40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 1 Samuel 2:11-36 (Episode 226)

Episode Date: July 27, 2020

Samuel is growing before the Lord while Eli and his sons are growing in different ways. There are practices going within the priests that God is displeased with. And a prophet is sent to Eli to bring word of God's rejection of his house. Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network 1517 YouTube Donate

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast. Check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. while you're over there check out all the articles check out the craft of preaching you know if you're on the internet go ahead and check out the youtube channel like and subscribe uh to that thing so you can don't miss those chad burr videos and any other content that we're putting out on there on a pretty regular basis chad uh how are things man they're going

good going good i uh was in uh dfw this weekend for some uh videos which was fun yeah we recorded uh well camp arcadia uh up in michigan they're doing a like an online dean's program where you can you know because because the covid people can't always be at the camp so they're gonna have these online very short like three session classes so i hammered one of those out friday night on uh reading the new testament like a rabbi nice one of those things i like to talk about and then uh yeah the the big the big event was saturday we spent all day of doing all kinds of uh video production for a book trailer for my next book unveiling mercy which is a daily devotional based on hebrew words that 1570 will put out probably october november yeah we'll have

an exact date yet anyway pre-order that was fun pre-order soon it'll be well yeah yeah pre-orders will be up pretty soon but yeah that was that was a blast i've never done one of those uh it's amazing you can you know you shoot hours upon hours of all this video and then it ends up being like a you know two minute trailer or something yeah yeah that's how that goes yeah but those guys are i mean the people i was working with up there you know a couple of our our our 15 17 buddies uh doug and grant but had a couple of uh other experts in there so uh yeah it was it was it's quite an experience can't wait to see the final product it'll be fun yeah man well i know people are excited don't worry uh if you're listening to this podcast that we will certainly

let you know when the when the pre-order link is available and we'll put it in the in the show notes and all that stuff uh so you're able to to get that book i know that i mean dude people are are chomping the bit i see every time that you see it they're like asking for that link so we'll make sure we tell them right yeah yeah yeah other than that uh well i i don't know if i mentioned on the podcast we dropped my son off at the naval academy to start plebe summer two or three weeks ago so like every night my wife is going through the pictures they post trying to find them because they'll post uh hundreds of pictures every night uh of plebes you know doing this and that so uh we've been seeing if we can spy them and it's all the people who look exactly the same now they're

all wearing the same thing they're all haircuts all the same so that's been fun tell you tell you what you had but this is this is kind of exciting i know i mentioned this to you before but uh by the time this releases we will have surpassed uh our 1 millionth 40 minute in the old testament download so that is amazing that's pretty that's pretty cool it's a big number there yeah yeah that is very cool yeah we've been at this for uh at this for a while it's uh it's pretty cool to see how you know it's just kind of keep rolling out there and get more and more people on board So I mentioned this before, but I think every place I travel to speak, most of the people that introduce themselves to me will tell me that they, you know, they heard about us or me and through the podcast. So, yeah, it's phenomenal how widespread the audience is out there.

So thanks, everybody, for listening. Yeah, man, I don't know that when we started this, we thought about talking about a million downloads at some point. I know. Definitely was not on the horizon back then. Yeah. So, yeah. So that's a pretty cool milestone. We'll let you know when we hit two. We won't talk about it again. When we hit two, we'll let you know. All right. Well, we're still here in 1 Samuel chapter 2. We are. Samuel's been dropped off, been dedicated to the Lord. Now he is in the care of Eli.

