40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 1 Samuel 3:1-18 (Episode 227)

Episode Date: August 3, 2020

The word of the Lord is infrequent but comes to Samuel at night. Eli isn't the best priest but gives Samuel the right response to God. A hard word is given to Samuel to speak. And Eli isn't as faithless as he sometimes seems. Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network HWSS Livestream Signup 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 podcasts that are living over there. while you're over there check out all the articles and all the other things that we got going on one of those things that well we have going on but differently is the here we still stand conference now i know people have probably been waiting to hear the time has come where we had to make a decision about here we still stand and uh we didn't have to discuss it too much because

the governing authorities sort of made the decision for us so it was going to be a a tough decision that we ended up not really having to make. So it is not going to be doable to gather 500 people together in person in San Diego in October. At least it doesn't, there's nothing going on right now that would lead us to believe we can do that, which means that sort of makes it impossible for us to do all the stuff that we have to do to make that happen on what would seem like a pretty foolish bet. That being said, we are forced to cancel the in-person conference. However, we're not going to just leave you out there with nothing to do. We're not just going to mail it in. We have to overcome. So what are we doing? Well,

we're just going online. So Here We Still Stand is going to be a digital conference. It's going to be streaming live everywhere and so what's gonna what's gonna happen is we were still figuring this stuff out but we wanted to let people know is that uh on october 16th and 17th so friday and saturday we will be streaming the conference and uh it will consist of all the plenary talks and uh panels and we're going to do a bunch of other cool things some of it will be live. Some of it will be stuff that we pre-recorded. And so it's going to be a really good time. We're going to try to make it super cool. One of the nice things is it's totally free. And so we hope that a whole bunch of you will join up, participate in the conference virtually. So we'll be releasing

more information about that as we figure it out. But there will be a conference. It will just be in your living room or in your church or whatever maybe you can get your family together if there's certain friends that you're hanging out with you can do watch parties and that kind of stuff so we're still gonna we're gonna try to make it as uh the best conference we can possibly make it uh online so kind of a bummer but uh but we're gonna uh we're gonna make the best lemonade we can make with those covid lemons join us for that all right chad so uh so here we are in uh in first Samuel, third chapter, Samuel is about to, uh, to do what every boy has heard, uh, this story in Sunday school. It's about to happen to him. This is the, you know, this is the kind of

thing where growing up that I would have felt greatly, uh, reassured if something like this would have happened to me, because what I was always struggling with is why does God just make himself, why doesn't he just talk to me in a way that I would hear him, right? I mean, this was a great source of anxiety for me, because I'm like, I don't think I've ever heard God just speak. Now, I didn't have a great theology of the Word at that point. I literally wanted to be laying in my bed and just have God have a conversation with me, and I think a lot of that was based on, hey man, you did it to Samuel. Why don't you do it to me? Yeah, yeah. Well, the problem was, you weren't sleeping in church yeah that's it that's it was the issue yeah i mean you should have put your

sleeping bag beside the altar of god and uh then then what happened see you could hide your vision that's right that's this is true that's true it could also be that uh i'm not called to be a prophet yeah that that's another that's another possibility too yeah i uh i remember studying this when i was uh or hearing this story when i was was very young and kind of you know wishing the same thing. I mean, that's not something you always grow out of too. There are plenty of times when it'd be like, you know, I realized she would just tell me exactly what you want me to do. Although as I've gotten older, I've also come to realize that a lot of times when God does appear to someone and speak to them, that which they are given to speak is not exactly something that

people would would choose and in an ordinary way to speak you know the the word that is given to Samuel to speak is a word of judgment and I've always wondered if Isaiah regretted his eagerness to serve you know here my send me send me and then God proceeds to tell him the message that he's supposed to proclaim to Israel and it's a message of of great doom and gloom so uh yeah I So I suppose one part of me is kind of glad that God never actually appeared to me and gave me a word to speak. Yeah, and the other part is, and we're jumping ahead here, is that you don't realize this until you're older, too, is that even for Samuel, sometimes the voice of God is not all that obvious. I mean, it's not as though he knows this is God.

