Grace OPC Sewickley PA

Sermon Series: I Samuel 1-7

  • Golden Rats and the Cross

    Golden Rats and the Cross

    This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “I Samuel 1-7” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, November 23, 1997.

    About this sermon

    The modern church tends to skip stories like this one, where panicked Philistines offer golden rats and tumors, as too strange to preach. Their confession comes close to ours, because looking to the cross of Christ means confessing the same wretched sinfulness they had to admit. The text already puts total depravity on display.

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    Sermon transcript

    We come this morning to 1 Samuel 6. We begin our reading with verse 1. This is the word of God, so let us give our attention to it. Now, the ark of the Lord had been in the country of the Philistines seven months. and the Philistines called for the priests and the diviners, saying, What shall we do with the ark of the Lord? Tell us how we shall send it to its place.

    They said, If you send away the ark of the God of Israel, do not send it empty, but you shall surely return to him a gilt offering. Then you will be healed, and it will be known to you why his hand is not removed from you.’ Then they said, What shall be the guilt offering which we shall return to him?’ And they said, Five golden hemorrhoids and five golden mice, according to the member of the Lords of the Philistines.

    For one flared was on all of you and on your lords. So you shall make likenesses of your hemorrhoids and likenesses of your mice that ravage the land, and you shall give glory to the God of Israel. Perhaps he will ease his hand from you, your gods and your land. Why then do you harden your hearts as the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their hearts? When he had severely dealt with them, did they not allow the people to go and they departed?

    Now therefore take and prepare a new cart and two milk cows on which there has never been a yoke, and hitch the cows to the cart and take their calves home, away from them. Take the ark of the Lord and place it on the cart and put the articles of gold which you returned to him as a gift offering in a box by its side. Then send it away that it may go. Watch, if it goes up by the way of its own territory, to Beth Shemesh, then he has done us this great evil. But if not, then we will know that it was not his hand that struck us, it happened to us by chance. Then the men did so and took two milk cows and hitched them to the cart and shut up their calves at home.

    They put the Ark of the Lord on the cart and the box with the golden mice and the likenesses of their hemorrhoids. And the cows took the straight way in the direction of Beth Shemesh. They went along the highway, lowing as they went, but did not turn aside to the right or to the left. And the lords of the Philistines followed them to the border of Beth Shemesh. Now the people of Beth Shemesh were reaping their wheat harvest in the valley, and they raised their eyes and saw the ark and were glad to see it.

    The cart came into the field of Joshua, the Beth Shemite, and stood there where there was a large stone, and they split the wood of the cart and offered the cows as a burnt offering to the Lord. The Levites took down the ark of the Lord and the box that was with it, in which were the articles of gold, and put them on the large stone, and the men of Beth Shemesh offered burnt offerings and sacrifices that day to the Lord. When the five lords of the Philistines saw it, they returned to Ekron that day. These are the golden hemorrhoids which the Philistines returned for a guild offering to the Lord, one for Ashdod, one for Gaza, one for Ascalon, one for Gath, and one for Ekron.

    And the golden mice, according to the number of all the cities of the Philistines belonging to the five lords, both are fortified cities and country villages. the large stone on which they set the Ark of the Lord is a witness to this day in the field of Joshua the Beth Shemite. The Lord struck down some of the men of Beth Shemesh because they had looked into the Ark of the Lord. He struck down of all the people 50,070 men, and the people mourned because the Lord had struck the people with a great slaughter. The men of Beth Shemesh said that Who is able to stand before the Lord, this holy God?

    And to whom shall he go up from us?’ So they sent messengers to the inhabitants of Kyriet-Jerim, saying, The Philistines have brought back the Ark of the Lord. Come down and take it up to you.’ And the men of Kyriet-Jerim came and took the Ark of the Lord and brought it into the house of Abinadab, on the hill, and consecrated Eleazar his son to keep the Ark of the Lord. From the day that the ark remained at Kiriath-Jerim, the time was long, for it was twenty years, and all the house of Israel lamented after the Lord.”

    Our Lord, we are confident about your word and its power. We are confident about the promises that are contained in it and the grace that is communicated. Father, we would also be confident of the effectiveness of your word. as it is proclaimed here, as it is proclaimed throughout your church, this day, and throughout the world. Father, may it please you to grant grace to your people who come and sit beneath your word that they might be refreshed. And Father, may it also please you in this day to call many to yourself that there would be that wonderful transformation, even from death to life, for those who are called unto eternal life, even by the Spirit of your mercy. Father, we would ask for those who serve in mission posts, in evangelistic enterprises, that your grace would be upon them as they proclaim your word fearlessly today. We would also ask our God that your people would grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen.

    Now, it may well be that the modern, urbane, sensitive, sophisticated Establishment Church would never find an occasion to speak about 1 Samuel 5 and 6. But if it did, it would pause Only briefly, at best for a grudging acknowledgment, most assuredly making comment about the primitive character of the text, and then hurry along. of the modern, urbane, sensitive, sensible, sophisticated establishment church, as thoroughly vague and assertive, progressively prophetic, come hell or high water in the interests of a truth that they must invariably set before the world. Or no, not at all. is as prudish and as Victorian as any fundamentalist body, for such a Church is likely to find the material here in 1 Samuel 5 and 6 to be a bit too crude, even indecent, for public presentation. Interestingly, both fundamentalists and liberals start nervously checking their watches, fumbling with their bulletins, squirming in their pews when the iradvised preacher foolishly wanders into chapters like these. But of course, you recognize immediately how hypocritical such reactions from liberals and conservatives are. This past week, in checking two conservative Bible surveys, I found that neither made the slightest reference to these chapters. They skipped over them altogether.

    Here are the people sworn at least according to their press releases. Here are the people sworn to the defense of biblical integrity, who made such protestations against the attempts to diminish the authority of the entirety of Scripture, who have presented themselves as those committed to resist all efforts to subtract one jot or one tittle from the biblical text. However, these very people, it would seem, employ their own methods of selectivity, of inclusion and exclusion, when it comes to the scriptural record. In keeping with their methodology, they, no less than the nervous liberal, had decided that, in viewing a text like 1 Samuel 5 and 6, The less said, the better.

    This is an unfortunate response because it exposes in the conservative a fundamental failure to live up to his own principle. The whole of the Word of God, all of the text, The Bible in its entirety. But if we witness this breakdown in the conservative, even more glaring is the breakdown in the liberal.

    After all, isn’t the liberal church and its liberal pastor the ones who believe that it is their mission in life to reinvent the social norms? Secondly, they are not above shocking people. Isn’t it the liberal church and the liberal minister who are the ones who measure their success by the readings, that their ethical and theological pronouncements register upon the sociological and ecclesiastical rigor scale?

    The church that is not too embarrassed to promote the most radical versions of political and social redesign. The church that is not too embarrassed to promote things like same-sex marriages, gay and lesbian agendas, goddess worship, abortion on demand. and divorce for anyone who feels like it. Is all too embarrassed by 1 Samuel 5 and 6?

    The Church, none too sensitive about important obscenities. I’m not exaggerating here. And if you are an observer of the Church scene and witnessed the goings-on during this last summer in the major assemblies and the major bodies, you know that I am not exaggerating. The Church, none too sensitive about importing obscenities and blasphemies into their very courts, as well as into their sanctuaries. would be unnerved and unsettled by the mention of holistings with chemeraids?

    Let’s get serious. The liberal establishment, for all its platitudinous outrage, for all its self-generated, self-righteous, and self-referenced moral programming, is a sham, a complete and utter fake, more laughable and pitiful than the Philistines in their humiliated state. Now, having heard what I have said about the liberals and conservatives, I know you won’t be at all upset to learn that I plan ten more messages on 1 Samuel 5 and 6. Not really. But let me ask you this, what if I were planning ten more messages?

    Could you be comfortable with that? Knowing that you would be having set before you, week by week, yes, even here in these chapters, the Word of God. I trust that you would be comfortable as a minister of the Word would take you to any place in Scripture and ask you to consider it in light of the intention of God himself.

    It is, after all, his Word. He put this stuff here, and that for our benefit. Well, so much for the apology. What about the story? The storyline from these chapters, and yes, from the chapter that precedes them, is by now known to you, I trust, if it wasn’t previously.

    The Israelites, as represented in Eli’s family, had brought God’s wrath upon themselves and suffered a monumental double defeat at the hands of the Philistines. You can read about that in chapter 4. But the Philistines, in their second victory, captured the sacred Ark of the Covenant of the Lord, which the Israelites had superstitiously and foolishly brought into their camp. The loss of the ark registers upon the people, again represented in Eli and his family, as the loss of God’s glory. Indeed, as the fourth chapter ends, the glory has departed.

    Now, as we look to chapters 5 and 6, the ark moves through the Philistine plague-like tumors—actually, yes, hemorrhoids—and an assault upon their society, their cities, as those cities are overrun with an infant infestation of mice or maybe even rats. The Philistines then consult their theologians and their mediums, who advise on the matter of the Ark’s return to its home country. Make replica, they say, of the plague’s manifestations as a gift offering to Israel’s God. Five golden hemorrhoids, one each for the five wards of the Philistines, and five golden rats, one each for the five Philistine cities, these to accompany the ark on its return. Now, if we were amused by what we heard in chapter 5, when we come to chapter 6, we are about to be amused again, if you can imagine this, making five golden hemorrhages to accompany the five rocks.

    And you may be thinking to yourself, what in the world is going on here? There is great instruction in this, even as God superintends the wisdom of the Philistine theologians. The making of these golden articles is for the sake of underscoring Philistine humiliation. You get the point. What the Philistines are now compelled to admit is not only that they have hemorrhoids, they are hemorrhoids. That is what is being said. There are five lords. Not only is this the matter that applies to the people, it applies to the people who are in control, their leaders. There are five lords. The hemorrhoids match up to the five lords. Not only do their cities have rats, not only do their cities have vermin, their cities and their society are vermin.

    And the instruction that comes from the theologians amongst the Philistines and their diviners is that an act of absolute humiliation is necessary in order for there to be release. Or, you could put it this way, salvation, deliverance. The making of these golden articles, then, is a concession. It is an act of utter humiliation. by which these people are declaring what they are and what their society is. Now, you may be thinking that this is utterly bizarre, that this is thoroughly and completely pagan.

    But I want to remind you of the experience of the children of Israel in Numbers chapter Do you remember the story about the grumbling Israelites in Numbers 21? When God, provoked by them, set up with them, sends into their camp fiery serpents. You may be at a loss to explain what happens after that, because God commands Moses to make a bronzed serpent, and to lift up that bronzed serpent before the people with the promise that all who look to the bronzed serpent will be saved from the plague. In the foresting case, Hemingway erodes. In Israelite case, a serpent.

    What is going on in Numbers 21? Do you realize what is happening? By the making of that bronze serpent, and by the people walking to it in faith, it is a confessional act. Can you tell me the nature of that confessional act? Do you know what the people are confessing? They are confessing that they’re snakes, that they’re the seed of the serpent. and they have no hope at all, except God’s sake. Mighty instruction for us here, even with regard to our own confession.

    What is it that you think you are acknowledging when you look to the cross of Christ? Behind the cross you see a smiling face, and the words of the smiling face, God love you, have a nice day. But you always get the impression that that is all there is to the cross, in listening to many speak about it. Jesus picks up on that Numbers 21 passage in John chapter 3.

    He suggests that the lifting up of the bronze serpent by Moses anticipates His being lifted up upon the cross, that by looking to the cross there is an acknowledgment on the part of the people who do look in faith concerning their own condition, the truth about themselves. What is that truth? If I were to join serpent to cross, what is that truth? That truth is that I am a son of Satan, a child of darkness, that I am sold out under through my sins and my transgressions, and apart from my confession of this truth, there is no salvation for me.

    But of course, as you look to the cross, you see so much more, don’t you? You see yourself as serpentine. You see yourself the snake, the descendant of the seed of the serpent. You see yourself as such, but you also see one who has in effect joined himself to the image of the serpent, and that willingly, and that in his righteousness, taking your serpent-like character to himself, that you might become a child of God. Now, you wouldn’t have thought that all of that was to be found in five golden hemorrhoids and five golden mice.

    But you can see that if I am determined to preach the gospel from 1 Samuel 6, I am bound and determined to preach it from anywhere. And I trust that you are benefiting from it. Or maybe you think you’re better than the Philistines. Or maybe you think you’re better than the Israelites.

    The bottom line to this portion of scripture is, there is none righteous, no, not one. our Father. Indeed, as we are drawn to look to the cross of Christ, we are horrified in the acknowledgment that we are the children of the serpent. But yet, O God, even as we are compelled now by your Spirit to gaze, we are convinced also that this one our Savior, who has hung upon the cross, has taken to himself our serpent-like character and deeds, that he might bear that in his body for us, in order that we might become the children of God. Father, at this time of year when we are thinking about the giving of thanks, We ask that we might give thanks from the depths of our hearts for this truth and this reality, not seeing ourselves as more righteous than ancient Philistines or Israelites, but at one with them in our corrupted nature. Bless us, O Father, then, with a joyous season of praise and thanksgiving, because we believe even as we have looked to the cross, we believe that Christ came into the world to save sinners such as ourselves. We do, in fact, O God, thank you for his ministry on our behalf, and ask you that we might be blessed in our souls and in our hearts with thanksgiving that is full and overflowing. as we ask in Jesus name.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • Dagon Falls Before the Ark

    Dagon Falls Before the Ark

    This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “I Samuel 1-7” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, November 16, 1997.

    About this sermon

    Dagon’s own collapse before the captured ark is one of Scripture’s more pointed jokes, God using sarcasm and irony to humiliate the Philistines’ god. Even in captivity, the ark itself endures a kind of exile on Israel’s behalf. That endurance, not the comedy, is where God’s love actually shows itself.

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    Sermon transcript

    This morning our scripture reading is 1 Samuel chapter 5. We will be reading 1 Samuel chapter 5 this morning. Give your attention to God’s infallible And the Philistines took the Ark of God and brought it from Ebenezer unto Ashdod. When the Philistines took the Ark of God, they brought it into the house of Dagon and set it by Dagon.

    And when day of Ashdod arose early on the morrow, behold, Dagon was fallen upon his face to the earth before the Ark of the Lord. and they took Dagon and set him in his place again. And when they arose early on the morning, behold, Dagon was fallen upon his face to the ground before the Ark of the Lord.

    And the head of Dagon, and both the palms of his hands were cut off upon the threshold, only the stump of Dagon was left to him. Therefore, neither the priests of Dagon, nor any that come into Dagon’s house, tread on the threshold of Dagon in Ashdod unto this day. But the hand of the Lord was heavy upon them of Ashdod, and he destroyed them and smote them with hemorrhoids. Even Ashdod and the coasts thereof.”

    And when the men of Ashdod saw that it was so, they said, The ark of the God of Israel shall not abide with us, his hand is sore upon us, and upon Dagon our God. They sent therefore and gathered all the lords of the Philistines unto them, and said, What shall we do of the ark of the God of Israel? And they answered, Let the ark of the God of Israel be carried about unto Gath, and they carried the ark of the God of Israel about thither. It was so that after they had carried it about, the hand of the Lord was heavy against the city with a very great destruction, and he smote the men of the city, both small and great, and they had hemorrhoids in their secret parts. Therefore they sent the Ark of God to Ekron. that came to pass as the ark of God came to Ekron, that the Ekronites, quite I’m saying, they have brought about the ark of the God of Israel to us to slay us and our people. So they sent and gathered together all the lords of the Philistines and said, Send away the ark of the God of Israel and let it go again to its own place, that it slay us not and our people. For there was a deadly destruction throughout all the city. The hand of God was very heavy there, and the men that died not were smitten with the hemorrhoids, and the cry of the city went up to heaven.

    Our Father, we ask that your word would be strong today in overthrowing strongholds of unbelief and the bastions of idolatry. May this be so, O God, throughout the world, even as your word and the gospel are proclaimed. May our zeal be for your word here and throughout the nations, and may it please you, O God, to graciously grant many salvation. Hear us, O Father, may our prayer be earnest and sincere, for Jesus’ sake Amen.

    The story about the Ark of God in Philistia, beginning in 1 Samuel 5, is full of grand theology, masterful irony, and grim, although intentionally playful, humor. Now, the humor here does smack of a deliberate sarcasm. I know that many are put off by sarcasm. To them, it is the lowest form of humor. They believe being the pious folk that they are, sarcasm is inherently cruel, since it involves laughing at another or at another’s expense. Therefore, sarcasm is always wrong, it is always wicked.

    According to this version of piety, Sarcasm is never, never appropriate. But I trust that it is clear to you that such piety, which expresses itself this way, actually sits in judgment of the Bible, since the scriptures are full of sarcasm. But no less does this piety that we have mentioned sit in judgment of many of the central figures that we find in the Bible, admirably commended even for and in their sarcasm. Nor should it pass note that such piety as we’ve spoken of here this morning sits in judgment of the most central figure of all in the Bible, God Himself.

    It goes without saying, no one likes to be laughed at. You may even feel that You have a mission to come to the aid of all who are being laughed at, whose self-esteem is being damaged. You may even dedicate your life professionally to wiping out sarcasm harassment. I am being sarcastic. But none of this has anything to do with whether some people or some things in some situations deserve to be laughed at. If you want a quick course in the word sarcastic witch, I invite you to look at Isaiah 44, verses 9 through 20.

    In this passage, God, through his servant Isaiah, mocks mercilessly, and I underscore that mercilessly, the idolater. The Lord describes the idolater as one who, maybe innocently, plants a tree, a tree of course, given an ironic twist, watered by the rain which the Lord alone can send. From this tree, the idolater takes half to fire up his stove, cook his meat, and warm himself. From the other half, the idolater makes a god. He then falls down in front of this god, this god here being called a block of wood, and prays to this block of wood, saying, Deliver me, for thou art my God.”

    The bottom line is, regardless how pitiful this idolater is, regardless how tragically incapable this person is of saying, given the text in Isaiah 44, there is a lie in my right hand. the fact remains. From Heaven’s perspective, from God’s point of view, this idolater is a laughingstock. He is a ridiculous figure, a fool, who in his religious obtuseness deserves to be laughed at.

