The portion before us this morning
is found in 1 Samuel chapter 2. We've already read it together. The Lord Jesus Christ once said, listen to the words of our Saviour. Ye are of your father the devil. and the lusts of your father
ye will do. John chapter eight, verse 44. Ye are of your father, the devil,
and the lusts of your father ye will do. It doesn't take us
long to see the effects of nature and the presence of sin in the
lives of our children. And that natural opposition to
the things of God, that pursuit of the lusts of the flesh beset
us in our humanity all the days of our life and will absolutely
take us down to the grave and ultimately to hell because it's
who we are and it's what we are. And I can give you absolutely
no hope this morning of anything except the judgment of God and
an eternity in hell in your natural state and condition. There is
but one way of salvation, and that is to be found in the person
who spoke these words. Year of your father, the devil,
and the lusts of your father ye will do. What a terrible condemnation
it is that these words should fall from the lips of the one
who is himself the judge of every man. This is the judge speaking. He who will judge the world in
righteousness. And I tell you this morning that
there is a warning here for every one of us. Hophnii and Phinehas
served before the altar of God. They wore the ephod of God's
priests. They carried themselves with
a deportment which said, here am I, God's chosen man, in the
service of his worship and sacrifice. and the Lord testified against
them. The Lord would slay them for
their wickedness. We cannot because of whose children
we are, imagine that we have got any special rights to God
or to grace. We cannot, because of the lifestyles
that we live, imagine that we have got any special rights.
There is but one way, and it's not in reforming our lives or
living in accordance with some legal pattern set out by men. It is by finding righteousness
alone through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ and peace with
God on the footing of the sacrifice of the only Saviour of mankind. There will come a time when men
and women will hear these words, depart from me ye cursed into
everlasting fire. How terrible it will be to hear
those words. There's no way back then. There's
no way of escape then. Thereafter it is just the fulfilment
of every curse and judgement that God has promised in his
word and revealed in his word to bestow upon sinful men and
women. And do you realise this morning,
my friends, that it is an imminent reality for millions of men and
women in this world today. It is an imminent reality. it
will soon befall men and women who are alive today. We say from
time to time that this is the day of grace. What does that
mean? It means that now is the accepted time. Now is the time
to flee to Christ for mercy, because if he takes you away
in the twinkling of an eye, in the moment of time, and you're
uttered into his presence without Christ's blood as you're covering,
then it will be your lot to hear these words, depart from me ye
cursed into everlasting fire. We must not trifle with the things
of God. We are given two declarations
in scripture of the words that will be spoken in the day of
judgment. To one man and one group will
be said, Well done, good and faithful servant. Come, ye blessed
of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation
of the world. Oh, how blessed to hear those
words spoken in our ears, whispered in our presence, declared. to
our hearts. Come, ye blessed of my Father,
enter into this kingdom, inherit this kingdom prepared for you
from before the foundation of the world. Or in Matthew 7, 23, then I will
profess unto them, I never knew you. Depart from me, ye that
work iniquity. The day is coming and will soon
be upon us when great swathes of humanity will be separated
as sheep and goats, as wheat and tares. And I dare say that
in the moments and the minutes leading up to the unfolding of
these great apocalyptic statements that are made in the Word of
God to warn us ere that day of wrath comes, I dare say that
there will be people who will know In those minutes, in those
moments before the command to depart is actually made, what
terror will fill their hearts in those moments as they are
cast into hell for eternity? What dread will beset them in
their minds as they stand before a holy judge, bared in their
sinfulness and their wickedness, with nowhere to turn and nowhere
to flee. God grant us grace. to be numbered
on that day amongst the redeemed of the Lord. God grant his grace
to be numbered amongst the redeemed of the Lord on that terrible
day of God's judgment. The passage before us enables us to encounter two men
the sons of Eli, or rather they are described to us as the sons
of Belial. They are the sons of Belial because
they knew not the Lord. They are sons of wickedness,
sons of the devil, workers of evil. And I want to just take a couple
of points this morning in this passage and seek to direct your
minds and your attention to what it means to be under the judgment
of God. And then if the Lord will be
gracious to us, to point you as best as I am able to the only
place to whom you can flee in the face of such terrible judgment
to come. The first point I want to address
this morning is this, that sin brings judgment. That is the
relentless truth of the word of God. The soul that sins will
die. God will hold all men accountable
for the things that we have done, for the things that we have said,
for the things that we have thought. The legalist, he likes to say,