In fact, thinks it's somebody else. Yeah, right, right. Thinks it's his priest. It's Eli at first. Yeah, so this story, I've got a history with this story. When I taught Hebrew years ago, not quite the final test, but one of the last tests, they had to translate 1 Samuel 3, because it's kind of fun in the Hebrew. So I've worked through this text many times with a lot of students,

and there's a lot of cool stuff in the Hebrew, but there's a lot of cool stuff just theologically, too. So we're going to get into that just right away here. So this is going to be, actually, this is going to be the last chapter where we hear about Samuel for three chapters following that. So there's going to be like a three-chapter interlude, chapters four, five, and six really don't talk about Samuel. He just kind of disappears from the scene, and his absence is significant for kind of the narrative structure of that. that's when it's called the ark narrative that's when the ark instilled them by the philistines which uh we'll probably get into a little bit today but of course we'll cover it more in the next few episodes but this is yeah this is the call of samuel i mean the yes call samuel so

we'll see what happens here let me start out here with the first few verses read this and we'll go back over it now the boy samuel was ministering to the lord before eli and the word of the Lord was rare in those days. Visions were infrequent. That Hebrew could be translated as something like, no vision was spread around or spread abroad, something like that. And it happened at that time as Eli was lying down in his place. Now his eyesight had begun to grow dim and he couldn't 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 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. But he said, I didn't call you. Lie down again.

So he went and lay down again. And 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 didn't call you, 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.

And then I'll just finish up with verse 10. Then the Lord came and stood and called, as at other times, Samuel, Samuel. And Samuel said, Speak, for your servant is listening. It's a lot of good stuff here. Let me just kind of start with the end and make a comment here that is not always picked up on. Notice in verse 10 that Samuel's name is repeated twice. I wish I had the list in front of me. I've looked at this before.

But if you're interested sometime, do a study and look through all of the occurrences in scripture where a person's name is mentioned twice. And it's almost always, if not always, at very significant junctures in their life. There's something about this double repetition of the name that highlights these particular narratives as something which is going to be central for the rest of that person's life. So this double repetition of Samuel is one of those. So going back to the beginning, we were talking about this right before we started the podcast. How old is Samuel?

He's called in the Hebrew a na'ar, which in my translation, and I think most translations, would be rendered boy. But the problem is it's an ambiguous word. The Hebrew noun na'ar can refer to what we think of in English as a boy. So someone who's maybe, I don't know, you know, say 13 or younger. But it can also refer to an adult. There are plenty of adults in the scripture that are called a na'ar, kind of in the sense or at least sometimes in the sense of servant. So it's one of those words that just has a broad range of meanings that can't be narrowed down to a specific age group. So we're going to say, I think we agree, Dan, we're going to say he's a teenager, right?

Yeah. so yeah i think so i mean we don't we don't have any time frame given to us i think the if i remember of course it's been a long time since i've been in sunday school but most of my sunday school materials seem like they pictured samuel is like five or six years old yeah he seemed really really young yeah really young and i i don't i mean i guess we can't disprove that but i suspect he's a little bit older maybe maybe in his teens but anyway he's ministering to the lord before Eli, the Hebrew verb that's used there is often used for the service of Levites. And as we talked about last time, Samuel does come from the family of the Levites. So it's fitting for him to

describe that way. I'm assuming that he was a helper to the priest, which of course is what the Levites were supposed to do. They were the servants of the Aaronic priest. We don't know exactly what he was doing, but that was his role. That was his vocation there, ministering to the Lord before Eli. And then we have this reference here to the word of the Lord and to visions, which I think we should probably hear as somewhat parallel. This is the word of the Lord was rare, which could also be translated precious, kind of means the same thing. If we talk about a rare metal, we talk about a precious metal. So they were rare, precious in those days. visions were not being spread abroad. So there's a parallel here between the word of the Lord and