    Now, I know that the habit in the Church at least in the last two centuries, has been to separate the sinner from the sin. And in this regard, we might say, laugh at the sin, not at the sinner. But the Bible makes mockery of, it laughs at, such distinctions.

    We have been told by the Church and in the Church that we must follow the polite, socially correct path because our interest is to spare the feelings of the sinner. We laugh at the sin, not at the sinner, because, after all, the sin doesn’t have any feelings any more than that block of wood in Isaiah 44. But don’t you see the testimony of Isaiah 44 as proof? Don’t you see God isn’t interested in scaring us of our feelings?

    He laughs at us in our sins. He mocks us in our absurd following. Despite how proud we are, we sinners have made ourselves laughable and the objects of divine sarcasm. He will even heap on us more scorn still in the judgments he brings upon us in our rebellion and our unbelief. He who sits in the heavens shall laugh, the Lord shall have them in derision.”

    You read that this morning. You also sang it. So it is in 1 Samuel 5. The world here will not merely make the Philistine God, Dagon, that block of wood, laughable, he will make the Philistines themselves laughable. And by doing so, he deliberately leads up his people to laugh at the expense of these who are described. What I mean to say is, God not only makes Dagon and the Philistines laughable, he makes us laugh at them.

    Shall we go through the story? The mental picture brought to mind by the descriptions of Dagon’s prostration before the God of the Ark are intended to make us laugh. Dagon, who was supposed to receive the Ark as the trophy of his triumph since his servants had vanquished the servants of Jehovah, finds himself now face down as if in worship posture before the Ark.

    If that weren’t bad enough, this so-called powerful God must now be weighted—he cannot weigh himself—he must be set again in his place, only to fall again a second time, but this time decapitated and shorn of his limbs. The King James Version captures the scene wonderfully. At the end of verse 4, only the step of Dagon was left to him. Now, for no money, that’s a fairly humiliated God.

    But what of the people? What of the Philistines? As with the idol, so with his worshippers. If you are going to laugh at the God, you are going to laugh at that God’s worshippers. they, beneath the mocking scorn of the God of heaven and earth, will be totally and thoroughly humiliated. These Philistines, these supposed conquerors, to whom the world belongs according to their estimations, are laid low by a plague. that cannot help but make all who hear of it ever since snicker, if not break out in a grand belly laugh. The mighty Philistines, who have just devastated Israel and captured Israel’s God, are now by hemorrhoids. There probably aren’t a lot of sermons preached on this task.

    But before we’re I hope that you will understand and see the mastery of the Lord’s dealings. You will notice further now that this sarcasm in this story literally swims in a sea of And as we move from sarcasm to irony, the level of the humor rises. It becomes even sublime. Look at the ironies.

    The agents of a visible man-like God who administer a double defeat to Israel in 1 Samuel 4, now witness in 1 Samuel 5 the double humbling of their God, not once but twice. The second defeat for Israel was her demise. And so Dagon’s second prostration is his utter destruction. And just as the movement for Israel in chapter 4 was toward death, capped in the death of Eli, so the movement for the Philistines in chapter 5 is toward death, sealed by the plague, the humiliating plague of Hemorrhoids.

    Dagon will have left to him only his trunk or his stump, while his people will be afflicted in their trunks, even their trunks’ most socially sensitive and unspeakable spot. The thought of it is not just physically. but socially painful. It is thoroughly and completely humiliating. So much for these proud people. The visible God Dagon, who has lost his head, and cannot lift a hand to help his people. This God is the victim of the invisible, the true God. whose unseen but omnipotent hand comes down heavy upon his enemy, and note the number of times the hand of God is mentioned in the rest of the story.

    Verses 6, 9, and 11. The Philistines making mention of it themselves in verse 7. And the true God He is the one who, in his eternal mind—certainly he has not lost his head—in his eternal mind, outwits the Philistines, even as he makes them, as he makes all people, finally, the servants of his sovereign purpose. And it is here that we are now forced by the sarcasms and the ironies in 1 Samuel 5 to the depths of the grand theology that finds its ground in the remarkable wisdom of God. He who has humbled Israel, chapter 4, because she had profaned his worship. now humbles the Philistines who worship false gods.

    But stay with the point for a moment further. You must understand that in this enterprise of humbling the Israelites by their defeat and the Philistines by their humiliation. But by this enterprise, he who humbles both of these people does so by humbling himself. The highest reach of the story will point this out to you.

    The earth’s journey is the Lord’s journey. The earth’s exile is the Lord’s exile. The Lord is giving himself over to exile itself. He will experience it. And it will be through this exile that Israel, yes, is disciplined. that Dagon worship is a devastating blow, that Dagon worshipers are laid low, and that the cry, even from these foolish Gentiles, will ascend up into heaven.” Now, the grand theology begins to overwhelm us. Do you begin with all humility to peer now into the unfathomable and inscrutable mind of God, hear at the beginning of the Old Testament story about the establishment of the kingdom of God. The very end of that kingdom is being forecast for you.

    That end will be an exile for Israel as she is disciplined in the interests of her true calling. But before she enters that exile, even as she is constrained to do so under judgment, her God, the living and true God, enters into that exile and endures it Himself. This He does for her, that she might endure the exile in Him. Such is His love for her. and emerging from that exile, he has given Meryl instruction to her about her true meaning and destiny. When she herself years later returns from her captivity in Babylon, it won’t be for the sake of ground near Jerusalem or for the sacred precincts in a refurbished temple, let alone for the sake of a trumpeted self-importance and self-righteousness.

    But as the Lord’s exile in 1 Samuel 5 tells us, so also for the exile of Israel to Babylon, truly in view is preparation for a consummate judgment upon Israel, a discipline accomplished in the days of Jesus Christ, one in which the Lord himself will move out from Israel into all of the nations, bringing down idols, delivering preliminary judgments among the Gentiles, so that as many as are called by him would themselves cry out to heaven and be saved in the day in which he will bring everything to a conclusion.” in its ironies, in its witticisms, but yes, in its profound theology, announces the coming of Jesus Christ and the ministry of his Church, which, like the Ark of the Covenant, bears witness to her invisible Lord who judges Israel who now, through the Church of Christ, brings down idols, effects preliminary judgments among the Gentiles, working in the hearts of all who are being saved, Gentile and Jew alike, for the sake of life’s true meaning and destiny, namely God himself in glory. that even all of God’s sarcasm, the ironic twists of his sovereign superintendent of human history, together with the grand theology of his true eternal gospel, has grabbed you.

    That you have come to that place where you don’t mind being laughed at in your sin. because it means you will laugh joyously with God himself and with your Savior Jesus Christ in heaven. And even presently, yes ironically, you have begun to laugh for joy because you know that in your mission in this world and in the exile that leads from this world to the next, your Savior, like the Ark in 1 Samuel 5, has preceded you, and that he has promised his church that he will never leave her.

    He has told her, Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world. Such is the nature of his love. And such is the nature of your confidence as you make your way in your pilgrimage. Such is the nature of your assurance and certainty as you know the cause and purpose of Christ’s church will not fail. This one who has preceded us is even remarkably with us.

    Let’s pray. Father, we ask you that we would delight in you. And Father, may we not turn away from the scorn that we rightly deserve. that in facing it, O Father, may we acknowledge that we deserve to be laughed at, as do all who have turned away from the true God. We pray, Father, that we might understand that your intention is your kindness and even the salvation of those upon whom you have set salvation from all eternity. May we know the same thing. Therefore, in our humor, Lord, keep us from cruelty. And when there are opportunities to use sarcasm, may we be very, very wise, judicious, understanding the way of our God and the intentions of our God, having peered into the great mysteries, understanding, O Father, your purpose and intention for the nations, the salvation of your elect, the preservation of your Church, unto the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • A Warning in Israel’s Defeat

    A Warning in Israel’s Defeat

    This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “I Samuel 1-7” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, November 9, 1997.

    About this sermon

    Israel’s double defeat signifies more than a military loss, and the modern church’s discomfort with naming God’s judgment on his own people does not make that judgment go away. Israel’s fall stands as a real warning to us, not just ancient history. Justification comes only by faith in Christ, exactly as Paul insists in Romans 11.

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    Sermon transcript

    We begin our reading this morning in 1 Samuel chapter 4, and we will be reading the conclusion of this chapter this morning, assuming that you know the story that is included in this chapter. the messenger who has recently come from the battle in which the Israelites have been defeated and the ark has been taken, that messenger has been speaking to Eli, as we begin reading in verse 18. 1 Samuel 4.18. When the messenger mentioned the ark of God, Eli fell off the seat backward beside the gate and his neck was broken and he died, for he was old and heavy.

    Thus he judged Israel forty years. Now his daughter-in-law, Phineas’s wife, was pregnant and about to give birth, and when she heard the news that the ark of God was taken and that her father-in-law and her husband had died, she kneeled down and gave birth, for her pains came upon her. And about the time of her death, the woman who stood by her said to her, Do not be afraid, for you have given birth to a son.’ But she did not answer or pay attention, and she called the boy Ichabod, saying, The glory has departed from Israel, because the ark of God was taken, and because her father-in-law and her husband were dead.” She said, The glory has departed from Israel, for the ark of God was taken.”

    Then turning over to the Gospel of Luke, chapter 21, beginning at verse 20, Jesus is speaking, Luke 21. But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then recognize that her desolation is near. Then those who are in Judea must flee to the mountains, and those who are in the midst of the city must leave, and those who are in the country must not enter the city, because these are days of vengeance, so that all things which are written will be fulfilled. to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing babies in those days, for there will be great distress upon the land and wrath to this people. And they will fall by the edge of the sword and will be led captive into all the nations, and Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.’ When they led him away, they seized a man, Simon of Cyrene, coming in from the country and placed on him the cross to carry behind Jesus. and following him was a large crowd of people and of women who were mourning and lamenting him.

    But Jesus, turning to them, said, Daughters of Jerusalem, stop weeping for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For behold, the days are coming when they will say, Blessed are the barren and the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed. Then they will begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us. and to the hills, cover us, for if they do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?

    To others also who were criminals would be a better way to be put to death with them.” Finally, turning over to Romans chapter 11, we pick up Paul’s argument in verse 13. But I am speaking to you who are Gentiles, inasmuch then as I am an apostle of Gentiles, I magnify my ministry, if somehow I might move to jealousy my fellow countrymen and save some of them. For if their rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead?

    If the first piece of dough is holy, the lump is also, and if the root is holy, the branches are too. But if some of the branches were broken off and you, being a wild olive, were grafted in among them and became partaker with them of the rich root of the olive tree, do not be arrogant toward the branches. But if you are arrogant, remember that it is not you who supports the root, but the root supports you. You will say, then, branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in.

    Quite right, they were broken off with their unbelief, but you stand by faith. Do not be conceited, but fear, for if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either. Behold, then, the kindness and the severity of God to those who fell severely, but to you, God’s kindness. If you continue in this kindness, otherwise you also will be cut off. and if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again. For if you were cut off from what is by nature a wild olive tree and were grafted contrary to nature into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these who are the natural branches be grafted into their own olive tree?

    For I do not want you, brethren, to be uninformed of this mystery, so that you will not be wise in your own estimation, that a partial pardoning has happened to Israel until the fulness of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved, just as it is written. The deliverer will come from Zion. He will remove ungodliness from Jacob. This is my covenant with them when I take away their sin.

    From the standpoint of the gospel, they are enemies for your sake, but from the standpoint of God’s choice, they are beloved for the sake of the fathers, for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. For just as you once were disobedient to God, but now have been shown mercy because of their disobedience, so these also now have been disobedient, that because of the mercy shown to you, they also may now be shown mercy. for God has shut up all in disobedience, that he may show mercy to all.

    O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and unfathomable his ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, and who became his counselor? Or who has first given to him that it might be paid back to him again? For from him and through him and to him are all things To Him be the glory forever.

    Amen. Our God, we would ask that you would bless your word here and throughout the world. We ask, Father, for a rich harvest even in our time, that the gospel would be proved in its effectiveness as sinners are brought out of darkness into light, those who are dead are made alive. O God, may we have the confidence in your word, for surely by that word you have made us alive. These things we ask through the living Lord Jesus Christ.

    Amen. For those of you who have been with me during the course of these messages on 1 Samuel, I trust that by now you have caught the drift, that you are cued into the meaning of this chapter. In it you are being addressed with the ultimate of issues. In it, you are being confronted with the end, with nothing less than the end of the world. Now, I have built my case for this approach to this chapter throughout this series, but let me restate my case for you this morning. and build on that restatement.

    The double defeat of Israel at the hands of the Philistines, recorded for you in the opening verses of 1 Samuel 4, is deliberate under the sovereign intention of God. The double defeat is deliberate, not just once defeated by the Philistines, but twice. For this double defeat at the hands of the Philistines here anticipates a yet future double defeat for the nation of Israel as a whole. When that nation will be subjected to the defeat, first of all, at the hands of the in the destruction of the northern kingdom in the 8th century B.C., and then subsequently the destruction of the southern kingdom at the hands of the Babylonians in the 6th century B.C. The double defeat here anticipates the coming awesome double defeat for Israel as a nation. But just as the double defeat in the days of Eli anticipates the double destruction of the northern and southern kingdoms in the days of the prophets, prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah, respectfully, so also this latter double devastation anticipate a further destruction in the entirety of the Old Testament order of Israel in and through the ministry of Jesus Christ.

    Let me repeat that for you. Just as the double defeat in the days of Eli anticipates the coming double destruction of the northern and southern kingdoms in the days of the prophets, So this double destruction in the days of the prophets anticipates a further destruction, a destruction of the entirety of the Old Testament order of Israel in and through the ministry of Jesus Christ. Do I need to read more to you this morning than I have already read? from the Gospels. We have read from the Gospel of Luke, and the witness that you have from Jesus in the Gospel of Luke is consistent throughout the Gospels as a whole, and that testimony is plain.

    Jesus presents his ministry as one in which the end of the world is manifestly evident in the devastation he pronounces and affects upon the old Jewish order. You see the end of the world coming in what Jesus proclaims and then sets in motion regarding Israel in the first century.

    It is a tragically self-deceived modern church. that removes the reality of Jesus’ message about divine wrath from its proclamation of the gospel. It is a tragically self-deceived modern church that removes the reality of Jesus’ message about divine wrath from its proclamation of the gospel. But further, it is a ruinously foolish modern Church that willfully blinds itself in the name of universal brotherhood, in the interests of dialogue between the Church and the synagogue. It is a ruinously foolish modern Church that willfully blinds itself to the divine judgment that comes upon the Jew. things have now become so bad along these lines that many in the modern Church, Roman Catholic and Protestant alike, have suggested that the New Testament message attributed to Jesus and others about divine wrath upon Jews is actually an importation into biblical text from an alien anti-Semitic force.

    Jesus never said any such thing. It was a later generation of Christians who wanted to vent their spleen against Jews who then imported into the account of Jesus’ message statements that now sound anti-Semitic. The task of the Church presently is to remove those statements from the Bible. That is being done as we sit here. to remove those statements from the Bible or to neutralize them in some fashion.

    My hope for you is that at least you are clear-eyed enough to grasp what is going on when it comes to the machinations of the modern Church. Surely you understand that the removal of the New Testament message about judgment upon Israel is being promoted in the interests of the modern Church, in the interests of the removal of the message of judgment of any kind whatsoever, especially the Last Judgment. but particularly as that judgment encompasses the Church herself. But you see, in this regard concerning the reality of this judgment as it encompasses the Church, You see, as we come to see things along these lines, that we stand right at the heart of what we have been saying all along.

    As we have moved from 1 Samuel through the prophets to the gospel, remember that double devastation on Israel at the hands of the Philistines. Remember the double devastation that has followed them for the northern and the southern kingdoms. And as we move from the one to the other, as we move from 1 Samuel into the prophets themselves, to that latter double devastation, the necessity for the doubling itself becomes all the more evident, all the more clear. I say this because as you take consideration of that latter doubling, the destruction of the northern and the southern tribes, You have set before you this truth, that the judgment that comes upon the North serves to warn the South about what is coming.

    But when we come to the New Testament, and the judgment that falls upon Israel at the lips of Jesus and in keeping with his sovereignty, you might well ask the question, what happens to the doubling? There was the doubling in 1 Samuel 4, there was the doubling in the history of Israel as a whole, but when you come to the New Testament and the judgment that Jesus pronounces upon Israel and Jerusalem, What becomes of the doubling there? Does this doubling continue? Indeed it does, but there is a change. There is an alteration.

    Actually, Israel’s judgment in the New Testament is like the judgment that came upon the Northern Kingdom in the Old Testament. but there is still a judgment that is outstanding, a judgment that corresponds to the other judgment in the Old Testament, the judgment that came upon the Southern Kingdom.

    And that judgment is the end of the world, and in the center of that judgment stands not Israel, but the Church. All of this that has been written down, all of this that has been set before the people of God, is unto the end that the Church might get to point. You must realize how serious this is. Because now, you see, there will be no further doubling. You’ve reached the end of the line. The judgment that comes upon the Church is not a judgment that gives way to another judgment. It’s the final judgment.

    It is the last, and it sets before us the point to which all other judgments previously have pointed, to which they have been aimed. This is why you dare not tamper with the message of judgment and its essential nature in the Scriptures, for you cannot do that without fatally damaging the message of the Bible as a whole. The indisputable reality of the judgments that came upon Israel, including that mediated by Jesus Christ in the first century, has led us by the biblical road to a confrontation with the overwhelming reality of the Last Judgment, and this being the obvious intention of Scripture all along. But this now brings us to the latter part of 1 Samuel 4, and the story of Eli’s demise.

    In this account, what does God want you to know about the Last Judgment? He’s preaching to you. What does he want you to know about the Last Judgment? This is what he wants you to know. That judgment is coming upon the Church. Now, do I need to make this a little more personal? That judgment is coming upon you. I’ve been preaching on the book of Revelation from time to time. And I realize what you might say to me in light of those messages that you heard from the book of Revelation.

