On January 15, 2009, US Airways Flight 1549 took off from LaGuardia airport in New York City, with pilot Chesley Sullenberger at the helm. After picking up enough speed on the runway, the plane became airborne and started its ascent, only shortly thereafter to run into a flock of geese, some of which damaged the plane’s engines, leaving it unable to continue its ascent. Captain Sullenberger carried on a conversation with air traffic control for about a minute and a half as he tried to determine options for a runway he could find to land the plane, and without being able to navigate to any of those options, he said in a typically cool flight captain voice, “We’re gonna be in the Hudson.” He managed to land the plan in the Hudson River and then ran through the cabin twice to make sure every passenger and crew member had been evacuated before he stepped off of the plane as the last evacuee. And the rest, as they say, is history. I thought of that story as I was studying this passage this week, thinking about it in the context of God’s promise to Abraham. God had promised Abraham a nation of descendants and the inheritance of a land, and at this point in the story, those promises have been fulfilled. Israel is a nation, and God delivered them from Egypt, entered into covenant with them, and brought them into the promised land. But like a plane that lifts off the runway and then loses engine power, you begin to wonder at this point in the story if God’s promises to Abraham are about to crash and burn after such a promising liftoff. Yes, Israel is in the land of promise, but they are not secure there. The book of Judges tells of numerous times when enemy powers invaded and oppressed them. And not only are they not secure, they are also at this point a disordered nation. There is no organized governing structure. There is no king in Israel, and everyone does what is right in his own eyes. And as the passage will show us today, the priesthood has become corrupt beyond repair.
So we are at a passage of Scripture of Scripture today that is raising the question of God’s faithfulness. Will his promise to Abraham really be fulfilled, or will it sputter and crash so soon after getting off the ground? And what we find in this story is that God is tenacious. He does not give up. He holds on through all the ups and downs. What we will see from this passage today is that in spite of the way things appear to us, God is always at work, often quietly and always patiently, for the fulfillment of his promises. He can be trusted, no matter how dark things may be in the world, in the church, or in our own lives. When your faith is tested, I hope this will be one passage you will remember to cause you to look for signs of grace even where at first glance it seems there are none.
I want to show you God’s tenacity from two main truths concerning Israel, one drawing primarily from chapter 2 and the other primarily from chapter 3. And then I will make a third point from them both that draws out a key application for us.
First,
The book of 1 Samuel begins toward the end of the period of the judges, when Israel had no king, and everyone did what was right in his own eyes. The most important institutional leader at the time is Eli, the high priest, who ministers at the tabernacle in Shiloh with his sons, Hophni and Phinehas. The darkness of this period of Israel’s history surely owes a lot to the corruption of Eli’s house. We are told in 2:12 that Hophni and Phinehas “did not know the LORD.” And because they did not know the Lord, they had run headlong into grievous sin. The text mentions that they treated the Lord’s sacrifices with contempt, and they would do this in two ways. Whenever a worshiper would bring the sacrifice of a peace offering, the fat portions (the good part) were to be burned on the altar as God’s portion. God gets the very best. Then the priest would be given the breast and the right thigh, according to the law in Leviticus 7. And as for the rest of the meat, the worshiper would prepare that to eat with his family as a celebration of their fellowship with God. Hophni and Phinehas made it a practice to do two things with these peace offerings. First, when the person who brought the animal was getting ready to burn the fat portions on the altar, one of the young priests would demand the fat for himself. Of course, many of the average laypeople in Israel knew better and would protest, “No, let that portion be given to God, then take what you want.” And if he met with any resistance, the young priest would threaten force, stealing from God with mafia-like tactics. And then, perhaps on other occasions, when the worshiper was preparing the portion for himself and his family to eat by boiling meat in a pot, one of the young priests would come with a three-pronged fork, jab it in the pot, and take for himself whatever came up, thereby robbing from the meal of the worshipers who were there. And so these two young priests showed contempt for the Lord’s sacrifices by stealing from the Lord and stealing from worshipers. And on top of that, the text mentions that they would also take to bed women who served at the tabernacle. Not only did that show utter disregard for marriage (it is likely they were both married; see 1 Sam. 4:19), and not only did it show utter disregard for the women who served there, but it also showed utter disregard for the holy place itself. This is God’s dwelling place, and Hophni and Phinehas treated it like an unruly frat house.
