Samuel No.2 A Tale of Two Families

The reading this morning is from 1 Samuel chapter 2, verses 11 to 36. 1 Samuel chapter 2. Last week I believe you were looking at Hannah and thought about her desperate plea for her child and then she was given a son Samuel and then after Hannah had weaned her son she gave him back to the Lord for temple service with the priest Eli. Today's passage we look at the contrast between Samuel's devotion to serving the Lord and the wickedness of Eli's son.

1 Samuel chapter 2, verse 11. Then Elkanah went home to Ramah, but the boy ministered before the Lord under Eli the priest. Eli's sons were wicked men.

They had no regard for the Lord. Now it was a practice of the priests with the people that whenever anyone offered a sacrifice and while the meat was being boiled the servant of the priest would come with a three pronged fork in his hand. He would plunge it into the pan or kettle or cauldron or pot and the priest would take for himself whatever the fork brought up.

This is how they treated all the Israelites who came to Shiloh. But even before the fat was burned the servant of the priest would come and say to the man who was sacrificing, give the priest some of the meat to roast. He won't accept boiled meat from you, but only raw.

If the man said to him, let the fat be burned up first and then take whatever you want, the servant would then answer, no, hand it over now. If you don't, I'll take it by force. This sin of the young men was very great in the Lord's sight for they were treating the Lord's offering with contempt.

But Samuel was ministering before the Lord, a boy wearing a linen ephod. Each year his mother made him a little robe and took it to him when she went up with her husband to offer the annual sacrifice. Eli would bless Elkanah and his wife saying, may the Lord give you children by this woman to take the place of the one she prayed for and gave to the Lord.

Then they would go home. And the Lord was gracious to Hannah. She conceived and gave birth to three sons and two daughters.

Meanwhile the boy Samuel grew in the presence of the Lord. Now Eli, who was very old, heard about everything his sons were doing to all Israel and how they slept with the woman who served at the entrance of the tent of meeting. So he said to them, why do you do such things? I hear from all the people about these wicked deeds of yours.

No, my sons, it is not a good report that I hear spreading among the Lord's people. If a man sins against another man, God may mediate for him. But if a man sins against the Lord, who will intercede for him? His sons, however, did not listen to their father's rebuke, for it was the Lord's will to put them to death.

And the boy Samuel continued to grow in stature and in favor with the Lord and with men. Now a man of God came to Eli and said to him, this is what the Lord says. Did I not clearly reveal myself to your father's house when they were in Egypt under Pharaoh? I chose your father out of all the tribes of Israel to be my priest, to go up to my altar, to burn incense, and to wear an ephod in my presence.

I also gave your father's house all the offerings made with fire by the Israelites. Why do you scorn my sacrifice and offering that I prescribed for my dwelling? Why do you honor your sons more than me by fattening yourselves on the choice parts of every offering made by my people Israel? Therefore, the Lord, the God of Israel declares, I promised that your house and your father's house would minister before me forever. But now the Lord declares, far be it from me, those who honor me I will honor, but those who despise me will be disdained.

The time is coming when I will cut short your strength and the strength of your father's house so that there will not be an old man in your family line and you will see distress in my dwelling. Although good will be done to Israel, in your family line there will never be an old man. Every one of you that I do not cut off from my altar will be spared only to blind your eyes with tears and to grieve your heart, and all your descendants will die in the prime of life.

And what happens to your two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, will be assigned to you. They will both die on the same day. I will raise up for myself a faithful priest who will do according to what is in my heart and mind.

I will firmly establish his house and he will minister before me, before my anointed ones always. Then everyone in your family line will come and bow down before him for a piece of silver and a crust of bread and plead, appoint me to some priestly office so that I can have food to eat. Let's bow our heads in prayer for a moment.

Father, as we come to this holy act of looking into your Word, we pray that you will help us to understand why it is that you cause this challenging, somber passage of Scripture to be written, and help us to apply your Word to our hearts. We thank you that you speak to us through the Bible, and by the miracle of inspiration it remains completely contemporary and therefore up-to-date. Help us, Father, then to give to you the concentration that you ask as we come around this oracle in which you have put your advice and indeed instructions into print for people like ourselves to obey.