    We’ve been concentrating on chapters 15 and 16, and the vision that is given us there of the Church secure in her Savior, even as God’s wrath is unleashed through plagues upon the world and the last judgment is brought on. but as secure as the Church is portrayed in those chapters, you must not lose your grip on the beginning chapters of the book of Revelation, for the opening of that book presents to you the risen Christ speaking a message to seven churches that sounds very much like the message we spoke to Jerusalem.

    Eli is staring, although physically blind, into the crushing reality that yes, God withdraws from his people in judgment, and that even in the context of his election. Eli sees this withdrawal together with its blinding reality, and the removal of the ark. His daughter-in-law sees it too, and translates it as the loss of glory. If the body is no glory, the glory has departed. Both Eli and his daughter-in-law know that the people of God are not immune, despite their election, to such a reversal in which those formerly blessed by God’s presence are blessed no longer, and are rather the objects of God’s wrath and indignation. He departing from them, He withdrawing from them. Do you want to talk about hell? Do you know what hell is? Try the absence of God with any drop of mercy. But it is important that you understand further that it is precisely the attitude that such a reversal is impossible that lures the people of God themselves open to the judgment that is coming.

    The Old Testament Church in Eli’s day believed itself ultimately invincible, and that’s because it possessed the Ark. there were other reasons as well why the Israelite would imagine himself, or the nation as a whole, would imagine itself as invincible.

    Not the least of which was the Old Testament Church’s self-righteousness. That self-righteousness does not find its occasion in Hothnu and Phinehas and their wicked acts we’re guilty of hypocrisy. Rather, that self-righteousness is set before you in the occasion of Eli’s righteous rebuke of his sons. That immediately after that righteous rebuke of his sons, Eli himself is rebuked by the Lord not only calls our attention to the flaw of Eli’s discipline, that it wasn’t accompanied by action, but it likewise places before us puts whatever is genuine in his discipline within perspective, for neither Eli’s righteousness nor the righteousness of Israel, the Old Testament Church, renders them immune to the liabilities of judgment.

    In fact, it is precisely those who know and acknowledge this liability who will live by It is specifically in view of the liability to judgment that compels you in your faith to live by faith with respect to that liability, that you trust God firmly in the faith of the coming judgment. It is precisely those who know and acknowledge their liability, those who finally, if you will, justify God in his judgment, that are justified. And it is this astounding truth that animates and drives Paul in his epistle to the Romans His argument is that the Church of Jesus Christ, wonderfully grounded in God’s predestinating election, is forewarned by God’s dealings with Israel. The judgment that finds Israel incapable of vindicating God in his judgments, and rather clings to its own self-righteousness and boasts in it, is indifference to the righteousness provided by the faith of Jesus Christ, anticipates the bold features of the Last Judgment. the judgment upon Israel which finds God reconciling Gentiles against the background of the Old Testament Church’s arrogance, ultimately sees God’s coming in ultimate judgment at the end of the world, reconciling Israel against the background of the New Testament Church’s arrogance.

    This is Paul’s point in Romans 11. Do not be conceited but fear, he says to the New Testament Church, who if God did not spare the natural branches, that is, the Old Testament Church, he will not spare you either. You live in jeopardy. You can’t escape it. And the only way to face it is by faith. Faith in what? Or in whom? You know. There is none other than Jesus Christ himself. by way of such dealings with his people. Old and New Testament, in light of the coming judgment, the final judgment, God roots out all arrogance and self-righteousness. Everyone having been shut up in disobedience that he might show mercy to all.

    Romans 11.32. It is the mark of everyone who has received that mercy that they are able then to justify God. With Paul.

    Oh the depths of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways are past finding out. For who hath known the mind of the Lord, or who hath been his counselor, or who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again. For of him, and through him, and to him are all things, to whom be glory forever.

    Amen. That must be your confession. It must be. Even though you are part of the church, baptized, take communion, if that is not the confession of your heart, I’m telling you on the basis of the word of God, that you will not stand in the judgment. I don’t want to be in glory without you. May Paul’s confession be yours.

    Father, guard us against the sin of making our election a presumption, for we are never to live by presumption, rather we are to live by faith. Presumption breathes elegance, faith breathes humility. O God, in all humility, we, prostrated before you, acknowledge that you are the great and eternal God, and that you are past our discovery. We cannot find out your reigns. But Father, we rejoice and glory in the revelation that you have given, for surely by that revelation there comes blessing and warning, and truly, O God, we have been warned. May we heed what you have said. We pray, our God, that we would justify you even as we then stand forth as those justified by you.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • Eli’s Death and the End

    Eli’s Death and the End

    This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “I Samuel 1-7” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, October 26, 1997.

    About this sermon

    Eli’s death, falling backward at the news of the ark’s capture, reads as a small commentary on the end of the world itself, the same pattern nearly every Old Testament story follows in miniature. Putting God’s will above even our own families turns out to be the real cost of faithfulness here. Christ’s own righteousness, not Eli’s failure, is what finally answers that cost.

    More sermons from 1 Samuel · Browse all sermons

    Sermon transcript

    We are beginning our Scripture reading in 1 Samuel chapter 4. We will begin reading at verse 10 in that chapter. This morning I’m going to be reading from the New American Standard Version, 1 Samuel 4, beginning at verse 10. Give your attention to God’s Word.

    So the Philistines fought, and Israel was defeated. And every man fled to his tent, and the slaughter was very great. For there fell of Israel thirty thousand foot soldiers. and the Ark of God was taken and the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, died. Now a man of Benjamin ran from the battle line and came to Shiloh the same day with his clothes torn and dust on his head.

    When he came, behold, Eli was sitting on his seat by the road eagerly watching, because his heart was trembling for the Ark of God. So the man came to tell it in the city, and all the city cried out. When Eli heard the noise of the outcry, he said, What does the noise of this commotion mean? Then the man came hurriedly and told Eli. Now, Eli was ninety-eight years old, and his eyes were set so that he could not see. The man said to Eli, I am the one who came from the battle line. Indeed, I escaped from the battle line today. And he said, How did things go, my son?

    Then the one who brought the news replied, Israel has fled before the Philistines, and there has also been a great slaughter among the people, and your two sons also, Hophni and Phinehas, are dead, and the ark of God has been taken.’ When he mentioned the ark of God, Eli fell off the seat backward beside the gate, and his neck was broken and he died. for he was old and heavy.

    Thus he judged Israel forty years. His daughter-in-law, Phileas’s wife, was pregnant and about to give birth, and when she heard the news that the Ark of God was taken and that her father-in-law and her husband had died, she kneeled down and gave birth, for her pains came upon her. About the time of her death, the women who stood by her said to her, Do not be afraid, for you have given birth to a son. But she did not answer or pay attention. And she called the boy Ichabod, saying, The glory has departed from Israel because the ark of God was taken because of her father-in-law and her husband. And she said, The glory has departed from Israel for the ark of God. was taken.

    Then turning over to the New Testament, to the gospel of Matthew, reading from Matthew 27, beginning at verse 45. From the sixth hour of darkness fell upon all the land until the ninth hour. About the ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani, that is, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

    And some of those who were standing there, when they heard it, began saying, this man is calling for a larger. Immediately one of them ran, and taking a sponge, he filled it with sour wine and put it on a reed and gave him a drink. But the rest of them said, Let us see whether Elijah will come and save him.

    And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit. And behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from the top to the bottom, and the earth shook and the rocks were split. The tombs were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. After his resurrection, they entered the holy city and appeared to many. The centurion and those who were with him, keeping guard over Jesus, when they saw the earthquake and the things that were happening, became very frightened and said, Truly, this was the Son of God.

    Father, help us in all of our opportunities, respecting your Word, to gain from that Word what you have for us. May we apply ourselves with the whole of our beings. Father, keep us from that notion that we can leave our minds at home when we come to church. Instead, Lord, may we be engaged with all of our mental facility. Lord, we pray this and keep in mind that we would be engaged also with our affections so that our love is stirred up, our love for you. and for your church. We pray these things in the name of Christ, our Savior. Amen.

    The story about the death of Eli is the story about the end of the world. Now, if it is your habit to look for relevance in preaching, I would encourage you with all of my energy to look in this direction, in the direction of the end of the world. If your reply to me is that you’re not expecting the world to end any time soon, and therefore even my suggestion lacks relevance, my response to you is this. How do you know? How do you know that Jesus Christ will not return before I finish this message? How do you know that Jesus Christ will not return before the hours of this day are completed?

    The Bible is clear. It has told you that since Jesus Christ first came, the ends of the ages have come upon us. That’s 1 Corinthians 10. Peter, at the foundation of the Christian Church, says this, that since Jesus Christ died and rose from the dead, and since he has sent his Spirit, we are now living in the last days. Acts 2, 17. And the Apostle John ups the ante when he says to his readers, 1 John 2, this is the last hour. And James, that most neglected of contributors to the New Testament, says that God, our judge, is even now at the door. Paul tells us in the last chapter of his letter to the Philippians, the word is at hand.

    The New Testament is full of the urgency and immediacy born out of the relevance of the concerning the end of the world. The Old Testament itself prepares us for this atmosphere, this environment, this situation in which we presently live, by placing before us, through its stories and its figures, the reality of the consummation of the ages. The story about Eli’s death is about the end of the world. This story, as I have already said, is then repeated in other forms and with other figures often throughout the pages of the Old Testament. In fact, it is the very intention of this book, 1 Samuel, not only to repeat this theme of the end of the world, but to use it for its overall structure, thus placing it at the very center of its meaning.

    Let me show you something. Look at verse 1 in 1 Samuel 4. What I want you to notice is the place where the Philistines camp. We can always count on Denison to pick up some obscure point. I want you to note the place where the Philistines camp. The place is called Asak. While I’m not sure the name in itself has significance, it does mean strength. And it might refer, in a theological sense, to the incomparable strength that belongs to the enemies of God’s people. And it may refer, ironically, therefore, to the lack of strength that God’s people have in themselves. The Philistines are camped at strength.

    But the reason I call your attention to the name Asa It’s because you will see it again at the very end of this book at first hand. You will find it in chapter 29 verse 1. You will note that it is the site to which the Philistines again gather for the great battle that concludes this book.

    In that battle, at the end of this book, you will recall both Saul the king and Jonathan his son are slain, and the Israelites are devastated. Two slain in the previous account, possibly in Phinehas, two slain in the latter account, Saul and Jonathan. The stories of Eli’s death and the story of Saul and Jonathan’s death are one.

    They have the same meaning, the same intention, they press to the same conclusion. And that conclusion is to set before you the end of the world. This meaning is reinforced by the similarities of patterns we find in the two stories. I’ve already mentioned one for you, but there are others that match the story early on for Samuel with death later on at the conclusion.

    Elah’s death and the Philistine triumph sets the scene for the appearance of Samuel at his coming. So Samuel and Jonathan’s death and the First King’s triumph later on sets the scene for the appearance and the ascendancy of David. And as Eli’s daughter-in-law in her death laments the loss of the Ark and memorializes that loss by naming her newborn son Ichabod, which means no glory since the glory has now departed with the Ark, so David after the latter defeat, laments the loss of Saul and Jonathan, and will memorialize them with the words, The beauty of Israel slain upon thy high places.

    How are the mighty?” Let me tell you now. As the story of Eli serves the later story of Saul and Jonathan, so both of these stories serve a later story still. They force us on even more conclusively to the reality of the end of the world and to its more conclusive lament.

    A lament that is found on the lips of Jesus himself. When in surveying Jerusalem, he cries out, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stains those sent to her? How often I would have gathered your children together, even as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you would not. Behold, your house is left to you desolate. And with this picture and this lament, there comes the rendering of the temple curtain, and with it the manifest disclosure that not only is the art gone, but the glory is nowhere to be found, at least in the temple precincts. In this context, the sun is darkened. The earth quakes, the rocks split open, tombs are opened, and many saints rise.

    The story about the crucifixion of Jesus Christ is definitely about the end of the world. like those of the stories about Eli and Saul and Jonathan, is meant to place us in the environment, the atmosphere, the setting of the end. But how can this be the case? You might ask. In each of these stories that I’ve listed for you this morning, in the Old Testament or in the New is about Israel.

    How can stories that tell us merely about the grievous tragedies overtaking a small country in a little corner of the ancient world be telling us about the consummation and the demise of the entire planet? Haven’t we blown things out of proportion here? Well, the answer to this question goes a long way in helping us to understand the purpose of the scriptures in their entirety. You see, the end-of-the-world stories which we have noted are increasingly intense as we move through them and from one to another.

    However, the pattern remains the same. They present a devastation of apocalyptic significance, if not proportions, but one that focuses upon Israel. These devastations that overtake Israel are not meant as parochial lessons about God’s judgment upon a tiny nation.

    No, they are meant as sober instruction to the whole of Christ’s Church to the end of the age. Israel is the one-time Old Testament Church which prepares you for the end-time New Testament Church. Israel is the one-time Old Testament Church which prepares you for the end of time New Testament Church. That’s why you read your Old Testament. The stories about Israel’s judgment in scenes preliminary to the end are intended to tell you about the judgment that comes upon the Church when history is brought to a conclusion. The stories about Israel’s judgment in scenes preliminary to the end are intended to tell about the judgment that is coming upon the Church when history concludes.

    You are not left without witness, and you are not left without warning. You have no excuse. You have been told. As Paul himself says, and we’ve quoted him earlier, when speaking about the Old Testament scriptures as a whole, these things, he says, are written for our instruction, that is, for the instruction of the Church of Jesus Christ, upon whom the ends of the ages have come. Again, 1 Corinthians 10, 11.

    But if now Eli’s story, the story about his death, is meant to instruct the Church for the end of the world, what is the specific nature of that instruction? What are we supposed to gain from this? At this point we might become confused. The reason I say this is because of things that we have noticed earlier in these messages, specifically the tension in the story about Eli that appears at the end of 1 Samuel 2. If you look at the verses from verse 22 on in that chapter, on the one hand, Eli rebukes his son. On the other hand, the word comes, as it were, immediately promising judgment upon Eli, for not rebuking his sons. Eli rebukes his sons, then the word comes and promises judgment upon a man for not rebuking his sons, verses 27-36 of that second chapter.

    You may remember what we said in our message on those verses. The answer to this apparent contradiction is discovered by keeping in view that Eli is more than a solitary figure, an individual person. Rather, he is a corporate figure in the life of the people of God and in the history of salvation, in whom we are to see the entirety of God’s people as a whole, in whom we see, therefore, both the positive and the negative reality belonging to those people, the Old Testament Church, anticipatory of what we will find in the New Testament Church as well. Positively, we see in him features on the one hand so glorious that they reflect Jesus Christ.

    In him we see also a model Sabbath rebuking his children. even a model believer, but negatively we see in him a severe failure in that as the Lord says about him, he honors his sons above God. And because of this, despite what appears to be genuine discipline of his sons, there was in truth no such discipline at all. Eli’s serious words to his sons, it would appear, were never matched by his actions.

    But if things are as we say, and Eli’s story, the story of his death, telegraphs to us, the Old Testament Church in an end-world scenario, for the sake of the New Testament Church, which now faces the end of the world, if these things are as we say, and the Church of Jesus Christ must with fear and reverence look to herself, lest she tell your spirit that treasures human affections more than love for God. Lest it tell your spirit that for the sake of human affections and the things of this fails to exact the discipline demanded for the Church as she now comes face-to-face with the end of all things. The Church cannot ignore discipline, and I will say to you that the most extreme challenge to the Church in implementing discipline is dealing with your husband, with your wife, with your children. Because for the sake of human affections, you will say, my love of God is second. It will be because of this that you bring down the judgment of God upon your heads.

    When there is a child who is in need of the Church’s discipline, the parent ought to be the first at the door of the session. I think I’m becoming relevant. But you should know the instruction to the Church about living in the end times, rising out of the story concerning Eli’s death, involves more than lessons about Church discipline. of equal importance is its lessons concerning righteousness. You see, the way in which God has framed his word is deliberate. The presentation of Eli’s rebuke to his sons immediately followed by the world’s judgment upon him for not rebuking his sons. That combination of passages at the end of 1 Samuel 2 is meant to get you. It is meant to get your attention.

    And it is meant to confront the New Testament Church with this truth, this truth, your righteousness, regardless of your estimations of it. even if we grant it a sincerity and a genuineness, will not hold back the end of the world. I don’t care how pious you are, you will not stand the hand of God. His judgment is going to come at His appointed time. even if I grant to you its sincerity and its genuineness, will not hold back the end of the world, much less will that righteousness provide you a reason to boast before God when the end comes.

    In other words, the story about Eli confronts the New Testament Church with the inevitability of the end, as well as the absolute necessity for the vindication of God, and that out of the heart of every true believer. You hear that echoed in Eli himself. in one of his extraordinary moments. He says, after receiving the word from God concerning the judgment that is coming upon him, it is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him. even for the Church then, that affords itself most diligently, most effectively to the matters of discipline. At the end of the world, all its righteousness will neither hold back the consummation nor provide ground for that Church to glory in itself.

    I’m having second thoughts about Asa. Maybe I will make much of that name. In the end, we are brought to the place where we realize the enemy possesses an unconquerable strength against us. our ability to resist. And against this enemy, in ourselves, in our own strength, we are powerless.

    This is simply another way of saying, the Church now, beloved of God, dear to Christ, in order to stand in the end, it must boast only in the Lord. and in the righteousness found in her Savior, such righteousness as resides in Christ, and appropriated not by the works of the law, but by the healing of faith. That it might be absolutely and completely. The Church, also in order to stand in the end, must not recoil from the inevitable nature of the end, but rather greet it and welcome it and embrace it with these words, come Lord Jesus, even so, quickly come. Amen.

    Our God and our King You have set before us the wonders of your word, the harmony of them, the consistent thread that runs throughout, and how to a common and unified purpose you have had your word inscribed that it might be a comfort and an instruction to us.

    Truly, O God, we live in the face of the end. But Lord, lest we be dismayed, we are blessed by your Son, the presence of your Spirit, the encouragement of the saints, and even the ministry of the means of grace which you have appointed. Father, we ask that we might delight in you and in your Son in light of the not having a boast in ourselves with regard to our own strength, but rather an acknowledgment that we are utterly and completely weak and depend upon you entirely. Father, you prepare for the conclusion. Even by these marvelous stories that are given to us in the Old Testament, they come to direct us, they also come to warn us. May we heal them.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • Eli, God’s People Embodied

    Eli, God’s People Embodied

    This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “I Samuel 1-7” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, October 12, 1997.