between visions, and quite rightly, because what we're about to see happen in the rest of the narrative is a vision in which the word of the Lord appears to Samuel. We're going to return to that in just a second. But before we do, I want to kind of set the scene here with the rest of descriptions given to us. And I think it's more than just kind of a, more than just a narrative description. I think there's some metaphorical qualities to this. What I'm talking about is that we have two references to kind of the, what we might call light or illumination. One is in reference to Eli's sight that it had darkened or had dimmed. And the other is a reference to the lamp of God, which had not yet been extinguished. So Eli, it says, was in his place

wherever he slept, presumably there somewhere close to the sanctuary. And it says that his eyesight had begun to grow dim and he could not see well. This could just simply be telling us that, hey, he needs glasses, doesn't have very good vision. But it's pretty rare in the scriptures when something like that is told to us when there's not some kind of symbolic value to it. The Bible, as we've talked about before, is extremely reticent to give us any physical descriptions of people. When it does, when it mentions Absalom's long hair

or the color of Esau or left-handed Ehud or anything like that, there's usually some reason behind it. So I, I suspect the reason his eyesight is mentioned here is because not only is his eyesight dimming, but his kind of his ability to perceive, we might say, his ability to kind of see things the way they are was, was not that great. And we've, we've already seen this, right? I mean, he can't tell the difference between a woman praying and a woman who's drunk. Right. Right. Right.

Because he thought Hannah, it's like, he's so unfamiliar with, with people praying that he thinks they're drunk. And he didn't do a very good job of perceiving all of the trouble that his sons, Hophni and Phinehas, were bringing upon the sanctuary and the priesthood and all of Israel either. So his perception, the way he sees things, is the equivalent of the way that his eyesight is not functioning well either. and then the second thing this mentioned is the lamp of god uh which would be a reference to the menorah the lampstand in the holy place it says it had not yet gone out and i find that a little bit intriguing too because i don't think it's just telling us hey that you know the candles were still burning there was still enough wax for them to continue enough oil for them to continue burning i suspect that this is suggesting that you know what it wasn't completely dark yet there

was still hope there was still this uh flicker of illumination and it's going to be as the narrative unfolds it's going to be actually samuel who will be the one who will fan that that light into flame once more and be able to give hope for israel after some pretty dark days that are that are coming up there yeah i mean as if you if you read this the way you should read it which is of course right after what we just read in chapter 2, where Eli has received a pretty unwelcome word from God, right? That there's all this language of the rejection of his household and all this, and then you go right into this. I've always taken this to sort of mean that, yeah, Eli's not the best priest that you ever had. He's not the most perceptive guy.

uh yes he's old and and with that age and and and maybe a sort of complacency that in which he's operated in his vocation his sight not just maybe physically but also spiritually is not great yet i've always taken that lampstand had not gone out as the as that and we're going to see it happen here that even this guy god is not quite through using yet um so so it's almost as though Eli has received this word that would be a hard word to hear that you could easily just say this is a word where God says, I'm done with you. And then you have this come in, which is, but not completely done with you yet. And so God still is going to use Eli to put the right words in Samuel's mouth. So in this way, even though Samuel will be the one to,

you know fan that that you know a menorah back into flame god does use eli to give him the words to respond to god which is pretty cool because this is sort this is sort of the the mercy of god right where where he says uh man you've been a pretty big disaster yet it gives you hope that eli is not well he's not a good priest he is still uh the servant of the lord and uh and he is still one whom God can use to bring about His will. And so, I think you have those things going on. So, I think it's an encouraging thing in that way that this guy who can't perceive spiritual things very well, he got this one right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the words that he gives Samuel to say are words that we could still pray today, right? You're studying the Scriptures, and you're like,