Yeah. Of all the people to be in the care of. yes yeah it's a it's kind of it it's really strange when you when you the more you learn about eli and not just him but you know his two sons of baliel to think about how just you know eli is not like samuel's a very very young kid when he's dropped off like what three years old so he's you know he's raised there yeah you're about to find out that uh that eli was not going to be able to say to hannah like cool man leave your uh son here i'm awesome at raising kids particularly sons yeah father of the year priest of the year right yeah uh so it's it's gonna be one of these cases where obviously the lord was uh the lord is more

the father here i mean there i i don't want to like completely uh kind of uh blackball eli i suppose i mean there are a couple of times when he actually i think he's kind of one of these people who like he he sometimes he kind of knows what should be happening but he just doesn't have the courage or or something in order to to say the right thing at the right time to the right people Because there's a couple of times when, I mean, what he says is spot on, but there's other times when he just doesn't faithfully and in an ongoing basis fulfill his vocation. So he lets way too many things slip, and it ends up just being a royal mess, which actually, I mean, such a royal mess that we're going to hear later in this chapter, or maybe the next chapter, where a prophet comes along and basically says, hey, that's it, your house, the days of your house are numbered. So Eli is one of those kind of at least semi-complex figures here, because what

he says to Samuel, once God calls Samuel, is right on. But what he says to his sons is just, he's not like convinced enough of what is right and that they're doing what is wrong in order to stop them. But anyway, back to where we began here. So we're going to pick up here with chapter 2, verse 11. This is right after Hannah sings her prayer or sings her canticle. And verse 11 says, Elkanah, that's her husband, Elkanah went to his home at Ramah, but the boy, talking about Samuel, ministered to the Lord before Eli the priest. And then we make an immediate transition to verse 12 where we have a contrast that's set up here, a contrast that's going to be fleshed out more in the verses that follow. It says, the sons of Eli were literally sons of Belial. They did not know

the Lord. We talked about that meaning of Belial before. So over time, like by the time you get to the intertestinal period, like the Dead Sea Scrolls talk about Belial this way, and Paul does in the New Testament, where Belial has become another name for the devil, for Satan. But at this time, there's really no evidence that Belial meant like the Lord of the Underworld or something, or the devil. At least at this point in the usage of the phrase. It tends to mean just kind of more like useless

worthlessness, just a bad seed, as we used to say. But the contrast that's set up here is interesting because it says, now the sons of Eli were the sons of Belial. Well, what that implies is that Eli and Belial are basically like the same thing. It's calling Eli Belial by saying the sons of Eli were the sons of Belial. So Eli himself is behaving in a Belial sort of fashion, we might say. And then as a sort of an explanation of that, it says that they did not know the Lord. Of course, they knew the Lord in the sense that they knew who he was, but they were serving. We might add a little bit of a parenthetical explanation to say something like they did not know the Lord. That is to say they did not serve the Lord. Instead, they were

they were serving their own appetite they were serving their own lust as we'll find out in a few more verses they were they were serving they were certainly serving their own belly because they were all about making sure they had enough meat on their table and stealing from the lord and from his people at the same time so we're going to see in the in the next few next few verses how more or less this section is going to develop a contrast between between samuel on the one hand and Hophni and Phinehas, the sons of Eli, on the other hand. So we jump right in at verse 13 to a description of what they were doing. And this might seem a little bit strange to us just because we weren't familiar with what was happening

at this time with sacrifice and those kinds of things, but we'll explain it. It says that the custom of the priest, they did not know the Lord and the custom of the priest were the people. When any man was offering a sacrifice, the priest's servant would come while the meat was boiling with a three-pronged fork in his hand, and he would thrust that fork into the pan or the kettle or the cauldron or the pot or whatever the meat was in, and all that the fork brought up, the priest would take for himself. Thus they did in Shiloh to all the Israelites who came there. So we have it spelled out very clearly back in Deuteronomy 18 and Leviticus 7 and other

places exactly which portion of the sacrifices that the priests were to receive. We talked about that a lot back in Leviticus and other books, that part of the paycheck of the priest, part of the way they were supported, was by a portion of certain sacrifices, not every sacrifice, but certain sacrifice being given to them. They were quite frequently given the hide of the animal, which I guess they could either use or sell for leather. They were also given part of the meat of certain sacrifices. They were given part of the grain and the wine and the oil. This was nothing more than the paycheck of those who served in the priestly office. Well, what's happening here is basically the priest servant would come up and he would jam

