A Lamb, a Stone, and an Altar

Samuel was a faithful prophet and a solid leader in His life.

Israel. So why did he identify himself as a sinner, a pilgrim, and a worshiper? We'll find out today on Truth for Life in a message titled, A Lamb, A Stone, and an Altar. Here's Alistair Begg teaching from 1 Samuel chapter 7, we're in verses 8 through 17.

Well let's pick up our study then midway through the chapter, and let's try and gather our thoughts under just three brief headings. Let's think, first of all, of a lamb, and then of a stone, and then of an altar. So first of all, in verse 9, so Samuel took a nursing lamb and offered it as a whole burnt offering to the Lord. Now, the context of that, of course, is that the Philistines, realizing that the people of God had gathered at Mizpah, had determined that they would come and attack them.

And as we noted in our previous study, the Israelites were actually fearful. They weren't presumptuous, as they had been on the prior occasion in chapter 4, but they now had been humbled, they were now aware of their dependence upon God. And since Samuel had promised to pray for them, they had now come to him and essentially said to him, We want to hold you to that promise. So do not cease, they said, to cry out to the Lord our God for us, because it is only in him that we will have salvation.

Now, in actual fact, later on in 1 Samuel, in what is essentially Samuel's farewell address, one of the things that Samuel says to the people is simply that, Far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord by ceasing to pray for you. And his role in the judging of the people and the setting them in the right direction and in calling them to repentance and so on is bathed, if you like, in prayer. And it is as he prays for them that he's made aware of them and of their need.

And the answer that comes is striking, isn't it? The soul, the conjunction there at the beginning of verse 9, the request of the people is, Please, cry out to God for us, pray for us. And then it is to Samuel and to this issue of sacrifice that we then come. So Samuel took a nursing lamb and offered it, and Samuel cried to the Lord. Now, surely there is something there that we're supposed to notice, and it is straightforward—namely, that Samuel knew that the only access to God in prayer is along the pathway of atonement. The only access to God is through the shedding of blood. And therefore, in fulfilling the call to pray for the people, he comes to God in the way that he must and in the way in which we must. When we read the Old Testament and we think about it in light of the unfolding of the new, we realize how this is in the most Old Testament of the New Testament books, Hebrews.

This is reinforced again and again, isn't it? Since we have confidence to enter the most holy place by the blood of the eternal covenant, let us then pray. So in other words, Samuel is picturing that in the approach that he now takes.

And by this means, he causes the people to see. Because Samuel was saying to the people in this sacrifice, What I am doing to this lamb right now is what should be happening to you. The punishment that you deserve is now falling upon this innocent lamb.

The lamb is a substitute. And so, when you come to this, as we do in a section like this, we have the benefit of reading it in light of the unfolding cumulative story of the entire Bible. So we are able to read this incident in light of the fulfillment of the picture itself.

But one of the things that we need to keep in mind is this—and I'm going to take a moment and say it to you in the hope that you will be helped by it. Earlier in Hebrews 10 and verse 4, the writer to Hebrews reminds the readers that the blood of bulls and goats cannot take away sin. All right? And yet it is the offering up of the blood of bulls and goats that is both prescribed by the Levitical law and performed in the sacrifices in which the people of God engaged. Which raises the question, surely the people then in the Old Testament are not to be regarded as having been involved in a religion that is unreal, or engaging in ceremonies that are without any substance, or providing sacrifices without any benefit.

No. Not for a moment. Imagine just for… This is one of the helps of the Psalms. Because in the Psalms, we have the opportunity to see the Old Testament saints singing and praising God and rejoicing in the provision of God. So, for example, imagine joining some Old Testament saints, and we're going to sing together, Psalm 103 and verses 2–5. And so we stand together to sing. Someone gives out the psalm, we're going to stand as Old Testament saints, and we're going to sing together. Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, Who forgives all your iniquity, Who heals all your diseases, Who redeems your life from the pit, Who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, Who satisfies you with good, So that your youth is renewed like the eagle's. Now, it is accurate to say that these Old Testament saints—for example, singing that song—enjoyed a forgiveness in the exercise of those sacrifices. They enjoyed a forgiveness in light of what Christ would achieve—in theological terms, proleptically. For those of you who are medics, you know the word.

In anticipation of the science that is involved in that. That was true. That was absolutely true.

But here's the thing. They were not busying themselves with unrealities. They were not walking around in the shadows. If we had met them coming out of the temple, they would have said, My sin, O the bliss of this glorious thought! My sin, not in part but the whole! In other words, if we could step inside the Old Testament and be with them, we would rejoice with them in the reality of the forgiveness that was promised to them in the doing of what God required of them in the sacrifices.