speak, Lord, for your servant is listening. I mean, as far as prayers go, it's pretty hard to beat that, right? Here I am. I'm standing before your word. So speak because I'm here to listen. One of my favorite prayers that's short like that, right to the point that I often pray before I'm studying something is from Psalm 119. And it's very similar to that, except it accents another one of our senses. I can't remember the verse number, but it's from Psalm 119. It says, open my eyes that i may behold wonderful things from your torah yeah so it's kind of like so i i'm i'm praying open my eyes god so i can i can see what you have to say to me in your word all these wonderful things or i could pray the prayer from eli just to speak because i'm listening

so open my ears open my eyes so that i can see and perceive what you have to what you have to say to me yeah yeah yeah it's interesting uh the two things that uh you one of them you had mentioned uh the sort of doubled calling of samuel where he says samuel samuel you know as a as a new testament guy uh i don't know if you know this um chad but uh yeah i can't hear that and not think of like saul saul right this is exactly the the way so this isn't just something that god did you know old testament uh this is exactly the way that he calls saul who we know as paul right he does it does the same exact thing to him i think the first time that i picked up on that actually it was i was doing one of my uh one of my videos and i was looking at uh the story mary and martha

and it intrigued me that in that in that particular uh story jesus says martha martha And I wondered, hmm, I wonder how many other times in scripture someone's name is repeated like that when they're addressed by God. And so I got to looking and it's like Moses, Moses, Samuel, Samuel, Saul, Saul, Martha, Martha. And I think there were a couple more instances. And that led me to think, you know what, this was probably a turning point in Martha's life too. If it fits with the rest of the pattern in scripture. Yeah. so double repetition of Saul double repetition of Samuel double double repetition of Moses

all these are kind of life-changing events that uh that happened another thing that's just strange that Samuel is just like in a sleeping bag next to the ark like uh now I'm trying to remember if there's ever a time where like someone's bedroom has the ark of the covenant in it but that that seems like a pretty unique unique situation yeah yeah if if he was he wasn't supposed to be there you know that that's a that's not the place that you want to be uh want to be hanging out it says yeah he was lying down in the temple uh which we've talked about before i guess they're calling it temple it really was a tabernacle but he was lying there where the where the ark of god was yeah so is it just that it's in the vicinity or or is it that it's is he like just right there next

to it yeah is he is he sleeping so they're coming is he in the holy place uh if you pop the lid off side yeah a little off and crawl in there and yeah so it's uh it's kind of odd i i suppose one of the reasons the ark is mentioned here is because it's going to become a dominant feature of the next chapter so it's mentioned tons of times in chapters four five and six in the the ark narrative uh but maybe it's mentioned here to connect it with samuel because uh samuel when he when he comes back around it's into the narrative at the same time the ark is going to come back back to israel but anyway that's that's where he's at and of course three times he hears uh the lord the lord calling to him and each time he mistakes this call for eli coming to him you know maybe

this was something that happened like eli would call to him in the middle of night and so this was nothing unusual for samuel but anyway that's that's his assumption but another thing that's interesting about this chat is that this language of that samuel did not yet know the lord he's serving the temple doesn't yet know the lord and if you want to know how someone comes to know the lord it is by the lord using a word and calling you to know him that this is this is by the way still how this works right still the way this works so samuel dedicated the lord serving the temple but this whole that he didn't know the lord in this and the way that he's about to know the lord and the only way that you end up knowing the lord like that is when his word comes to you

and calls you to know him now this doesn't happen to all of us when we're lying in in bed and he calls our name but it does happen when that word is put in the mouth of a preacher and the gospel is preached to us, the word of the Lord. He comes to us in that way and calls us to know him. I love that part in the Christmas carol where you have the massive ghost of Christmas past. I think it's Christmas past. Is that the giant one?

The big huge guy? I can't remember. Anyway, one of the ghosts of Christmas past. And it's terrifying because it's just this humongous, like giant of a figure. Ebenezer Scrooge is very nervous about this whole thing. and he says, come in and know me better, man. That's what I feel like, that's what happens when God calls.

