Good morning, Church of the Resurrection.
It's been a while since I've heard that, so it's really nice.
If you are new, my name is Somane Megadi.
I'm one of the pastors here at the church.
I've been gone for two months or so.
So if you've been coming and you didn't see me, here I am.
This is my first sermon since I came back, and I get to preach
on these exciting passages that we just read today.
We're walking through the book of First Samuel and so far we've
seen some very troubling things. Eli's sons, Hofni and Phinehas
have abused the priesthood with greed and immorality.
Eli has dishonored God by not correcting his sons properly,
and in fact, he is living off of the sin of his sons.
And we know that everyone in Israel was doing what was right
in their own eyes. Yet there is a bright light in
young Samuel who grows up in the Lord's presence, hearing his
voice and obeying God. Our passage today is first
Samuel 3 verse 19 to 422. It's found on page two, 13213 At
the beginning of that passage, we see that Samuel now is
recognized as a prophet all across Israel, from Dan to
Beersheba, north to South, and that God appears to him at
Shiloh, where the ark and the Tabernacle are, speaks to him.
Samuel receives God's word, and then he tells God's word to all
of Israel. He delivers it faithfully to
them. And then we come to chapter 4,
which is very dark, very heavy. In chapter 4, God brings about
the judgement that He promised against Eli and his family.
And even worse, something happens that has never happened
in the history of Israel before. The ark of the Covenant of God,
the throne of God, that holy place where God met with Moses
in the wilderness, is captured. God sends himself into exile.
This chapter confronts us with those two sobering realities,
the Lord's judgement and the Lord's exile.
And so we're going to explore both of these as we look in our
passage today. We're going to see how God,
God's judgement comes on his people for their sins, but also
how his exile, paradoxically, is actually a sign of hope, the
very means of deliverance for his people.
So yes, there is darkness and heaviness in this sermon, but
there is light as well. There is hope.
So let me pray for us. Your Word, Heavenly Father, is a
light into our path, a lamp for our feet.
And we pray that you illuminate our hearts by your Holy Spirit
so that we can see your word, that it would speak to us and we
would glorify your Son Jesus Christ.
In your name I pray. Amen.
All right, stick with me.
The first part of this is heavy, so stick with me.
So back in chapter 2, God condemned Eli for his complicity
in his son's corruption, for letting them defile the
sacrifices and molest the women who were working in the temple.
He promised to bring discipline for their unrepentant hearts,
and that's what chapter 4 talks about.
But Eli and his sons weren't the only ones who were guilty of
sin. The whole nation shared in the
sin. So Psalm 78, the Psalm that we
just read, is actually a summary of Israel history, and part of
that includes covers this particular story as well.
Psalm 78 tells us that all the people were faithless, breaking
God's covenant, and we get a sense of the weight of the sin
right from the start of chapter 4.
The Israelites March out to battle against the Philistine.
There is no order from the Lord. He didn't say do this.
They just went out to do it. They didn't talk to Samuel about
it. And it's probably because
they're seeking freedom from oppression, which is a good
thing. But in the first clash, Israel
loses 4000 men and the elders are wondering why Verse 3 Why
has the Lord defeated us today before the Philistines?
Now notice that they recognize that it was the Lord that
defeated them before the Philistines.
Now if these elders were worth their salt, they would have
remembered Deuteronomy 28, which says, But if you will not obey
the voice of the Lord your God, the Lord will cause you to be
defeated before your enemies. You shall go out one way against
them and flee seven ways before them.
And if they had really been worth their salt, these elders,
they would have gone straight to Samuel.
They knew he was a prophet and they would have said what should
we do? And at the very least they would
have called the people to repentance.
But that's not what they did. They said to themselves, hold
on, guys, come on. Wait.
God might have fought against us just now, but we've got the Ark
of the Covenant. We need to bring it to the
battlefield because if we do that, God must protect us.
The Philistines will have no power over us, as though the Ark
of the Covenant of God were a Talisman.
So they sent for the Ark from Shiloh, this ark.
Now remember the Ark of the Covenant has in it the 10
commandments, right? And when you look at verse 4,
the the the writer says it was the ark of the covenant of the
Lord of host who is enthroned on the cherubim.
It's like he wants to emphasize that this is the emblem of God's
glory, right? It's being brought into the camp
by the priests under the supervision of Hofni and
Phinehas, sort of the poster children of Israel's corruption,
with their unrepentant hearts weighed down by sin.
