Eli in the Old Testament had sons who were priests set apart by God for sacred purposes, yet they were both spiritually and morally corrupt. They abused God's provision.
They used their position for personal gain. Today on Truth for Life, we'll learn more about the contemptuous ways of these wicked priests and how God dealt with them. Here's Alistair Begg teaching from 1 Samuel chapter 2 verses 11 through 26. They were also, the record tells us, robbing God of that which belonged to the Lord himself. Again and again you read that when God instituted these things, the fat was to be burned off as a pleasing aroma to the Lord. Then the people were able to say, And the reason that we're not diving in right now is because this aroma is a sacrifice of praise to Yahweh, the God who has provided everything for us, not least of all forgiveness for our sins. So, Hophni and Phinehas said, No, we're not gonna do that either. And they gave instruction to their servant, If the worshiper protests when you go at them in this way and ask for the raw meat, then just take them by force. Don't be bothered with it. Use force to secure our greedy, godless ends.
Thus, 17, the sin of the young man was very great in the sight of the Lord, for the man treated the offering of the Lord with contempt. Now, at this point, the darkness lifts momentarily. The mood shifts. The melody is no longer discordant but tuneful. And what do we have?
A boy clothed with a linen ephod. A little boy classically insignificant in contrast to the domineering forcefulness of these worthless men. Another reminder that runs all the way through Scripture that when the odds seem overwhelming, when the darkness is apparently all-encompassing, God shines his light into the darkness. You think about that as you're driving away and through the week. You think about how many times we have this kind of intervention. Do you remember the overwhelming odds that were represented at the time when that great crowd of people had come to hear Jesus speak and to perform miracles?
And now it's towards the end of the day. And so the disciples, with an expressed concern for the well-being of the crowd, come to Jesus and say, You know, it's probably a good idea to send all these people home, because otherwise they're gonna be stuck here, and there's nothing at all to eat. And remember, Jesus says, Well, does anyone have anything to eat? And they say, Well, there's a boy—there's a young boy here.
He's got five loaves and two fish. But what are they, among so many? To which essentially Jesus says, Just wait and see.
Just wait and see. If anybody looked at the situation, they would have said, What good is some little boy dressed up like a priest in the midst of all this darkness and all this chaos? You know, my friends, that's exactly what people do say about the Lord Jesus Christ in our culture. Who is this? What child is this that laid to rest in Mary's lap is sleeping in the midst of all this darkness? You see, the domestic circumstances of Samuel stand in direct contrast to the domestic circumstances of Hophni and Phinehas. Hophni and Phinehas have a dad who's AWOL. Samuel has a mom who's on her game. And I make no apology for loving the intense humanity that is represented in this simple statement. And his mother used to make for him a little robe and take it to him each year.
Think about this. She would always go up each year. We know that from chapter 1. But when she went up, it was a time of great bitterness and disappointment and pain, because she was childless, and she hated the thing, and Pnina gave her the business, and it was a disaster. But she went.
Circumstances have changed. She still goes, now in a different spirit. No, she didn't get this in Old Navy. She used to make it for him.
She made it for him. I admire people who can make things. You know, there are consumers, and there are creators. You know, I consume. I'm gonna consume my lunch. If you left me to create it, I would be somewhat emaciated. I can't make anything, except a mess. So I'm in awe of people who make stuff—carpentry, things—and there's something wonderful about it.
Because there's so much thought in it, there's so much engagement in it, there's all the conversation that must have taken place. How much do you think he will have grown this year, Elkanah? Do you think the sleeves are long enough?
Well, let me see them. Well, we'll find out when we get up there, because if his sleeves are up to here, we'll know that you got off the mark last time. I could do a whole sermon here on Samuel's robe, but I'm not going to, because the robe appears throughout, and it gets really quite amazing.
And in actual fact, Samuel is going to wear a robe for the rest of his life and beyond the rest of his life, because he's covered over with a robe of righteousness, as in the prophet Isaiah that is provided only in Jesus. Oh, this is terrific. And in that context, Eli, he would bless Elkanah and say, May the LORD give you children by this woman and do so for the petition she asked of the LORD. She didn't ask for six kids. She asked for a boy. She asked for a child. And in answer to the petition, she discovered that God is no man's debtor. She discovered that you can never outgive God. She gave her boy back, and she has now conceived three sons and two daughters. She, who has described the fact that the baron now has seven, she's up to six. Well, that's the little shining light, verse 21, and the boy Samuel grew in the presence of the LORD.
Do you track with us? I don't know. This may be terrible, but I can see it now. I can see the light is just shining on him, and as the light dims, we descend into darkness once again. So we've got this boy who's growing, and we've got this Eli who's dying. So Samuel's growing, Eli's dying. Eli was very old. How old?