You might know a little, you might know about God, and you might, you know, you might have some information, but when the word of the Lord comes in, in this case, God himself calling Samuel, or whether it comes from the mouth of the preacher, I feel like that's what it is. God saying, come close and know me better. Come and actually know me.

This is sort of what is happening to Samuel here. Well, that's a great setup for what we should talk about next, too, because the way that we truly know the Lord and the way that he reveals his word to us is precisely through Christ, right? So we should talk about how all of this intersects with some of the other things that we've discussed in past episodes. So what I mean is this. We have a lot of different ways in the Old Testament where God bridges the gap between himself and humanity, where he will make some kind of appearance, right? These are called a theophany, which is just an appearance of God, or sometimes they're called a Christophany, an appearance of Christ. and we've encountered a multitude of these over the last 200 some odd episodes that we've done right the first one would have been when we were talking about hagar in genesis 16 and the

appearance of the the malak yahweh the the messenger of the lord to her we talked about it in exodus 3 when that same messenger appeared to to moses the burning bush we talked about it in connection with the commander of the Lord of hosts. When he appeared to Joshua, we've had other occasions to talk about it too. So over and over in the old Testament in, in a, in a multitude of different ways, God is making himself visible temporarily physical some way he is appearing to, to his people. And this, this can take all sorts of different forms.

I've mentioned the, the angel angel slash messenger. I don't like the, I don't like to use the term angel because people think of a creative being when i do so i prefer messenger so the the malak yahweh is the messenger of the lord but he also appears as the glory of the lord and uh here in first samuel 3 he makes his appearance as the devar yahweh the word of the word of the lord so this is one of these this is one of these uh and it's not isolated when these appearances of the word in a visible form i think this is this is important to emphasize because so much of the prophetic literature is full of the word of the Lord coming to prophets, right? The word of the Lord came to whoever it might be, Isaiah, Jeremiah,

Ezekiel. So the word of the Lord comes to a prophet, and typically when we hear that phrase, we think, oh, they heard God speak from heaven. Well, maybe they did, but if this particular chapter is an indication of how the word of God comes to prophets, they don't just hear a voice, they see the appearance of this word in some sort of some sort of visible form whatever whatever it looked like we the first time we saw this was back in genesis 15 when the word of the lord comes to to abraham and that's what we're told first it's like the word of the lord came to in a vision all right but then you read a few more verses down verse 4 in genesis 15 it says the word of the Lord came to him, and he had more to communicate. And then, verse 5, this word

took him outside and showed him the heavens, which suggests to me that we're not just talking about some kind of voice here. We're talking about a visible word. A word somehow became manifest to Abram so that he didn't just talk to him. He led him outside. We see the same thing happening in 1 Samuel 3 where it says the word of the Lord was rare, was precious. The word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him, but then what happens? Verse 10, this word, which is now called the Lord, came and stood and called as at other times. So when the word comes, that's one thing, but when the word comes and stands, well, that's a whole other thing. So this is a visible form of the word of God. And then there's one more. This is from the beginning of Jeremiah.

This is the call of Jeremiah, more or less. It says that the word, this is Jeremiah 1, verse 4. Now the word of the Lord, again, it's the Devar Yahweh, same phrase in Hebrew, came to me saying, and then he speaks to him, I knew you in the womb, I called you, so on and so forth. Then we get to verse 9 in Jeremiah 1, and it says, the Lord stretched out his hand and touched my mouth and then spoke further words to me. So not only is this word of the Lord coming to Jeremiah and speaking to him, he has assumed such a physical form that he's able to stretch out a hand and touch the mouth of Jeremiah. Yeah, Chad, I've said multiple times, I don't know if I've said it this podcast before but i've said it to other people if the word stands this is christ because

if the word has legs they belong to jesus and if the word touches you on the mouth this is christ because if when the word has a hand it belongs to jesus any any time you have any of these things if you have a if you have fingers and feet and legs and arms if the word has these things they they have them only in the person of christ yeah absolutely and this is this is this is the entire background there's some other influences on john but this is why john begins the gospel his gospel the way he does right you know he's he's talking about the well in in greek i mean in hebrew it's devar in in greek in hebrew it's devar in greek it's it's logos but either way it's the same thing So the Word, in the beginning it was the Word, the Word was with God, and through this Word, God made all things, and then this Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