The people don't realize that they were not bringing victory
into the camp. They were bringing judgment, and
so they rejoice loudly. But God's glory and his covenant
carried, carried in the ark, stood as judgment against them.
And at the very least they were breaking the third commandment
by reducing the relationship with God to a transaction.
Or worse yet, they were treating him like a genie.
Give me whatever I want right now.
They were commanding God to bless the work of their hands
while they remain steeped in their sin.
And in so doing they were taking the name of the Lord their God
in vain. These idolatrous, Sabbath
breaking parent dishonouring, murderous, adulterous, lying,
covetous, unrepentant sinners, we're daring to ask God to bless
the work of their hands. In 2014, several news outlets in
Nigeria ran a story about four armed robbers that have been
arrested in Lagos. And these armed robbers
confessed that before every one of their operations, they would
pray to God Almighty to grant them success.
And they were very clear to God, please only send us sinners so
that the innocent would escape. I mean, I OK, so I think of
that. And the thing that comes to mind
is Psalm chapter 2, where God laughs in derision against the
witches. Like what are you all doing?
And that's exactly what's going on here with Israel.
But Psalm 78 tells us that God was not having it.
And so he stirred up the fears of the Philistines.
What is that loud uproar that we are hearing?
The camp of the Israelites, their gods have come amongst
them. These are the gods that
devastated Egypt, that superpower.
Whoa. We need to man up and fight.
Otherwise they're going to make us slaves the same way that we
have made them slaves. So take courage and fight, and
God hands His people over to the sword of the Philistines.
Their priests, Hofni and Phinehas were cut down in the
slaughter. And most devastating of all,
Psalm 78, verse 61, God delivered His power to
captivity, His glory to the hand of the folk.
You see, the Philistines didn't on their own power capture the
ark. God gave Himself over to them.
He went into exile. Judgment had come, but the
judgment wasn't complete just yet.
The story continues in verse 12, a man from Benjamin runs back
with the news to Shiloh. He sees Eli sitting at the
gates, the gate where judgment is usually meted out, ironically
enough. But he doesn't stop there.
He runs into the city, and he tells the people the news, and
there is an uproar. The people are mourning, and
this one stands in stark contrast.
The shout of joy when the Ark first arrived at the
battlefield. This uproar is right.
The people were right to weep over what had happened.
At least now they were beginning to feel, if only faintly, the
sorrow the God himself had carried for years as they
languished in their sin. Has anyone heard of drunken
Shakespeare? Yeah, yeah.
It's a theatre show where actors perform Shakespeare well while
one of them is deliberately intoxicated the whole time
they're drunk. The show is probably very, very
funny. I've never been there, but the
mastery is in how do these sober actors work with this one actor
who is really, really drunk the whole time?
When I first heard about it, I laughed.
It's a hilarious concept. It's probably very funny.
But then I have to check my spirit because the question came
to mind, Would Jesus be laughing at this or mourning because of
this? And what other things in my life
do I treat the same way? Things where my feelings don't
line up with God's feelings about that particular thing?
Am I really attuned to the sorrow that God feels over sin
in my life, in my community, in my city, in my nation, over what
I watch, what I read, listen to, participate and promote or
oppose? So I've been praying prayers
that God would give me his heart for all things.
God, you say I should love my enemies.
Well, please give me love for my enemies.
You said I should love all the people in this room, so please
give me love for all the people in this room.
You have told me that there are some things that I should abhor
and I should hate, and I should call an abomination because you
call them an abomination. So give me a heart that sees
these things as abominations, A righteous indignation against
these things, because I don't want to be rejoicing in the camp
when I actually should be mourning.
I don't want the judgement of God to be the thing that wakes
me up to the reality of his heart in my life.
Eli, blind as a bat. His physical blindness is
mirroring the dullness of his heart toward the Lord.
He hears the uproar and he asks what does this commotion mean?
And the man tells Eli everything.
Each piece of news is devastating, but nothing was as
catastrophic as the ark being carried off into exile.
Eli in his heart trembled. Rightly so, for the Ark of God,
the Kabode, the weight, the glory of Israel, was taken into
exile. And when this old priest heard
it, he fell backward. His own kabad, his own
heaviness, his own weight of sin was too much for him, and he
broke his neck. He was the high priest of God.
