God's Priest

"...I will raise me up a faithful priest"

1 Samuel 2:34

We have been looking together at the story of Samuel with which the history of Israel as a nation properly begins, and we have seen how the story of Samuel brings us to the family of Elkanah and hte particular providence that was in that home. You will recall that Elkanah had two wives, Hannah, who had no children at the beginning of the story, and Penninah who had many children. Every time they went to worship the Lord, Penninah rubbed salt in the wound of Hannah's soul and spirit, mocking her and ridiculing her that God had forgotten her, and that God had no mercy and no grace for Hannah.

But it was Hannah, in all her affliction and in all her pain, who was to come to know the blessing of God in a special way on her life and on her home and family. Her name, which is the same as Anne or Anna, means grace, and Hannah received grace. She received much of God's covenant love and kindness at this particular time, and the blessing she received was as great as the trial through which she passed and as great as the affliction she had to bear. She went to the house of God; there she prayed that God would give her a son, and God answered her prayer, and remembered her, and gave her a son; her response was that she gave her son as a token of her own self-giving to the Lord. At the end of chapter 1, we find Samuel worshipping the Lord in the temple of Shiloh before Eli the priest.

Chapter 2 begins with Hannah's great hymn of praise and song of thankfulness to the Lord for all that He had done. And then the shadow falls. We have these great incidents recorded for us her in chapter two of the sons of Eli and what God had to say about them, Hophni and Phinehas, at this particular time. There is throughout this second chapter a great contrast between the sons of Eli the priest and the son of Hannah. She started off as a nobody, and yet the Lord gave her a son whom God himself would raise up and to whom he would give eminence and glory and supremacy in Israel. Eli started off as a somebody, but he was a man who had had no control at all over his family and even now, when he tries to rebuke them for their sin it is far too late, and they, who wear the clothing of the priests and who minister before the Lord and who carry out the services of the Lord - the Bible tells us that they were sons of Belial, and they did not know the Lord (2:12).

Here, then, is this great contrast between Hophni and Phinehas on the one hand, and Samuel on the other; between the home and family of Eli on the one hand, and the family of Hannah and Elkanah on the other. The sin of Hophni and Phinehas throws into such clear relief for us the holiness and the dedication of Samuel, and the piety and godliness of Samuel shed their own light for us on the sin and on the wickedness of these two men, Hophni and Phinehas.

The three of them, Hophni, Phinehas and Samuel had a lot in common. They were all priests, ministering in the Temple before the Lord. They were all engaged in the sanctuary of God and in the service of God and in the house of God and in the cause of God. Were you to visit the Temple in Shiloh, when the three of them were there, officiating at the altar before the Lord, you could never tell them apart. They had all the apparent evidences of dedication to Jehovah and to the cause of God and truth. Were you to look at their ministries, you could hardly distinguish them. The three of them were there engaged in the most public manner possible in the services of God's house, in the services of the Temple and of the sanctuary. But God is able to see right in to the heart of Hophni, and Phinehas, and Samuel too. And the division that men could not make, God makes, and he makes it very clearly in this chapter before us this evening.

It is possible for men to be engaged in the service of God, and in the service of God's house and God's sanctuary, and yet to be sons of Belial, who do not know the Lord. It is a solemn, solemn fact that it is possible to be a preacher of the Gospel and not know the Lord. The apostle Paul knew that fact, and it drove him to his knees in dependence on God's grace, lest, he says, 'having preached to others, I myself should be a castaway'. It is not enough to occupy a pulpit, or to preach about Christ, even to have others converted through one's preaching; it is possible to have all of these things, and still be a stranger to God and his grace. It is possible to occupy an office in God's church on earth, possible to be a deacon or an elder, possible to be consecrated by all the rites and rituals of the church in this world, and be a stranger to God and his grace. It is possible to take up membership of the church, to sit at the Lord's Table, to take public oaths and vows, possible to parade ourselves before the world in the colours of God's people and still be strangers to God and his grace. The division and the distinction that teh world cannot make, God makes, and God sees right in to the heart of every Hophni, and every Phinehas, and every Samuel, and God knows us for what we are. Jesus says to us that on that last great day, on that day when every heart will be judged and every life will be weighed, and every experience will be laid bare, men will come to Jesus and they will say to him, 'Lord, lord, in your name we did this and we did that and we did the next thing - we cast out devils, we did miracles, we did wonderful works, we preached, we planted congregations, we pushed the boundaries of your cause to the furthest ends of the earth and men saw us and men were in awe of us and were amazed at our religious enterprise and boldness' - yet Jesus will say 'I never knew you'.

