The stark contrast is they were not sons of God, they were sons of Satan. And worthless men. You can do a whole study on the movement of that word, how it becomes a proper noun, and moves from a noun to a proper noun. And God is not their father. Satan was their father.
We all know Jesus said that about the Pharisees. You're of your father, the devil, and the works thereof you do. Man, could you, what would you pay to be there to see him shoot those guys down like that with truth? You're listening to Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher, Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel, Mechanicsville.
Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of 1 Samuel. Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about cross-reference radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. And now here's Pastor Rick in the second chapter of 1 Samuel on today's edition of Cross-Reference Radio. The state of the poor, is not necessarily their doom. Just because they're poor doesn't mean, of course, they're judged.
And thus, Lazarus, the angels. carried him And the rich man was buried. Verse 8. He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the beggar from the ash heap. To set them among princes, to make them inherit the throne of glory.
For the pillars of the earth. Are Yahweh's And he has set the world upon them. Of course, this is very poetic. The metaphor of setting the world on pillars, there is no turtle holding up the earth. And there are no rolled columns either.
Uh He raises the poor from the dust. The old King James, more poetic here, in the beggar from the dung hill. The word dung rings bells when we hear it. It's supposed to ding, but it's dung, and it has a different meaning. And we know it.
But it it is broad meaning. And here it gets a trash heap. You know, uh it was easy to handle, you know, the waste from animals if you lived out in the country, but when you started moving into the city, now you had issues. And these piles, these heaps would Certainly be something that you did not want to be around. But it is where some people found themselves.
as do many. The ashes is not an unfortunate interpretation. Ashes are things spent. Things that have been consumed or sacrificed. They are things that are gone.
And this is uh the imagery here is is uh spoken by one that knows what she's talking about. This verse pictures the gospel, the rescue of sinners from this pile of ashes of a life, this waste of a life. You hear the unbeliever lament this life. They are those who lament without a hope. All they do is wring their fingers.
Oh, it's so messed up. You know, the news, the politics, the world's going crazy.
Well, what's going to happen when you die?
Well, I just made something up, and it's got to happen, right? I just made it up. It's me, after all. How could I be wrong?
Well, this change in Hannah's social position was one that changed her from. shame to dignity. Fraught with poetic metaphor. Is this Poem of Hannah, this prayer. uh demonstrating she was well educated and not only well educated, she knew what to do.
It's one thing to be an A student. And we would like all of our children to be A students. It's something else to know what to do with being an A student. You can be a Lex Luther character. We have all this genius, and you just do evil with it.
Verse 9. He will guard the feet of his saints, but the wicked. shall be silent in darkness, for by strength no man shall prevail. Let's just take two New Testament verses that comment on this. 1 Peter.
The first five. Uh chapter one, verse five. Speaking of the righteous who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation, ready to be revealed at the last time. I mean, I love, you know, when the saints go marching in, I'm going to be in that number. When the saints are gathered around the throne.
That is going to happen to us. That is on the calendar. You keep calendars, you check them, that one's coming. Um I remember when I got out of boot camp, they give you a calendar, you know, and a bunch of other stuff, a toothbrush, too. Uh random.
Anyway, I still have my calendar and I would count down the days when I'm gonna be out of here. Uh well The day did finally come. It was a little underwhelming. But It ain't going to be underwhelming when this calendar date comes. It is going to be the most glorious thing we've ever experienced.
Anyway, Ephesians chapter 2 comments on this. Remember her comment. For by. Strength no man shall prevail. fundamental before the presence of God.
Well it works with man to man perhaps, but not with God. Ephesians 2: For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God. Not by works. lest any man should boast.
No boasting to God. Verse 10: The adversaries of Yahweh shall be broken in pieces from heaven. He will thunder against them. Yahweh will judge the ends of the earth. He will give strength to his king and exalt the horn of his anointed.
no fear in this woman. No who God kills. You know, let me tell you, God is sovereign, and He does kill, and He does make alive. And you have every bit of a choice in this matter. And so here she is saying, the adversaries of the Lord shall be broken in pieces from heaven.
Sound doctrine through and through. He will thunder. He will judge the ends of the earth. He will give strength to his king and exalt. the power of his anointed, the horn there.
Psalm 2, verse 9: You shall break them with a rod of iron, you shall dash them to pieces like a potter's vessel. We're not to pray that way so much nowadays, but God is still going to do those things. Genesis 18, one of the most sort of a doctrinal statement that covers the scripture. From Abraham. Far be it from you to do such a thing as this.
