Faithful When the Church Fails

Transcript

Auto-generated from the audio. Click a timestamp to jump to that part of the video.

[0:00] And now we'll go to our sermon, and our sermon text is from 1 Samuel 3, verses 1-20. A little bit of background before we begin on that. Samuel, 1 and 2 Samuel, are the beginning of the books of history. Well, not the beginning, because there's judges also, and a few other judges, you know. But this is the beginning of the history that is a little more organized. And these books trace the lives of three men. Again, Samuel, Saul, and David. So these are names that hopefully are familiar to you, but you'll learn a little bit more about them if you don't know who these people are. This period of history starts at the end of the book of Judges. And there's a few books sort of in between, but the timeline would be towards the end of Judges and now the beginning of 1 Samuel. The final verse of Judges is famous. If you read the final verse of Judges, it reads like this. In those days there was no king in Israel. Now the next part's important. It says then, Which could sound good. You're like, oh, everybody did what was right in their own eyes. But then when you think about what people are really like, then you realize that was a terrible thing. So actually all sorts of terrible things are happening at the end of Judges.

[1:15] And this is not for the faint of heart, but if you have time and the inclination, you could read the last three chapters of Judges, and you'll find all sorts of horrible things happening amongst God's people. There's a civil war. There's atrocities committed that are horrible. They're sometimes called the texts of terror. You don't necessarily want to read them. But it's part of the scripture, and it's a description of the depravity of human nature. And into this chaos that is Israel's history comes Samuel, Saul, David, and all the rest. But before that, somebody named Eli. Eli is the beginning of the story of Samuel, 1 Samuel. So Eli is the second to last judge of Israel. If you can consider that Eli is both a priest at the Tent of Meeting. Sometimes it's called the temple, but the built-up temple did not exist at that time. But he's the priest at the Tent of Meeting in a place called Shiloh. Shiloh was the religious center of Israel because Jerusalem was owned by another tribe of people called the Jebusites. And it didn't actually become Israel's property until David conquered it. And this was so important. It's several years later than that. So in Shiloh was the place where the Tent of Meeting was erected.

[2:32] Eli was the second to the last judge and prophet of Israel. And Samuel was the last judge and prophet of Israel. And after Samuel became King Saul, and after King Saul was King David. And then the royalty sort of went on from there. So he ministered at Shiloh. And Eli was faithful to God himself. But as background. This is important background. You'll hear more about it. That we find that he was unable to control the evil of his own two sons. One was named Phineas. The other was named Hophni. These two sons did terrible things. They were in line to become the priest after him. But God saw how wicked they were and said, We need to break up this line, this hereditary line of the priesthood and give it to somebody else. So in our reading, we're going to hear how Samuel, who lives at the Tent of Meeting with Eli, and is just a little boy, is given his divine ordaining and hears about God's judgment on Eli and on his sons. So this is the story of Samuel's call, as Pastor Victoria talked about. So our reading is from chapter 3 of 1 Samuel. Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord under Eli. The word of the Lord was rare in those days. Visions were not widespread. At that time, Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see,

[3:59] was lying down in his room. The lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was. Then the Lord called, Samuel, Samuel. And he said, Here I am, and ran to Eli and said, Here I am, for you called me. But he said, I did not call. Go lie down again. So he went and lay down. The Lord called again, Samuel, Samuel.

[4:33] Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, Here I am, for you called me. But he said, I did not call, my son. Lie down again. Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him. The Lord called Samuel again a third time, and he got up and went to Eli and said, Here I am, for you called me.

[4:58] Then Eli perceived that the Lord was calling the boy. Therefore Eli said to Samuel, Go lie down, and if he calls you, you shall say, Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening. So Samuel went and lay down in his place. Now the Lord came and stood there, calling as before, Samuel, Samuel.

[5:27] And Samuel said, Speak, for your servant is listening. Then the Lord said to Samuel, See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make both ears of anyone who hears of it tingle. On that day I will fulfill against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house from beginning to end. For I have told him that I am about to punish his house forever for the iniquity that he knew because his sons were blaspheming God, and he did not restrain them. Therefore I swear to the house of Eli that the iniquity of Eli's house shall not be expiated by sacrifice or offering forever.

[6:13] Samuel lay there until morning. Then he opened the doors of the house of the Lord. Samuel was afraid to tell the vision to Eli. But Eli called Samuel and said, Samuel, my son? He said, Here I am. Eli said, What was it that he told you? Do not hide it from me. May God do so to you, and more also, if you hide anything from me of all that he told you.

[6:42] So Samuel told him everything and hid nothing from him. Then Eli said, It is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him. As Samuel grew up, the Lord was with him, and let none of his words fall to the ground. And all Israel, from Dan to Beersheba, knew that Samuel was a trustworthy prophet of the Lord. And this is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

[7:12] Let's see. Now I'm going to put myself in the middle here for the people at home. That's good. That's better. All right. But you don't have to see that part. And then just a second here. Well, there's a different one called, he'll find it. There it is. All right. Good.