that three-pronged fork in there and whatever it came up with, that was his. So they were just trying to get as much meat as possible. They weren't just taking their portion. They were also taking whatever they wanted. And a portion of this belonged to the people. That's how it worked with peace offerings, the Shalemim offerings. So I'd bring a lamb, my family would come with me, and the lamb would be sacrificed, and the blood put on the altar, the priest would get part of the lamb, the rest of the lamb, most of the lamb would come back to me, and I would cook it, and my family and i would have a a holy meal and we'd invite levites we'd invite the poor and would be basically a a holy celebration around this animal that had been sacrificed but that's not what's

happening here because the priests are taking whatever they want from the animal that's supposed to go to the people and not only that but they went beyond that so they're stealing from the people but they're also stealing from god verse 15 says also before before they burn the fat the priest's servant would come and say to the man who was sacrificing, give the priest meat for roasting as he will not take boiled meat from you, only raw. And if the man tried to oppose him and say, well, you know, they got to burn the fat first and then take as much as you desire, then that servant would say to him, no, you give it to me now, and if not, I will take it by force. so what's happening here is the fat of the sacrifices belong to god the fat was considered

to be the best part of the sacrifice that's why sometimes you'll hear there's a there's a hebrew idiom where the best of something is called the fat of something so the the best of the wheat would be called the fat of the wheat it was just a kind of an idiomatic way of expressing that which was the highest quality the fat out of something sometimes you'll see it just just said like the fat of the land right and it's just talking about the goodness of the land yeah precisely and that falls in that same kind of that same kind of expression where yeah the the best of the land the the highest quality of the crops whatever it is is called the fat because the fat was considered to be the best part and that always always went to god it was burned on the altar but that's not

what's happening here the priest would come and they would just you know take the raw meat because i guess they wanted to cook it in the way that they wanted to so they're they're doing all sorts of things which are which is against the law and not just against the law of moses but just kind of against the law of of charity and of love toward neighbor and of honoring god they're more or less just serving their own appetites they're trying to uh to make sure that they have enough more than enough food on their table. And this actually is part of the story that develops after this, because we find out that Eli is fattening himself from the Lord's offerings, and no doubt his sons were as well. And this kind of all comes to a head when Eli dies, and he dies because he falls

over backwards and he breaks his neck because he is an extremely heavy man. So this theme of fattening oneself literally as well as in sort of a symbolic way of by taking other stuff stuff from other people this is going to be a theme that's going to be developed over the next two chapters as well so all of this ends up by saying verse 17 that this thus the sin of the young men was very great before the lord for the men despised the offering of the lord this is another part of the contrast between Samuel and the sons of Eli. So Samuel back in verse 11 is called a na'ar, which is usually translated as boy, but it can just mean an underling. So if I have somebody under me that's serving me that maybe I'm just working with or training, that

is often referred to as a na'ar. And then you get to verse 17 and it says the sin of the young men well that's just the plural of na'ar so in both cases samuel and these two guys even though age-wise these guys had to be at least 30 at least in their 30s they're still called a na'ar which as i say sometimes translate a young man but just basically means an underling so they're both called that they're both as we're about to hear they're both involved in some sort of like tabernacle uh priestly worship setting but the difference between them could not be could not be greater. So, just to finish off this section, 18 shifts the focus now from these sons of Belial to Samuel. Samuel, it says, was ministering before the Lord as a boy wearing a linen ephod,

and his mother would make him a little robe and bring it to him from year to year when she would come up with her husband to offer the yearly sacrifice. And then Eli would bless Elkanah and his wife and say, may the Lord give you children from this woman in place of the one she dedicated to the Lord. And they went to their own home. And the Lord visited Hannah and she conceived and gave birth to three sons and two daughters. And the boy Samuel grew before the Lord. So Samuel is, he's, even though he's a kid, he's still ministering before the Lord, I guess, doing whatever you can do as a very, very young child working there at the tabernacle. And he's dressed more or less like a priestly servant. We got two different stories going on here with