This we ask for Jesus' sake. Amen. Amen.

Let's keep our Bibles open, shall we, at 1 Samuel and the passage that we've just been reading together. I read something which struck me as quite striking during the week. Let me share it with you.

You've got to listen very carefully to get it. A Christian should be so comfortable that he could sell the family parrot to the town gossip. A Christian should be so comfortable in his home that he could sell the family parrot to the town gossip.

Now, that shall be our starting point just now, because the burden on my heart is to challenge us in regard to the way that we live our lives at home, what type of mother or father we are, what type of son or daughter we are, and perhaps even more appropriately, what's it really like in the church family at Worthing Tabernacle? Somebody was to scrutinize us and to write up what we're like as individuals, as members of this congregation. Would there be any sense of embarrassment at all? Or could we say, print it all? Because even if you had the parrot that actually doesn't lurk within the precincts of Worthing Tabernacle, and the parrot had been able to take into its mind and repeat all that we do and say, and the village gossip or the town gossip got hold of the parrot, we wouldn't blush at all, because as for us in our house, we serve the Lord. I want to preach to you this morning on a tale of two families, a tale of two families, and I don't use that word tale in the sense of something that is not true.

I use it simply because I wanted to plant within your mind what I feel is the Lord's message to us from this particular chapter of Scripture. You see, the reason why the Old Testament was written according to the new was so that we could learn by the good examples and also by the mistakes of folks who lived centuries ago. And here in 1 Samuel chapter 2, spilling over to the third and the fourth chapters, we are brought face to face with two family circles, circles which converge on one another.

And I want to ask you, where do you find yourself? Because one family circle could be described in the word tragedy and the other in the word triumph. One was a disaster and the other was a delight. Now, how is it in your family? How is it in this church family? How do you behave as parents, as Christian brothers and sisters? A tale of two families.

Now, this chapter and the verses that have been read, the final part of the chapter, in effect shout for a contrast. And I'll tell you why, because when you come down to the 17th and the 18th verses, they bring together the members of the family circle into whose story we're inquiring at this moment. Look at verse 17, will you? This sin of the young men was very great in the Lord's sight, for they were treating the Lord's offering with contempt, but Samuel was ministering before the Lord, a boy wearing a linen ephod.

Now, let's just stop for a moment because not everyone is that familiar with 1 Samuel as perhaps we ought to be. So here is the background. There is the story of two young men who are brothers and there's also the story of one young lad.

The young men, as the word indicates, are relatively mature, at least physically. The boy is really still in his infancy. They both come from different sets of parents and they should both be very productive in the service of the Lord.

What I want to show you very, very simply, and I generally break my outline up so that those who take notes can jot down at least the headings, or those of you with a good memory can bring to the forefront of your mind later on what I've shared. So let me simply show you how I'm going to break this up. First of all, considering these fellows, I want to speak about their ancestry from whence they emerged, their ancestry from whence they emerged.

Then I want to talk about their activity, for what they were famed, for what they were famed. And then their legacy, what they left. And in one sense you can test yourself with those three things, your ancestry.

What was your background like? From where did you emerge? And were you true to your background, assuming it was a Christian one, or was it a non-Christian background and yet from that very unlikely situation you became a very strong servant of the Lord, your ancestry from which you emerged, your activity for which you're famed. What do people see of you? What does your lifestyle illustrate? What's the measure of the service that you offer Almighty God? And then when the day comes, when life here is through, and you leave a legacy, not necessarily in terms of heaped up finance and wealth, but in terms of the recall that people still alive have when they think about you, what legacy will you have left? Well, first of all, the ancestry. From whence these fellows emerged, two men and one boy, and they had an excellent pedigree, let's say that.

You see, these two fellows of whom you read in the 17th verse, their father was the priest, the main priest in Israel. He combined the functions of Moses and Aaron, and they were brought up within the precincts of the tabernacle. That was like the Old Testament equivalent to a church building.