[7:32] Hopefully this is just the time we're getting the bugs out. So now you know. So I want us to just notice a few things about this. And then there's one thing at the end that I think we really want to start paying attention to. Two for us. But here are some things to notice. And Pastor Victoria said this really well. Samuel is young and vulnerable. And this is just like God. He comes to the small. He comes to the weak. He comes to the young. You know how Jesus says, let the little children come to me. Don't hinder them from coming to me. So God is interested in children. God is interested in the small and the weak and the vulnerable. And he calls them to do great things. Even later in this series of 1 and 2 Samuel, we find that David, who's not a prophet, is a prophet. Not really that old at all. Is anointed to be king of Israel. So God is not afraid of youth. He doesn't have a problem with people being young. If he calls them into work, they respond. The other is that Samuel is a miracle baby. The first couple chapters of this book are about his mother who can't have a child. And she goes and prays. And every year she prays that she'll have a child. Finally she goes to Eli and says, I need to have this baby. I need to have a baby.

[8:45] And she makes sort of a bargain with God. She says, God, if you can give me a baby, I'm going to consecrate him for service to the Lord. And so she actually has a child. And that's Samuel. And she gives Samuel to Eli to raise at the Tent of Meeting in Shiloh. So he's sort of this miracle baby. And you could kind of think that these stories like this, there's a little bit of foreshadowing of Jesus here, right? A young child. Sort of a miraculous child. Consecrated. Is young in the temple. And if you read Luke's Gospel, you'll see that Jesus is in the temple teaching. Even when he's maybe 12, 13 years old.

[9:25] So God is able to call and does call young and vulnerable people. The other, and Victoria always does a good job of preaching the sermon before the sermon, is that God calls Samuel by name. And that makes this call specific. It's just not a generic call to a whole group of people. But it's individualized. Samuel. Samuel says his name four different times, doesn't he? It's a specific call to a specific person in the history of the world to do a specific thing. Now he is, mostly the story is about how bad Eli and his sons have been. But it's implied there that the call is that Samuel will take over the mantle of being the last judge of Israel and the priest of God at Shiloh. And that he'll, in essence, be the leader of Israel until he's done. And that he'll be the king of Israel until Saul is anointed king.

[10:17] And the specific call that Samuel is given is not an easy one. It's really an awkward one. He's told that the person who is a father figure to him, who is a mentor to him, that that person is now, that he's going to take his job. You know, it's like going to your boss and saying, God told me I'm going to have your job. And your sons are horrible kids. Which you know. But you know, God told me that I have your job. And so the very first thing that Samuel has to do is not an easy thing. He's supposed to go up to somebody he respects, who's much older than him, who has a lot more authority than him, and say, God told me that I'm going to have your job. And what I love about this story is Eli knows his children, his sons, are bad. And you could read about what they do. It's not great. But his resigned response is this. He's not one of sort of minimizing it or fighting it. He says, let it be as the Lord has said. You know, you're right. This was a long time coming. Maybe he's even relieved. He's like, I don't have to pass this on to my sons because I don't trust them. I can pass this on to Samuel. God has said so. Right? So the line of the priest cannot pass on in heredity from Eli. His sons aren't fit. So the line has to be broken and given to Samuel.

[11:38] That's the message that he's given. That's the task. And the third thing I want us to notice is that Samuel doesn't realize who's talking. In fact, it even gives us a little bit of background. The word of the Lord wasn't common. Samuel did not know the Lord or what the Lord's voice sounded like. Right? He thinks it's Eli.

[12:00] And what's good, another good thing about Eli is that even though he's failed to either correct his sons or raise them properly, and I'm not sure which or both, Eli, on the third time, is wise enough still to figure out what's happening. He's like, there's this voice keeps coming. Somebody's calling your name. You think it's me, but it's clearly not me. I was asleep. So in his wisdom, he realizes the Lord must be speaking to this young boy, Samuel. And so he sends him back one more time to listen. And so there's times that it takes the wisdom of other people to help us discern when God is calling us. So God may be calling you to something. You may have an internal sense of call. You may hear God speaking to you in various ways. But it's also good to confirm it with other people. In their wisdom, other people can tell you, yes, that's from God. Or they might say, no, that's not from God. So that's kind of a good reminder about how call works. Call works both internally and externally. And both have to be in agreement with each other generally for that to go well.

[13:05] And then finally, for this sort of opening section, I want to say that God is calling us. God calls Samuel when they're in the dead of the night. When there aren't any other voices or sounds going on. All the animals are asleep. All the people are asleep. It's just total silence, right? So there's no cell phones ringing. It can be a little bit sort of out of sync. If you think about yourself, in complete silence, God's voice still isn't identified.