God is saying, Watch it, Abraham, but you're telling me what's far from me. To slay the righteous with the wicked.
Well, that's true, Abraham. I don't slay the righteous with the wicked ultimately.
So that the righteous should be as the wicked, far be it from you Now here it comes. Shall not the judge of all the earth do right? Absolutely. every single time. But according to his definition of what is right, and so we study righteousness.
As students of Scripture, so we can understand what God says is right and what God says is wrong. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled. Hopefully, as a Christian, you have struggled with verses, you have wrestled with them. You have wrestled with promises of God. Or, you know, that's part of true, of genuine Christianity.
We are Perplexed, Paul said, but not in despair. Persecuted, but not forsaken. Struck down, not destroyed. That's Christianity. Otherwise, this is just um It's uh it's it's just not real.
He will give strength to his king.
Now, Hannah speaks about a king. There's no king right now in Israel. Moses hinted at a king in Deuteronomy 17. Went so far as to lay down rules for a king. It would not be unrealistic.
To say, you know, the Jews had to have had conversation, political conversation, about having a king. They didn't just one day say, you know, Samuel, your sons. Uh j they're they're they're creeps, and we want a king. They did not come to that in a moment. There had been something that had been stirring in the nation, all the way back to the book of Judges.
Judges chapter 9, this is Abimelech. He was technically Israel's first king. He was not. Anointed by God, and so he was not the first anointed king. That would be Saul, Judges 9:6.
And all the men of Shechem gathered together. all of Bethmilo, and they went and made Abimelech king. But God, that was not God's choice.
So, my point is: when she says he will give strength to his king, what king? They don't have one. Yeah.
So it is prophetic. And it's prophetic based on prophecy. And exalt the horn of his anointed.
Now, anointed, of course, Messiah. The word therefore anointed is where we get our English word Messiah, the Greek Christ. And the Jews again knew that there would be a ruler, not of this world, who would reign over this world. John the Baptist spoke of the coming one. John Or Luke's Gospel chapter seven.
Verse 20. John the Baptist has sent us to you, saying, Are you the coming one, or do we look for another? See, this is the anointed one. There are lesser anointed ones. They are still anointed.
David was an anointed king. Saul was an anointed king. What he did with his anointing was on Saul. What Judas did with his appointment was on Judas. Won't be blaming God for that.
That God called it long before the foundations of the earth were formed. doesn't mean that he caused it. Because God calls it doesn't mean he caused it. But it does mean he allows it.
So, John, when John baptized Christ, it was a public anointing. He immersed him in water in front of everybody that was present. They go, well, obviously. It was an anointing of Messiah the king. And that anointing distinguished Jesus from everybody else.
So when he comes out, John made the distinction: I'm not worthy to be baptized, to baptize you, you should be baptizing me. He'd been preaching about him. But then he hears about Jesus out with tax collectors and sinners, and he's wondering: is that the Anointed One?
Well, The one that Hannah is speaking of. Remember, in prophecy, Old Testament prophecy, there are near fulfillment and there are far fulfillments. There are those fulfillments that are partial fulfillment. They are historical to man, and then there is the absolute fulfillment, the climax of the prophecy, which is its far and truest fulfillment and that's why many of the prophecies are shared. between David and the Christ.
And it is, but then there are, but even in the reading, they excel.
So when you get to Isaiah. 53, he's not talking about a man. You know that. This is the anointed. He was wounded for our transgression, smitten by God, incidentally.
says the Prophet, These words are significant to Samuel because it will be Samuel who anoints the two kings. And now he's putting he's the one publishing his mom's prayer, and he gets to this about the horn exalt the horn of his anointed. And incidentally, the oil was likely kept in a horn. Poured out over the Anointed One. Verse 11 Then Then Elkanah went to his house at Ramah, But the child ministered to Yahweh before Eli the priest.
Now we begin, what we're beginning here is the stark contrast this time between the house of Elkanah and the house of Eli. One is moving to the forefront and the other is moving to the back. Samuel, but the child ministered to the Lord before Eli. Here he is paying his dues. You young Christians need to know.
about paying your dues. Use your strength while you've got it. Invest yourselves in your present time. In your education, in your exercise, invest yourself, it's for you. You're putting you into something for you to get something back later.