regard to Samuel's genealogy. If you look back at the very opening verse of 1 Samuel, it says there was a certain man from the hill country of Ephraim, and his name was Elkanah, the son of so and so, so and so, so and so, an Ephraimite. So the opening verse makes it sound like Samuel's father, and thus Samuel himself, is from the tribe of Ephraim, right? But then you go to First Chronicles. I don't have the chapter here in front of me, but I think it's First Chronicles seven. And it says, First Chronicles six, rather. It says that that genealogy traces Samuel's family back to the tribe of levi so i if we were to reconcile these two i think probably what's going on here we've seen this before back in judges so probably yeah samuel samuel is from

the tribe of eli he's a levite in other words but they happen to live in the territory of ephraim and that's why they're called an ephraimite because the levites had no territory of their own so sometimes they were identified with the territory of the tribe in which they happen to reside so probably that's what's what's happening so anyway uh he's he is a levite he's a little levite he's got this linen ephod on this priestly uh vesture and his mother brings him a little robe year to year because of course he's growing right i'm sure by sure by the time that the family got there the next year it was like six eight inches too short well yeah you're you're growing by leaps and bounds uh when you're when you're that age uh and then i think we brought this up in the last

episode that eli blesses the family and they end up almost with the same number of children that hannah sang about she said that the woman who was barren is now a mother of seven well she herself ended up being a mother of six. Besides Samuel, she had three more sons and then two daughters. And then this section wraps up by saying the boy Samuel grew before the Lord. You can't really see this in the English translation, but this is another contrast that's set up between Samuel and the sons of Eli. The word that's used for grow is gadol, which just basically means to get big. So the boy Samuel, Gadol, he got big before the Lord. Now, you look back at verse 17, and it says the sin of the young men was gadol ma'od, which means like very big. So the only

thing big about the sons of Eli was their sin. And in opposition to that, in contrast to that, Samuel was growing big before the Lord. So this sets up at least the beginning of this comparison and contrast between the faithless priest who were doing nothing but despising the offerings of the Lord and corrupting the people of Israel, even though they were the ones who were charged with being what we not today call spiritual leaders of the nation. They were doing the exact opposite. In fact, it seems as if the people who came there to worship were more pious than these priests were. I mean, it basically would be the equivalent of like if you had a pastor of a church who was stealing from the offering, you know, to make sure that he had a

big steak dinner or maybe he stole enough, he was able to drive a fancy car or whatever. He's stealing from the offerings that people have been giving to the church and to the Lord in order to make sure that he lives the kind of lifestyle that he desires all right so that and and unrepentantly right yes exactly yeah i mean not yeah not unrepentantly like we might say like defiantly unrepentantly right yeah this is uh yeah they were even though eli's about to rely is about to uh to take them the task for this and of course we've already heard how the people were trying to correct them, but they're not going to listen to anybody. They've hardened their hearts just like Pharaoh did at this point. It's gone on too

long. Okay, so verse 22 says that Eli was very old, and somehow he heard all that his sons were doing to all Israel. Supposedly, I mean, I would assume he's heard about this other stuff. Well, now he's about to hear something else. It says he also heard how they lay with the women who served at the doorway of the tent of meeting i wish we knew more about this uh more about this in the sense that i wish we knew who these women were we we have we've we've heard a reference to this i don't have it in front of me maybe it's exodus but at one point the uh oh it's in the description of the the construction of the tabernacle when they were going to make the bronze the the bronze well it was later called the bronze sea but the wash basin right the way

they made that was by taking, it says, they took the bronze mirrors of the women who served at the tent of meeting, and they melted them down to make the basin that the priest would wash in. So there's a reference to those women who were servants at the tabernacle back then. And now we hear about women who served at the doorway of the tent of meeting again, but we're never told anything else about what they did. I wish we knew, but there's just not any more details that are provided here. We may have talked about this in Judges in connection with Jephthah and his daughter. Some people think that he basically, rather than actually sacrificing her, that he dedicated her as a virgin to serve at the tabernacle. And that's by no means completely