[13:40] 100%. It takes time, right? So when we listen for God's call, we need to be in a place of silence. And we need to be removing extraneous noises. And I think that's important for us. It's very hard, actually, to carve out a place of silence in the world. Now, I think the world was actually quieter back in this time. It's only gotten noisier. So there's a way, and it takes sort of intentionality, there's a way of getting rid of extra noises, extra sounds, and putting yourself into a place where you can actually hear God's voice. And when you do so, I do believe God will speak to you, either through the Spirit, or sometimes through other people, or through reading the Scriptures. But there needs to be silence. There needs to be a silencing of other voices and other noises before we can hear God reliably, I think.

[14:30] Now, the final thing to notice, and this is what I want us to take the most away from, is that in this call of Samuel, God is removing the line of Eli from the priesthood and replacing it with Samuel. So, God's not above doing things like this. He's not above taking the youngest and making him in charge of all the oldest. That happened with Joseph and his brothers. God is not afraid of supplanting the normal progression of things with a servant whom he can trust, or a servant whom he calls. And sometimes it is the youngest and the most vulnerable. And you think about Joseph. He was kidnapped by his brothers, sold into slavery. It was only after a much longer time that they were all able to reunite. But at that time, then, it was clear to them all that he was the head of the family. So, God does this over and over. Now, here's a surprise, or maybe not a surprise.

[15:29] Samuel also had sons. Their names were Joel and Abijah. Do you think these guys were any good? No! They were not! They were not good kids. What a surprise! You'd think, like, Samuel would have been like, Gosh, I should really keep my kids in line, because Eli, you know, he didn't keep his kids in line. And Samuel couldn't keep his sons in line. And in chapter 8 of 1 Samuel, the same book, the people go, Your sons are terrible. We don't want your sons to be the next priest. And prophet. And judge. So, we want a king. And in chapter 8, they start asking for a king. And so, Saul replaces Samuel. Do you see what's going on here? Eli gets replaced by Samuel. Samuel gets replaced by Saul, the first king. Now, what happens to Saul? I don't even need to tell you. Saul does all sorts of stupid things, including taking spoils from a raid that he wasn't supposed to take. A bunch of cows. And who confronts Saul? Samuel. Samuel goes to Saul, You weren't supposed to keep all those things. And Saul says, I didn't keep those things. You know? And Samuel says, I can hear the cows. I can hear them. And he could. You know, you think I'm stupid? God has taken the anointing away from you. He's going to give it to somebody else. And he anoints David king.

[16:56] So, David replaces Saul. And on and on and on and on through history. God replaces somebody else. And he anoints somebody who's not faithful with somebody who will be faithful with. Now, does this remind you of any, say, parable from the New Testament?

[17:11] Anyone? We did a five-week series on it about a year and a half, about two years ago. The parable of the vineyard. Remember that? Somebody nod so I don't feel crazy. Okay, thank you. Yes. So, the parable of the vineyard, right? Where the people who are working in the vineyard, they beat God's, they beat the owner's messengers. They finally, they take the son. They kill him. And what does Jesus say about those, the wicked tenants? It comes from kind of the parable of the wicked tenants or the parable of the vineyard. He says, God will take the vineyard away from them and give it to somebody who will do the work that he requires. So, God's going to replace the workers in the vineyard with other workers in the vineyard, other tenants in the vineyard who will yield to God the fair produce of the vineyard, right? So, why am I talking about all this? I mean, this theme of replacement kind of shows up. It shows up both here in 1 Samuel, but it also shows up in the New Testament, especially in the parable of the vineyard. And I think it has a lot to say about this current state of the Christian church. And I know I go on about this a lot, but I think it's really active right now. Is that I think the Christian church with a capital C, the whole church is in terrible shape.

[18:23] I think it's in terrible shape. I don't know why anyone who watches TV right now or reads the news would ever want to join a Christian church. Because they probably don't think Christians are very great people at all, right? We're supposed to stand for justice, but we don't stand for that. We're supposed to stand for the low and the lowly and the meek. We're supposed to help people. But it doesn't look that way in the world. It really doesn't. And there's problems of Christian nationalism among some strands of evangelicalism in our country. There's other strands of the church which are just kind of irrelevant. And so the church is... I feel like the church is kind of like Eli.

[19:04] And it has some children that just aren't doing what they're supposed to do. And so the children of the revivals, the children of the Protestant Reformation, they're falling apart. So here's what I think. I think this is writ large. Not just in the parable of the vineyard, the story of Eli and Samuel and all the rest. But I think that in the future God will replace the current church with the faithful church.