Samuel is ministering at the house of the Lord. He's doing all of it, he's an apprentice, so he's doing the gopher work. He goes for this, he goes for that. He does whatever he's sent to do, fetches water, go get a pail so the stronger men can haul the water. clean up, take out the trash.
And it appears, we're told actually, That Samuel excelled. as a youth. He worked hard. And it is repeated. This part, you know, he ministered before the Lord.
What does that mean to the New Testament Christian? Acts chapter 13. As they ministered to The Lord and fasted, the Holy Spirit said, Now separate to me Barnabas and Saul for the work which I have called them. Then having fasted and prayed, they laid hands on them and sent them away, and of course the rest is history. God anointed that relationship for one tour of duty.
And then the relationship was split. And then God had two tours of duty. One with Barnabas and Mark, and the other with Paul and Silas. Satan thought he broke them up. And Really what he did was he just spread it.
But here's another interesting thing here. It says, but the child.
Something very kind. About this Hebrew word is lost in the translation. The translators in the New King James, and I think the old two. have opted for child, but really the Hebrew word is the boy. The lad, the boy.
And so it just makes it personal. You can see the little boy. That's what he is right now. He's the little boy ministering in the house of God.
So you don't have to say, oh, he's just a kid, he can't serve. Yeah, they can.
Well, not when they're two months old. All right. I said no joking, and I should have kept to it. Anyway, translators, they are inconsistent too often, I think. They don't corrupt the text, but they do sometimes shave off the force.
I think it reads more forceful, but the boy ministered. Because He's moving into man's work. But not yet. not ahead of his time. He still has to grow physically and mentally and spiritually.
Later on, we'll be told in chapter 3 that Samuel didn't know the Lord yet. But he's serving here in in the house of God. Under the vows of his Mother and father. That's right. She made the vow, Elkhanor granted it, and there he is now serving.
And so the narrative, again, is shifting its focus from, as I mentioned, The house of Elkinah to the house of Eli, Elkanah, a good father. Eli, a poor father. Verse twelve.
Now the sons of Eli were corrupt. They did not know Yahweh. There's a stark contrast. It is blunt. It is to the point.
Literally, where he says they were, the sons of Eli were corrupt. These were sons of Belial. They were worthless men. And the stark contrast is they were not sons of God, they were sons of Satan. And worthless men.
You can do a whole study on the movement of that word, how it becomes a proper noun. It moves from a noun to a proper noun. And God is not their father. Satan was their father. We all know Jesus said that about the Pharisees.
You're of your father, the devil, and the works thereof you do. Man, what would you pay to be there to see him shoot those guys down like that with truth? You would think one of them would say. I don't want to be a son of the devil. What do I have to do to not be a son of the devil?
Repent. That times of refreshing may come. This was the case of Simon the sorcerer. And Peter told him, You're poisoned with bitterness and bound in iniquity. and he that you should repent.
And so the human capacity for God to be the Father. By free will, or Satan to be the father by withholding the free will from God. And Samuel is providing for us now both an eyewitness account and commentary. He was there, he knew these thugs, and they were thugs, these two men, the sons of. of Eli.
And he's on it because he learned a lot. You can learn a lot from being around bad leadership. He goes, oh, that was a mistake. I won't do that one. You get to watch it happen.
You're sorry, you have to live through it.
So it says they did not know the Lord.
So it is no surprise that there are unsaved people in pulpits. throughout the world. It was, it's no surprise.
Well, it may be a surprise to us to find that there are unsaved priests. ministering there in Shiloh. Nothing new. Today they're converting pulpits. To podiums, things that were supposed to speak the word of God are now speaking the word of people.
And churches have become community centers. And many people are very happy with that. Because the people come first, a little god on the side. You put the little bow on it, and it's no longer trash, right? Just put Jesus' name on it, and what you're doing really isn't wrong anymore.
Well of course that's not how it works. Samuel's sons will also be corrupt, but they will not be ministering at the temple. Samuel's a fierce dude. He hacked Agag and chopped him up.
So his sons will be 60 miles away. When we read about that, 1 Samuel 8, but his son did not walk in his ways. They turned aside after dishonest gain, took bribes, and perverted justice. And they were in Beersheba, not up in Ramah, where Samuel was from, or there in Shiloh, where the temple was. Very likely, Samuel drove him out.