I just want to point out a quick side note that this is one passage among many in Scripture where a failure to honor God as God is tied to sexual immorality. Unrepentant sexual sin is an indication of a heart that simply does not fear God. Remember that the next time you are tempted to go too far with your boyfriend or girlfriend, or when you notice yourself inching toward betraying your spouse because of the unwise conversations you have been having with that coworker, or when you are about to search out pornographic videos on your device. When the temptations of those moments come, remind yourself that God will not be mocked, and you need to fear him. Hophni and Phinehas had no fear of God, and as a result they defiled the holy place and corrupted the worship of Israel.
I just want to point out a quick side note that this is one passage among many in Scripture where a failure to honor God as God is tied to sexual immorality. Unrepentant sexual sin is an indication of a heart that simply does not fear God. Remember that the next time you are tempted to go too far with your boyfriend or girlfriend, or when you notice yourself inching toward betraying your spouse because of the unwise conversations you have been having with that coworker, or when you are about to search out pornographic videos on your device. When the temptations of those moments come, remind yourself that God will not be mocked, and you need to fear him. Hophni and Phinehas had no fear of God, and as a result they defiled the holy place and corrupted the worship of Israel.
But Eli is to blame here as well. Yes, he protested his sons’ behavior, but he didn’t stop it. As high priest, his charge was to protect the holy place from defilement. And that means, no matter who may be treating God’s name with disrespect in the precincts of the holy place, Eli has the charge to deal with it and drive it out. He should have removed his sons from serving as priests, but he was too weak to do so.
Corrupt worship from corrupt priests has set the tone for a corrupt nation. And into this dark situation there comes an unnamed figure, a “man of God” mentioned in 2:27. He is not an institutional leader or influencer. We don’t even know his name. Seemingly out of nowhere, he arrives on the scene to deliver a message from God. He is a reminder to us that no matter how dark the times may seem, God has his faithful servants out in the world, quietly doing his work. Note God’s words through the prophet to Eli in 2:29: “Why then do you scorn my sacrifices and my offerings that I commanded for my dwelling, and honor your sons above me by fattening yourselves on the choicest parts of every offering of my people Israel?” There’s a suggestion that Eli, though he never stole the meat personally, nevertheless enjoyed eating what his sons had stolen. Family loyalty trumped devotion to the Lord in his role as high priest. Dale Ralph Davis says it well: “This prophecy against Eli emphasizes that you can end up in grave sin by thinking it very important to be nice to people. How easy it is to practice a gutless compassion that never wants to offend anyone, that equates niceness with love and thereby ignores God’s law and essentially despises his holiness. We do not necessarily seek God’s honor when we spare human feelings.”1 That is an especially important word in a day when human feelings have become the standard by which good and evil are judged.
The prophet foretells that Eli’s house will have a catastrophic fall. When God gets through with Eli’s line, it will be gone from the priesthood, gone from prominence in Israel, marginalized, and on the brink of starvation. And though Eli wouldn’t live to see all that would happen to his line, God promised him a sign: on the same day, your two sons will die. Let that be a sign to you that the Lord is against your house. And in place of the house of Eli, God would raise up someone else. Verse 35 says, “And I will raise up for myself a faithful priest, who shall do according to what is in my heart and in my mind. And I will build him a sure house, and he shall go in and out before my anointed forever.” This prophecy would come to fulfillment in the line of the priest Zadok, who came to prominence during the time of Solomon’s reign. And we are told in 1 Kings 2:26-27 that Solomon exiled Abiathar, the descendant of Eli, from the priesthood in fulfillment of this prophecy. God foretells through his prophet that a day is coming when Eli’s house will be unable to defile the holy place any longer, and Israel will have a faithful priest who will serve before God’s anointed king. The future of Israel will have both a renewed priesthood and a king to bring order and righteousness to this chaotic, godless nation. The awful situation we see before us is destined for a great reversal, because God is tenacious, and he will tenaciously defend his holy place.
