"priesthood" Tagged Sermons
1. The church is holy (v. 5).
2. The church is a priesthood (v. 5).
Samuel’s rise and Eli’s fall together foreshadow a much larger replacement still to come: the old covenant giving way to the new. The similarities between Samuel and Christ are not incidental but structural to how the story is told. Christ, in the end, abolishes the Levitical priesthood Eli represents rather than merely reforming it.
Elkanah’s background gets real attention here, not for its moral example but for how it sets up a ministry that points beyond itself, the same pattern later seen in John the Baptist. Samuel’s own ministry anticipates Christ’s in ways morality alone cannot explain. Christ, not Samuel, is the final and eternal priest Hebrews describes.