The gospel brings us face to face with the most solemn and the most serious issues in the whole of life. It says to us that what a man is outwardly is not necessarily what a man is. It is possible to look even at the priests officiating at the altar and not see what God sees. Possible to look at the pulpit, or the elders' pew, or the Lord's Table, and not see what God sees. It is possible to look at the ministrations of the sons of Eli in the Temple and not know that these are sons of Belial who did not know the Lord.

Except that in the case of Hophni and Phinehas there were signs that things were not all well. God did something quite unique and quite interesting at this point. God sent someone to Eli, and made known to Eli exactly what his family and household were like, and exactly what God was going to do to Eli and his family in days to come. God shows Eli how these sons of his were out to get what they could for themselves out of the service of the sanctuary, self-centered and materialistic, they had no ethics left - they were sleeping with the women at the door of the Temple, getting what they could for themselves out of the sacrifices of God. They were making themselves fat on the offerings of God's people in God's house at Shiloh, and God says "I am not going to tolerate this any more".

God has a way of bringing our most secret and our most cherished sins to an end. He has a way of uncovering what we really are and of bringing us face to face with the reality of our lives. We can hide as much as we like from men, and we can go into our secrecy and do everything there so that no man can see and no eye can see, but there is an eye that probes into the deepest and most secret places of our soul and we are told here that a man of God came to Eli the priest of God and God told Eli what was what.

God sent a prophet to meet a priest. You will recall that Chapter 3 tells us that the Word of God was precious in those days. There was no open vision, no Bible people could go to to read and consult and examine and interpret. God sent his prophet to Eli. Eli needed to hear from God what God had to say about himself and about his family and his ministry and what God was about to do. There is a lesson for us here. We need the Word of God to inform us and to guide us and to keep us and to shed light for us on the realities and the great issues of life day by day. It was not enough that Eli was the priest - he needed the word of god to be sent to him; he needed this unamed prophet to be sent to him - a man of God came to Eli. Why did he come to Eli? Because God sent him, and God sent his word to Eli, and God says to Eli - you are not obeying my law, or my statutes, and in my book I am going to tell you what I am going to do with your sin and with your household and with your family.

We do not need less of the Word of God in this modern age of ours, but more and more; we need it in our lives and we need it in our homes and we need it in our church and community, and throughout the length and breadth of our kingdom. This land of ours that was once upon a time a land shaped by this book, a land that bowed before this great book and its oracles and insights and teachings - how far we have strayed from what this book says. We need to come back to the Word of God so that it will inform us as the man of God informed the priest of God at this particular time.

And we need tonight a whole Bible, not a part Bible. We need the complete book, not just the attractive parts that appeal to human nature, and all that it says to us about the benign, loving side of God. We need to recall from the Bible that this God is a God who will not tolerate sin, a God who will judge sin and who will judge sinners, and a God who will not suffer the wicked to go unpunished. We need to remind ourselves that the whole of this book reflects the character of the God before whom we are accountable and before whom we are answerable, a God of everlasting love and grace, a God of mercy and lovingkindness, a God who is holy and of purer eyes than to look at sin, and who says at last that he will weigh up every human life and every human experience and situation in the scales and balances of his own eternal justice. We need a whole Bible, and we need to come to it again and again, and God has given it to us so that we will listen to it and obey it and lay it up in our hearts and, as the Catechism reminds us, practice it in our lives.