The fact that the cumulative impact of it is revealed ultimately in Jesus is also grounded at the other end of the fact in that the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world was chosen before the foundation of the world and slain before the foundation of the world. So it's enough to keep you up all night thinking about it. And you said, Yes, well, we've thought about it finally and long enough. Thank you very much. All right.

But look at what is happening there. In this Lamb, Samuel had spoken the word to them, and they trusted it. Samuel had prayed for them, and they trusted him. Samuel had offered a sacrifice, and they trusted in the sacrifice.

Allow the cumulative impact to lead you forward. Jesus comes and speaks the very word of God to us, and we trust it. Jesus intercedes on our behalf before the Father, and we trust him. Jesus offers up the sacrifice of himself, and we trust in it. And so Samuel took a lamb.

Secondly, as you go on, you will notice the place of the stone. A remarkable deliverance came about, as we saw just in passing earlier, this appearance of the thunder. God is in control of the affairs of our world, the tides and the movements of the planets and the spheres. And so, for him to thunder with this mighty sound and throw them into confusion and to lead them into defeat, and the men of Israel going out and chasing them down the hill, as it were, as far as Bethkar—nobody actually knows where this place is.

Well, nobody that I know knows. And then a deliverance like this couldn't be allowed just to pass away and sink into oblivion. And so, in keeping, again, with pattern in the Old Testament, Samuel decides to take a stone and to set it up as a memorial. The lamb has now been sacrificed.

The Philistines have now been vanquished. And so the stone is put in place—a memorial, not to recall the names of the dead, but a stone to highlight the living Lord God. The word Ebenezer means just simply stone of help, or he is their help. And so Samuel says, What we're going to do is we're going to put a memorial right here, so that every time everybody comes past this way, comes back into this place that we know as Ebenezer, they will not be in any doubt. It is vitally important that this happens, so that with the psalmist in one of the psalms of ascent, I lift my eyes to the hills, and where does my help come from?

My help comes from the Lord. In years to follow, there will be picnics, and the people will be there at the stone, and they will be opening up their stuff, and some of the children will be running around and saying, And what is this stone about, Grandpa? And they'll say, Well, we have a wonderful story to tell you about that.

And then the story will unfold. And one generation will praise his name to another, and they'll say, This is how the Lord helped us. When I was young, this was it. In my middle age, this was it.

He kept me through all these years, through all the changing scenes of life. That's why we put the stone here. Did you see in the press, was it only today, the piece by this young lady, a forty-one-year-old lady, and she is an entrepreneur and something else? I was struck by it because of the things I was thinking about, about memorials. Her company is called Recompose.

The system is recomposition. It is a trendy alternative to burial or to—what do you call it if you don't get buried? Cremation. That's it.

You'd think I would know that. It's not nice to talk about, but I want to show you how different things are in the Bible to this nonsense. The theory on it is that your remains will be turned into compost, into a kind of sanctified form of mulch. You will pay dearly for this, but you will be able to feel good about yourself because it will make an impact on the generations to come, not least of all in relationship to your carbon footprint.

Quotes from the material, we have calculated carbon savings of over a metric ton per person. And the reason this is so significant, recomposition allows us—now, notice carefully—allows us to give back to the earth that supports us all our lives. Mother earth birthed us, mother earth supports us, and therefore we will be returning ourselves to the mother who has watched over us and provided for us. Loved ones, this sounds esoteric.

It is increasingly mainstream—not necessarily the company, but the concept. Do you see how vastly different it is, how vastly different, from the prospect of the believer? God, you created the heavens and the earth. There's a land that is fairer than day. You are the risen Lord Jesus Christ. You triumphed over death.

There will be a new heaven and a new earth in which dwells righteousness. Oh, people think I'm crazy. They say, Oh, you're all into gravestones and funerals, and you're always on a boat. You want a cemetery and all these kind of things.

Yes, I absolutely do. It's about time somebody other than myself stepped forward and acknowledged that one of the ways in which we speak to an alien culture like this is in the matter of death itself—is in being able to say to our children and grandchildren, There is a marker here, and the marker is here purposefully, so that people might know when they pass. There's a reason why Noah built the memorial. There's a reason why Moses built the memorial. There's a reason why Samuel put this in place.