    About this sermon

    The description of Eli shifts noticeably across this passage, and that shift matters: Eli embodies God’s people at their best and their worst at once. His failure to correct his sons is, at bottom, a failure of church discipline, not just bad parenting. The consequences fall on the whole community, not on Eli alone.

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    Sermon transcript

    Our scripture reading this morning is from 1 Samuel 4, and we are beginning at verse 10. I’ll give you attention to the word of God. 1 Samuel 4, verse 10. And the Philistines fought, and Israel was smitten, and they fled every man into his tent, and there was a very great slaughter, for there fell in Israel thirty thousand footmen. And the ark of God was taken, and the two sons of Eli, Hothme and Phinehas, were slain. And there ran a man of Benjamin out of the army and came to Shiloh the same day with his clothes rent. and with earth upon his head.

    And when he came low, Eli sat upon a seat by the wayside watching, for his heart trembled for the ark of God. And when the man came into the city and told it, the city cried out. And when Eli heard the noise of the crying, he said, What meaneth the noise of this tumult? And the man came in hastily and told Eli, Now, Eli was ninety and eight years old, and his eyes were dim that he could not see. And the man said unto Eli, I am he that came out of the army, and I fled today out of the army. And he said, What is there done, my son?

    And the messenger answered and said, Israel has fled before the Philistines, and there hath been also a great slaughter among the people, and thy two sons also, Hophni and Phinehas, are dead. and the Ark of God is taken. And it came to pass when he made mention of the Ark of God that Eli fell from off the seat backward by the side of the gate, and his neck broke, and he died.

    For he was a very old man and heavy, and he had judged Israel forty years. And his daughter-in-law, Phineas’ wife, was with child near to be delivered. And when she heard the tidings that the ark of God was taken and that her father-in-law and her husband were dead, she bowed herself and prevailed, for her pains came upon her. And about the time of her death, the women that stood by her said unto her, Fear not, for thou hast born a son. But she answered not, neither did she regard it. And she named the child Ichabod, saying, The glory is departed from Israel, because the ark of God was taken. and because of her father-in-law and her husband. And she said that glory is departed from Israel, for the ark of God is taken.

    Father, as you would quiet our hearts, as you would bless us with your spirit and with the presence of the risen Christ, we are also thinking of our brothers and sisters around the world that we would share in this common peace that has been procured for us through the blood of our Savior.

    Knowing, O God, that we have been justified by faith and that this peace is ours because of him, even the one who has been justified for us and before us. Lord, help us in our reflections on your word today. that you would bless the proclamation of that word and our reception of it. To the glory of your name. Amen.

    To say the least, Eli is one of the Bible’s most intriguing figures. He interests us, and does so now in a most pressing way, because his story is about to come to an end. Israel’s double defeat at the hand of the Philistines in verses 1-11. But now, as this chapter closes with verses 12-22, we are shown the aftermath of that second defeat and the last image of the Ark of the Covenant. The story of the immediate aftermath focuses on the impact that the loss of Eli had upon Eli, a man who has been a puzzle for us since we began this series in 1 Sin.

    Now, I say a puzzle advisedly. In chapter one, you may recall how Eli appeared in a very positive frame, as a very positive figure. In fact, there is even the slightest hint of any difficulty with regard to this man. His name means High or Ascension. or exalted one or exaltation. And it is difficult to place him any higher in the scale of things than the position he receives in that first chapter. The description of him as a priest to God certainly elevates him. as does the description of him as a special intermediary for Hannah in her life, this setting him in the very best possible life, one in which we are able to see nothing less than the form and pattern of Jesus Christ himself.

    In the second chapter again, Eli appears quite positively as he blesses Hannah and her husband. And then we see that blessing materialized in the birth of more children for Hannah, verses 20 and 21 in that second chapter. Once more, as in the previous chapter, divinity shines forth in Eli’s service. One who blesses and then seemingly has the power to bestow upon that one blessed the very reality of the blessing.

    Also in chapter 2 we find Eli as a father, in a scene in which it seems that he is genuinely rebuking his wicked sons, proven to be a proper father in the circumstance, verses 22 through 25. And then in chapter 3, verse 18, we find Eli once more, this time he is described as one who justifies God in the face of certain oncoming judgments. even a judgment that will take its toll upon him, and this in an act that calls out for imitation on the part of every true believer. It is the Lord, Eli says, let him do what seems good to him.

    Christlike, a picture of God himself, a responsible parent, a model believer. We have said all of these things about Eli, this man whose name means high, ascension, exaltation, one lifted up. But at the same time, and this causing our confusion, if not our dismay, at the same Eli is lumped with his two sons, Hophni and Phileas, who are called in the twelfth verse of the second chapter, sons of Goliath.

    That is, sons of lawlessness, or as the more American standard has it, worthlessness. And that particularly when it comes to God in his person. For these men not only tiltered the offerings at the altar, verses 12-17, they actually defiled the sanctuary by their rudeness, openly fornicating with the women who served at the doorway of the tabernacle, verse 22. The sin of these men is very great indeed.

    But Eli, now their father, who in so many ways appears to be exemplary, is loathed with them. If you are feeling the strain in this, that strain will only be increased by taking another look at one of the truly disturbing passages in the Bible, one that caused a member of you to speak to me at the door when we grieved by it earlier in this series.

    I’m talking about the end of chapter 2 from verse 22 on. For the fear you had in what seems to be inexplicable fashion Here you have back-to-back verses that appear to commend Eli on the one hand, verses 22-25, and then verses that speak unmistakably about God’s deliberate judgment upon him, verses 27-36. And then he is convicted.

    Now, the story here wouldn’t be so extreme if God’s judgment wasn’t explicitly directed against Eli. In that very area, Eli seemed righteously to be engaged, mainly the rebuke of his silence. In chapter 2, verses 22-25, we find Eli consenting these boys, but then in verses 27-36, we find God judging Eli as a participant in his boys’ crimes, as if he had not rebuked them at all. verse 29 of that second chapter states the Lord’s case.

    You, Eli, honor your sons more than you honor me. Now, I know what you might be thinking. In order to get this text out of trouble, You may be thinking that the Lord’s disappointment with Eli in the latter part of the 2nd chapter is not that Eli didn’t rebuke his sons, but that Eli honored them more than the Lord himself. So you’re saying to yourself, despite the fact that he’s spoken to his sons, there’s something more here.

    He has not honored the Lord as he ought to. So technically, the strain between these two accounts is resolved. The word chastisement at the end of chapter 2 is matched by his further word through Samuel in chapter 3. I want you to notice the 13th verse in that third chapter.

    This is what the Lord says through Samuel to Eli, “‘For I told Eli that I am about to judge his house forever for the iniquity which he knew, because his sons brought a curse on themselves, and he did not rebuke them.’” But by my reading of chapter 2, Eli did rebuke them. Yet now God is going to bring on Eli first an everlasting judgment for not dealing with the problem, for not dealing with his sons, for not rebuking them. What’s going on here? Is there an open contradiction in the Bible, or of equal seriousness, is an innocent man, Eli, being unjustly condemned by God?

    Is this man who has been described in such this one who is elevated, lifted up to the heights in so many passages, and passage after passage to be brought so miserably low in what appears to be more conclusive texts yet. By answering these questions, I hope that it is obvious to you that you are being challenged at many levels by the deep and even sobering significance of this name. Above all, what I want you to keep in mind What I want you to labor at with regard to your focus is this fact.

    Remember, Eli is more than a solitary figure. He is more than a singular individual. of the entirety of God’s program, the entirety of the history of salvation. In him you are able to behold the Lord’s dealings with Israel. You are able to behold in him the history of that nation as it will unfold, as it transpires. but you will be able to observe, with regard to this man, the great transition that is coming from the old epoch to the new, from the old Israel to the new, thus enabling you, as you observe this man, as you study him, to behold patterns pertaining, yes, to what is coming future for Israel, but also that which is coming future for the Church. It is by this method that Eli becomes relevant. It is by this method that he is related to you. You virtually, by taking stock of him, are now being pulled into his life. just as Israel was previously.

    This is a discipline that the Word of God is bringing upon us, lest we lose our way in interpreting the Bible, and even interpreting ourselves. Eli is more than just a solitary figure. He is a corporate personality in whom you see the life of an entire people, if not the span of an entire age. This means, of course, that Eli speaks to us of things far greater than himself. That’s why we sing the Bible. It’s a very simple thing. Not everybody in the ancient world is mentioned.

    Eli speaks to us about things far greater than himself, things by which we are able to see the entire life of the people of God. He is a vessel of the Lord, a servant of the Lord’s sovereignty. Eli, therefore, becomes a comprehensive figure, one in whom we witness both the positive and the negative features of God’s people as a whole. We will witness these same dynamics in a figure yet to be introduced to us in this book of 1st Samuel. This to help you. If you think Eli is enigmatic, you haven’t seen anything yet. Wait till you get to Saul.

    Although our sympathies might rightly rest with Eli by comparison, and the dynamics of the positive-negative development become all the more clear in Saul, worked out more clearly still, Eli himself already confronts us with this reality. that you will have to deal with the positive and the negative in the man.

    We see in him the heights, the ascension, the exaltation, even that for the people of God. At the same time, we see in him the death, the descent, the fall of the people of God. In the one man, we see both the glories, yes, reaching out to Christ. And at the same time, the consequence of a failed religious conscience, just as we see it in Saul in all of Israel, even to the point now that we observe it as it plagues the Church.

    Therefore, in understanding Eli and in penetrating the confusion about him, we must acknowledge that on a closer look we have set before us a deliberate ambivalence, a deliberate ambivalence that speaks to us about the positive and the negative in the people of God as God would deal with them. When it comes, therefore, to the rebuke itself, we’ve been speaking about that. spoke of it earlier, and it was supported by a departure hymn in our message. When it comes to dealing with the rebuke that Eli has for his children, we are faced then to see that there are even two sides to the rebuke, one positive and the other negative and inadequate.

    In the end, the rebuke of the type Eli delivers is not the type that the Lord demands. In the end, although it has the form, although it seems to be the kind of rebuke that the Lord enjoins, in the end it is not the kind that the Lord demands. Eli delivers his rebuke with words, while the Lord demands action. You see the Lord demands action because the Lord himself is a God of action. His words are not empty. If he says the judgment is coming, it will come. Eli delivers his rebuke with words, the Lord demands action, and according to the Lord, a rebuke without action, where in fact action is demanded, is no rebuke at all.

    The Bible tells us that by his failure to act, he was the priest, he was the elder, he was a judge in Israel for forty years. By his failure to act, Eli put his sons above the Lord. How aggravated his inaction is by the fact that he bears office in the Old Testament Church. He, holding office in the Old Testament Church, refused to fulfill his office by disciplining his boy.

    But in standing as a major figure now in the history of Israel, Eli anticipates the days coming for the new Israel of God and the Church of Jesus Christ. If Eli was indulgent, he anticipates the temptation coming upon the new Israel to be indulgent also. These things are given as example to us, lest we would incur to ourselves the wrath that came upon Eli and his house. The Old Testament Church exists for the sake of the New Testament Church.

    That is why Eli serves us still by warning us about failures. that overtake officers and people alike in the Church of Jesus Christ when it comes to discipline in the Church today. I would dare say that by and large, for the Church of Jesus Christ, responsible discipline evaporated one hundred years ago and does not exist. I trust that one of the reasons why you are here today is because you happen to believe that discipline is a mark of a true church. But in acknowledging that, I also hope and pray that you find yourself in a position in that state of mind and soul to submit to that discipline.

    May we feed the warning for there still remains that form of rebuke that comes even to us, in which we might be engaged ourselves, as Eli was. A form of rebuke that contents itself with mere words, and thus betrays an allegiance to the earth and to those who are in it, even if they are our blood relatives. Rather than that form of rebuke that glorifies God and honors him, the one who always matches his words with his actions. There is more to say about the figure of Eli and his significance, but this gets us started and certainly provides us food for thought. I hope not just food for thought, but also foundations for action.

    Let’s pray. Our God, we would delight in your word. We would profit from it. we would profit from our study, our reflection upon the various figures that you have set in your Word. Lord, we would not then observe them and turn away as if we had not seen, as if we were blind. Instead, O God, we would look intently, we would meditate. And with prayer, Lord, we would proceed in directions that you have outlined for us, have set before us in your Holy Word. Father, with all diligence, may we apply ourselves. with regard to our own souls, with regard to those areas in life in which we have influence. May we do what you have commanded.

    May we rejoice, O God, that you love us enough to discipline us and correct us, lest we face your final act unprepared, namely your return. We pray now, our God, that you will bless this congregation that in confessing its belief in the marks of the Church, it would live up to those marks by all of the strength which the Spirit supplies.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • A Double Defeat Foretold

    A Double Defeat Foretold

    This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “I Samuel 1-7” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, October 5, 1997.

    About this sermon

    Samuel’s word against Eli’s family reaches far beyond one household, since Israel’s double defeat foreshadows the later fall of both kingdoms. This part of the story heads toward defeat. In Galatians Paul answers that long pattern of loss, declaring that Christ has set us free.

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    Sermon transcript

    This morning we begin our scripture reading in 1 Samuel 4. We’ll start our reading at verse 1, to give you attention to God’s word. 1 Samuel 4, verse 1. And the word of Samuel came to all Israel. Israel went out against the Philistines to battle and pitched beside Abimezer, and the Philistines pitched in Aphek. The Philistines put themselves in array against Israel, and when they joined battle, Israel was smitten before the Philistines, and they slew the army in the field about 4,000 men. When the people were come into the camp, the elders of Israel said, Wherefore hath the Lord smitten us today before the Philistines?

    Let us fetch the ark of the covenant of the Lord out of Shiloh unto us, that when it cometh among us it may save us out of the hand of our enemies. So the people sent to Shiloh that they might bring from thence the ark of the covenant of the Lord of hosts, which dwelleth between the charioteers. And the two sons of Eli, Hockney and Phinehas, were there with the Ark of the Covenant of God. And when the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord came into the camp, all Israel shouted with a great shout, so that the earth rang again.

    And when the Philistines heard the noise of the shout, they said, What meaneth the noise of this great shout in the camp of the Hebrews? And they understood that the Ark of the Lord was coming to the camp. And the Philistines were afraid, for they said, God is coming to the camp.

    And they said, Woe unto us, for there hath not been such a thing here before. Woe unto us! Who shall deliver us out of the hand of these mighty gods? These are the gods that smote the Egyptians with all the plagues in the wilderness. Be strong and put yourselves like men, O ye Philistines, that ye be not servants unto the Hebrews as they have been to you. Put yourselves like men and fight. The Philistines fought, and Israel was smitten, and they fled every man into his tent. And there was a great slaughter, for there fell of Israel thirty thousand footmen, and the ark of God was taken, and the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were slain.”

    Then turning to the New Testament, to the book of Galatians, chapter 5. verse 1, and also verse 13. This is what the Apostle Paul says, Galatians 5.1, “‘Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage,’ and dropping down to verse For brethren, ye have been called unto liberty, only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but to love and serve one another.”

    The impression you have as you begin to consider 1 Samuel 4 is that the events about to unfold before you are bound to, if not determined by, the word of Samuel mentioned for you in the opening line of that chapter. Thus, the word of Samuel came to all Israel. the great Old Testament commentators of the last century, saw the bond between that opening line and what was to follow. They went so far as to suggest that Samuel’s word in the first line of verse 1 is the direct reason for Israel’s action in the second line. In other words, Israel mobilizes its armies against the Philistines because Samuel, the prophet of the Lord, ordered Israel to do so. Personally, I am not convinced by Kyle and Delica’s opinion at this point. But I do believe that they were on the right track in connecting the opening of 1 Samuel 4 to what follows.

    For I am convinced that Samuel’s word, as the word of God, presides over the events now to be described, over the entirety of those events. things are about to fall out according to Samuel’s message from God. And such is the nature of this message that the fall of Eli’s house is not only predicted by Samuel’s word, but actually compelled and accomplished by that word.

    But further, Samuel’s word to all Israel, or most of all Israel, previews in actual fact the future for all Israel. Samuel is, after all, that foundational prophet, that transitional prophet into the epoch of the prophets. And what you are about to witness in the next three chapters is then a compressed prophetic and predictive summary of what lies ahead for Israel in her history, as that history is anticipated in the fate of Eli and his household. So yes, the word of Samuel to all Israel about Eli and his family is like unto the word of the prophets belonging to the epoch of the prophets coming to all Israel. That word about Israel’s own future, even her own future demands.

    And Samuel’s word functions in these immediate events now described for you, even as the prophet’s words will function in the coming history of Israel, specifically as that history unfolds the reality of the intended looming judgment. You gain a feel for this as you look further into this fourth chapter in 1 Samuel.

    What we have before us in this chapter is the account of Israel’s double defeat. Here is the account of Israel’s double, two-fold humiliation. You begin with one defeat as you start out the chapter, and by the time you’ve arrived at verse 11, you have witnessed a second. This account of the double defeat of Israel is then followed by the record of the impact of this double humiliation upon Eli and his extended family.

    This morning, the most we will be able to do is to begin our address concerning these first eleven verses and what they have to say about Israel’s double humiliation. Are you able to make your own connections while thinking about such a double disaster? Are you able to make your own connections as you think about this double disaster? Remember what we said concerning the relationship between What we’re hearing in these verses, and what we will hear later on as Old Testament history unfolds, do you know of a later day double humiliation, double disaster anywhere in Israel’s history?

    That humiliation which comes to Israel in the destruction of the northern kingdom. Humiliation number one, followed by another humiliation some 130 years later in the destruction of the southern kingdom. You will recall that in the second humiliation that of the mines of the southern kingdom. The glory truly does depart from the sanctuary as it is destroyed with the city of Jerusalem.