What are we doing with the word that God has sent us? Eli was called to attention by the man of God that God sent to him. What are we doing with the Word of God that God has given to us? What place does it have in our lives outside of Church? Is the Bible something that we just reach for on our way to Church, to return to the shelf when we come home from church? Is it left unread, gathering dust for the rest of the week? God forbid that Bible should only have a peripheral place in our lives. God forbid that the Holy word he has given us for our direction and our guidance should be neglected by us, when we ought to bow under the authority of God's voice speaking to us in Scripture.

Perhaps we need to hear what Augustine heard as he sat down one day on a rock contemplating the great issues of life with his philosopher's mind, and he heard a voice saying 'Take up and read', 'Take up and read'. God is saying the same to us about the Bible in our homes and in our hands - take it up and read it. He is saying that in it are the oracles of the living God that alone can guide and inform and direct. Take up the Bible and read it, and listen to the Word of God contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments.

Faithless Priests

The Word of God came to Eli; the prophet of God came to the priest of God. Every single one of us needs to hear the word of God. God told him of all that he had done in the past, how he had set the house of Aaron apart for the service of the priesthood. We know that Eli's family was descended from the fourth son of Aaron, from Ithamar. Now God accuses them of having despised the services of the sanctuary. They're kicking my sacrifices; they're kicking my offerings that I commanded in my habitation - you've done nothing about it - you've honoured your sons above me. Eli said to them 'Look, what you're doing is not right'; but it was too late. When is the right time to start disciplining your children? when is the right time to begin saying to them that there are things that are wrong and things that are right?

Well you know the Bible is full of examples of men who started disciplining their children when it was far too late. Eli was one of them. He was ready to say to Hannah in the temple 'Put away your wine from you...' but he was not so ready to correct his own sons. Perhaps he excused himself because of the importance of his position and the importance of his office. But there is no official duty in the Church that excuses us from the personal duties that God sets before us in his word. These come before any of our official duties. God says to me 'What's the use in being a good minister if you are not first a good husband and a good father?' What is the use in being a good elder or deacon if you are not a good example in your own home and in your own community of what it is to live the Christian life as a husband devoted to your wife and as a father devoted to your children. God says to Eli, 'What's the use in you being a good priest if you have put your sons above me and you have failed to give them the discipline that I command fathers to give their children in Israel.

When is the right time to set before our children what is right and what is wrong? From the very earliest moment when they first understand our voice and as they see our example and are aware of our conduct and as we teach them gently little by little that there are some things God loves and commands and requires and there are other things that God forbids and that God hates and says 'Put them away from you'.

There is no sense - it is disobedience to God to think - that we can leave our children to fashion their own lives and then suddenly we can say to them that their lifestyle is wrong. Charles Swindoll, the American theologian - I rate him among the best American theologians of the twentieth century - tells a story about a tree that fell in Fullerton, in a town where he ministered for a time in America. One day the tree was standing there, tall, erect, straight; there were nests in its branches, children played around it. The next day the tree fell. It was lying on the ground. There was no explanation for it. The council sent in men to tidy up the mess. Fortunately no-one was harmed or injured with the falling of the tree. Soon everything was swept up; there was no sign that anything had happened. And the scientists went in; they examined the tree, and studied it, and looked at what had been happening inside the tree. They could see the rottenness inside the very core of the tree. Nobody had noticed it; nobody knew that anything was wrong; everything looked healthy and promising on the outside. But at the very core of the tree there was rottenness that was eating away the very life of the tree and all of a sudden the tree fell. And it happened suddenly; but no tree falls suddenly, unless over a long period of time there has been rottenness at the very core and at the very heart.