Rather than be filled with the kabad, the heaviness, the weight
of God's glory, he was filled with the kabad, the heaviness of
his own sin. And in one day, the word of
judgement spoken against Eli's family came to pass.
Now Eli stands as a warning to all of us who confess that Jesus
Christ is our Lord, our King, our Savior.
We too can become weighed down with sin to the point that even
though we carry some kind of pious concern for the things of
God, which is good, we do nothing about it.
We remain confined to our spiritual wheelchairs, unable to
see the light of God's truth. God wants more than just the
heart posture. He sees.
My heart is not enough. He actually wants us to do what
is right in His eyes. And this is especially a warning
to church leadership, to me, to Dan, to Andrew, to anyone who is
in spiritual authority, because we have agency and
responsibility to set things right in the sphere of
influence. In our sphere of influence, if
we sit in the sidelines and do nothing, we are in for it.
We must call out sin when we see it to do what Eli and the elders
of Israel refused to do. And we want to be able to say to
you, like Paul said to the Ephesians, that we are innocent
of the blood of all, for we did not shrink from declaring to you
the whole council of God. If we do not call out sin when
we see it and repent of it when God reveals it to us, we have
failed you. And most importantly, we fear
the Lord Jesus Christ. We want to be Samuel to you, not
Eli. And you know, this is really
hard work. It's overwhelming.
Trust me, it's over. If you are thinking of becoming
a minister, really take time to think about it.
This is not easy work. I plead with you, please pray
for us as we pray for you. We want to be Samuel to you, not
Eli. The story gets darker.
God had promised that Eli would have descendants and the
judgment on him and his house would pass down to them.
So Phinehas's wife gives birth to a boy she named Ichabod.
The glory has departed. The glory is in exile for the
rest of his life. Here's what Ichabod had to look
forward to for Samuel 233. The only one of you whom I shall
not cut off from my altar shall be spared to weep his eyes out,
to grieve his heart. And all the descendants of your
house shall die by the sword of men, Ichabod, a man of sorrows.
And you know it's entirely possible that he died before the
ark of God was ever returned to Israel.
Now that seems atrociously unfair.
Unfair. I mean, why should the Son
suffer for the sins of the Father?
But let's remember Ezekiel, what Ezekiel said.
If Ichabod walked in righteousness, he would not not
die for his father's guilt. Yet still his birthright now in
this chapter stood as a sign that God's glory had departed
into exile. And what about Finhas's wife?
Poor woman, being married to such a scum like Phinehas, what
did she go through? There are no victimless sins.
Even private sins have victims. And I know that many of us feel
like we are Ichabod or like we are Phinehas's wife, Suffering
for the sins of other people. Your whole life of felt like has
felt like 1 suffering after another laid on you by the sins
of others. Hold on with me just a little
longer, because there is hope. What adds to the tragedy of
First Samuel 4 is that the judgement was not only on Eli's
house and on the people and on his descendants.
It also fell on Shiloh, God's own dwelling place.
Psalm 78 verse 60 says God forsook his dwelling at Shiloh,
the tent where he dwelt among mankind.
And you know something, He never returned to Shiloh ever.
Rather, during Solomon's time, Solomon builds a temple for God
where God's glory settles in. But even that temple would prove
just as vulnerable to the people sin.
Listen to what God says to Israel centuries later when they
were yet in another cycle of sin.
Jeremiah 7 Go now to my place that was in Shiloh, where I made
my name dwell at 1st and see what I did to it for the
wickedness of my people Israel. And now, because you have done
all these things, says the Lord, and when I spoke to you
persistently, you did not listen.
And when I called you, you did not answer.
Therefore I will do to the house that is called by my name, in
which you trust, and to the place that I gave to you and to
your ancestors, just what I did to Shiloh.
And that's exactly what happened.
God's glory left Solomon's temple and it was destroyed.
The Church of God today globally carries.
The glory of God, but it also carries the glory of God
individually, more importantly as a community.
Jesus Christ, since enthroned in and through us the fierce glory
and power of the Almighty is upon our shoulders.
If the Church of God, if the Church of the resurrection.
If you and I have been overtaken by sin and are unrepentant, if
you and I, all of us, are as heavy as Eli, weighed down by
sins that so easily ensnare us with no heart of repentance,
Make no mistake, God will remove our lampstand from before Him.