I don't know. He could still hear, we know that. Now, Eli was very old, and he kept hearing.
So that's good. But what he was hearing was absolutely reprehensible. He was hearing all that his sons were doing to all Israel and how they lay with the women who were serving at the entrance to the tent of meeting. The people that were coming to the tent of meeting were supposed to come there to confess sin, not to commit sin. But these boys had turned the tabernacle into a bordello.
They had done, in 1000 BC—what we find is happening in 50 AD when we read the New Testament letters and which we are aware is happening today within the framework of expressions of contemporary religion amongst us. The devil really has only got one or two ways of going at things, but he does it again and again and very successfully. I watched the Chronicles of Narnia yesterday afternoon. It's wonderful, having grandchildren, and you use them as an excuse. But as I was watching—and I was thinking about this and watching that—but then it made me think about screw-tape letters and how screw-tape says to Wormwood, you know, one of the ways that we can get at the patience, the followers of our enemy, namely God—one of the ways we can do this is we will encourage them to take good things that God has given them but to take them at the wrong time or in the wrong place or with the wrong people and in the wrong quantities.
And what do you find? That wholesale greed and gross immorality run like a dart, dart line through the story of the church. So, food, gluttony, sex, immorality—we just track down the line. So, these boys—these boys—reveal the fact that the wickedness of the human heart routinely expresses itself in this kind of manner. And they were doing this routinely.
It was a recurring pattern. What about Eli? With Eli, it's a case of too little, too late. He had the power to remove them—he was the one in charge—but he didn't have the will to remove them. Before we criticize him too quickly, it is very easy, isn't it, to allow our natural human affection to triumph over the call of God? It'd be very hard for him to throw them out. He should have. Still be very hard.
Sometimes true love has to do the really hard thing, and it is a false love that fails to do the hard thing. They wouldn't listen to the voice of their father. He had spoken to them. He had explained to them in verse 25a that if someone sins against a man, God will mediate for him. I think what is in mind there is what you have in terms of the law of God— and again, you can read this, for example, in Exodus—in the law of God, God has made provision for dealing with the sins of people against one another. So there are all kinds of mechanisms written into the law to deal with this, if you stole an ox or if somebody did something and so on.
All of that is there. I think that's what it's about. If someone sins against a man, God has created a place of mediation. But if someone sins against the Lord, who can intercede for him?
Well, some of you are gonna immediately say, Well, of course, Christ himself will intercede. Yes, we know that. That's not the point that is being made here. The point that is being made here is that these fellows showed contempt for the very means that God had given for dealing with their sins.
Right? So here is the way in which God deals with sin. They said, We don't care. In that respect, they were similar to Pharaoh once again in terms of their defiance. Because you remember that when Moses goes to Pharaoh, the record makes clear that Pharaoh hardened his own heart. But it also says that God hardened Pharaoh's heart—that the hardening of Pharaoh's heart was not only an expression on the part of Pharaoh himself, but it was an expression of the judgment of God on Pharaoh himself.
And the one truth doesn't exclude the other. And the final section of verse 25 should be read in light of the complete Bible. They wouldn't listen to the voice of their father, for it was the will of the Lord to put them to death. It doesn't say, Because they wouldn't listen to their father, God decided to put them to death.
No. Now, our time is hastening by, but in terms of cross-reference in the New Testament, let us make sure that in considering this, we turn to Hebrews 6 and to Hebrews 10. And in Hebrews 6, talking about this amazing and mysterious reality of those who have tasted the goodness of the Word of the Lord and the powers of the age to come, and they have then fallen away, it is impossible to restore them again to repentance.
Why? Because they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt. They treated the offering of the Lord with contempt, the one basis upon which they might find forgiveness, in which their repentance might be real.
They then turned their back on that. And we won't turn to Hebrews—well, I will, because in Hebrews 10 you have the statement—what is it?—in verse 26, if we go on sinning deliberately, after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins but a fearful expectation of judgment and a fury that will consume the adversaries. They were the adversaries of God. And in her song, she says, the adversaries of God will be broken to pieces. Loved ones, this is not easy material to convey or to ponder, but you read it in the psalm this morning. The wicked will not stand in the judgment nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. And that is what is here before us.
Blakey, who was a Scottish theologian in the nineteenth century and also a friend to D. L. Moody, this is what he writes concerning this. Hophnia and Phinehas experience the fate of men who deliberately sin against the light, who love their lusts so well that nothing will induce them to fight against them. They were so hardened that repentance became impossible. And it was necessary for them to undergo the full retribution for their wickedness. So their hardness was both their own choice and at the same time God's judgment on them for that choice. Dale Davis, who's a wonderful Old Testament commentator and a terrific help to me and, I think, to my colleagues too—he says when we come to this, we have to beware of either becoming a critic, whereby we call in question the mercy of God, as if it were deficient, or whether we simply decide to be intellectually curious.