Sometimes Christians fall. No Christian falls suddenly. Secretly there has been some sin working away taking away the very life of the tree. And all of a sudden the Christian falls. You may mourn tonight that your teenage son or teenage daughter is not living the kind of life you would want them to live; they have gone this way or that way. Remember the tree that fell in Fullerton. It does not fall suddenly without a reason. We need to remember that these young trees that are growing in our families - these sons and daughters God has given us - we need to cherish them and nourish them from the very outset so that they will grow healthy and strong and be rooted in the house of God. We cannot make Christians out of our children, only God's grace can do that. Does that mean we have no responsibility to them? Is that what God says in his word? Does God say that we can let our children grow up any old way and then we will expect them some day, some time to suddenly burst into the prayer meeting converted and we'll rejoice then? I don't find that anywhere in the Word of God. I hear God saying to me as a parent from the very outset - don't honour your children above me. God says 'If you honour me first' then they will grow up healthy and strong. Train them, bring them up in the way that they should go and when they are old they will not depart in Fullerton.

The story of Eli's family is a sad story. Every service was carried out properly. Every sacrifice just at the right time, just in the right way. Just in the right manner. I guess you would flock to one of Eli's services. And yet his family was rotten to the core. And then the tree fell in Fullerton because Eli had not attended to these sons of his.

That is why the story of Samuel is such a tremendous story. That is why God says to Eli in the words of verse 25 - 'I will raise up a faithful priest for myself'. Here was the house of God and the cause of God compromised by the sins of Hophni and Phinehas. God steps in and God says 'What you are not going to do I will do for myself. I will raise up a faithful priest.'

The Priesthood of Samuel

Who is the faithful priest that God raises up? In the first instance, these words referred to Samuel himself, as he wore the linen ephod the garment of the priest, even as a child in the temple of the Lord, and as he honoured God and as he followed God, he was being fashioned and shaped by God for the day when he would undertake the duties of a faithful priest among a faithless people. It is a wonderful thing that in successive eras of this world's history and of the church's history God has raised up men to proclaim the Gospel in days of compromise and in days of watering down that message and in days of removing the foundations of Gospel truth. He has his Samuel here, his Calvin there, his Luther here, his Knox there. He is able to raise up men who will prove faithful in faithless times. And they will lay hold upon God alone, as Samuel did, and they will proclaim the Gospel.

Why did God reject Hophni and Phinehas and bless Samuel? Here it is in the chapter - verse 30 - 'those that honour me I will honour, and those that despise me shall be lightly esteemed'. This is not how the world thinks. The world's attitude to religion is quite different. The world says 'If I 'm in trouble I'll call on God - if you get me out of this then I'll serve you'. If you get me out of this danger, I'll start going to church more often. If I get out of this difficulty, then I'll read my Bible more often. If I get out of this hole, I'll live a good life. I'll be a Christian if I get out of this. In other words, the world says to God 'If you honour me, I will honour you'.

The world says to God in its prayers - 'You give me help, and then I'll give you your place.' God tells us in the Bible that that is the wrong order. You must honour him first, and those who do will be honoured by him. That is his promise; his promise to every single one of us; if we give him his true place, he will give us his blessing. You cannot reverse God's order. You cannot have the prayer of the world that says 'Get me out of this jam then I'll worship you; get me out of this trouble I'm in then I'll do something. How many New year resolutions are written like this? Once the New Year passes, then I'll honour God. Once I overcome this problem, then I'll honour God. Once I get this behind me, then I'll honour God. God says, however, 'You put me first, and give me honour, and you give me a prime place in your life, and in your outlook and in your philosophy every single day of your life, whatever you do - give God his place; then God says not that you will have no problems, not that you will have no difficulties, no trials, no trouble in your life; but he does say that if we put him in the primary place in your life and heart and thinking then his blessing will flow down into your soul and heart. How many times did we pray that if God changed our circumstances for us we would become better people, perhaps even Christians? It did not happen, did it? No, because we put the order wrong. We put ourselves first, then God. God says to put him first, then everything else will follow.

That is why Samuel was raised up at this particular time to be a light in the darkness and to be a witness in this faithless day and generation. God says 'I'll raise up a faithful priest', and there was Samuel, prepared by God to serve him in the temple.

The Priesthood of Christ

But surely tonight a greater than Samuel is here. When you come to the great prophecies of the Old Testament you must remember this that these prophets prophesied far more than they could ever know. They were like men standing on top of a mountain ridge seeing peak after peak before them - but the furthest peaks were beyond their view and even beyond their horizon. Tonight we know more than the men and women of God in the Old Testament could possibly know.