you know what? I have set my life out so that
I don't sin anymore. I endeavour to keep the standard
that has been set for me. I live up as best as I am able
and the Lord will be merciful for those times that I've slipped
up and fallen. And he is talking about externals. He's talking about the outward
man. He's talking about his prading before his friends and his neighbours
and his fellow church members. He's talking about maintaining
a religious order which God turns up his nose at and eschews and
hates for its self-righteous wickedness. Such legalists have
no real idea about the wickedness of their own heart and the lusts
of their own mind. And James says in his little
epistle towards the end of the New Testament, when lust hath
conceived, it bringeth forth sin. And sin, when it is finished,
bringeth forth death. There is a judgment that will
fall upon men and women of this world because of their sin. The sin of these two men, Hophnii
and Phinehas, the sons of Eli, the sons of Belial, are given
to us in several examples of their wickedness. They were thieves,
these men. They stole the offerings that
were made by those who came to Shiloh, where the Ark of the
Covenant was, in order to worship God. They stole the offerings
from the people who came to worship. But in truth, they were stealing
from God. And that is the reality of all
sin. Sin can be an offence to man. We can hurt those that we love. We can hurt and spoil the relationships
that we have. We can do terrible damage to
those in whom we ought to be caring for and to have placed
their trust in us. Oh, the wickedness of man's heart
and woman's heart, let's not lay it simply on one side. But here's the thing, much as
we wrong one another, we are wronging God. And he holds the
record of every thought and every word and every deed. The offence that these two young
men were guilty of was that they brought the worship of God into
ill repute. The worship of God was bad-mouthed
because of the things that these young men did. The other thing
was that they corrupted the women who came to worship to Shiloh
and those that stood at the door, those who came to make their
offerings, we're not told what those offerings were or the form
of worship that was being fulfilled here, but these men debauched
those women. It speaks to us. I tell you very
seriously about the worship of God. Who will steal worship from
God? And yet there are religions and
there are denominations and there are churches all over the place
that are following a pattern which say we are honoring God
and we're worshiping God and they're stealing from God. and
there are priests in these religions and they are saying we are offering
to God our worship and our service and they are debauching the very
people that come to worship God in their ignorance. I would rather men didn't worship
at all than they went through this adultery of a process that says
that their hearts are right with God and they stroke one another's
pride and pat one another's backs and send one another into a lost
eternity. These men had greater concern
for their own personal appetites. They preferred flesh to souls. and the wickedness of these men
extended to the damage that they did to the souls of others. Preoccupied,
satisfied with fleshy things and careless for their souls. It doesn't change. Generation
after generation, this was a long time ago. This was before the
establishment of the Davidic kingdom in Israel. This was before
all the prophecies that were made. And yet the very same wickedness
is present in the hearts of men and women today. They are preoccupied
with fleshiness and they are thoughtless about their soul's
well-being. In verse 22 of the passage that
we read, We're introduced once again or reintroduced to Eli. Eli is old. He's an old man. And the verses that follow from
verse 22 is Eli's attempt to rebuke his sons for the things
that they're doing. But the sense of the passage
is, we've read it together, the sense of the passage is, too
little, too late. Too little, too late. I think perhaps Eli, the sense
is that Eli had in some way connived with his sons. I don't doubt
that he dined at the same tables. where this meat had been wrongly
appropriated and then served up according to the appetites
of the priests. I'm sure that the old man ate
at those very tables. We are told a little bit later
at the time of his death that he was a fat man. He made himself
fat from the backs of the people of God and God held him accountable. His life had become easy and
Eli had become lazy. He had closed his eyes for too
long to the things that were being done underneath his very
own nose. But let us all be aware, you
and me today, God sees. God knows. God remembers. And God will have justice. The old man says in verse 25,
if one man sin against another, the judge shall judge him. You
can get recourse In a land where there is law and order, you can
go to the judge and you can get recourse if someone is offended
or someone is hurt or someone has stolen from you. But who
will entreat if a man sinned against the Lord? Who will entreat
if a man sinned against the Lord? If a man sinned against God,
who shall entreat for him? Entreat means to plead our case
for peace. To plead our case for peace. Who will entreat for a man if
he has sinned against God? I've looked in Eli's life to
see whether there's hope for his soul. And I'm not sure that
there is. I'm not sure that there is. I'm
not sure that we can leave the testimony of Eli in the Old Testament
with any real confidence that that man is in heaven today.