    The loss of the Ark, the devastation now presently that comes to Shiloh, in this current passage, anticipate what is coming. What we witness, therefore, in the double humiliation of 1 Samuel 4 sets before us the end, the end of the Old Testament kingdom, even before that kingdom rises and runs its course from David to the destruction of Jerusalem.

    When you are coming up against the word of God, it is imperative that you understand what you are dealing with. What seems to be an innocent remark at the beginning of 1 Samuel 4 concerning the word of Samuel going out to all Israel now has seemingly comprehensive significance. Do you know what the Word of God can do?

    It can actually create the event it describes. By the Word, the world was created. It is brought into being. That is the nature of the Word. That world by which the worlds were made is now operative in the prophets. It is coming forth from them. It is coming forth from Samuel. And it is surveying the entire future history of Israel as a kingdom. It is not only predicting what is coming, it is establishing and determining what is going to take place. Before such a word, I should tremble, and you should too.

    One subtle feature of 1 Samuel 4, adds weight to what I have been saying so far. What I have in mind is the way in which this chapter suggests that Israel actually forces the confrontation with the Philistines. This comes across in the contrasting description of the two armies. seems to be that Israel goes out deliberately in order to meet the Philistines now in battle. In verse 2, the Philistines, in response to the aggressiveness from Israel, form their battle line to repel the advancing Israelite army.

    From this observation, what we are able to piece together is this. Consistent with the picture given to us from the book of Judges prior consideration, the Israelites live under the threat of invasion and with the reality of external domination. And although we last saw these Philistines humbled by Samson, who destroyed more of his death than in his life, Judges 16, still the Philistines remain the dominant force and they presently subjugate the Israelites. That this is in fact the case is proved by what we notice in verse 9 of this fourth chapter. For you see, in the response that the Philistines give, they consider the Israelites their servants, or even more powerfully, their slaves. The Philistines rule.

    This means that what is taking place as 1 Samuel 4 opens It’s an attempt on Israel’s part to establish her autonomy, to gain her independence from Philistine rule. But now I want you to think about Israel’s later history. For this is precisely what was going on, both in the cases of the Northern Kingdom, where she met Kurdamaz, and the Southern Kingdom, where she met Kurdamaz. Samaria in the north rebelled against Assyria in her quest for freedom, and thus brought on the destruction, while Jerusalem in the south rebelled later against Babylon in her quest for freedom and brought on Pergamon.” as with 1 Samuel 4, so was the close of the history for the northern and the southern kingdoms. But there is another feature to the story in 1 Samuel 4 that further builds towards this conclusion, the interaction between the events.

    It is this. Israel is subject to Philistia, even though she presently lives in the promised land. Israel is subject to Philistia even though she presently lives in the promised land. Consider this. Consider the doctrinal weight of it. Israel has come into her inheritance. That which was promised her through the patriarchs mediated to her through Moses and through Joshua.

    But now, even here in the promised land, in possession of the inheritance, she, Israel, experiences bondage and lives presently in slavery. Slavery and bondage, therefore, are not to be confined to Egypt. It’s as if having left Egypt, the slavery and the bondage follow Israel, continue to be a reality in her experience, continue to be a threat to her. The slavery, the reality of it, the possibility of it, follows Israel. even as she leaves Egypt and comes into the territory of Canaan. Do you imagine a social and a political liberation to be the substance of the freedom of which the Scriptures speak?

    Having experienced the political and social liberation Israel is still under threat, and while coming into the Promised Land, she is facing subjugation further. But as it was in the days of Samuel and Eli, likewise in the days of the rise of Assyrian and Babylon. and enslave Israel, even though Israel is living in the land of the promised inheritance. As we push ourselves and our consideration of these things that are being set in front of us, we have then Philistia, Assyria, and Babylon. all representing the same reality, with an increasing intensity as we move from the one to the other, until Babylon finally, in the magnitude of all of its evil, dominates the landscape of biblical imagery. And that singular reality represented by these three kingdoms—Philistia, Syria, and Babylon—is in actual fact an alien worldly yet spiritual power as seductive as was Delilah to Samson, whose goal is the enslavement, the binding of Samson, the enslavement of the people of God. to the end that their liberty as the children of God, their freedom as the children of God, might be destroyed, and this despite their possession of the promised inheritance.

    There you are. If you were to understand Philistia, if the question of a serious meaning or Babylon’s meaning has perplexed you, I say it before you now, these empires are a singular reality. They are an alien, worldly yet spiritual power, profound in significance, seductive, whose goal is the enslavement of the people of God and the destruction of their liberty, despite the fact that the people live presently in possession of the inheritance. They have it in hand.

    As things were prove themselves one of the most effective means of seduction at the disposal of Philistia, Assyria, Babylon and that which they represent, is to entice the children of God to rely on their own strength. So we’ll go out and we’ll fight the Philistines and we’ll gain our own freedom. by the power of our own hands. The high-water mark of the seduction of this singular reality is to entice the children of God to rely on their own strength just like everyone else. to be a nation like all the rest of the nations. Those of you who know 1 Samuel understand the direction of that comment. The ultimate implication of such a seduction will be the belief that the children of God have, by their own strength, both secured and presently maintained their inheritance. The ultimate reach of the seduction in you will be the belief that the children of God have, by their own strength, secured the inheritance and are presently maintained in it by their own wisdom and ability.

    Philistia, like Assyria and Babylon to come, therefore, is that alien force, the epitome of worldly and spiritual evil, holding Israel in bondage within the inheritance, enticing Israel, becoming the occasion for Israel to think of herself as a kingdom like all other worldly kingdoms, relying on and boasting of her own strength. Philistia is double the fuse of Israel, therefore forecasts the coming devastation at the close of the Old Testament kingdom. We have here the coming history of Israel in preview and in miniature form. but to what purpose? Is it merely to leave you with an interesting parallel construction, an interesting organization for the events of Israel’s past history?

    The Apostle Paul sees things differently. For instance, he says that the events of the Exodus and the aftermath of that Exodus in the wilderness were recorded as an example for us, the Church of Christ, those upon whom the ends of the ages have come. You think it was bad for the Northern and Southern Kingdom? You haven’t seen anything yet.

    If you want to reference 1 Corinthians 10, verse 11, Paul elsewhere tells us that whatever was written in earlier times, that is, in the entirety of the Old Testament, was written for our instruction, for the instruction of the Church of Christ. But what might be the specific instruction for the Church in what we find in 1 Samuel You too have come into possession of the inheritance.

    Not an inheritance of this creation, a piece of real estate in a corner of the Mediterranean world, but an inheritance above, eternal, an everlasting inheritance in glory. And this inheritance has been granted to you in and through Jesus Christ, your Savior. It is a gift of God, and you trust for salvation now in Christ alone, do you not? You rely on him for your preservation in this inheritance that has been bequeathed to you. He, by his word and by his Spirit, sustains you. and in the Spirit he super-intends the entirety of the history which his Church has yet to endure, for he sees the end of it from the beginning, and it is all comprehended in him.

    However, as was the case for Israel, there is a Philistia for you, and it, like the Philistia of old, seeks to enslave you. even though you have the inheritance in hold. This celestia seeks to undo your freedom, to countermand the truth that you are a child of God. This celestia seeks to do this by seducing you with the promise of worldly blessing and tempting you to become like everyone else in the world, and by dating you to fight against it in your own strength. that in this Philistia you are able to perceive all the forces of spiritual wickedness, all the powers of the flesh that threaten you and entice you. Truly, the objective of this Philistia is your enslavement.

    Its tactic is to make you trust in yourself that the word from God is clear. The flesh which is the agent of your philistia is not only enslavement but death. While the spirit who is the agent of your inheritance, the one by whom you have been graciously granted freedom and are now maintained in that liberty, is life and peace.

    Romans 8.6. You who are alive then in the Spirit, in your inheritance, must now walk in the Spirit.

    Galatians 5.25. You who know Jesus Christ as your Savior must now continually put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh.

    Romans 13.14. it was for freedom that Christ set you free, only do not now turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh.” Galatians 5, verse 1 and verse 13.

    You must not Yes, there is a judgment, it will come upon the house of God, it will come upon the Church, just as it came upon Israel in the Old Testament. That is unavoidable. But when that day comes, may it be true of you that you have looked your Philistia in and seen him for what he is and renounced him and stood your ground in and through the power of Jesus Christ who has granted you the eternal inheritance that will never fade away. Amen.

    Lord, we would not be ignorant of the threat that comes against us. Lord, in the power of your word and in the knowledge of the salvation you have given us, may we stand in your strength and in your strength alone. Acknowledging that our position is by grace, and that you are pleased to communicate to us this gift according to our faith which you have worked in our hearts. Father, we pray, therefore, that we would not surrender to the flesh or any of its enticements, but according to the ministry of that agent from our inheritance, namely the Spirit, may we endure walking by him and according to the word that you have given us. Father, as we come to the sacrament, we pray that we might acknowledge the truth, that we are saved by grace, and that our Savior’s sacrifice is the means for atonement and reconciliation. By him we are redeemed. Father, we ask that our hearts might be right and true, even as we have understood the nature of our freedom, the reality of our inheritance, and the truth of your Word. These things we pray through Christ, our Savior.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • The Word That Moves Events

    The Word That Moves Events

    This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “I Samuel 1-7” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, September 14, 1997.

    About this sermon

    Samuel’s word in verse 1 sets everything that follows in motion, just as God’s word in the mouths of his prophets always moves history. Four likenesses tie Samuel’s prophetic office to Christ’s. Both speak, and events themselves obey them.

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    Sermon transcript

    This morning we will be reading from 1 Samuel 4, and from there we will be turning over to Matthew 9. 1 Samuel 4, beginning with verse 1, this is the word of God. And the word of Samuel came to all Israel. Now Israel went out against the Philistines to battle and pitched beside Ebenezer, and the Philistines pitched in Aphex. And the Philistines put themselves in array against Israel, and when they joined battle, Israel was smitten before the Philistines, and they slew the army in the field, about 4,000 men. And when the people were come into the camp, the elders of Israel said, Wherefore hath the Lord smitten us today before the Philistines?

    Let us fetch the ark of the covenant of the Lord out of Shiloh unto us, that when it cometh among us, it may save us out of the hand of our enemies. So the people sent to Shiloh that they might bring from hence the ark of the covenant of the Lord of hosts, which dwelleth between the cherry beans. And the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were there with the Ark of the Covenant of God. And when the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord came into the camp, all Israel shouted with a great shout so that the earth rang again.

    And when the Philistines heard the noise of the shout, they said, What meaneth the noise of this great shout in the camp of the Hebrews? And they understood that the Ark of the Lord was come into the camp. And the Philistines were afraid, for they said, God is coming to the camp.

    And they said, Woe unto us, for there hath not been such a thing heretofore. Woe unto us! Who shall deliver us out of the hand of these mighty gods? These are the gods that smote the Egyptians with all the plagues in the wilderness. Be strong, and quit yourselves like men, O ye Philistines, that ye be not servants unto the Hebrews as they have been to you. Quit yourselves like men and fight.

    And the Philistines fought, and Israel was smitten, and they fled every man to his tent. And there was a very great slaughter, for there fell of Israel thirty thousand footmen, and the ark of God was taken, and the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were slain. And there ran a man of Benjamin out of the army and came to Shiloh the same day with his clothes rent and with earth upon his head.

    And when he came low, Eli sat upon a seat by the wayside, watching, for his heart trembled for the ark of God. And when the man came into the city and told it, all the city cried out. And when Eli heard the noise of the crying, he said, What meaneth the noise of this tumult? And the man came in hastily and told Eli. Now Eli was ninety and eight years old, and his eyes were dim that he could not see. And the man said unto Eli, I am he that came out of the army, and I fled today out of the army.

    And he said, What is there done, my son? And the messenger answered and said, Israel has fled before the Philistines, and there hath been also a great slaughter among the people, and by two sons also. Hophni and Phinehas are dead, and the ark of God is taken. And it came to pass When he made mention of the Ark of God, that Eli fell off the seat backward by the side of the gate, and his neck broke, and he died. For he was an old man and heavy, and he had judged Israel forty years.

    And his daughter-in-law, Phineas’s wife, was with child, near to be delivered. And when she heard the tidings that the Ark of God was taken, and that her father-in-law and her husband were dead, she bowed herself and prevailed, for her pains came upon her. And about the time of her death, the women that stood by her said unto her, Fear not, for thou hast born a son. But she answered not, neither did she regard it. And she named the child Ichabod, saying, The glory is departed from Israel, because the ark of God was taken, and because of her father-in-law and her husband. And she said, The glory is departed from Israel, for the ark of God is taken.

    And then turning to Matthew chapter 9 verse 35, And Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people. Father, how would we estimate the power of your word, it overcoming sin and death in us, sin and death in your people? your word sustaining us in ways that we do not comprehend.

    Yet today, O God, your word is declared throughout the world. There are many whom you have called to declare it, and, Father, would you bless them even as they declare that word to those who do not yet believe? We ask, Father, that there would be mercy shown, that there would be great rejoicing as sinners are called to repentance, as they are in fact brought into the kingdom of heaven. Lord, strengthen us in our prayers for your people throughout the world, even those whom you are drawing to yourself presently.

    This we ask in Jesus’ name. Amen. Now, I want you to notice how the fourth chapter of 1 Samuel opens. The word of Samuel comes to all Israel. But I want you to keep in mind as you take note of that sentence, this word from Samuel is the word of the kingdom coming to all God’s people.

    And as such, it is much more in its operations. For consider, it is that word, in fact, by which those things now to be described, now to be described, will transpire. It is that word by which these events will be put into motion, by which they will be motivated and brought to their conclusion. Such is the significance of this word. But there is more still.

    This word from Samuel is that word by which God’s children be made aware through the Holy Spirit. will be compelled, nor even driven, to know the deepest things of God. This word of Samuel referred to here at the opening of 1 Samuel 4. will specifically reach from the opening of this chapter into the seventh chapter, particularly the second verse of that chapter as being an endpoint, but yes, even extend itself beyond that second verse in the seventh chapter, reaching to the conclusion of that seventh chapter. In its scope, is about to take you on the most extraordinary journey. One more remarkable than the journey of the Ark into Philistia and then back into Israel again. For this word, from Samuel to all of Israel, spoken of at the outset of the fourth chapter there, must be appreciated in the most comprehensive sense. Not just all Israel in a mere territorial sense, that is, all Israel alive at the time at which Samuel spoke the word. but much more all Israel, in terms of the chronological sense of the phrase touching the very end, the conclusion of Israel’s history itself.

    What I mean to tell you is this. What you are about to be given in this portion of 1 Samuel is the whole of Israel’s history. compactly presented. Now, I suggest to you that this is the meaning of Samuel’s disappearance. I suggest to you that this is the meaning of Samuel’s disappearance.

    You see, Samuel will not be mentioned again until you arrive at verse 3 in chapter 7. He’s gone. just as he disappears from the scene after 4-1. So he will disappear from the scene in death at the conclusion of his ministry. And just as he, as the Lord’s prophet, has his word established in his absence, throughout the course of what is coming in the next chapters. So also, his word, the prophetic word, will prevail, it being the word of the Lord, after Samuel’s own departure at death, even to the fullness of God’s purpose for Israel as a nation.

    Let me suggest to you, then, that in 1 Samuel 4.1, in relationship to all that follows until we reach chapter 7, verse 3, we have a parallel set out for us that will coalesce with the entirety of the rest of the Old Testament.

    This is real prophecy. It won’t be just the words of the prophets that tell you what is going to take place. The events that transpire attached to the ministry of Samuel will be a preview themselves. Prophecy is not merely a matter of words, it is a matter of event.

    This is why I think the journey you are about to take in these chapters is most extraordinary. But now let me emphasize further for you, even though Samuel disappears from these coming verses, we must not think that the words that appear here are devoid of the Prophet’s presence. Because you see, his word includes the whole of the people and the whole of their life. His word becomes something of an extension of his presence, an extension of his person into the circumstances that are in view. It is this observation that drives me to the conclusion that when we deal with the rather odd construction at the beginning of chapter 4, we are not thereby to be cut off guard.

    As words read, thus the word of Samuel came to all Israel. Now, you might be cut off guard by those words because you expected to hear something different. you expected to hear something like this, thus the word of the Lord came to all Israel, thus the word of Samuel, or thus the word of the Lord came to all Israel through Samuel. And this would make perfect sense, given the conclusion of chapter 3, where you find the final verse ending with reference to the word of the Lord. The most natural thing, and certainly the most theologically correct thing to do, would be to carry through with the phrase, the word of the Lord. Instead, as the fourth chapter opens up, we are given the phrase, the word of Samuel.

    Doesn’t this word of Samuel, in this particular context, seem to be given a bit too much credit to the man, too much credit to Samuel himself? Isn’t the text elevating the prophet beyond what is proper here? There are two things that are important for us to keep in mind when we think of Samuel in terms of his office as the prophet. For one thing, we must think of the dignity of the office that he bears. The prophet, you know, appears as the Lord’s appointed spokesman. He is the appointed speaker for the war.

    When Moses was being called, the Lord told him when he objected due to his lack of rhetorical he told him that Aaron would be a prophet for him. In explaining what that meant, the Lord said that Moses then would put the words that he had received from the Lord into the mouth of Aaron, his brother. The relationship then between Moses and Aaron was to parallel the relationship between God and his prophet. God puts his word into his prophet’s mouth, as Moses then was to put the word that he received from the Lord into Aaron’s mouth.

    The prophet, therefore, is elevated by virtue of his calling, since he has the very word of God in his mouth. When the angel carries the coals from the altar to touch Isaiah’s lips in that marvelous scene in Isaiah chapter 6, that chapter giving us the account of Isaiah’s call to the office of prophet, this action by the angel is by no means for the sole purpose of moral cleansing, to remedy the fact that Isaiah is a man of unclean lips. Now it is for the purpose of Isaiah’s calling, since as a prophet, the very word of God will be placed in his mouth. But as dramatic as this was in the case of Isaiah, it is even more dramatic and direct in the case of Jeremiah. For in Isaiah’s case, it was the seraph, the angel, who applied the coals to Isaiah.