And this almost inevitably happens when this subject comes up. I guarantee you that within a matter of minutes, somebody would want to come if they don't get to me to say, Well, Alistair, at what point, then, in sin's progress does it become impossible to repent? If there is a point in the progress of sin where repentance is no longer possible, where the Spirit of God no longer strives with man, the curious says, What's that point?
And often the reason they're asking is because they want to get as close to that point as they possibly can. And that is why I say to you always, Today, if you hear God's voice, do not harden your heart! Because fear will harden his heart. Again, got another chance. Again, got another choice. Got another chance.
Again, again, again, and done. The Bible says that. It is the mercy of God that that is the case. Says Davis, What we ought to do is not find ourselves the critic or the curious but tremble before a God who can justly make sinners deaf to the very call to repentance.
He can justly make a sinner deaf to the call of repentance. The person says, I don't care. I don't care. Do you realize? No, I don't care.
They don't care. That's why the person says, Well, I think I maybe have then blasphemed against the Holy Spirit. If you're worried about that, I guarantee you you haven't done it. If you want to become a Christian, you're not on the wrong side of this divide. If you want to forsake wickedness and trust Christ, do it!
Because a day will come when you won't even care about doing it. And that is what had happened to these characters. That's dark, isn't it? Then the light shines again. The light turns on to our boy. He continues to grow in stature, in favor with God and with man. Which should make you think of Luke chapter 2 and the description of Jesus as he grows? A reminder that God is at work, shining his light into the background of chaos and corruption and decay.
God is always at work in the darkness. J. C. Ryle, the bishop of Liverpool, has written a wonderful book on some of the folks in eighteenth-century England whom God raised up to preach. And the opening chapter in the book is entitled The Religious and Moral Condition of England at the Beginning of the Eighteenth Century. And The Religious and Moral Condition of England in the eighteenth century almost defines darkness, defines the morass, the quagmire of man's superficial religion and multiplied sin and disinterest in God.
And then he just gives to us a whole series of fellows who were born. Wesley, 1703. Whitfield, 1714. Grimshaw, 1708. And Daniel Rowland in Wales. If you read Lloyd-Jones, you know he was a huge fan of Daniel Rowland. And Daniel Rowland, 1713.
Well, look how dark and empty and over Christianity is in England, people would have said. What are you doing, God? Well, there was a boy—John. There was a boy—Daniel.
There was a boy. And in actual fact, that's the story of the entire Bible, isn't it? For unto us a child is born, and unto us a son is given. But if we reject that boy, if we spurn that love, if we turn our back on the expression of God's mercy, which is revealed in the prospect of judgment, we remain without God and without hope in the world.
And that would then mean that we spend eternity in hell. That is Alistair Begg with a sober reminder about hardening our hearts, and also with an encouraging reminder that even in the bleakest of times, God is at work. You're listening to Truth for Life. We hope you'll keep listening. Alistair will be back in just a moment to close with prayer. I know many of you are familiar with the Basics Conference. After two years off, it is returning to Parkside Church in May of 2022. This is a well-attended conference that refreshes men who serve as pastors and Christian leaders, sends them back to their home churches, refreshed and renewed for further gospel work. Basics begins on Monday, May 2nd this year. It concludes on Wednesday, May 4th.
The theme is quite fittingly back to Basics. The speakers include Alistair Begg, Tony Morita, and John Woodhouse. They will be encouraging pastors to continue to faithfully teach God's Word.
Be sure to register before March 1st at BasicsConference.org. And there are still a few days left for you to request your copy of Little Pilgrim's Big Journey. If you're a fan of John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, you'll love the way this children's version closely follows the original storyline, but using language that children can understand. And the book is yours when you donate to support the teaching you hear on this program. Just visit truthforlife.org slash donate, or call us at 888-588-7884. By the way, you can purchase additional copies of Little Pilgrim's Big Journey as gifts, or it can be used in a Sunday school class.
The books are available to buy at our cost at truthforlife.org slash store. Now here's Alistair with a closing prayer. God our Father, look upon us in your grace. Grant that the words of my mouth, the meditation of our hearts, may be found acceptable in your sight. Draw us, Lord, unreservedly, each of us, to living childlike faith in your dearly beloved Son. For we pray in His name. Amen. I'm Bob Lapine. We hope you enjoy your weekend as you worship with friends and family at your local church, and be sure to join us on Monday when we'll find out why it's not necessarily a dream come true for you to get the desires of your heart. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.
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