We Have Found the Messiah

...in 1 Samuel 2:35

Then I will raise up for myself a faithful priest, who shall do according to what is in my heart and in my mind. I will build him a sure house; and he shall walk before my anointed forever.

Our studies on the Messiah show us how the Bible, in all its different elements, is bound together by the common theme of Jesus Christ. He is the meaning of every word and passage in the Scriptures. All Scripture speaks of Him.

We have already found the Messiah in this chapter, in verse 10 in the context of Hannah's song. There the Messiah was shown to us as a king, anointed by God and consecrated by him to that great office. In her song, Hannah predicts the coming of Jesus Christ.

It is worth lingering in this chapter, however, because the words of this verse also show us another element of this great theme. In the context, Samuel is ministering in Shiloh, in the Temple, with Eli the priest. But one of the themes of this chapter is the contrast between the sons of Eli and Samuel. Hophni and Phinehas are described in verse 12 as 'corrupt'; they did not know the Lord. Their position is very solemn. They were in office among God's people, yet were strangers to the God of the covenant. They abused the privileges of their office by sleeping with the women who are assembling at the door of the congregation. They also 'made themselves fat' with what the Lord's people were contributing; instead of offering it to the Lord they were taking it themselves.

Eli tried to warn them about their behaviour and sin, but they continued to abuse their privilege and position, while, according to verse 26, "the child Samuel grew in stature and in favour both with the Lord and men". There is a contrast, therefore, between the sons of Eli and the son of Hannah.

At this point in the narrative, at verse 27, an anonymous prophet appears. His message is more important than his name; he is simply 'a man of God'. This prophet comes to Eli and declares God's mind. He tells Eli that because of the sin of his household, and of his sons in particular, God will not allow the household of Eli to flourish. There will not be an old man in his family. As a sign of the fulfilment of this promise, the two sons of Eli would die in the same day, and chapter 4 tells us that this is exactly what happened.

Then the prophet makes this remarkable prediction: "I will raise up for myself a faithful priest". In the context of the unfaithfulness and infidelity of Eli's household, we immediately sense the contrast. Instead of this household, God will raise up a faithful priest for himself. God is talking directly here about the Messiah; what does this tell us about the anointed of God?

Let's remind ourselves of what we have already noted in the Old Testament about God's Messiah. God predicted that he would be a KINGLY Messiah, the king from the tribe of Judah. It is of kingship that Hannah speaks particularly in verse 10. We have also noted that the Messiah would be a PROPHET, one like Moses (Deuteronomy 18:15ff).

But here is a new dimension; here we are told that God's Messiah will be a PRIEST. At this point in redemptive history, we are told about the priesthood of the Messiah. Already in the Old Testament there has been an emphasis on the importance of the priesthood. In Genesis 14 that mysterious king-priest Melchisedek appears; and as Hebrews tells us, picking up on Psalm 110, Christ is a priest after the order of Melchisedek. At Sinai, when God covenanted Israel formally to himself, He said of Israel that they would be a 'kingdom of priests' to Him (Exodus 19:6). And integral to the giving of the Mosaic law was the provision of a priesthood; Aaron, the brother of Moses, was consecrated High Priest, and his sons were to offer sacrifices to the Lord. So in the Mosaic covenant there is a clear emphasis on priesthood. God is dealing with the sin of his people, making provision for our salvation. In this way he is fulfilling the promise that the seed of the woman will bruise the head of the serpent (Genesis 3:15), and he is teaching us that apart from representative priesthood, apart from atonement and reconciliation, there can be no salvation for us.

If we are to be saved at all, we need a priest. And the emphasis on priesthood in the Mosaic covenant shows that, although it is a revelation of law, it is also a further revelation of the grace that saves.

But there is a clearer indication of this in Numbers 25. After Balaam had tried, unsuccessfully, to curse Israel, as Balak, king of Moab, had asked him to, God's people, instead of learning to stay away from Moab, only mingled with them further. They intermingled and married. So God judged them by sending a plague among them. Another Phinehas (not the son of Eli, obviously, but the grandson of Aaron) saw a son of Israel take a woman of Moab into his tent, he rushed into the tent and killed them both. Psalm 106:30 praises the action of Phinehas; he was the saviour of Israel, the mediator who stood in the breach while God's anger was ready to be poured out.