    But in Jeremiah’s vision, the Lord himself stretched out his hand and touched Jeremiah’s mouth and said, Behold, I have put my words in your mouth. So realistic a feature is this of the prophetic calling that this whole matter of putting the word into the mouth informs the later experiences of both Jeremiah and Ezekiel as they are described as ingesting the word. They eat it.

    The placement of God’s word in the mouth of his prophet is thus so central to the prophet’s that God’s great and grand promise concerning the coming prophet has this feature at its very center. I have in mind Deuteronomy 18, verse 18, which contains the promise concerning the coming prophet. For if the Lord says to Moses, I will raise up a prophet from among your countrymen like you, and I will put my words in his mouth.

    In light of this elevation, for the Lord’s messenger, for his prophet, it would seem then that the intersection of Samuel’s word and the Lord’s word, as we move into the fourth chapter of 1 Samuel, is not a matter that need concern us. But there is a second thing that we must keep in mind when it comes to the elevation of Samuel in his role as a prophet, and this has to do with what I have said to you on earlier occasions. Samuel is portrayed in scripture as the landmark prophet.

    He is presented to you as the great transitional figure in whom you can see the old Israel fading and the new Israel taking shape. He stands at that prophet in whom we are able to see the intersection of the old world and the new, in which we are privileged to see the coming of the kingdom of God. That one who in his person serves the purpose of defining the new age that is to come, and specifically as that new age will take shape through the agency of the prophet of the Lord. That one in whom we are able to see the pattern for the fulfillment of the Lord’s promise to send the ultimate prophet spoken of in Deuteronomy 18.

    This means, then, that whatever links we find between Samuel and the later prophets, such as Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel, we are compelled to grant to Samuel a unique place. You see in that unique place, as that landmark prophet, as that great transitional figure appearing in the pages of the Old Testament, through whom Israel is moved from the old into the new, as that one in whom we see the coming of the kingdom, in whom we find the outline of the coming promise of prophet, Samuel himself is made like unto the Son of God.

    So it is when we hear the sentence, thus the word of Samuel came to all Israel. Though it may at first sound strange and even seem to make too much of Samuel, its intent is to elevate this prophet not simply as one in whose mouth God’s very word has been placed, but as that one who wonderfully prepares God’s people in a special way for the appearance of Jesus Christ. Thus the word of Samuel came to all Israel, and Jesus was going through all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the kingdom of God. But now as Samuel prepares God’s people in a special way for the appearance of Jesus Christ, Does the pattern of his word to God’s people that we see working itself out from this fourth chapter on anticipate the scope of Jesus’ own words to God’s people later?

    More specifically, are we able to see In 1 Samuel 4, 1 through 1 Samuel 7, verse 2, and even to the conclusion of the seventh chapter, something of the coming ministry of the Messianic word to and for the people of God. The answer to that question is an emphatic yes. What I want you to do now is to place these chapters from 1 Samuel. What I want you to do is to place 1 Samuel 4, verse 1, through that 7th chapter, verse 2, and even take a look at the conclusion of the 7th chapter, and place them beside the service of Jesus Christ, and note the results. Here are the highlights.

    Samuel’s word, being the word of the exalted prophet like unto the Son of God, extends itself into the whole of the life of Israel, comprehending and determining that life. Jesus’ word, being the word of the exalted Son of God Himself, extends itself into the whole of the life of His people, a new Israel, comprehending and determining their life.

    2. Samuel, the exalted prophet like unto the Son of God, disappears from the story of the Old Testament here, at this juncture, even while that story is carried on to its completion, and that by his word. Jesus, the Son of God, disappears from the story of the New Testament. by way of his death, resurrection, and ascension into heaven, even while the story in view is carried to its completion by his word.

    3. Samuel, the exalted prophet, like unto the Son of God, even though physically absent from the picture, And this, in keeping with his word, which endures, which survives, effects the departure of glory from the old Israel, the ark is gone, and the visitation of that glory among the Gentiles, even to the point of the triumph of that glory over the Gentile gods. Jesus, the Son of God, even though physically absent. And this, in keeping with his word, effects the departure of glory from the old Israel, and the visitation of that glory among the Gentiles, and the subsequent triumph of that glory over all of the Gentile gods.

    4. Samuel, the exalted prophet, like unto the Son of God, returns in 1 Samuel 7 verse 3, and this for the purpose of vindicating God’s name among those among whom God’s glory has resided for a time, and that in a climactic, decisive judgment upon all of God’s enemies. Yet Jesus, the exalted Son of God, risen and reigning, returns to vindicate God’s name among the nations among whom God’s glory has resided for a time by way of the gospel and through the ministry of the Church. His return is for that climactic apocalypse and decisive judgment upon all of God’s enemies and the enemies of his people. As I said in the beginning of this message, the word of Samuel that came to all Israel has the power to drive God’s children, those who have been blessed by the Spirit of God, into the deep things of God himself. In fact, this word drives us into the meaning of Israel as a nation, of the Philistines as a threat.

    It drives us into the meaning of Eli, into the meaning of his sons. It drives us into the very heart of God in the way in which it presents to us the fate of the ark. As that ark journeys itself into exile and into humiliation. Likewise, in all of this, we ourselves are driven into the profound depths of the gospel, touching here our own meaning, that meaning setting us in the context of the ends of the earth and the end of the world.

    Samuel’s presence, 1 Samuel 4, his disappearance, 4-6, his reappearance, 1 Samuel 7, previews the coming of Christ the disappearance of Christ into heaven and his coming again. And as surely as Samuel reappeared, Jesus Christ is going to do the same. You have been warned. What I am telling you is that the way in which God is presenting to you the certainty of His Son’s return is through the figure of Samuel. as sure as Samuel came back, so also will his son. Now I think that you can complete the message. Amen. One who had the word of the Lord in his mouth said, Prepare to meet thy God. Are you ready?

    Father, may we rejoice in your word and in the servants that you raised up to give us that word. May we give to them, Lord, that honor that is due, even as you are reflected in them and operative in them. Father, we also pray that we would not be strangers to the message that you sent through them. even as that message culminates in Christ your Son, who truly is the last prophet given to this world. We pray, our Father, that by His word we might be instructed, but also know that His word is effective to bring about those things that have been declared by Him. And surely, O God, as he has announced the coming day, that day shall come. And Father, as he has pled with us that we would be ready for that day, we ask that we shall be. Father, may your servant Samuel serve the purpose that you intend, even as he would prepare us for what is coming. We ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • A Prophet Like Moses

    A Prophet Like Moses

    This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “I Samuel 1-7” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, September 7, 1997.

    About this sermon

    Samuel eclipses Eli here much as Christ eclipses the Levitical priesthood itself, a pattern set from Samuel’s very first calling. That calling establishes the template Isaiah and Jeremiah will later follow, the prophet like Moses promised in Deuteronomy 18. Even Eli’s own resigned confession, ‘it is the LORD,’ shows something closer to New Testament faith than expected.

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    Sermon transcript

    We will begin our reading this morning in Deuteronomy 18, we will move to 1 Samuel 3, and we will conclude in Acts 3. This is Deuteronomy 18, and we are reading from verse 15. I’ll give you attention to God’s word. This is a reading from the New American Standards version.

    The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your countrymen. You shall listen to him. This is according to all that you ask of the Lord your God in Horb on the day of the assembly, saying, Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God. Let me not see this great fire anymore, or I will die. The Lord said to me, they have spoken well.

    I will raise up a prophet from among the countrymen like you, and I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. It shall come about that whoever will not listen to my words, which he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him.’

    Then turning over to 1 Samuel 3, beginning at verse 1. Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord before Eli, and the word from the Lord was rare in those days, visions were infrequent. It happened at that time as Eli was lying down in his place, now his eyesight had begun to grow dim and he could not see well, and the lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord where the ark of God was, that the Lord called Samuel, and he said, Here I am.

    Then he ran to Eli and said, Here I am, for you called me. He said, I did not call, lie down again. So he went and lay down. The Lord called yet again, Samuel. So Samuel arose and went to Eli and said, Here I am, for you called me. But he answered, I did not call my son, lie down again.

    Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, nor had the word of the Lord yet been revealed to him. So the Lord called Samuel again for the third time, and he arose and went to Eli and said, Here I am, for you called me. Then Eli discerned that the Lord was calling the boy.

    And Eli said to Samuel, Go lie down, and it shall be if he calls you that you shall say, Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening. So Samuel went and lay down in his place. Then the Lord came and stood and called, as at other times, Samuel, Samuel. Samuel said, Speak, for your servant is listening.

    The Lord said to Samuel, I am about to do a thing in Israel at which both ears of everyone who hears it will tingle, and that day I will carry out against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house from beginning to end. For I have told him that I am about to judge his house forever for the iniquity which he knew, because his sons brought a curse on themselves and he did not rebuke them. Therefore I have sworn to the house of Eli that the iniquity of Eli’s house shall not be atoned for by sacrifice or offering forever.

    So Samuel lay down until morning. Then he opened the doors of the house of the Lord. Samuel was afraid to tell the vision to Eli. Then Eli called Samuel and said, Samuel, my son, and he said, here I am. He said, What is the word that he spoke to you? Please do not hide it from me. May God do so to you, and more also if you hide anything from me of all the words that he spoke to you. So Samuel told him everything and hid nothing from him, and he said, It is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him.

    Thus Samuel grew, and the Lord was with him, and let none of his words fail. All Israel from then, even to Beersheba, knew that Samuel was confirmed as a prophet of the Lord, and the Lord appeared again at Shiloh, because the Lord revealed himself to Samuel at Shiloh by the word of the Lord. Thus the word of Samuel came to all Israel.

    This is verse 22. Moses said, The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brethren. To him you shall give heed to everything he says to you. And it will be that every soul that does not heed that prophet shall be utterly destroyed from among the people. And likewise all the prophets who have spoken, from Samuel and his successors onward, also announce these days.

    It is you who are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant which God made with your fathers, saying to Abraham, And in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed. For you first God raised up his son and sent him to bless you by turning every one of you from your wicked ways.

    The first verse of 1 Samuel 3, at least at its beginning, has us looking over our shoulder. But before we are done today, I trust that we will be looking into the glory of God. The first sentence of that first verse in chapter 3 reads, Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord before Eli. This sentence has us looking backward, as it were, over our shoulder, because it reads almost word for word like the last sentence in 1 Samuel 2 verse 11. A sentence that reads this way, But the boy ministered to the Lord before Eli the priest. Now I’m sure that in hearing those two sentences read to you that you can pick up the slight changes between them. There are a couple. One change is this.

    In chapter 2, verse 11, Eli is clearly identified as, quote, the priest, unquote. But you note in the description in chapter 3 verse 1, that approach to Eli disappears. As the description of Eli the priest disappears, we are witnessing then the departure of the priesthood itself from Eli. This being worked out in narrative form for you as the writer makes his way through the story.

    Samuel’s rise will mean Eli’s demise. Eli’s divestiture from office means Samuel’s investiture with office. But Samuel’s movement into the priesthood is greater than just the replacement of a man with a boy. For it anticipates the great transition, the great movement that is coming. It anticipates the arrival of the priesthood of Jesus Christ himself. As Samuel displaces Eli then, so Jesus Christ displaces the entirety of the Old Testament priestly order.

    An order known for its imperfections, its limitations, and even its corruptions now, as we reflect upon Eli and his family. But the entirety of this Old Testament priestly order is destined to be overcome in a greater administration still, in the administration of a heavenly sanctuary. This opened up by a final sacrifice which has as its purpose the perfecting of the consciences of the people of God, and that through the faithful mediation of the only one by whom the saints of God are to persevere in their faith unto the end.

    I’ve pretty much given you a summary of the epistle to the Hebrews. Samuel’s emerging priesthood, therefore, in the way in which it overtakes Eli’s, does in fact help us, even as we stare into the Old Testament story, to appreciate better the greater and more monumental movement in the history of salvation, when the exalted everlasting, righteous priesthood of Jesus Christ eclipses the earthbound, temporal, limited, even corrupted priesthood of the Levitical order.

    Here you have a preview of what’s coming. But those of you who have been here for the duration of these messages on 1 Samuel know that I’ve said all of this before. And you may be wondering to yourself this morning, why is he saying it again? Well, it is actually in the interest of another change. that we observe as we move from 1 Samuel 2 verse 11 to 1 Samuel 3 verse 1. It is in the interests of that change that I press on in this message, for that change will alert us to a further element still, a yet newer element being introduced into Samuel’s story at this point.

    You see, that other change from 2.11 to 3.1 is this. 2.11 doesn’t mention Samuel’s name. 3.1 does. Now I know what some of you are thinking. How in the world does he make so much of so little? And why in heaven’s name does he bother? Or you might be saying to yourself, if you’ve been here for the duration of the series, Oh no, we’re going over that lean thing again.

    You might recall, Charlie, that you preached on that issue long ago, when you were taking up the difference between chapter 2, verse 11, and verse 18 in that same chapter, where we observed the same phenomenon. Now, I haven’t forgotten what I said to you about the difference between 2.11 and 2.18, but you will notice that the appearance of Samuel’s name in that 2.18 text, yes, in contrast to what is in 2.11, was for the purpose of furthering your consideration of the displacement of Eli by Samuel and his coming priesthood. The priesthood was in view as you move from 2.11 to 2.18. And that is why in 2.18 Samuel appears not only named, in contrast to 2.11, but clothed.

    Clothed with the linen ephod. I ask you, who wears the linen ephod? Well, not every boy in Israel. the linen ephod is a priestly garment. And even at this juncture, then, you are being instructed that by the way Samuel dresses, he is preparing to display Eli.

    But the fact now that Samuel’s name appears in the first verse of the third chapter, And that, in deliberate contrast to what we find in chapter 2, verse 11, serves an entirely different purpose. In you, here, is not so much the contrast between Samuel and Eli, although that is still there.

    Wait, it is still there. But much more immediately, the introduction of his name at this point serves as a means to contrast him to the enigmatic figure that appears at the end of chapter 2, specifically the unnamed man of God who is presented to you in verse 27. Isn’t it strange that this man comes out of nowhere? He comes with no name, seemingly no identity other than the fact that he is the man of God, and he speaks to Eli. But his namelessness now stands in contrast to Samuel, whose name is in prominence. Then the man of God came to Eli and said to him, thus says the Lord.”

    Here is someone, then, it seems, who stands in prophet’s style, in prophet’s style. We’re changing gears. We’ve been talking about priests. But here is one at the end of chapter 2 who stands in prophet style before Eli, delivering a prophet’s message.

    He is the Lord’s ambassador, his envoy. He is his word-bearer. But now as we begin the third chapter, Samuel Samuel is going to line up beside him, this one who has just delivered the message previously. He is going to line up beside him, and yes, even in some remarkable ways, contrast him. As Samuel’s service, as the Lord’s messenger, as the Lord’s ambassador, his envoy, as the replaces even the service that is rendered by the unnamed man of God.

    This stuff is intricate and meant to be powerful. This means then that as much as 1 Samuel 3 wishes us to be carried along With the theme of the replacement of Eli’s priesthood with Samuel’s priesthood, it means even more to tell us about Samuel as the coming, greater, definitive prophet. Here he comes. The word might have been rare. previously, and the visions infrequent, but no more, because there is going to be an explosion of revelation. Now, the first Samuel 3 has this as its theme, namely, the prophethood of Samuel, seems to be irrefutable from the text itself.

    To begin with, we have the simple matter of the parameters of the chapter. Look at them. You have the second sentence in verse 1. The rarity of the word, the infrequency of visions. This statement in itself demands resolution. It is forcing you, through the story, to a conclusion. It is seeking resolution. We anticipate then, even as we read it, the change which an answer to this predicament sets before us. And that answer has arrived in full force by the time you reach the chapter’s end. For there you read paraphrased form. The Lord was with Samuel and let none of his words fail. All Israel knew Samuel was the prophet of the Lord because the Lord revealed himself to Samuel at Shiloh by his word. Thus the word of Samuel came to all Israel.

    Pervasive, powerful, overwhelming, standing in direct contrast to what you had read at the beginning of the chapter. The problem at the beginning of 1 Samuel 3 was in fact, yes, a lack of a prophet. It would seem that even more than that, the lack of an age of the prophet. a transformation in history itself, in which the prophetic reality impressed itself upon the consciousness of the people of God. The theme of 1 Samuel 3, then, is the call of Samuel as a prophet in light of the great transition in salvation history, which the Lord in his sovereignty is affecting. It is further observed along these lines that we find in the course of chapter 3 many indications that now we have in Samuel a pattern for the callings of other prophets. Some commentators have made a great deal out of the temple environment. You will note in verse 3 that the temple is specifically mentioned. That might strike you as an optimistic. because you realize that the temple hasn’t been built yet. But there it is. Did the writer make a mistake? No, he’s making a theological point. There is a connection.

    Say, some commentators in this temple environment with what we find later in the call of Isaiah the prophet in Isaiah chapter 6. Further, so the commentators, we find link with other prophets around the issue of Samuel’s age. He was but a boy. He is described as such. The age problem is raised later by the prophet Jeremiah, you may recall. He says to the Lord, in his response to the Lord’s call, I’m but a youth. You’ve got the wrong person.

    So there are these words, but as we have already intimated, It is not enough for us merely to note the parallels between Samuel’s call to office as a prophet and the call of others. It is not enough to rightly identify the theme of 1 Samuel 3 as the theme of Samuel’s prophethood. It is not enough to rightly match the beginning and the end of this chapter. It is not enough just to see in Samuel another prophet.

    For there are hints running through this chapter that suggest something far greater still, that to which we have already pointed. For one thing, we find the extraordinary language in verse 10 about the actions of the Lord. These are unique. We are told that the Lord comes and he stands. before Samuel in order to issue his call. I judge that the closest language to this sort of reference that we can find in scripture is the description that we have of the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire. where God in his glory resided during the period of the Exodus and at the time of the building of the Temple. Now I realize that making that observation may force me to alter some comments that I made last week about Psalm 99. I think that there is a way out for me, but I won’t go into that right now. I will merely make this point.