Sometimes people say they can’t believe in God because of all the evil that is in the world. And sometimes they say they can’t believe in God because there is too much hypocrisy in the church. If you think about it, both objections are really, at root, the same thing: the claim that God is not really holy. If he were, wouldn’t he eliminate evil from the world, and wouldn’t he eliminate it from his church? The biblical answer is yes, God is holy. He is always true to himself. He never lowers his standards for anyone. And he will eliminate evil from this world. And he will completely purify his church. But he will do so according to his own timeline, not ours. So when we see wickedness prevail in the world or in the church, may we not be discouraged. Things have been bad before, but God is tenacious.
So then here is a second truth concerning Israel from this passage:
In chapter 2 between all the scenes of Eli’s house ruining the nation of Israel, we have snapshots in the life of someone else. Look at 2:11: “Then Elkanah went home to Ramah. And the boy [Samuel] was ministering to the LORD in the presence of Eli the priest.” Now look at 2:18: “Samuel was ministering before the LORD, a boy clothed with a linen ephod.” The next few verses are the last we hear of his parents, but they depart the story on a note of blessing. God gave Hannah three sons and two daughters, showing us that you can’t outgive God. Once her desire for a child was consecrated to the Lord, she received from him an abundance of blessing. But then the end of verse 21 tells us, “And the boy Samuel grew in the presence of the LORD.” Then verse 26: “Now the boy Samuel continued to grow both in stature and in favor with the LORD and also with man.” This story is getting a little interesting. We have little snapshots, nothing more, and yet small indications that God is preparing to raise up a new leader in Israel.
And then a decisive moment comes in chapter 3. Note first the author’s statement about the state of prophecy of Israel at this time. 3:1 says, “Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the LORD in the presence of Eli. And the word of the LORD was rare in those days; there was no frequent vision.” That means God did not reveal himself to prophets in Israel very often at that time. Israel had gone so deep into sin that God had largely stopped speaking to them. But things are getting ready to change. One night, as he lay sleeping in the tabernacle the boy Samuel heard a voice calling to him, “Samuel!” So he ran to Eli and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” Eli responded, “I did not call; lie down again.” And it happened again. And then again. It was actually the voice of God calling to Samuel, but Samuel did not know it because, as 3:7 tells us, “Samuel did not yet know the LORD.” Yet God patiently and gently called to this boy repeatedly, until Eli figured out what was going on and told Samuel how to respond. And so Samuel did, and a visible manifestation of God came and stood before him and delivered him a message about the imminent fall of Eli’s house. And the next morning, when Eli demands to know, Samuel reluctantly delivers his first prophetic word telling his mentor and caregiver the horrifying news that has come from God. With that experience, Samuel has now become a prophet. Look again at 3:19: “And Samuel grew, and the LORD was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground.” That means Samuel spoke infallible words that were not his own words, but God’s. What was the result? According to 3:20-21: “And all Israel from Dan to Beersheba knew that Samuel was established as a prophet of the LORD. And the LORD appeared again at Shiloh, for the LORD revealed himself to Samuel at Shiloh by the word of the LORD.” Prophecy returned to Israel, and in spite of the corruption going on at the tabernacle, Shiloh became a place from which God’s Word went forth to the nation.
There is an interesting parallel I want you to note. It is a little bit obscured in the ESV, but I want to point it out anyway. The last part of this section is 4:1a: “And the word of Samuel came to all Israel.” Now compare that to what had been said back in 2:14, toward the end of the verse: “All that the fork brought up the priest would take for himself. This is what they did at Shiloh to all the Israelites who came there.” The phrase “all the Israelites” is the exact same phrase in Hebrew that is translated “all Israel” in 4:1. What that tells me is that the author is picturing Samuel’s influence for good as matching in extent the influence of Hophni and Phinehas for evil.
In Deuteronomy 18:15, Moses told the Israelites shortly before his death, “The LORD will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen.” This was not just a promise of future prophets in Israel. It was a promise of prophets like Moses, a series of prophets who would hold a position of leadership and influence over the whole nation. Many prophets never had that. Consider the unnamed man of God in chapter 2. He was an outsider who likely lived on the margins of a wicked society. But Samuel represents the return of a national prophet, a prophet who holds institutional authority and wields influence over the whole nation. The Word of God, in other words, comes back to the mainstream of Israel’s life with Samuel.