It's not—unless you're an evolutionist who thinks that any old news is just old news and to be discarded—but if you're a biblicist, then you realize that these things are there to teach us and to help us. Now, here's a wonderful thing, and I hope that this will be of encouragement to all of us. As I tried to say in our earlier study, Ebenezer previously had been for these people the place of defeat, the place of sin, the place of sorrow, and it has now become for them the place of repentance and the place of victory. So that, in a just fantastic way, it is a reminder that God is able to take all of those past disappointments and failures and sins and stuff, the things that when you go back to that point, you find yourself there again. He's able to take that and say, No, look, we're gonna put up a new marker here, right on this very same spot, so that you will be able to say that God has done this for us.

That seems to me just to be intensely practical and very, very honest. A lamb, a stone, an altar. And just a word. The impact of the victory is such that in verses 13 and 14 the Philistines are subdued, the border towns are now back in the territory of Israel, and peace has been established not only with the Philistines but with the Amorites, who are part of the larger Canaanite population. And then a little summary statement there that takes us to the altar at the very end of verse 17. Samuel judged Israel all the days of his life. It's interesting, when you read the Bible, the few times in which Samuel appears other places. For example, in Psalm 99, the psalmist writes, Moses and Aaron were among his priests. That's the priests of God. And then it says, Samuel was also among those who called on his name. So he gets special mention, along with Moses and Aaron, because each of them had been gifted by God to lead his people. And so all the days of his life he was preaching to them and praying for them. And verse 16, he went on a circuit from place to place, providing them with guidance and encouragement and direction and saying to them, Make sure you direct your hearts to the Lord. And he did this all the days of his life. This wasn't a short-term project. This was the long haul. If you compare the excitement of the earlier part in the chapter at Mizpah and the thunder and all that went along with that, you see, few people's lives are sustained, few lives are marked by Mizpah events.

Most of our lives are marked by ordinary events. And Samuel is a wonderful reminder to us, isn't he? So he would go around, and then he would go home. And he went home, because his home was there. And he did the same thing when he was in his own home, and he built an altar there. In other words, like Noah before him and Moses before him, he publicly and privately identified himself by the building of an altar, whether it was in his front yard or his backyard or in his house or up on the top of the hill, we don't know. But people would have said, You know, that's Samuel.

If you want to know anything about Samuel, you go up there, he's there. He has an altar there, you know. And it's not an altar to himself but to the living God. So what he did was he identified himself first as a sinner in need of the provision of God, secondly as a pilgrim in the service of God, and thirdly as a worshiper in the praise of God. Sinner, pilgrim, worshiper.

That pretty well does it, doesn't it? But, you know, just when you want it to then read—and they all lived happily ever after—you go to the beginning of chapter 8, and what do you discover? You say, Well, we're not doing chapter 8 yet. Yes, you are.

Right now you are. Old age. When Samuel became old, old age became the occasion of errors in his judgment. We might say, towards the end of his life, he began to allow his heart to rule his head. It seemed to him a good idea to bring his boys into the family business, as it were, in terms of the judging of Israel. But it proved to be a bad decision. Because they were able to engage in the routine, but they didn't enjoy the relationship with God that their father did.

He toured the circuit. So did the boys. But they failed in the matter of truth. They failed in the matter of righteousness. Scripture and history record that the best of leaders may be called to bear heavy burdens in this regard. That's why we all need the Lamb. We all need to set up that stone. And we all need to make sure that in the secret place—not in the public arena—that your children and your grandchildren will be able to say, she was a sinner, a pilgrim, and a worshiper.

That'll be a fine legacy. You're listening to Truth for Life with Alistair Begg. You've been listening to the final message in Volume 1 of our study titled, Give Us a King, from the book of 1 Samuel. If you've enjoyed learning from these opening chapters in 1 Samuel, you can hear the rest of Alistair's teaching through this entire book.

Listen for free online using the mobile app by searching for the title, Give Us a King. Or you can own Alistair's teaching through this Old Testament narrative on a USB drive that's available for purchase on our online store at truthforlife.org. God calls us to be devoted to one another in love.

But what should that look like for us today? How can we be the kind of church members who make a real difference in one another's lives? Today we want to recommend to you a book that will not only inspire you to get involved in your local church, it will help you get excited about it. The book is titled, Love Your Church, and it's written by Toni Morita. Request a copy when you give a donation to support the teaching you hear on this program. Visit us at truthforlife.org slash donate or call us at 888-588-7884.

I'm Bob Lapine. Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoy your weekend as you worship with your local church and then join us Monday as we begin a study in the book of Titus. We'll hear how Paul advises a young pastor and his congregation to live lives that reflect their beliefs in the midst of a culture rife with moral and doctrinal confusion. A time not unlike our time today. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life where the Learning is for Living.