[19:31] God's going to replace... The faithful church, the church that can remain faithful to what God wants the church to do, will inherit the whole vineyard. And the unfaithful church will lose it. And they're in the process of losing it already. So I'm going to say this again. God will replace the current church, the unfaithful church, with the faithful church.

[19:54] And I think we fit into this. I'm sounding a bit apocalyptic now, but I can't stop. Because this is what God has put in place. And I feel a little bit of a benefit on my heart. Is that in our church here and in this community, we need to be the faithful church. I'm not saying that we should do this so that we inherit the whole church. Because that's more than I can think about right now. And it's not about enlarging anybody's territory or anything like that. We just need to be the faithful church. And more things will come to us and we'll have to take them on. Because we'll be the only ones left that are being faithful to what God calls us to. So what does that look like? What does it look like? What's the faithful church look like? It's a church that's not idolatrous. It's not self-indulgent. It listens to God and answers the call. It's willing to speak about God's injustice and about the failings of the rest of the church. That's faithful in the long run. That's what the faithful church looks like. And I think we need to think about the timeline here too. This could take a long time. Our part in this is just for the church. This could take a few decades perhaps that we know about. This could be a very long overhaul of the church.

[21:08] This may be a very long transition of the real church going from the current church to the faithful church. I think about this often. I still think about this. I've talked about this. These cathedrals in Europe that were built, some of the really big ones, it took over 150 years to build some of them. Some of the people who were pounding away at rocks and shambles, they were building them. They were shaping them into things. They worked for 20 or 30 years but they never saw the finished project. But they were hopefully faithful and happy to do their part. And once their part was done, they put it in the building. And then they went and retired and somebody else took over. So what God is building, we may just be, he's rebuilding, we may just be at the bare foundations of it. I don't know. It doesn't matter actually. We don't have to see the finished product.

[22:01] We have to see the finished project. We have to be faithful with the pieces that have been given to us. We have to craft them with the best skills that we have, the best gifts that we have. And we have to place them in the structure where God tells us to do so. And that's how we become the faithful church. And someday this grand cathedral, God will open the doors of it. You know what I mean? It's going to be open and it's going to be glorifying to God. But in the meantime, we have a lot of work to do. And I think we have to be prophetic about the failings of the rest of the church. It breaks my heart to do so. I have friends who are kind of stuck in some Christian nationalism, a lot of conspiracy theories, a lot of just stuff that I, a lot of politicization, is that a word? Politicization? I can't, well anyways. You know, it is a word. I'm just not going to say it because it's impossible.

[22:52] A lot of them are into that and it breaks my heart. And I don't even know what to say to them yet. Because I don't want to be extra confrontational. But if I were to take my cue from Samuel and Elijah, if they were to say to me, what has God said, don't hold anything back, I might say, well, it seems that you're making a mistake here. Don't you want to be the faithful church instead of the broken church, the idolatrous church? And invite them back into it, right?

[23:22] Well, in the meantime, for us, there's this important work that we do. And so as a church, what do we do? Well, we work on our own discipleship. We work on ourselves so that we don't let that stuff infect us. So we work on discipleship by learning and being in community together. And also always being ready to share the hope that we have. That's always important. And then we need to be people of hope in dark times. I think that's going to set us apart. I think the community that we build here, the hope that we live in here, not that we're going to solve it all, but that we're doing our part for something that's coming in the future. I think that's going to set us apart. And people may come and see that and go, well, we see this now. What do you guys have? Why are you still so hopeful? The world is so dark. The world is so broken. And they might come to hear about the hope that we have. So we need to be ministering to people in need in the coming years in our work. And so, you know, we think about our neighborhood and there's houses across the street that cost millions of dollars. You say, how could they possibly be in need? Some of them are incredibly lonely. Some of them are actually terrified of their next life.

[24:26] Some of them are terrified of their next mortgage payment because they bought too big of a house. You think about it, you know. And the property taxes are due. Some of them feel alienated. And that big house that they're in is not bringing them the happiness they thought. We need to be there for them. We need to be an open and hopeful and welcoming place for them. So now I'm going to ask you just to listen in silence. I'm going to do five seconds of silence and hopefully, except for this projector here making the buzzing noises, the whole church will be quiet. And then I'm going to read to you from Isaiah chapter 43. And I want you to listen in silence as the God of the universe calls us into his service. So let's take a moment.

[25:11] But now, thus says the Lord who created you, Jacob, and formed you, Israel, Do not fear, for I have redeemed you. I have called you by name. You are mine. When you pass through waters, I will be with you. Through rivers, you shall not be swept away. Let's pray.

[25:37] Father, thank you for your word to Samuel. Thank you for your word to us. Help us to inherit the vineyard, inherit the kingdom. Help us to be faithful to you in all that we do. In Jesus' name.