    Here in verse 10, there is a deliberate and a close tie being established specifically between Moses and Sam. And as much as Moses is set apart in being prisoned to the cloud of the Lord, so also is Samuel in his call. This is an extraordinary call. Also in verse 18, we have recorded now something of the effect of Samuel’s ministry as prophet. For you will note here that Eli responds to the message that comes from Samuel with words of remarkable spiritual strength. We are struck by them because we may not be prepared for them given our estimations of Enoch.

    He’s caught up in corruption. He’s defended his sons. He’s stood for them and honored them before he’s honored the Lord. And now he has received this crushing message, and the response that he gives to that message, as it’s mediated unto him through Samuel, is one of remarkable spiritual strength. He says in response, it is the Lord. It’s almost as if he were confessing. It is the Lord.

    Let him do what seems good to him. I will tell you with regard to these words. They are reaching out to another age. They are far ahead of their time. They are striking right at the heart of the response to the gospel that will come from the lips of Jews in a latter time.

    When they are visited with devastation and they look upon their plight, it will be those Jews who cry out, it is the Lord, let him do what is good in his sight, that are vindicated in their vindication of God. They will be justified in their justification of the Lord. The very spirit of justification by faith is speaking now in what you hear in the voice of Eli, as if he is undergoing conversion through the voice of this prophet. Like unto those conversions coming, when the emissaries of the gospel will proclaim divine grace, even though it comes through the awful horrors visited upon Israel.

    The reason that I raise this point is because the presence of this response from Eli to Samuel, as I say, is so striking, not simply because of its content, but because of its position. Because you see, at the end of Chapter 2, there is no response from Eli.

    We are moving from one administration to another, and I am telling you, the latter administration is infinitely more effective. That is the administration in which you have been privileged to live, to which you have been privileged to respond. yourselves. I’ll ask you, can you say, it is the Lord, let him do what seems good to him. If you can’t, Eli is a better man than you.

    Linkage to Moses making Samuel extraordinary, response where previously it was wanton, This too attached to Samuel’s ministry, and then we come to verse 19, where we are told that not one of Samuel’s words failed. Now I know that you wouldn’t expect anything less from a prophet of the Lord, but it is striking that the comment is made as if it had to be made. Not one word of Samuel failed. as if you had now entered into an administration that has this effectiveness and power and sufficiency that was lacking previously, that wasn’t there. The cumulative effect of all of this makes Samuel, from his call, the most extraordinary of figures. Even a prophet who was unique, one who was in fact like Moses, blessed by God, with special service to perform.

    Moses spoke of just such a figure, you will recall, recording it on the planes of Moab in Deuteronomy 18, where he reported to Israel God’s promise to raise up a prophet like unto Moses, a prophet whose ministry would be the dividing line between life and death, between one age and another, between heaven and hell. Oh, that we were hearing that message this weekend. What a monumental travesty to the Church of Jesus Christ. Where is the prophetic word?

    We see that prophet then, that extraordinary prophet, yes, the form of him in Samuel. So extraordinary is Samuel’s ministry that it stands higher than all the ministries that preceded his. They are all thieves and robbers in comparison to him. His is the landmark ministry. His is the landmark office. His is the landmark prophecy. He separates the times into the ministry before him and that ministry that belongs to him.

    This is the significance, then, of that unnamed man of God at the end of 1 Samuel 2. You may have been wondering why he appears at all, for his message is merely repeated, it seems, by Samuel when you come to 1 Samuel 3. He appears, you see, as representative of the entirety of the prophetic ministry that precedes up to the ministry of the promised prophet, Samuel. The pattern is set. just as Moses and all who were with him give way to the promised prophet who is like him. So the unnamed man of God at the end of 1 Samuel 2 gives way to Samuel, the one in whom the pattern of the promised prophet appears. But of course the true and final prophet, the promised prophet, is not Samuel at all, is it? Samuel becomes landmark prophet in anticipation of one infinitely greater than himself, the Lord Jesus Christ, whom God has literally raised up, even from the dead.

    The one whom Peter in Acts 3.22 declares to be, in fact, the great landmark prophet, by whom the ages are divided, by the population of heaven and hell are determined. Now that Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead, has ascended to heaven, has dispensed his word to the world through the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, we are commanded of God, who yes, even in the administration of Christ’s ministry, appeared in the cloud once more to speak to Peter, James, and John, saying, hear ye him.

    For as the Lord said through Moses, it shall come about that whoever will not listen to my word, which my prophet will speak in my name, I will require it of him. of you. I put it to you then, just as God has sent to you the final priest, he has sent to you the final prophet. And just as there is no further priest for the people of God but Christ, by whom you are to be saved, so there is no further prophet but Christ, that one who speaks through the scriptures, from whom you are alone to hear the word from God. Are you listening?

    Father, if we become confused in the details, let us be certain about the main points. That even as you were calling and establishing your servant Samuel, you were placing before your people that preview of what was coming in the grand, glorious priesthood of Christ, in the grand, glorious prophethood. of our Savior. Now, Lord, may we own his mediation exclusively, and may we embrace his word, and that alone, even over against all other authorities and all other voices.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • Samuel’s Unique Calling

    Samuel’s Unique Calling

    This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “I Samuel 1-7” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, August 31, 1997.

    About this sermon

    Samuel’s calling in the night gets misread more often than not, treated as a template for every believer’s personal experience rather than something genuinely unique to him. Three specific features set his childhood ministry apart from any ordinary calling. Even here, the coming of Christ’s kingdom is already present, not merely anticipated.

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    Sermon transcript

    We read this morning from 1 Samuel chapter 3, beginning at verse 1. 1 Samuel chapter 3. Give your attention to God’s holy word. And the child Samuel ministered unto the Lord before Elon. And the words of the Lord were precious in those days. There was no open vision.

    And it came to pass at that time when Eli was laid down in his place and his eyes began to wax dim that he could not see, and ere the lamp of God went out in the temple of the Lord where the ark of God was, and Samuel was laid down to sleep, that the Lord called Samuel and he answered.

    And he ran unto Eli and said, Here am I, for thou callest me. And he said, I called not, lie down again. He went and lay down. And the Lord called yet again, Samuel. And Samuel rose and went to Eli and said, Here am I, for thou didst call me. And he answered, I called not, my son, lie down again.

    Samuel did not know the Lord, neither was the word of the Lord yet revealed unto him. And the Lord called Samuel again the third time, and he arose and went to Eli and said, Here am I, for thou didst call me. And Eli perceived that the Lord had called the child. Therefore Eli said unto Samuel, Go, lie down, and it shall be, if he call thee, that thou shalt say, Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth. So Samuel went and lay down in his place, and the Lord came and stood and called, as at other times, Samuel, Samuel. Then Samuel answered, Speak, for thy servant heareth.

    And then turning over to the book of Acts, Chapter 3. Peter and John, in this context, have ministered to the lame man in the gate of the temple, and they have healed him in the name of Christ. We begin our reading at verse 11. And as the lame man, which was healed, held Peter and John, all the people ran together unto them in the porch that is called Solomon’s, greatly wondering. And when Peter saw it, he answered unto the people, Ye men of Israel, why marvel ye at this?

    Or why look ye so earnestly on us, as though by our own power or holiness we had made this man to walk? The God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob, the God of our fathers, hath glorified his son Jesus, whom ye delivered up and denied him in the presence of Pilate when he was determined to let him go. But ye denied the Holy One and the just, and desired a murderer to be granted unto you, and killed the Prince of life, whom God hath raised from the dead, whereof we are witnesses.

    And his name, through faith in his name, hath made this man strong, whom ye see and know. Yea, the faith which is by him hath given him this perfect soundness in the presence of you all. And now, brethren, I know that through ignorance ye did it, as did also your rulers.

    But those things which God before had showed by the mouth of all his prophets that Christ should suffer, he hath so fulfilled. Repent ye, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord. And he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you, whom the heaven must receive until the time of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began.” For Moses truly said unto the fathers, A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren right unto me. Him shall ye hear in all things whatsoever he shall say unto you. And it shall come to pass that every soul which will not hear that prophet shall be destroyed from among the people. Yea, and all the prophets from Samuel and those that follow after As many as have spoken have likewise foretold of these days. Ye are the children of the prophets and of the covenant which God made with our fathers, saying unto Abraham, And in thy seed shall all the kindreds of the earth be blessed.

    Unto you, first, God, having raised up his Son Jesus, sent him to bless you in turning away every one of you from his iniquities. with me now. Our God, our hope for your word is not with regard to ourselves alone. You move our souls and our hearts to consider the horizons of your church. We pray, Father, for your blessing upon your people today, and Lord, may you grant grace to the many who rise before them to declare your word. And Father, those who are of faith, may you bless, and those who are not, may you convert. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

    The story of Samuel’s call in 1 Samuel 3 is deceptively simple. It is also something of a swamp, where pools of quicksand await the all-too-confident that erring step. It is a familiar story, as familiar as the story of Hannah, Samuel’s mother, which preceded it. It is a story often used as a ready-made message for children. Not unlike the message we hear in the hymn we have just sung. The appeal runs along this line.

    Samuel was a child who received the word of God and was obedient to it. So also, the children of the Church are to receive the word of God and be obedient to it. In fact, it is best if you, the children of this Church, are encouraged, as Hymn 655 endeavors to do, to speak about your own reception of the word and your obedience to it in the most personal terms. That you personally might have Samuel’s ear, Samuel’s heart, Samuel’s mind, being able to say, Out of your own unmurmuring faith, obedient and resigned, may I read with childlike eyes truths hidden from the wise.” Now, I want you to know that our great God certainly wants you, the children in this church, listening today. to receive his word and to obey his commands. And yes, there is a link between you, a child, and Samuel the child in this story, and at the very level of his example to you and for you. And yes, it is appropriate for you and for us all, for that matter, to sing Hymn 655 in the Trinity Hymnal.

    But it is also important that you begin to learn that this hymn And the interpretation of our story about Samuel that I have shared with you thus far have definite, certain limitations. It is the Church’s failure, and particularly the Church’s failure to you, to deal with those limitations. It is these limitations this morning that concern me in my message. For the Church’s habit of leaving this story about the boy Samuel at the level of a mere example is actually, at the close of the day, quite destructive.

    If all we see here is the material for a children’s hymn with a lesson about listening to and obeying the word of God, then we have already wandered off into that swamp of which I spoke, and are already up to our necks in quicksand. Why do I say this? Well, to begin with, as much as Samuel, the child, is like all other children, and as much as Samuel, the child before the Lord, is like other children before the Lord, with obligations to him, at the very same time, this figure, Samuel, is utterly different.

    How many of us here today, when we were children, were deposited by our mothers in the Church to be raised by the minister? I might ask further. How many Jewish children can you think of in the course of Scripture? were so deposited. Not many, I judge. And how many of those Jewish children, how many of us, has ever been awakened by God himself calling out our names in the middle of the night? And how many of those Jewish children, how many of us have received a message directly from God comparable to that message received by Samuel? You get my point, I trust.

    Because Samuel is unique, because he is so different We can never be satisfied with the approach that sees him as merely a child like all other children. But I trust you are also able to see further the implications of the point I am making. Some of you are ahead of me. since there are those in the Church who have built upon the figure of Samuel in the interests of their expectations concerning the common operations of the Holy Spirit.

    For these people, not only is Samuel the pattern of every child’s religious experience, He is also the promise, yes, in Old Testament form, to many a believer with regard to their expectation concerning spiritual endowment. Therefore, contrary to what I have been saying this morning, what I have been endeavoring to communicate, these people fully expect their religious experience to be just like Samuel. Samuel was visited by God in the dead of night in some substantive, discernible, and recognizable form, and that’s just how he will visit me. Samuel heard the very voice of God with his own ears, and so will I. Samuel received visual and verbal revelation from God, and so have I. Samuel was a prophet, and I am nothing less.

    The severe danger to the moral and religious example approach to biblical interpretation, when it is used in exclusivity, is more than just the simplistic level at which it leaves the Scriptures, but the way in which it encourages us in the Church to think of all moral and religious examples in Scripture to be common to every believer in every age, especially now that we have entered the so-called age of the Spirit. So if God spoke audibly to Samuel, he must speak audibly to me. If Jesus’ disciples received miraculous powers, I can receive them too. If some early Christian spoke in revelatory, miraculous tongues, I can do the same.

    We are courting disaster and chaos with such an approach to the Bible. You see, as I have been intimating, the heart of the Bible’s story about Samuel is not so how Samuel and we are alike, but how Samuel and we are different. In fact, the overall testimony of Scripture emphasizes just how unique Samuel was. If we are true to our confession concerning Scripture’s authority and sufficiency, While Scripture is its own best interpreter, we will find great help in appropriating Samuel from the light shining from the whole of God’s Word.

    Let me remind you of a few helpful texts. First of all, Psalm 99, verses 6 and 7. These verses read this way in the New American Standard Version. Moses and Aaron were among his priests, and Samuel was among those who called on his name. They called upon the Lord, and he answered them. He spoke to them in the pillar of cloud, they kept his testimonies, and the statute that he gave them.” Now, I want you to notice a couple of things about these verses. First, Moses, Aaron, and Samuel are mentioned in the same breath.

    They are treated as engaged in a common ministry. It seems specifically a ministry of intercession. The emphasis seems to be on their common priestly office. But in addition to this, secondly, all three of these men in this text seem to be involved, strangely, in the same events.

    This is apparent in verse 7, where the psalmist says, the Lord spoke to these men in the pillar of cloud, and also that these men kept the statute which the Lord gave them. Now, it is important to understand this latter reference. That reference to the statute at the end of verse 7 means, specifically, the law and the event of the giving of the law at Sinai. Its connection with what appears above should be obvious to us. The statute being the event of the revelation of the law at Sinai is coupled here with the appearance of the pillar of cloud. That cloud that accompanied Israel, but especially punctuated the ministry of Moses.

    But at this point you are now scratching your head. Because you know Samuel lives some 300 years after Moses and Aaron. And as you remember things, as illustrious as Samuel’s ministry was, you don’t recall any appearance of the pillar of cloud during the time of his service. Is the psalmist therefore daft? Is he mistaken in his appropriation of the historical detail of Israel’s past?

    Of course not. He knows that history very well. Probably knows them better than we do. But the psalmist here is making a determined doctrinal point, a determined and insistent theological point. Samuel, you see, is an extension of the Old Testament redemptive event at the Red Sea. He is at peace with it. It is as if he were there. Such is his relationship to it. Not only that, it is as if he were present at Sinai itself, when Moses and Aaron were privy to the deposits of the law of God.

    Samuel becomes a participant in the accomplishment of these events, and a servant in the interests of a ministry that flows forth from them. Samuel’s labors, therefore, are consistent with what has preceded him. They are the further realization, the extension of God’s purpose already struck in the Exodus salvation. The effect is such that we see Samuel as subordinate then to that great definitive salvation in the Exodus. He himself defined by it, according to what the psalmist says. His meaning, even his calling out, in 1 Samuel 3, so regularly subjected to the most simplistic interpretation, is not grasped By making this man an example merely of a child’s piety, as much as we want to see our children pious, and even as pious as Samuel, much less is Samuel’s meaning and his call to be understood in terms of the potential that he has for a common personal spiritual empowerment. we like him hearing voices at midnight. Instead, Samuel in his meaning for us is more carved out as unique in the history of salvation, truly as unique as Moses and Aaron themselves.

    And as such, he is bound to the further implication of God’s rescue of Israel from Egypt, and the ongoing story of his people. But there is another dimension to this whole matter, to which we must refer before we conclude. It is a dimension hinted at by another Old Testament passage that then brought out most clearly by the New Testament text that we read this morning. The other Old Testament passage is Jeremiah 15 verse 1, which reads this way, again in God is speaking to the prophet, even though Moses and Samuel were to stand before me, my heart would not be with this people.

    Send them away from me, and let them go. I don’t have time to develop it for you this morning, but I certainly hope that you caught the force and the power of those last words. Send them away from you and let them go. You can almost hear the echo, let my people go, in the conclusion of that line.

    And you understand the significance of these words. It is overwhelming. since these words actually seem to envision a reversal of the undoing of the exodus itself. God telling Pharaoh to let his people go, now these people being let go by him for destruction. But we’re dealing here with the mention of Samuel, aren’t we? The beginning part of this verse. The mention of Moses and Samuel together is not merely in light of their common, earnest, and successful mediation for Israel in the past, but because both of them are what we might ethical and pivotal figures in the history of salvation.

    As to how ethical, how pivotal, we now turn to that New Testament passage that I referred to, Acts 3.24. It reads this way. again in the New American Standard. And likewise, Peter speaking, he just having referred to Moses in the earlier verses, the previous verses, and likewise, all the prophets who have spoken from Samuel and his successors onward, also announced these days. Once more, as in the previous texts, Moses and Samuel are joined together. Once more, their unified service to the ongoing history of salvation is stressed. But here, now, at last, is clear indication of Samuel’s true uniqueness and the uncommon service that he renders, and that even distinct from Moses. You are at the end of the line, and it is at this point that it is to become clear to you.

    From Acts 3.24, it then would seem that the prophetic ministry has now, with Samuel, entered a most distinctive stage, and that with his call, 1 Samuel 3, as if the prophets were to be identified and marked from Samuel, as if a new era had begun with the appearance of Samuel and the performance of his ministry, as if the prophets themselves had a true beginning in and from this figure. This is what I meant by saying that Moses and Samuel are truly ethical and pivotal figures in the whole of the story of salvation. Jeremiah’s mention of them is meant in part to pinpoint the epochs. Moses and the epoch of the law, and then Samuel and the epoch of the prophets.

    And here’s the conclusion. you will find the meaning of the boy Samuel, and you will find the root of entrance into the story about his crawl, not just in a consideration of the continuity between the epochs of the law and the prophets, but in a consideration of that transition from the one epoch to the other.

    If you are still with me, and I know some of you are, if you are still with me in this exercise, it is this transition now, from the law to the prophets, that previews the coming transition from the entirety of the Old Testament into the New. You’re going to see it laid out in front of you. All of the anticipatory aspects of the New Covenant are going to begin to spring upon your mind. It’s going to explode on your consciousness. You’ll open the text, you’ll see Samuel, but you’ll see more. You’ll see the New Covenant, the New Testament. You’ll see the coming of the Kingdom. You’ll see the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.