Well, John isn't just kind of doing original theology there. He's building upon Old Testament narratives such as this, where the Word of the Lord makes some kind of appearance in physical, human-like form in order to speak to his people. so to kind of circle back to the way that I that I began this yeah I mean the only way we know God only way that we know God truly know him is when he speaks his word to us invites us to know him better to know him more to know him more deeply and the only way that we are able to do that is through the means by which he reveals himself to us and that is through his through his son so we would read this like we read all those other stories that I referred to as the old testament appearance of of the son of god in a multitude of different ways this is this

is christ dwelling with his people before the incarnation all of this is kind of just paving the way for what is fully going to be revealed when he when he actually does assume our flesh and comes and dwells among us you know it's interesting chad i was in a conversation with someone i had uh used that luther quote that says you know uh i know of no other god uh than christ right and uh somebody i was in a conversation with a friend of mine he was like that doesn't seem exactly true in the old testament people knew god uh my response was well how did they know him did they know him apart from his word coming to them he said well no that's how they knew him like god spoke to them i was like well who do you think jesus is who do you think the

word of god is right this is not a new testament thing it's not that it's not the old testament new god the father uh unmediated from the son and then in the new testament well now we have jesus and this is how we know god more fully of course the cross reveals things that others could have never known uh but nobody uh even including adam uh knows god apart from christ who is the word yeah that's the that's the one who was walking in the garden in the cool of the day absolutely that's the one by whom uh so christ is the image of god and adam and eve are in that image yeah right yeah christ did not christ did not become the way you know god he has always been the way you know god that's right yeah yeah he's always been the only way the only truth the only life

the only means by which we come to to know the father so it's not like he became the mediator at the moment of his incarnation no there's always been that always been that so i mean conversations like this i wish that we could i wish that we could just get into every single christian church out there because i think that well i don't think i just pretty much know that by and large this is not by any stretch of the imagination the way that most people read the old testament right you know they i i get asked all the time some form of the question of like why is god so different in the old testament than he is in the new testament you know he's like he's some sort of kind of a he's just sort of a generic uh unity unit not unitarian but just like a

monotheistic deity right in the old testament and all of a sudden you get to the new testament and you're hearing about you know the word that the son the spirit the father like it was it's there it's all over the old testament this is this is nothing new god didn't all of a sudden decide to divide himself and become a trinity in in the new testament he's always been the father who reveals himself to us in his son word glory by means of the spirit that's always been the way that god has dealt with humanity yeah okay so uh enough on that we'll We'll, we'll, we'll, uh, what is, what is, what does this word have to say? It's a, yeah, we will return to that.

Yes. So anyway, uh, finally, when he, when he calls, when he calls Samuel, uh, and then Samuel responds almost verbatim. I noticed that Eli says to, to, to, to say this, speak Lord for your servant is listening. Now, when Samuel actually says it, he says, speak for your servant is listening. He leaves out the divine name, which maybe is nothing. Maybe it's like one more like slight indication that he doesn't quite know the Lord yet. I don't know, just speculating.