God does something remarkable for Phinehas: he makes a covenant with him, the covenant of an 'everlasting priesthood' (Numbers 25:13). In other words, the covenant of Moses is particularly a covenant of priesthood. I think it is quite wrong to say that it is a covenant of law; if it is a covenant of law it is such because it is a covenant of priesthood. It is a provision made for sinners, and the law points out our sin, showing what it is and what it deserves. But within the giving of the law, and in its very stipulations, God makes provision for an office which will secure salvation and reconciliation by making atonement. Before the giving of the commandments God pledges to make Israel a kingdom of priests; in the giving of the law he stipulates the requirements and functions of priesthood; and following the giving of the law he establishes the covenant of an everlasting priesthood.

It is impossible to devalue the importance of priesthood within the Mosaic covenant. It is particularly in priestly provision that the salvation plan of God is brought forward. But when we come to Samuel's day, what has happened? The priesthood itself has become corrupt. God had made Aaron high priest. Aaron had two sons, Eleazar and Ithamar. The priestly line was to run through Eleazar, and Phinehas was his son. But by this time, Eli is priest, and he is of the family of Ithamar. God has transferred the line of priesthood because of the unfaithfulness of his people. Now Eli is serving as priest, but HIS sons prove unfaithful. And it is into the midst of this, when the office of priesthood has been so corrupted and compromised in Israel, that God comes with the great messianic prophecy of our text, saying that he would raise up for himself a faithful priest. There was not a faithful priest to be found in Israel, but God pledges to provide one.

The Great Provision God Makes

The office of priesthood is already established. Christ is our Saviour because he fulfills three offices: he is prophet, priest and king. None of these were new. Christ did not come inventing a new office. He was the bearer of offices which God had established long before his coming, as means by which salvation would come into the world. How were men to be saved? Through kingship, prophecy and priesthood.

But it was only when Christ came that there was one who, in the integrity of his Person, would act in faithfulness and in truth to bear the weight of his priestly office, and the priestly office could bear the weight of God's purposes of salvation. At last, in the midst of all the sin of Eli and his household, God anticipates the raising up of a faithful priest. His eye, at last, is on one who will prove faithful, who will not let the people down, like Hophni and Phinehas, or compromise his office, like Eli, or render his office defunct through his own personal sin. God promises to raise up a priest for himself, the badge of whose office would be his faithfulness.

Today in the Gospel, for your need and mine, this is God's provision. He has raised up a priest, who is faithful. He established the office long ago so that there might be atonement and reconciliation; but not until Christ came did he find an office-bearer fit for this great task, who would fulfill every obligation of priesthood. So, as the New Testament puts it, "this is the main point of the things we are saying: We have such a High Priest, who is seated at the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens..." (Hebrews 8:1). And this priest is is holy, harmless, undefiled and separate from sinners -- unlike these human priests who were unholy and unconsecrated and sinning boldly against God. God has raised up for us the priest we need, characterised by faithfulness to God, who discharges all his duties and all the obligations of his office to make atonement for the sins of his people. Christ is God's faithful priest. In Christ there is realised the covenant of the everlasting priesthood. He appears before us in the office of priesthood, like Phinehas, standing in the breach, when the plague of God's judgement threatens to sweep us away.

What does our faithful priest do? He rushes into our tent, filled as it is with sin, with a javelin in his hand. But he does not slay us. Instead, he gives Himself over to death, in order to stay the plague of God's anger and to prevent it crashing down upon us. We will be spared the plague through his self-giving at Calvary. There he stands, holding back the flood of judgement, absorbing it himself, so that we will be spared. And he dies, but unlike the Old Testament priests, he is not succeeded in office by anyone. He remains priest in death and resurrection and ascension. At God's right hand he continues as our priest, making intercession for us.

What did the covenant with Phinehas promise? An everlasting priesthood. What does Hebrews say to us about Jesus? "He, because He continues forever, has an unchangeable priesthood" (7:24). It is unending, eternal, unchanging and unchangeable; his priesthood is all we need. The Messiah is our king from Judah, our Prophet like Moses, and our Priest, according to the covenant of an eternal priesthood. The greatest king of the Old Testament -- David, the king after God's own heart -- sinned greatly against God. The greatest prophet of the Old Testament -- Moses, with whom God spoke face to face -- also sinned against God. The greatest priest of the Old Testament is also tainted with sin. But at last there comes one in whom these offices combine, and in the integrity of his person the duties are fulfilled and the obligations are discharged in faithfulness. There is a priest for us in Jesus Christ.

The Great Promise God Makes

Not only does God say he will raise up a faithful priest, but he promises that he will build for him a sure house. The priest would do everything that was in God's heart and mind, and God promises that he will build him a sure house. In the covenant with Abraham, God promised to raise up his seed, who would be more numerous than the stars in the sky or the sand on the seashore. It is his intention to save a people, and to establish the house of his people. The same promise is repeated in the covenant with David -- there, too, God promises to build up a house.