out of the question. It certainly is a possibility. But again, we don't know exactly what they did. What is sadly ironic here, so one of the sons of Eli is named Phineas. Now, if you remember his namesake, so the old Phineas, way back in the book of Numbers, chapter 25, well, what did Phineas, how did he achieve fame? Well, he achieved fame by taking a spear, And while there was an Israelite man and a Gentile woman having intercourse either in or near the tabernacle in sort of a cultic sexual sort of way, he put the spear through both of them. So now, excuse me, now you have his namesake, this other Phineas, who's actually engaging in the very kind of behavior that the first Phineas put an end to with a death blow. so it's it's kind of uh it's it's come i wouldn't say full circle but a half circle to where this this phineas is sort of an anti an anti-phineas so they're they're doing this basically treating

these women as if they're as if they're cultic prostitutes and here's what eli says he says to his sons why do you do such things the evil things that i hear from all these people know my sons for the report is not good, which I hear the Lord's people circulating. If one man sins against another, God will mediate for him. But if a man sins against the Lord, who can intercede for him? But they would not listen to the voice of their father, for the Lord desired or had decided or willed to put them to death. That's what I meant earlier when they were kind of like Pharaoh. they'd harden their hearts so much to where it didn't matter who said anything to them they were they were not going to accept any kind of correction or any any kind of any kind of rebuke

because they got to that point where they were so recalcitrant that everything basically just bounced off of them and they wouldn't wouldn't take any criticism something this is always tough for people to grapple with because they you see like oh my gosh like okay so god's just they didn't listen because god desired to put them to death well i i do think that the the illustration of pharaoh is the way that you should probably always read this is that you in the case of pharaoh you have two things that go on one you have pharaoh hardens his heart pharaoh hardens his heart pharaoh hardens his heart over and over and over again and then at the end you see then god harden the heart of pharaoh yeah uh and this is sort of god giving you the hard heart you want

at some point if you if you insist long enough these guys obviously none of this stuff is bothering them and eventually uh god then says all right that's what i'm going to give you it's got it's like the uh that pretty well-known c.s lewis quote right if we if we don't say to god i will be done eventually he will say to us i will be done yes yes it's kind of yeah one of one of those situations yeah what is a uh i think maybe it was donovan riley told me this he might have got it from somebody else but uh like what does god's punishment usually look like you getting exactly what you want yeah yeah so it's these these guys i mean they they had exactly what they wanted and so in the language of romans chapter one god handed them over to what they

desired so yeah yeah and which is which is a lot of times the worst of all things i mean like i mean how many how many times in your life have you like done the thing that you want to do and been like oh man i really wish i had done that uh that's that's how it goes unfortunately in this case they're not even there uh at least in that place uh you're in a you're in a place of repentance where you got what you wanted and you wish you hadn't you know that's that's that's actually a good place to be the place that you don't want to be is i got what i wanted and i think i'll go get some more yeah yeah that that's a hazardous place to be and i think yeah i mean we've all been in those situations where countless times for myself where uh man i thought i really wanted

something and then when i got it i was like oh this is not good this is god god save me from my own desire right uh and i mean and he does of course this is this is part of uh the father disciplining his sons right we if you have kids you've all done this to your kids right they thought that they wanted exactly you know a b or c or whatever it is and and maybe they got it maybe they didn't but you got to step in sometimes and and uh have a little discipline and show them that you know just because they want that doesn't mean that that thing is what is best best for them well these particular uh children were not listening to their father and maybe it was because you know things have gone on too long maybe eli it says that eli was very old when

this happened so you know he just let things get out of hand for way too long and so they were in that state that they're now in. Then we have another contrast. There's three verses in this chapter where you have kind of a brief description of how Samuel was maturing and growing, not just physically, but also in his connection with his service to God. We've already seen the first one, verse 11. Now we're going to see the second one, verse 20, or the third one, excuse me, verse 26. It says, now the boy Samuel was growing in stature and in favor with the Lord and with men. Now, that might sound familiar to you, right? You probably heard that. That's one of those verses where you're like, I've heard that before, right? It seems familiar to me,