I'm prepared to be contradicted. But he said one or two interesting
things. He seemed to have a glimpse,
to have a small grasp of some of the spiritual realities, the
dimensions of God's dealings with men. And here's one of them. He knew, he knew, perhaps because
he was the pinnacle of Jewish religion, because he was the
very highest priest, he knew that if he didn't have someone
to entreat for him, How could anyone find peace with God? Men could come to Eli for judgment. Men could come to Hophni and
Phinehas for judgment. But who would they go to for
peace with God? Remember what James said. Lust,
when it has conceived, brings forth sin, and sin, when it is
finished, brings forth death. There is a judgment which all
men and women have to face, except there be one to entreat for us,
except there be one, the highest of priests. Indeed, it has to
be God himself, For there was no higher than Eli in his official
capacity and office. It had to be God himself who
would entreat God for the salvation of the sinner who has offended
against God. And be it no mistake, each and
every one of us has offended against God. An unnamed man There's
no need to speculate. An unnamed man of God brings
Eli word of God's judgment. And it is devastating. It is
loss. It is failure. It is shame. It is death. It is the cost to
be paid. It is the price that must be
met for the broken law of God and offense against his holiness. And yet there is one who stands
as advocate for sinners like you and like me, the Lord Jesus
Christ. And this brings us to the second
point of our thoughts this morning. We're told in this passage not
only of the wickedness of these two young men, the sons of Belial,
but we are told of another young man, indeed a child, just a child,
And we're told that Samuel grew. And then we're told that Samuel
grew on. In the midst of wickedness, the
Lord preserved his testimony. And that's what I want to draw
your attention to now. In verse 21, the child Samuel
grew before the Lord. And in verse 26, and the child
Samuel grew on. Here was hope, despite all the
evil that was around about him and all the perversions and prostitution,
both physical and spiritual, that was being undertaken there
at Shiloh by these priests. In the midst of the unfaithfulness,
in the midst of compromised worship, disdain for God, the Lord yet
proved himself to be faithful to a faithless people. He would cleanse his house. He would throw out the corrupt. and he would install a new order. For simplicity, we'll call it
conversion. He would make the change because
there was none fit amongst men to do it. So in the midst of
all this debauchery, of all of this wicked, God raised up this
child, Samuel. And the child grew, and the child
grew on. there was a hand of protection
upon Samuel. And when the Lord saves, He keeps. That's one of the wonderful things
about the grace of God. When He brings a sinner into
His family, when He reveals that sinner to be one of His own dearly
beloved sons, then He takes charge and he controls and he keeps
and he saves and he delivers. We talk about the perseverance
of the saints or the preservation of the saints and here's an example
of it in the life of this young man Samuel. Doubtless these sons
of Eli looked on Samuel with envy. They would distrust him
and distrust the evident way that God was pleased to bless
him. The child Samuel grew on and
was in favour both with the Lord and also with men, 1 Samuel 2.26. Compare those words with Luke