Now, if any lads have got great potential, surely it's these. And the boys were called Hophni and Phineas. Hophni means strength, and Phineas means oracle.

And surely when father, in an optimistic fashion, was naming them, he was sort of projecting what he hoped they would fulfill in terms of service to the Lord in his land of Israel. Hophni, he's going to be the strong man. And Phineas? Well, the word of God is going to be poured into his soul, and he's going to deliver it to other people.

Can you think of a preacher who, having a son, doesn't sometimes come before the Lord and say, make my son to be a leader of the righteous community when he matures? And such they should have been, but alas, they weren't. What about Samuel? For he's the third member of these, this little triplet that we're looking at. His name means given by God, and he too has a good pedigree.

His father is Elkanah, his mother is Hannah, and Elkanah and Hannah are people who are given to serving the Lord themselves, and they engage in prayer, and they attend the sanctuary at Shiloh annually. And yet, though these fellows came from good backgrounds, their ancestry, their pedigree was impeccable. Look what the Bible has to say of them.

The adult sons, to start with, of Eli. Verse 12, Eli's sons were wicked men. They had no regard for the Lord.

And Samuel? Well, in complete contrast, verse 26, the boy Samuel continued to grow in stature and in favor with the Lord and with men. When old Eli, the father of Hopham, Hophni and Phinehas, reviewed his life just before he was tragically killed, he might have wished that the day had never dawned when he fathered his lads. He might have wished in retrospect that he'd put a millstone around their neck, and they could never have infected the land of Israel with a poor example that was theirs.

But Hannah, great and glorious Hannah in the Old Testament, she who anticipates the person of Mary in the new, she was ever singing the Magnificat, my soul doth magnify the Lord. Why? Because God in his grace has made me to be a mother of Samuel, one of the most remarkable men in the whole of the Old Testament. Now, here's the problem, my friend.

Both these families have excellent pedigrees, but the authorized version doesn't blush to describe Eli's sons as being sons of Belial, sons of the devil. And Hannah? Well, we're told of her son, Samuel, that his influence was such that from Dan to Beersheba, or as we would say in the United Kingdom, from Jonagroth to Land's End, people blessed God for Samuel and for his godly mother. Well, that's the ancestry, I argue, from whence they came, the ancestry from whence they emerged.

But now let's consider for a moment the activity for which they were famed, the activity for which they were famed. Here comes the divergence, you see. Eli's sons don't follow his example.

Hannah's son follows hers. And as you're looking at Eli's sons, and as you're looking at Hannah's son, ask yourself, which example am I really following? Again, if I was to be placed in this chapter, would I more naturally be seen in the company of Hophni and Phineas, or would I more naturally be an associate of Samuel? What's your lifestyle like? How are you famed, so to speak? How do people think of you? With regard to Hophni and Phineas, let me talk to you for a moment about the indecency that mastered them, the indecency that mastered them. We're told later on in this chapter, are we not, that they used religion for their own advantage? Now that they'd grown up in the sanctuary at Shiloh, they'd seen their dad officiate in various sacrifices, and they themselves are brought into the priestly caste, and they follow, or it seems as though they ought to follow in his footsteps.

And we discover that when the people bring their sacrifices to the Lord, they misappropriate the sacrifices. They take for themselves the flesh of the animal, that they treat with contempt the very regulations of the Lord, an indecency which mastered them. This is what they were famed for.

And I almost blush to say that in the temple in those days, there were women who helped to minister. Nothing wrong with that. But Hophni and Phineas, these servants of Eli, instead of using these women and blessing God for their service at a spiritual level, they took them as being their concubines, and they engaged in immoral practices, the indecency that mastered them.

How terrible to take your advantage as being a religious leader and to use it to satisfy your own desires. But this was the problem with Eli's wicked sons. There was, as I say, an indecency which mastered them.

Now why? Why did they fall into these bad practices? Well, let me suggest this. There was an indifference that marred them. An indifference that they had towards the Lord and his desires for their lives.