God says to Eli through his anonymous prophet - 'I will raise up for myself a faithful priest'. And that is exactly what God did with the sending of his Son into the world and with the commissioning of his Son to be a Saviour. What does the Bible say of Christ? We have a priest; not one that proved faithless, like Hophni and Phinehas, but one who proved faithful like Samuel, and even more faithful than Samuel. We have one who ministered before God bearing all the interests and needs of his people before God's throne above. One who offered a sacrifice and one who went into the presence of God not without blood, one who is on the very right hand of the majesty on high. Jehovah says about Christ 'This is my faithful priest'. All the priests of the Old Testament anticipated and foreshadowed the coming of the great priest. All the offices of the Old Testament prefigured and represented the offices with which he would be adorned as the great prophet who has spoken the last word to a fallen world, and as the great king before whom all the nations of the world will be judged, and as the great priest, by whom sins are atoned for, through whom sins are forgiven, in whom sins are washed away by this one great offering up of himself as a sacrifice for ever.

People say 'I am not going to be a Christian', there are too many ministers like Hophni and Phinehas in the church, too many hypocrites in the church. Maybe there are; maybe there aren't, only God knows. I know this - there is room in the church for plenty more. But I say too that the priest you need and the priest I need is no mere earthly mortal, but the very Son of God himself. Little did this man of God know what he was saying as God told him to say to Eli 'I will raise up a faithful priest for myself', and there on the horizon through the mists of time God was anticipating the coming of the faithful high priest who is now in Heaven, who is touched with a sense of your infirmity and mine, and who is able to take all our burdens and carry all our sins away. How can he do this? Because of his faithful ministry in the presence of the living God.

I need a priest who will represent my interests before that God. And in Christ I have such a one. He is able to take me under the shelter of Calvary's shed blood, Calvary's great, finished sacrifice. He is able to listen to my confession and to give me complete and absolute forgiveness. He is able to wash away every stain and every blot that sin ever left on my life and on my character. He is able to get to the very root of the tree and he can make it whole. He can take a life, whatever has been done with it, whatever we have been in it, whatever we plan to do with it, and wherever we hope to take it; he is able to take our lives and bear it up before God as a life consecrated, washed, sanctified and set apart for the glory and honour and worship of Jehovah.

I can commend to you no kind of life like the life that is safe in the arms of this great high priest whom God has raised up to be my faithful high priest in the presence of the living God.

The Priesthood of the Believer

But the Bible says something else. What does God do with a single human life that comes under the power of his grace? He makes it into a priestly life. In Heaven, the book of Revelation says that the saints of God sing the praises of Jehovah because he made them kings and priests. The apostle Peter says that if we have been saved we are no longer our own, we have been bought with a price. What has God done with me? He has made me a priest! If I am a Christian, this is my status before God. He has brought me into the priesthood. And what is my function as a priest? to offer the sacrifices of praise and to pray and intercede before him for myself and for others. You are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood ... to shew forth the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his own marvellous light.

Has God done this in our lives? Have we been brought out of the darkness of sin and into the light of grace? Do we offer the sacrifices of praise to him day by day? Do we pray to him? Do we pray for ourselves to him? Do we pray for our family to him? Do we pray for your church? your congregation? your minister? your elders? Do you come with your sacrifice and consecrate the whole of your life to God? That is what it means to be a priest. Hophni and Phinehas were priests in name only. Let's make sure that we are not Christians in name only. Samuel was a faithful priest, a priest not simply in name but by his very service and consecration and commitment to God. Has God made us such a priest? Has he brought us into the light which his people enjoy, in his grace and love. What a blessing for us to know that Lord and that salvation in our soul to bow before Christ and acknowledge him as the great high priest of our profession, in whom all your interests for time and eternity have been entrusted.

In a faithless world and in a faithless generation there is a faithful priest for us on the pages of the Bible in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is still the priest sinners need, and to whom sinners can come without any delay.

© Iain D. Campbell 2001