something from the New Testament. Well, yeah, this is from Luke chapter 2, verse 52. This is when Jesus is still a young man. This is right after when he was 12 years old, and he was separated from his parents for several days. They were looking for him and finally found him in the temple. And it says that he went back with them to Nazareth. And verse 52, Jesus kept increasing in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and men. So I suspect that Luke, in describing Jesus that way was just kind of taking a playbook from 1 Samuel, so that he presents Samuel and Jesus in this same light, so that the young Jesus is modeled after Samuel in the sense that they'd both been at the temple, they were both the chosen servants of the Lord, they were both

designated by God as the one who would grow up to be instrumental in the kingdom. Yeah, but they're both miraculous births, and honestly, both in a religious context that has gone fairly sideways. So, obviously, the religious leaders of Jesus' day, by and large, were not great. The Pharisees are sort of the villains of the Gospels, and here we see Samuel is in a situation— And you might even assume that those ages, I mean, this might be a stretch, but those ages are similar. I think that probably more time is passing, you know, than words would make you believe. Samuel's probably not four years old at this point, but he's probably something more like 12. Yeah, I would assume so.

Yeah, it's sometimes just like in our life, you know, time to get away from us. It's like in the Bible, too. you know you'll have like between two verses five years go by yeah and there's no signposts to the fact that that's happened all we're told is that he was growing up so yeah maybe he's maybe he's 12 years old at this point then something uh then something happens here where god steps in in order to to deliver a very decisive word and this is going to take us through the end of the chapter This is a message that comes from an Eshelohim, which is a man of God. Very often, I think 70-something times in the Old Testament, instead of saying a prophet,

a prophet is described as an Eshelohim, as a man of God. And that's what we have here. It says just this anonymous prophet, a man of God, came to Eli, and he delivered a message. He delivered it beginning with a typical prophetic pronouncement of, Thus says Yahweh, thus says the Lord. And here's how it begins. Did I not indeed reveal myself to the house of your father when they were in Egypt and bondage to Pharaoh's house? And did I not choose them from all the tribes of Israel to be my priest, to go up to my altar, to burn incense, to carry an ephod before me?

And did I not give to the house of your father all the fire offerings, all these offerings of the sons of Israel? this is not unusual for a prophet to begin this way by recounting the divine actions of grace before he actually levels the charge against the individual or the nation or the priesthood or whoever the prophet might be directing his words to it's it's kind of a it's just a it's a way of like have you forgotten all the good stuff i did for you have you forgotten all these ways in which God was gracious and merciful and generous towards you. So that's the way this starts out. Don't you remember when God chose your family as the priesthood to do these things for God and to give to you these offerings? Then he says, then he transitions to verse 29. So because all of this is

true, why do you kick at my sacrifice and my offering, which I have commanded in my dwelling, and honor your sons above me by making yourself fat with the choicest of every offering of my people Israel? There's an interesting parallel here. I was looking at this in the Hebrew. Actually, when I was writing my book, this pops up in one of the devotions, but I noticed it again this morning. Very interesting that if I remember correctly, the verb for kick, why do you kick at my sacrifice, occurs only two times. And in both occurrences, the kicking is also connected with getting fat. So way back in Deuteronomy 32, verse 15, in the song of Moses, he's talking about Israel, whom he calls Jeshurun. It's a name given to Israel a few times, where it says that

Jeshurun, or Israel, grew fat and kicked against God. So it describes all the good stuff that God did for Israel, and then it describes Israel kind of like this recalcitrant calf. It got fat and then kicked against its owner, and that fits exactly with what's going on here. Same verb for kick that's used here. So Eli is, as it were, Israel personified at this point. So he's like Israel growing fat and kicking back in the song of Moses. So he's gotten fat off the sacrifices. He's kicked as it were, like treated them with contempt. And not only that, but he's honored his sons above God. So because he sinned in this way, verse 30, therefore the Lord God of Israel declares, I did indeed say that your house and the house of your father should walk before me

forever. But now, the Lord declares, far be it from me. For those who honor me, I will honor, and those who despise me will be lightly esteemed. And then he goes on to talk about what's coming next. He says, days are coming when I will cut off or break your strength and the strength of your father's house so that there will not be an old man in your house. And next verse is translated different ways, but I'll read mine. And you will see the distress of my dwelling or like in distress, you will see what happens to my dwelling, something like that. In spite of all the good that I do for Israel and an old man will not be in your house forever. Yet I will not cut off every man of yours from my altar, that your eyes may fail from weeping and your soul grieve,