Verse 12, again, Eli's sons were wicked men. They had no regard for the Lord. But why were they so casual in their spiritual observance? Well, I hesitate to say this because I wouldn't be cruel in expounding Scripture, even in the case of a man who obviously I don't know because I live centuries after his career.

But I wonder if at fault you have to bring into the dark old Eli. Eli was a good priest, wasn't he? But he was terribly overworked. He brought together, as I suggested, both the ministries of Aaron and Moses.

Now what's one of the problems for Christian leaders, for a father or indeed for a mother who is very much occupied with the service of God? You might give so much time to what you think is the service of God that you miss out on the prior responsibility of looking after your own family. You know there's a story in the Old Testament that speaks of children and their fathers and the children bringing inquiries to dad and saying, why do we keep the Passover? And what do these stones mean? And what do these religious observances mean? And Moses teaches the Israelites, the ancient Hebrews, that it should be the father who was answering the questions and giving the first basic religious instruction to his children. How pathetic it was that Eli is so involved with the affairs of the nation that it seems that when Phineas and Hophni should have been tutored by him, he's unable to give them the time.

Now he's a handicapped man, is Eli, let's be fair to him. He's lost his wife. Maybe she died when Phineas was born, I don't know.

But the truth of the matter is that these were motherless boys. And Eli, he should have given them time as you, my dear Christian friend, should give time to your children. As you who don't have children should be giving time to the boys and girls and the children of our church fellowship.

If you give your child presents instead of your presence, did you notice the difference? If you give your child presents instead of your presence, you are giving them the inferior thing. Never count an hour spent with a child as an hour wasted. Whether you're a mom or a dad or a Christian elder or deacon or Sunday school teacher or leader or just some member of a congregation who has upon your heart one or two of the youngsters of our church, never think it time lost to spend an hour or so with a child.

Eli was defective here. And what is more, he failed in the area of discipline. Someone has said a pat on the right provided it's administered hard enough and low enough.

They're thinking of children, not average church members incidentally. Here is Eli. And when Eli is judged by God, it's on the basis that when his boys were engaging in the dishonorable practices which were a scandal throughout Israel, he failed to restrain them.

Verse 13 of chapter 3, I told him that I would judge his family forever because of the sin he knew about. His sons made themselves contemptible and he failed to restrain them. The indifference that marred these fellows, it's traceable back to their parent.

Do you remember Isaac? It said of Isaac in scripture, he didn't wear out, he rusted out. And I think in some respects that's true. When he's on his deathbed, he wants a bit of venison, doesn't he? Do you remember the story of Jacob and Esau and one getting the venison later than the other and how the wife comes in, Isaac's wife, and she takes Jacob's offering and she treats it as though it's venison and ultimately he comes before his father and he pretends to be Esau and he gets the blessing of Isaac.

But the thing that strikes me as being impressive is this, that this old man on his deathbed, he's so concerned about his venison. He's so concerned about something to eat. It seems very carnal and very literally fleshly.

And I wonder if there wasn't that aspect in Eli's temperament. You see, earlier on in this second chapter, we're told that when these fellows misappropriate the offering and take the best meal to them, the best meat for themselves, not only do they eat it, but they bring it to their father and he consumes it too. Will you look at verse 29 of the second chapter? Why do you honor your sons more than me? Address to Eli these words.

Why do you honor your sons more than me? By fattening yourselves on the choice parts of every offering made by my people Israel. And later on we're told when Eli dies that he was a very heavy man, a very obese man. He led Israel for 40 years, we're told in the 18th verse of chapter 4. When he mentioned the ark of God, Eli fell backwards off his chair by the side of the gate.

His neck was broken and he died for he was an old man and heavy. He'd led Israel for 40 years. I don't want to deal unfairly with him.

But I wonder whether Eli failed also to curb his weaknesses, whether he lacked a basic discipline. And this sort of rubbed off on his boys. And as a result, well, there was an indecency which mastered them and an indifference that marred them.