That's why Samuel does not suffer the judgment that Eli does. Anyway, verse 13, the priest's custom with the people The priest's custom with the people was that When any man offered a sacrifice, the priests' servants would come with a three-pronged flesh hook. In his hand. while the meat was boiling, Now The priests had The right to a share of the offering, and it varied with different offerings. Eli's sons were sinning by taking what they wanted on demand.
And that's going to be stated in a moment. I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself. They would even jump the line. Those things that were for God, the fat of the animal, that was dedicated to God. They would take that too.
The law of Moses authorized that the priests would live off of the portions of these sacrifices. A sin offering, they'd take the whole thing. That belonged to the peace. You gave to the priest. But a peace offering, Which this is talking about now.
Because in the peace offering, the people would Eat m most of the sacrificed animal. sacrificial animal. This feeding of the priests is continued in the New Testament for the leadership of the church. 1 Corinthians 9: Do you not know that those who minister the holy things eat of the things of the temple? And those who serve at the altar partake of the offerings of the altar.
And so he's speaking about, of course, the connection between Judaism under the law of Moses and Christianity. That was now being developed. Later on, he'll say those who teach the word should have a double portion. He will say that in Timothy. He will say it several times.
It's not a promotion, it's just a fact. And there are those that try to corrupt this. I don't know how Christians can do this. It's like a Christian saying you shouldn't go to church. When the Bible says you're forsaking the assembly, you are...
A-W-O-L. Absent without leave, you're out of formation, you have an unauthorized absence. But Christians do this. I've heard people say pastors shouldn't get paid. Or people shouldn't tithe.
Then what do you sit on when you come to church? You bring a basket with you, just insanity. And, you know, don't put up with it.
Someone says that. I won't hear it, just if you can. If you've got a gun on you, maybe you might not want to say that. Anyway. I don't know how much to stay on this.
Of course, I racked my brains going over. Going over the Levitical laws is just really hard. Because so much of it is not clear, and some of it is very clear. Anyway. The first act of every peace offering was the animal was, of course.
Slaughtered and butchered, and the blood was taken and sprinkled on the altar by the priest. He would go through this: the burning of the fat, that was the bread for God, that was his part of the meal because it was a piecemeal, a communion meal with God. That would be his share. The meat would be the share. Of the worshipper, they would consume the meat after the priest got the breast of the animal and the right thigh.
What's happening here is they're taking more. including the fat. And we'll see the protest in a minute. I don't think there's anything else I should add. Verse 14, then he would thrust it into the pan, or kettle, or caldron, or pot.
And the priest would take for himself all that the flesh hook brought up.
So they did in Shiloh. to all the Israelites who came there. Also, before they burned the fat, the priest's servant would come, and say to the man who sacrificed, give meat for roasting to the priest. For he will not take boiled meat from you, but raw. In verse 16, And if the man said to him, They should really burn the fat first.
then you may take as much as your heart desires. He would then answer him, no, But you must give it now, and if not, I will take it by force. Imagine a pastor at the door with a gun. Where's your tithe money? I'll take it now.
Sorry, no checks, credit card cash. Uh it's just this craziest thing. Dissatisfied with their specified portions of the law, they sent their apprentice to start, you know. Strong-arming the people, extorting them. Whatever the three pong this trident, whatever it grabbed from the pot, the priest would take.
And never mind its preparation. And that's why the man protested and said, No, let's do the fat first. That goes to the Lord. That's why I'm bringing my offering here. You're corrupting my offering.
Can't argue much with a guy who's got a trident in his hand and You know, all you've got is a cow. Uh anyway uh This is um Robbery. They were stealing from the plate of God. Verse 17: Therefore, the sin of the young men. was very great before Yahweh.
For men abhorred the offering of Yahweh. It was a bombshell crime. Please. This ruined worship. Elkinah had to deal with this.
He had, just look, we're coming up here for the Lord. What they're going to do with this, we just got to focus on the Lord. I'm sure that's how a godly man would have dealt with this. He says, I'm not going to be deterred from coming to God's house because of them. Yeah.
Yeah.
Thanks for joining us for today's edition of Cross Reference Radio. This is the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel, Mechanicsville, in Virginia. Currently, Pastor Rick is in the book of 1 Samuel. If you'd like to listen again to this or other messages or share it with someone you know, please visit crossreferenceradio.com. Here, you can also listen to interviews with Pastor Rick to learn more about his life and ministry.
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