2.52. Listen to what it says here.
Let me read the Samuel verse again. And the child Samuel grew
on and was in favour both with the Lord and also with men. Luke 2.52, and Jesus increased
in wisdom and stature and in favour with God and man. I think the loveliness of this
type, this contrast, this comparison that we have between Samuel and
the Lord Jesus Christ We're not permitted to overlook it, we
can't overlook it, when the very testimony of Scripture bears
witness with such parallel, almost word for word, how that the Lord
Jesus Christ in his infancy and in his childhood was protected
and preserved by the overarching hand of God so that he would
grow in to be that priest of choice, that anointed one who
would serve his people and who would fulfil the purposes of
God for the salvation of his family. Growth, of course, is
an indication of life and Samuel grew And so it is with the people
of God, those that have been born again, those who have come
as those spiritual infants into the family of God. They have been brought as children
like Samuel was, taken and dedicated to the Lord as the blood of Christ
has brought them, perhaps as adults, perhaps as older folk,
perhaps as aged and elders, but yet brought as children into the family of
God. And we look for growth, do we
not, amongst those who are brought into the family of God? Shame
on us if by the time we've spent 10, 20, 30, 40 years professing
to be believers, we know little more than those who come into
our knowledge and experience of the Lord Jesus Christ in the
first week or two of their new birth. Sad to say, it often appears
as if those who are new converts are more eager for the things
of the Lord than those who have proved Him year after year after
year in their own life's experience. We grow physically, don't we?
And we should also grow spiritually. The Lord's people grow in grace
and in a knowledge of the truth. The Lord's people have an appetite
for the things of God. They have a desire to be under
the sound of his word, to be confronted once again with the
claims of the gospel and to have that comfort bestowed upon their
souls. That's the Lord's people and
the appetite of the Lord's people. And we rejoice to be in fellowship
with others who have the same desire. But at times the lessons of life,
spiritual life, Christian life, are hard. And the Lord purposefully
does it like that in order to try us and to test us and to
draw forth from us our faithfulness and our dependence upon him.
David, the young man, David, was not yet born. at the time
of Samuel's dedication to the Lord there at Shiloh. But David
would know, in his own life's experience, some of the trials
and the difficulties and the hardship of spiritual growth. Here's what he said. The Lord
is my shepherd. I shall not want He maketh me
to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside still waters. He restoreth my soul. He leadeth
me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Yea, though
I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear
no evil, for thou art with me. thy rod and thy staff, they comfort
me. Thou preparest a table before
me in the presence of my enemies. Thou anointest my head with oil,
my cup runneth over. Surely, goodness and mercy shall
follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the
house of the Lord forever. It was not right for Samuel to
stay a child. He had to grow and he had to
grow on. So must you, child of God. You have to grow. And that growth
might have growing pains attached to it. but grow we will and the
hand of the Lord will nurture and comfort and protect us to
the extent that there will come a time when we will be able to
say that though I've walked through the valley of the shadow of death,
the Lord was with me and surely goodness and mercy has followed
me all the days of my life. The Lord to the ministry for
Samuel, of which Samuel was as yet ignorant. And the saints
of God have spiritual service to commit to him. They have usefulness to the people
of God that yet has to be enacted and worked out. That's the reason
for our continued presence here. If you had no more service to
perform, the Lord would take you home right now. But it's
not like that. So we desire to find that service
that the Lord has still for us. And he is the one who alone makes
us fit for service. Thirdly, and in conclusion, let
me draw your attention to verse 35 at the end. of the passage
that we read together. Here we find, I believe, a beautiful
messianic promise. Let me read the verse to you.