This church will not last. It won't, because the judgment
begins with the House of God, with his temple.
Take a breather. Let's pivot a little.
I applaud you for sticking with me, because these are hard
things to hear, and rightly so. Sin is not to be trifled with.
God is not to be trifled with. But paradoxically, God's exile
is actually a means of redemption and salvation for His
people. So Psalm 78, verse 65 to 66 as
then the Lord awoke as from sleep, like a strong man
shouting because of wine, and He put his adversaries to rout.
He put them to everlasting shape.
You see, under normal circumstances, it should have
been the people who were sent into exile, and that will happen
later on in Israel's history. But here God Himself steps in,
goes into exile in in their place, and he tramples their
enemies. In the chapters that follow,
chapter 5-6 and seven, we see God in Philistine territory,
sort of the realm of death, and he defeats and humiliates Dagon,
the God of the Philistines. And he inflicts the Philistines
with tumors and with panic, and then he compels them, forces
him, forces them to take his art back to Israel, sort of like a
resurrection of sorts. And then in Chapter 7, he grants
people, his people, victory over the Philistines through Samuel.
If that sounds familiar, it's because it is.
This is the Jesus story right there, chapters 5-6 and seven.
And I think it's right to hyperlink Ichabod's birth to
another birth centuries later. Ichabod's birth was a sign of
God's absence. Jesus's birth is a sign of God's
glory coming to dwell permanently amongst his people.
And when he arrived, one of the things he did was to go to
Jerusalem. And just like God shut down
Shiloh, Jesus shut down Jerusalem's temple and he
declared that it was going to be destroyed.
And then he declared I am the new temple, a new Shiloh, if you
will. Then he enters into the exile of
death and he tramples hell and Satan under his feet.
He defeats sin and death, and then he resurrects from the dead
and then offers us freedom and triumph from death and sin and
anything that causes pain and evil in this world.
Somebody please say Hallelujah. I mean, come on.
So while this message in First Samuel 4 is a sobering message
of judgment, it's in the end points us to the love of Christ
that surpasses all knowledge found in the life, death and
resurrection of Jesus Christ. Look it.
Jesus loves us. He who died, heaven's gates to
open wide. He will wash away our sin.
Let his children come in. That's what we.
OK, I wish, I wish that I and all of us here knew how much
Jesus loves us. It's an impossible thing to
actually know, which is why in Ephesians, Paul prays this
prayer. He says to them, I pray that God
will give you strength by his Holy Spirit so that you will
know the height, the depth, the length, the width of the love of
Christ for you, which is beyond all comprehension, so that you
might be filled with the fruits of righteousness in Christ
Jesus. We cast off the heaviness that
weighs us down. We can awaken to the light of
Christ so that we are no longer blind in Christ Jesus.
Every Ichabod, everything he has, his wife has abundant life,
freedom. That's what he does for us.
OK, we carry the glory of God with No Fear because of what
Jesus did, but we must remain repentant before Him.
Now you might be thinking of the sins that all the people around
you need to repent of. I have done the same thing.
But you can't control other people's repentance.
You can only control your own. And you might rightly be
thinking, but I truly have no sin that I'm aware of.
That is a fair, that's possibly a fair estimation.
So I recommend that you frequently read the 10
Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount slowly, other passages of
Scripture that teach us how to love God and love neighbors
slowly, and then have this prayer as you read.
Lord, search me and try me. I think I'm living righteously,
but I might very well be deceived.
See if there is evil or wickedness in me, and please
lead me in the way of righteousness.
Let that prayer be on your lips for yourself, for your people,
for other believers around you, for the church at large.
The parable that Jesus told in Luke chapter 13, it's a very
scary parable to think about. You've got this fig tree that
he's planted and three years coming and going, he sees no
fruit on that fig tree. And he says to the vine of the
the vineyard dresser, it's like there is no fruit here.
Let's just cut it down. It's using up ground and the man
says to him, one more year I'm going to apply fertilizer and
let's see if it bears fruit. And I, I'm just wondering, are
we that fig tree as a church? I don't think so, because I do
believe we are bearing fruit, but perhaps we need to bear more
fruit. The glory of the Lord rests upon
us. Let us be worthy of that glory
through Jesus Christ our Lord. In the name of the Father, of
the Son of the Holy Spirit, Amen.