.

But with that, read your Bible carefully, devotionally and joyfully, and may the Lord use his word to sanctify you completely and we will continue our journey tomorrow.