    I’m trying to tell you how to read your Bible. I’ll say it for you once more, so I might impress it upon your minds. The transition from the Law to the Prophets, from Moses to Samuel, previews the coming transition from the Old Testament to the New, with the arrival of the Kingdom of God in Jesus Christ, the Lord’s Anointed. we will be approaching in the coming messages Samuel’s call with these things in mind, with nothing less than the gospel before our eyes.

    In the meantime, and while you’re singing hymn 655, child and adult alike, in obediently receiving the word of God, endeavor by all the spiritual energy that you can muster to read with childlike eyes truths hidden from the wise. Those truths, I tell you, are Christ and his gospel. Yes, we who delight in the simple things of childhood and the simplicity of children. But may we press on to the mature things.

    Lord, help us that we might be ourselves a help to our children, that we with them might read your word rightly. Father, to this end, we plead with you, not only for ourselves, but for your church as a whole, that she would truly be the people of your word, in the deepest and most profound sense. May we never be satisfied with mere moralism, may we run away from mysticism, May we find ourselves, O God, rather in your word, delighted with its presentation of Christ, the full range of the history of salvation, even as it declares to us our place in that history.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • Samuel Rises, Eli Falls

    Samuel Rises, Eli Falls

    This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “I Samuel 1-7” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, August 24, 1997.

    About this sermon

    Samuel rises and Eli falls, and together they foreshadow a larger replacement, the old covenant giving way to the new. The likenesses between Samuel and Christ belong to the structure of the story. In the end Christ abolishes the Levitical priesthood that Eli represents.

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    Sermon transcript

    To begin our scripture reading this morning in 1 Samuel 2, we are beginning our reading at verse 22. This is the word of God. Now Eli was very old, and heard all that his sons did unto all Israel, and how they lay with the women that assembled at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation.

    And he said unto them, Why do ye such things? For I hear of your evil dealings by all this people. Nay, my sons, For it is no good report that I hear you make the Lord’s people to transgress. If one man sin against another, the judge shall judge him. But if a man sin against the Lord, who can entreat for him? Notwithstanding, they hearkened not unto the voice of their father, because the Lord would slay them.” And the child Samuel grew up and was in favor both with the Lord and also with men.

    And there came a man of God unto Elohim, 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? And did I choose him out of all the tribes of Israel to be my priest, to offer upon mine altar, 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? Wherefore kick ye up my sacrifice and up my offering, which I have commanded in my habitation? and honorest thy sons above me, to make yourselves fat with the cheapest of all the offerings of Israel my people. Wherefore the Lord God of Israel saith, I said indeed that thy house and the house of thy father should walk before me forever.

    But now the Lord saith, Be it far from me, for them that honor me I will honor. and they that despise me shall be rightly esteemed. Behold, the days come that I will cut off thine arm, and the arm of thy father’s house, that there shall not be an old man in thine house. And thou shalt see an enemy in my habitation, and all the wealth which the Lord God shall give Israel. and there shall be an old man of thine house, there shall not be an old man in thine house forever. 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.

    And this shall be a sign unto thee that shall come upon thy two sons, on Hophni and Phinehas, In one day they shall die, both of them, and I will raise up a faithful priest that shall do according to that which is in mine heart and in my mind. And I will give him a sure house, and he shall walk before mine anointed forever. And it shall come to pass that everyone that is left in thine house shall come and crouch for a piece of silver and a morsel of bread, and shall say, Put me, I pray thee, into one of the priest’s offices, that I may eat a piece of bread.”

    Then, turning over to John’s Gospel, the eleventh chapter, beginning at verse 47, John 11.47, Then gathered the chief priests and the Pharisees a council, and said, What do we for this man do with many miracles? If we let him thus alone, all men will believe on him, and the Romans shall come and take away both our place and nation. And one of them, named Caiaphas, being the high priest that same year, said unto them, Ye know nothing at all, for consider that it is expedient for us that one man should die for the people, that the whole nation perish not. This spake he not of himself, but being the high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus should die for that nation, and not only for that nation, but that also he should gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad. Then, from that day forth, they took counsel together to put Jesus to death.

    Father, if your word is food, may we consume it. If it is drink, may we drink deeply from it. Lord, may we be satisfied in you, and when we feel then the pangs of hunger, may we be driven, Lord, to this word. And not only so, but even when we are full, may we take up the word, may we rehearse it, may we remember what we have been taught. We pray this for ourselves and for your people throughout the world. Through Christ, the Living Word. Amen. This morning I want to talk to you about two things.

    First of all, the unitary nature of 1 Samuel chapters 1-7, and then secondly, the place of Eli within these chapters. First of all, then, chapters 1-7 in 1 Samuel are meant to be taken by us as a unit. If you are in the habit of marking your Bible, you might draw a line at the end of Chapter 7 and inscribe the note, the conclusion of Part 1. Now, this division is mandated by a number of things.

    It is mandated by the fact that in what follows we are introduced to a completely new phase in Samuel’s life, and we are given a new angle of vision with respect to him. You will note that beginning in chapter 8 in 1 Samuel, we are introduced to Samuel’s with regard to his own science. That failure is spoken of, particularly in verse 3 in that 8th chapter, and you will notice with regard to it, that it is a failure that sounds strangely familiar. In fact, it sounds like the failure that had occurred in the family of Elah earlier in this book. So it seems that we are beginning again. We are opening a new chapter, a new section in 1 Samuel.

    In light of this failure on Samuel’s part, the story now turns to the replacement of Samuel, to the replacement of Samuel as judge, with a king in keeping with the people’s desire. Similar to the replacement that had taken place earlier, the replacement by the administration of Samuel of Eli and his family’s administration over the people of Israel. The first section of 1 Samuel, therefore, comes to an end with the conclusion of chapter 7. Further now, you will note, with regard to this division, 1 Samuel 7 ends with a reference, appropriately positioned, a reference to Samuel’s building of an altar to the Lord, chapter 7 verse 17. This altar stands, you will note, not in Shiloh, where the tabernacle and the Ark of the Covenant had been situated during the time of Eli, but instead in the town of Ramah, Samuel’s very own hometown. So it is, by the conclusion of chapter 7, the displacement and replacement is complete. not just the priesthood, Samuel for Eli, but the sanctuary and its service, Ramah for Shiloh.

    We are brought thus into a different environment, a different setting for the approach to God by God’s people. Truly, then, it would appear with the close of chapter 7, the old has passed and the new has arrived. The old has passed and the new has arrived. And this is precisely the way in which you are to receive and appreciate these chapters. As you witness in the course of them, the way God moves his people from the old administration into the new. A process, I suggest to you, that will culminate in the fulfillment of the old covenant with the arrival of the new covenant, a process that will culminate in the passing of this world with the coming of the kingdom of God and the arrival of the new creation.

    In other words, in 1 Samuel chapters 1-7, you are being forced to see nothing less than the gospel at work. To which these chapters, by God’s own sovereign superintendence, press us. Reading these chapters, then, without seeing the gospel in them is a misreading of them. And so serious is this misreading that if you do not see the gospel in these chapters, you do not understand these chapters at all.

    This is why responsible interpretation of these chapters see in them the very form of Jesus Christ. For example, responsible interpretation of these chapters sees in Samuel’s birth and in Samuel’s priesthood nothing less than the coming birth and priesthood of Jesus Christ.

    Of course, there is the obvious parallel that none of us should miss between Hannah, Samuel’s mother, and Mary, Jesus’ mother. A parallel that is underscored and established and confirmed by a comparison between the two songs of the mothers. Hannah’s song at the beginning of 1 Samuel 2, and Mary’s song in the middle of Luke 1. But then there are those parallels that are less obvious, less clear.

    For instance, the fact that both Samuel and Jesus seemingly lack any hereditary claim to the priesthood whatsoever. Jesus, as you know, hails from the tribe of Judah, not from the priestly tribe of Levi. while Samuel’s tribal link is purposely omitted in the telling of the story as we have it for us in these chapters in 1 Samuel. It would seem then that both Samuel and Jesus can be included under the heading that appears in Psalm 110, where the Lord declares, not after the order of Levi, but after the order of Melchizedek.

    But further, we have the fact that there is movement for Samuel geographically, and this too speaks to us about the coming gospel. Samuel’s movement is from Ramah, his hometown. to Shiloh, the place where the sanctuary was set, and the services to God were performed. But at the end of this portion of 1 Samuel, the scene is set back once more in Ramah, where things had begun. This movement from Ramah to the place of the sanctuary, back to the home region once more, anticipates the movement of Jesus geographically in his ministry. From Galilee, where his home was, to Jerusalem, where the sanctuary was, and then, after his resurrection, back to Galilee, there to receive the worship of his disciples.

    That even more, this movement that we see geographically for Samuel, and then confirmed in Jesus, has a higher meaning still. For Jesus is just not simply a latter-day priest. Much like Samuel, he is the Son of God. The place that he comes from, his home, is in heaven.

    He comes from heaven to earth, where there is the earthly sanctuary, and then he returns to heaven for the purpose of establishing the ministry in an eternal sanctuary above in glory. So from Ramah to Shiloh back to Ramah anticipates Galilee to Jerusalem back to Galilee, but more than that, it anticipates heaven to us back to heaven. Away from an earthly sanctuary to a heavenly sanctuary. Away from a sanctuary that will be destroyed to a sanctuary that cannot be destroyed.

    One other factor paralleling Samuel and Jesus is Samuel’s residence in the tabernacle. He is deposited there. He lives there with Eli. Indeed, he questions the priests and the teachers there. He makes inquiry of them. you might judge that the inquiry is constant and perpetual.

    I suggest to you that this anticipates the incident in the life of Jesus when he disappears into the temple, away from his parents, And when he is finally discovered by them, he declares to them, Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house? Luke 2 verse 49. But now I want you to note the progress of things as they are on unraveled for us in 1 Samuel 2 with respect to Samuel and his position in the tabernacle of God. In chapter 2 verse 26 we are told that Samuel grew in stature and in favor with the Lord and with men. Does that remind you of anything? I ask you to turn to the close of Luke chapter 2, immediately after the story of Jesus in the temple as a boy, there discovered by his anxious parents. And what do we read there? We are told by Luke, after that event, that Jesus kept increasing in wisdom and stature and in favor with man, with God, and with men.

    The intersection of Samuel and Christ is deliberate. You are to see your Savior in this man who comes before them. And true to the prophetic tradition, as true as John the Baptist himself, this man Samuel will be a forerunner. In Samuel, therefore, we are being introduced in Old Testament form to the grand, the glorious transition which God is effecting in the history of redemption that comes conclusively in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

    It will be along these lines and within this overarching biblical pattern that we must deal with Eli. It is plain to us, is it not, that 1 Samuel 1-7 presents us with the increase of Samuel and the decrease of Eli. You can chart the development for Samuel himself and the diminishment of Eli through the course of these chapters.

    We have repeatedly compact comments about Samuel, and these are deliberately laid within the texts as For instance, in chapter 1, verse 28, we are told, even though this Samuel is but still a recently weaned child, he worships the Lord. Something is being made of the child. In chapter 2, verse 11, we are told that Samuel now ministers to the Lord before Eli the priest, even though he is still a mere boy. The importance of the figure, the grandeur that we are to consider superimposing itself upon this boy. Chapter 2, verse 18, Samuel appears once more, still the boy, but now, believe it or not, wearing a priestly garment, wearing the ephod that belonged to the priests. In chapter 2, verse 21, he is described as growing before the Lord, as if the Lord himself In chapter 2, verse 26, the text we’ve already noted, still the boy, Samuel is maturing in stature and in approval from God and men. In chapter 3, verse 1, still the child, however not in his service, he is clearly edging out Eli and Eli’s household. In chapter 3, verse 19, through the opening of chapter 4, now Samuel appears full-grown.

    He is a man, and in the power of his office he performs his functions before the Lord. He is a prophet through whom the word of the Lord comes to all Israel. And then, in chapter 7, verses 3 through 17, Samuel now stands alone, Eli’s household, He stands alone without and apart from Eli as that one in whom a new priesthood in a new ministry has emerged. Watching Samuel come into full view as you move through 1 Samuel 1 through 7 is a marvel. in the presence of the opening up of this figure is powerful in itself, and we are being ministered unto by the Holy Spirit through a profound literary hand. But meanwhile, Eli’s star has been fading. His moon is eclipsed. To be sure, Eli’s positive service to Hannah fills out for us chapter one. We hear no disparaging word about him or his sons in that chapter.

    In fact, in his mediatorial role in his administration of the house of God, Eli comes across even Christlike, one in whom we can perceive the pattern of our coming Savior. In chapter 2, verses 12 through 17, Eli’s sons now, however, come off quite badly in their ignorance of the Lord, in their disregard for his law, in their proclamation of the sacrifices, in their coercion and threats of violence against the people of God.

    Their ministry, so it would seem to them, is to provide them with the best provisions best for us. Their God is their appetite. Now, you must understand, these are men who are in the covenant. They are men who are members of the Church. Not only that, they are ministers, and their God is their appetite.

    Interestingly, Eli himself is not indicted in verses 12-17. but instead again appears quite positively in verse 20, where he blesses Elkanah and Hannah, Samuel’s parents. And this positive vein for Eli continues, it seems, into verses 22 through 25, when in his extremely advanced years he reproves his sons for their reprehensible behavior. They are now serving their appetite by turning the house of God into a brothel. with acts true to Canaanite worship, not worship to the Lord. But it is at this point that Eli’s positive, priestly, and prophetic service is now to be held up to closer scrutiny.

    In verses 27 through 36, the first shoe drops As the unnamed man of God, the anonymous man of God, delivers the scrutiny of the Lord, we’re not ready for what we hear any more than Eli was. It is a scathing indictment in which Eli is finally exposed.

    He who appeared innocent is not innocent at all. He who appeared blameless before the law is not blameless at all. Do you hear the footsteps of the gospel? He who even on occasion seemed so Christ-like, one in whom we could see the form of Christ himself, now stands opposite and contrary Christ, and over against God’s saving intentions.

    Eli is implicated with his sons in their corruption, in verse 21, because he partook of their And he also made himself sat by way of their robbery. He is guilty before God because, as the man of God says, he honored his sons before he honored the Lord.

    And I hope you are all listening. You who worship your children. It is not just, then, in the final analysis, those who profane their profession by adultery and fornication. It is those who profane their service to God because they really, in the end, don’t worship God, they worship their family.

    Eli’s sons placed their appetites at the center of their religion. Eli placed his sons at the center of his. But you must not think Eli merely a man a bit overzealous for family devotion and loyalty. For as his sons translated their appetites into a comprehensive religion, a world unlike you. So Eli translated his sons into a religion very similar. In other words, the way in which this man, Eli, approached his sons became the very substance of his religious expression, the very heart and soul of the content of his religious drive and motivation. It became his world and life view. He may not have rushed into the morally debauched excesses of his sons, but in his own way he was just as worldly, with a hope that completely depended upon an earthly glory for all the fathers and sons of Israel.

    Eli, at the end of the day, serves the interests of this kind of religion. But you make a mistake if you read Eli as his sons, for that matter, in a narrow, provincial, individualistic manner, as if this was a problem for them alone and a problem for their time. The man of God who comes to Eli sees it differently, for he places Eli and his sons in the brightest context, those in whom we are to see the entirety of the Levitical order, the whole of the Old Testament priesthood and its administration.

    So it is in verse 27, the man of God speaks to God and says, did I not reveal myself to your father’s house? That’s Eli’s house when they were in Egypt. So also in verse 30, I did indeed say that your house and the house of your father, that’s Levi, should walk before me forever. You see, Eli’s house is but an extension of Levi’s house. When God now moves to bring down Eli’s house, he is declaring his intention to bring down Levi’s house. The indictment against Eli’s house is an indictment against the entirety of the Old Testament Levitical system.

    That system is no more able to reform itself than Eli could reform itself. In the end, that system will have no more spiritual strength than the age of Eli has physical strength. In the end, the Levitical system, like Hophni and Phinehas, will be corrupt beyond reclamation because of its own avarice and lust. And in the end, That Levitical system like Eli will be incapable of acting for the true and heavenly kingdom of God because it has embraced the religion of the world, a religion that reveres its children and a promise with regard to the children before God himself, and the promise of the world to come. I am not here just speaking about Old Testament Judaism. I am talking about twentieth-century American Christianity, and I am talking about liabilities that are alive and well in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

    Caiaphas is Eli’s spiritual descendant, and would rather save the nation and its children than serve the Messiah. the man of God finishes his message to Eli with the promise of a new and faithful priest for an enduring administration. Only the faint outline of the fulfillment of that promise is seen in Samuel himself, or even in the priesthood that would eventually emerge under David’s administration under the headship of Zadok. To be sure, when the other shoe drops and Eli dies of shock upon learning of his son’s death and the loss of the Ark of the Covenant to the Philistines, Samuel will be left standing as a symbol of that which he has yet promised. But Samuel, much less the house of Zadok to come, in the final analysis is no more capable of bringing in the eternal priesthood than was Eli.

    That privilege belongs. to Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who becomes both sacrifice for sin and mediator for sinners. In the new and lasting heavenly sanctuary to which he ascends, he having been crucified for us and raised from the dead for our justification. If you are a stranger to this last and final Great High Priest, may you be a stranger no longer, for he alone is the last and true sacrifice and mediator for sinners by whom you must be saved. And if you know this priest, May you live honorably in his administration, purifying yourself even as he is pure, always perceiving the heavenly nature of his new and perfect ministry, lest you be overcome by this world as was Eli.

    And because of a religion of this world, a religion of family and property, you forfeit your inheritance in the world to come. by your word, drive us into it that we may profit from it. May we see what you are about, what you are saying. May we see what you have done to make clear your purpose.

    Father, we ask that we might delight in Christ even as he is commended to us in the book of 1 Samuel, and may we love him dearly as we should. May we be pleased to serve him, even in keeping with the heavenly administration which he has inaugurated through his death, resurrection, and ascension. Now, O God, give us strength to live in the household that he establishes, that we might live with all purity. and that the proper and right determination might be ours, that we would serve you above all else.

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