and the increase of your house will die in the prime of life. And this will be the sign to you which shall come concerning your two sons, Hophni and Phinehas. On the same day, both of them shall die. But I will raise up for myself a faithful priest who will do according to what is in my heart and in my soul, and I will make him an enduring house, and he will walk before my anointed always. And it shall come about that everyone who is left in your house shall come and bow down to him for a piece of silver or a loaf of bread and say, please assign me to one of the priest offices so that I may eat a piece of bread. There's a lot that's in here. We'll just touch on a couple of things in the time we have left. One is that this is a prophecy that's

going to come true. It's going to come to its fulfillment much later in the time of Solomon. So, in 1 Kings chapter 2, right after the death of David, when Solomon becomes king, then Solomon banishes a priest by the name of Abiathar, who is a descendant of Eli, and he's replaced by a priest called Zadok. So, both of these are from the same tribe, But what happened was you had different priestly families who were in charge, and because of this curse, then the descendants of Eli, that house, which is the house of Abiathar, that was cut off from serving the Lord, from a leadership position, and instead the house of Zadok, who was another priest, was shifted in their place. In fact, in 1 Kings 2, there's a direct reference to the fact that this happened to fulfill what was spoken of to Eli, to Eli the priest. So, long story short, this is the prophet coming in and saying, because I chose you, and yet you chose to rebel against me, you chose to honor your sons above me, you chose to treat my offerings with contempt. because of all of this i'm going to switch houses instead of your house being the leaders in your

house serving they're basically going to be reduced to the level of those who are begging begging for just some kind of office at the temple in order that they might have food on food on their table which is of course once more a play on what hannah's saying where you know the hungry are well fed and now the well-fed are going to be going to be hungry this is the lord turning everything topsy-turvy once more yeah and it's a lot of uh it's pretty stern law uh coming in there and i think i think well well i mean you you kind of read that you're like man i think this is rough right um yeah you you should you shouldn't read this and think better make sure i don't sin or else it's all over for me yeah right what it tells you is that uh the as as luther will say

that the whole life of the christian is one of repentance is that uh when you sin uh you have no reason not to repent yeah because lack of repentance is the is the issue here i mean if god was going around looking for perfect priest he'd have i mean we got to wait for jesus for that uh and we see people do kind of horrific things all through the old testament we're not we're not done with that and the distinguishing factor uh is always the ones that that hear the word of the lord coming to them calling out their sin and uh whether they're willing to confess that sin acknowledge that sin uh and ask for forgiveness for that sin or if they're just going to be defiant it's a warning that calloused unrepentance is not good for you uh repentance is

a gift that you should open often yeah i mean and we have a we'll see this when we get to the kings i mean we even have the case of manasseh who was just about as bad as bad can get as far as the kings go and yet at the end of his life there was repentance right yeah so yeah i mean it's a the the tragedy i don't know if this is the best way to say this but the tragedy is not so much the sin as the lack of repentance you know what i mean i mean we're all going to sin in ways that are have minor consequences and major consequences. But the real tragedy comes in, the everlasting tragedy comes in when that's not followed by repentance, which is, as you said earlier, what God constantly calls us to. It's not, as I like to say, it's not an occasional emotion,

but a constant motion, right? Away from ourselves and into the arms of Christ, because that's his greatest desire for us. It's what makes the angels rejoice, right? Over one sinner who repents, because that means that he's got us back where he wants us to be living in absolution, living forgiveness and living the life, which is best for us. Right. That's in conformative way that he's created us to be. Yeah. Repentance always changes the story to where it flows a much, much different direction. Yeah.

And that is it guys. That is 40 minutes. And we, that was a little depressing, but hopefully we will, We'll get into better things soon. Yeah, next week's going to be really cool. We have the calling of Samuel, which is, I mean, the message he's given is not that uplifting, but the call itself is pretty cool. So join us in.

We'll see you next time.