Take heart! The Word of God will never perish from this earth. Even if the darkest of times, when there were only eight righteous people left on earth, Noah was a herald a righteousness, a preacher of the Word of God. And it is because the Word of God will never be extinguished that Jesus’ promise in Matthew 16:18 will stand: “On this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.” God will never withdraw his Word completely, and that means he will always have a people who have been drawn to faith by his Word in this world. The church of Jesus Christ, as messy and corrupt as it has been and continues to be outwardly, remains the only invincible institution in this world.
So in spite of the dark period that Israel is in at this time, God is going to defend the holy place by bringing down the house of Eli and raising up a faithful priesthood. And God prepares for that by raising up Samuel as a prophet to proclaim his Word to Israel. What does that mean for us today? Third,
With the judgment on Eli’s house looming and Samuel on the rise, pieces are coming into place for God to bring order to this chaotic nation and bring his promises to Abraham concerning the nation of Israel to fulfillment. There is still a long way to go, but the books of 1-2 Samuel will bring us to the point that King David will bring unity to the nation, triumph over its enemies, and most importantly, will establish pure worship of Israel’s God at a central location in Jerusalem. And then the kingdom of Israel will reach its high point under the peaceful and prosperous rule of David’s son, King Solomon. By the time we reach Solomon, the promises to Abraham that pertain to his earthly descendants will be fulfilled.
But even the fully formed kingdom of Israel would eventually fall. The house of David will ultimately fail, Solomon’s glorious temple will be toppled to the ground, and the people will be exiled to Babylon. That’s because the kingdom of Israel was not God’s final plan. It was always a type of something greater to come: the kingdom of God. God made promises not only to Abraham about his earthly descendants, but also about his spiritual descendants, a worldwide family that would experience God’s favor through a messiah to come from Abraham’s line.
So when we read the New Testament, what do we see? In John 2, we see Jesus coming to the temple in Jerusalem and cleansing it from defilement. Unlike Eli, Jesus defended the holy place for the honor of God’s name. He is himself the true temple, the dwelling place of God with man, who rules over his church, which is God’s dwelling place in every part of the world where two or three are gathered in Jesus’ name. More than that, he is also the Son through whom God has spoken to us in these last days, according to Hebrews 1:2. He is God’s final Word, the last of the prophets to come in fulfillment of Moses’ word in Deuteronomy 18:15. So if you want to know why we don’t listen to fools such as Joseph Smith, who claimed to receive new revelations from God to add to what we already have in Scripture, it’s because Jesus Christ is God’s final word, and once the testimony of his apostles about him was written down to preserve it for all time, God has nothing else that is new to say. The canon of Scripture has been closed because there are no more Deuteronomy 18 prophets to come.
And yet, while it is true that there is no more hereditary priesthood because Jesus is our high priest, and there are no more institutional prophets because Jesus is the final prophet, there is also a sense in which we are all priests in Christ, and we are all prophets in Christ. Because we are in Christ, we share in his priesthood. That means, through Jesus Christ, we have access to the holy place. God has seated us in the heavenly places with Christ, and we now serve him as priests in his temple, the church, through our sacrifice of praise and our intercessory prayer for one another. Moreover, we also share in Christ’s prophethood. In Christ, as we proclaim the message about him to the world and to one another, we speak as those speaking the very oracles of God, according to 1 Peter 4:11. It’s easy to let those words “priesthood” and “prophethood” roll off us like water off a duck’s back, but stop and think about what that means: in Christ, we are insiders with God, not outsiders. He has welcomed us into his home, and he has deputized us to represent him to the world. When we deserved nothing but exile from his presence into outer darkness forever, he has, through the atonement of his Son, made us his beloved people.
The tenacity of God in this passage—his quiet, patient, unrelenting work in fulfillment of his promises—points us where all Scripture points us: to Jesus Christ. And it tells us to embrace him by faith as our high priest and as God’s greatest revelation of himself to man. The next time you face discouragement over the madness of this world, over corruption in the church, or over your own sufferings or failures, fix your attention once again on Jesus Christ and say, “It’s going to be okay. My God is tenacious.” Amen.