But I find it interesting that the divine name is absent when he actually says what Eli tells him to say. Maybe Eli is a little more certain this is God than Samuel is yet. Yes, right, right. Maybe so. So here's what he says. he says, I'm picking up with verse 11. Behold, I am about to do a thing in Israel at which both ears of everyone who hears it will tingle. That is not a good thing. When God makes ears tingle, it's not a positive development. So here's what he's going to do. Verse 12, in that day, I will carry out against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house from beginning to end.

you're not going to leave anything out for i have told him that i'm 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 that's that's quite a uh quite a first sermon to deliver yeah this is the thing about this is that it's rough right is that god uses eli to uh to get samuel to to listen to the the voice of god and then what does the voice of god say uh all that stuff i told eli by the voice of the prophet uh i'm about to do all that stuff and yeah it's pretty rough you know i think that you could read this and i've heard people read

this and uh and talk about it that this is how you know that eli and his sons and i don't i can't say you can't say much about his sons because we don't know but uh are lost forever right because god says that they they will not be atoned for by sacrifice or offering i would push back on that a little bit and say that what is being said here is that the blood of these bulls and goats and all this other stuff ain't gonna cut it for eli he's gonna need something a little different to inherit eternal life which samuel is going to be instrumental in bringing about yeah i think that's a good way to put this and the very fact that god speaks this word to eli is itself indicative of his desire for eli to hear it right why would god speak a word that he doesn't want

eli to hear and so why would why would god continue to converse with someone that he's completely given up on right so this is yeah i think it's more a you know like oh well there's great sin in the land uh well let's let's get together some sacrifices i mean we'll see this happen throughout throughout first and second samuel and uh and the kings and chronicles and so you you think that okay god is upset or we disobeyed the lord i mean we've seen this happen all through the old testament like we need to to rededicate ourselves so we're gonna set up these sacrifices and stuff. And I read this as God saying, that's not going to do it. My mind is made up that I'm going to do this thing. You shouldn't read this as, and that's why you will

not see Eli in the new heavens and the new earth, but that you should see this as a turn is about to be made in my redemptive work. And simply getting together some sacrifices is not going to change my mind because we've seen god change his mind before on things like my mind is not going to be changed on this through you know performing these sacrifices or this act of repentance i'm still going to go through with this but i don't think this is some kind of eternal damnation no i mean it's the judgment is more on eli's house it's it's talking about his and his family's priesthood and their their position as the leaders of israel that is going to be over and nothing's going to change that nothing gonna no sacrifice is gonna alter that that divine decree so to to uh to wrap

this up what happened next is sammy goes back to bed opens the doors of the house in the morning and he says samuel was afraid to tell the vision to eli i imagine so yeah i imagine he was but again like what you were saying earlier you know you got to give eli credit because he's like listen he calls samuel and he's like uh what did he have to say you know what what is the word that he spoke to you eli seems very certain that samuel got something yeah yeah he's like hey don't hide it from me and then he kind of he has a threat he said may god do so to you and more also if you hide anything from me of all the words that he spoke to you uh so as eli wants to hear and samuel told him everything hid nothing from him and then i i i've always loved eli's response even though

was a word of judgment uh this is this is what he said it is the lord let him do what seems good to him that's another one of those uh quotable phrases from eli speak lord for your servant is listening it is the lord let him do what seems good to him this is to me that's where it's a word of faith i'm gonna say there's i was about exactly what i was gonna say this does not sound like a faithless response no i mean that is that's like one of those responses you can you can work into a whole lot of different situations well it is the lord let him let him do what seems good to him because ultimately we know that he is good imagine hearing this like this harsh harsh word and your this response is essentially i'm gonna lean heavily into the goodness of god

but that's all you got at that point you get this word you're like i'm gonna double down on your good yeah well it isn't that uh we will we'll finish up here but is isn't that what uh our response always should be like when god seems to be against you to whom do you flee well to god yeah god has just pronounced this very hard word against eli so where does he turn well he turns to god right he he uh when when the law strikes us and pronounces a lot of bad stuff where do we turn well we return to to god to christ we we go to the one who loves us and has redeemed himself and and provided that the sacrifice that does atone for for all of our all of our wrongdoing yeah amen and that seems like a decent place to end even though we got a couple more uh verses

that seems like those might fit better. Maybe we had a faulty chapter break. Yeah, maybe so. All right, Chad, I will see you next week. We'll see you here.