And I will raise me up, this is God speaking through this
man of God that was sent to Eli. I will raise me up a faithful
priest. that will do according to that
which is in mine heart and in my mind. And I will build him
a sure house, and he will walk before mine anointed forever. To end the account of Eli's judgment,
we have a word of hope. Here is encouragement. Perhaps
it was comfort for Eli in the midst of this terrible judgment
that had come upon him and upon his family for generations to
come. I wonder, did Eli receive it
as such? He did say some apparently spiritual
things, but then many do. Many do. What was his heart really
like? It is easy to speak. It is easy
to use the vocabulary of Zion. It is easy to kid one another
on as to our spiritual wellbeing and state. But what is our heart
like before God? He knows, for he looks on the
inner heart of man. Eli was able to say, it is the
Lord. let him do what seemeth him good. The Lord has said that he would
raise up a faithful priest. Some have suggested in the commentaries
that this was Samuel or perhaps another priest at the time of
Solomon that would come. Samuel was not directly in that
priestly line. But I think that the Lord's people
who see these things with New Testament eyes and New Covenant
understanding rather prefer to see the Lord Jesus Christ in
this verse for he is the one to whom every prophecy points
and in whom every prophecy has its true fulfillment. The Lord Jesus Christ is that
faithful priest who goes into the presence of God to make an
offering for the sins of his people with his own blood. The
Lord Jesus Christ, and surely there is none else beside him,
of whom it could be said he was wise to know the heart and mind
of God. Who but God knows the heart and
mind of God? The Lord Jesus Christ was able
to accomplish the heart and mind of God. Only the God-man could
stand between earth and heaven, between sinners and perfect holiness,
and entreat the one for the other. And unto whom Was there ever
such a house built as the precious church of the Lord Jesus Christ
and his people? This surely is that sure house
raised up, the body of Christ of whom he is the head. Our blessed Saviour fulfilled
every requirement for the deliverance of his people. Nothing remains
to be done. and at the cross he declared,
it is finished. If some would say, well, how
could it be that this one who would be raised up would walk
before mine anointed forever? Well, the Lord Jesus Christ has
many offices. We've spoken recently about his
office as prophet and priest and king. And in one office,
He serves the other offices. And there is a beauty of the
way in which the perfections of Christ's offices work together
and secure the great purpose of God in salvation. But I think
there's another way to interpret it also. For not only was the
Lord Jesus Christ that priest raised up, the anointed of God,
but everyone who is in Christ is anointed in him. And surely
the Lord here, the Lord God, could be speaking about that
house, that people, that church that would be established, those
who are anointed in Christ. David could say, Thou anointest
my head with oil, my cup runneth over. And in 2 Corinthians chapter
1, verse 21, the apostle says, Now he which establisheth us
You're established when you're made into a house. He who establisheth
us with you in Christ and hath anointed us is God. Here is an anointed people. those
who are sinners and yet who have found one to entreat for them
before the Holy God, those for whom this priest has availed
in the offering of his own blood for their sins. The Lord Jesus
Christ walks before his people. He is their mediator. He is their
representative in the courts of heaven. He is their king. and he has entered in for us
to the Holy of Holies as our representative and as our peacemaker. He leads as a trailblazer and
we follow in his wake. Soon Israel would be in great
need. The old order was indeed to be
taken away and overthrown. the Philistines would arise. They would come to battle with
Israel, and Israel, in their superficial religion, in their
fleshy lack of understanding of the true spirit, do you know
what they would do, these superstitious fools? They would take the Ark
of the Covenant onto the battlefield. as a totem pole and they marched
around before the Philistines and the Philistines smote them
and Hophnii and Phinehas died in a day and old Eli tumbled
over in his fatness from his seat and broke his neck and died
and the ark was taken by the Philistines and it was taken
into their cities and all Israel lamented when God says he is
going to overthrow he overthrows in style. And yet, we have a beautiful
type in all of this. Because when God the Holy Spirit
brings conviction into the soul of a sinner, when he overthrows
that strong man's grip on the heart of a sinner and says, be
gone, and expels out of the soul of one of his dearly beloved,
one of his elect children, that wicked one, that evil one, then
it will be a great overthrowing, but he will bring in his new
rule and reign. Perhaps this morning you feel
a little bit condemned like Hophnii and Phineas. Perhaps you feel
judged like Eli. And yet amid the despair of conviction,
a man arises. Not Samuel, but one who overthrows
the old ways. One who brings in a new order. the Lord Jesus Christ, risen
from the dead to rule in his church, to build up his people
and to walk before them all our days. It is a blessed picture
of the grace of God to sinners like you and like me. May the
Lord grant us eyes to see beyond the types and to dwell upon the
realities of his revelation, to see the sun, and to trust
in him. Amen.