And this is the same language which the New Testament uses of the church. When Peter confesses Jesus in Caesarea Philippi, Jesus says "on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it" (Matthew 16:18). What is it that Ephesians tells us? That God's people are 'built up' as a dwelling place for God through the Spirit (Ephesians 2:19-22). Psalm 118 picks up the theme of the rejected stone -- those who professed themselves to be the builders of the church, yet they rejected the chief corner-stone that God laid in Zion. But God says that this very stone became the headstone of the corner. God is building his church, and as 1 Peter 2:5 puts it, "you also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ".

If we are brought alive by the Holy Spirit, we are being built up as a spiritual house. This is God's plan. God never saves in isolation. His work of grace is individual but not individualistic. He saves us one by one so that we will be part of his building. And if we are part of his building, we are on a sure foundation; but we are also in contact with all the other stones round about us in our part of the wall. We should appreciate the fellowship of the church for that reason, and the company of God's people. We are the seed of Abraham, just as we are the sons of Japheth whom God has brought into the tents of Shem. At last God will have his new Jerusalem, the resplendent church which will glorify him as the master craftsman, who took the most unlikely materials and formed them into the most magnificent of structures. "I will build a house for my faithful priest".

I think there is a remarkable reversal there of what has been taking place in the Old Testament up until this point. When the Tabernacle was constructed, it was God's house, where the priest would minister. The priest was for that house. But now God says that he will build a house for the priest. Because the work is finished, he is building his people into a holy Temple in the Lord.

The Great Purpose God Has

God's purpose is that "he will walk before my anointed forever". If our interpretation of this verse has been correct up until this point, and we are correct in identifying the Messiah with the faithful priest, then the last line of the verse seems to run against this, by implying that the faithful priest is someone other than the Messiah. In the translation of the NKJV, that is certainly implied. "I will build him [the faithful priest] a sure house and he shall walk before my anointed..." If this translation is correct, then the faithful priest cannot be identified with the Messiah.

Unfortunately, most bible translations render the sentence in this way, identifying the faithful priest as the one who will walk before the Messiah. That is a natural interpretation: a man walks, so surely the verse is saying that the priest will walk? I do not think, however, that this is what the verse is saying at all. The translation ought to be "I will build him [the faithful priest] a sure house and IT shall walk before my anointed". It is not the priest who is doing the walking, but the house that God will build for his priest.

But what sense can we make of the concept of a house walking? But that is the whole point of the passage. The prophet begins his message in verse 30 with God saying "I said indeed that your house and the house of your father would walk before me forever, but now the Lord says: far be it from me; for those who honour me I will honour, and those who despise me shall be lightly esteemed". This is why God called Israel, and priviliged her with the blessings of the covenant, and established priesthood in Israel: so that the house of Israel would walk before him for ever.

But the house of Israel did not walk before God, but dishonoured him. If the house of Israel had honoured God, he would have honoured them; instead, they were despised. The whole reason the anonymous prophet is here is because the house of Israel did not walk before the Lord, but proved faithless and disobedient.

Here is the purpose of God's grace -- he will build a house for the faithful priest, and that house will walk before the anointed one (who is also the priest) forever. The priest IS the Messiah. It is the house that God builds that will serve the Messiah and give God the glory and honour. This house will serve him gladly and with a willing heart, because he has written his laws in their hearts and minds; they will walk before the Messiah because they live no longer according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. We sin just like others did, but there is a faithful priest whose blood atones for our every demerit and transgression. As a result of this, God will build a house which will bow before his Messiah king, and listen to his Messiah prophet, and serve his Messiah priest.

Here is a great prediction by a prophet known only to God, in the midst of apostasy and infidelity God promises to raise up a faithful priest-Saviour, for whom God would build a house which would walk before the Messiah-priest and serve him gladly. For this reason Peter says to the church -- "you are a royal priesthood ... called to show forth the praises of the one who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light" (1 Peter 2:9). Old Israel proved faithless to his trust, but on the basis of the faithfulness of God's priest, God will have his new Israel, who will trust in him.

The last verse of the chapter is a reminder to us that at last all the sons of Aaron would acknowledge the supremacy of God's faithful priest. "...everyone who is left in your house will come and bow down to him for a piece of silver and a morsel of bread, and say 'Put me in one of the priestly positions that I may eat a piece of bread'" (verse 36). If there is to be silver or bread at all for Israel, it will be because of God's glorious work of grace among men. So we bow before him and acknowledge him to be our priest for ever.

© Iain D. Campbell 2003