But if that's the activity for which they're known, what about Samuel? Well, you see, it's completely different for him. There is, and we'll just have time to bring out one characteristic, there is what I've called a maturity that marked him, a maturity that marked him. Here we're told in the 17th and 18th verses of 1 Samuel 2, the sin of the young men was very great in the Lord's sight for they were treating the Lord's offering with contempt, but Samuel was ministering before the Lord.

And in the 26th verse, and the boy Samuel continued to grow in stature and in favor with the Lord and with men. There was an incredible maturity that Samuel had. And you know, it's interesting that even today there are great contrasts that you can run between one young person and another young person.

You don't have to be old to be mature, and neither having been old do you necessarily qualify to be called mature. Maturity has got very little necessarily to do with age. Here is Samuel, and he's just a little boy, and he wears the linen ephod, the badge of office, the garment that marked the position of a man who could go into the presence of God.

I wonder why it is that young Samuel matured so very quickly. A remarkable spiritual growth that anticipates the carpenter's son in Nazareth, the boy Samuel continued to grow in stature and in favor with the Lord and with men. You see, if I'm right in suggesting that what you are rubs off on your children, and what you and I are as members of our congregation will in some way influence our young people, then perhaps we're correct in adducing this, that as Eli influenced Hophni and Phinehas to their disadvantage, so Hannah, godly Hannah, blessed Samuel by the example that she gave.

Do you remember several years before the second chapter, or the third chapter, how she stands in front of Eli with young Samuel before her, and she said, for this boy I prayed, and the Lord granted my request. Now I return him back to the service of God. Do you hear the echo of the voice on Mount Moriah? Abraham, take your son, your only son, in whom you delight, and sacrifice him to me.

Hannah is of the same stock, of the same caliber. Take your son, your only son, and remember the promise that you made, and bring him to me in the service of God, in the sanctuary of Shiloh. And to the eternal credit of Hannah, she does that.

Now you don't have a woman of that caliber whose influence will not rub off on her son. And I am arguing this, that the thing that makes for the contrast between Hophni, Phinehas, and Samuel are their parents, and the way that Alcannah backs up godly Hannah in dedicating Samuel in the service of the Lord. Now do you think that when she left Shiloh and went back home to Ramah, that she didn't take back in her heart with her the love that she had for her lad? If Monica prayed for Augustine, if Susanna prayed for John Wesley, how much did Hannah pray for Samuel? And the influence of Hannah, it stays with Samuel all the days of his life.

Now some of you are not mothers, but don't think because of this, that the point that I'm outlining this morning in the name of God somehow bypasses you. The man, or one of the men who must influence me in my life, is now in the glory. He was an old Irish pastor from Belfast.

I was too young at the time to evaluate his ministry, but folks who loved him dearly said that he couldn't preach for Toffee. But the life of that man as he ministered to us in Sheffield directly after the war, it lives on in the minds and in the lives of people who came into contact with him. You see my friend, you and I who are adults, we have a ministry of influence over other people which is so important, and it's outlined here in the story of Hannah and Samuel, and you get a negative example with Eli and his two sons.

So if these boys are known for the activity for which they're famed on the part of Hophni and Phineas, the indecency that mastered them, the indifference that marred them, and for Samuel the maturity that marked him, then let's hasten on to complete our little study this morning. The legacy that they've left behind, the legacy that they leave behind, you can almost work it through for yourself. You know in those days they didn't have surnames, they just had Christian names.

Surnames are something that have developed much more recently in history, but I want to suggest to you that there was a surname that you could apply to Eli and you could apply to Hophni and Phineas. There was a family name which was part of the legacy that these two lads left, and you discover it in the fourth chapter when at the end of that chapter you read of Eli's death, and also the death of one of his daughters-in-law, who on giving birth to Eli's grandson, verse 21, names the boy Ichabod, saying, the glory has departed from Israel. That's what Eli's family knew bit by bit as the years went by.

The glory departed. The father was called to a task that he couldn't fully do. He wasn't man enough to fill the position that was his of leading a nation, and bit by bit the luster, the godliness, and the spiritual sensitivity, it waned to the extent that he couldn't distinguish between a woman with a broken heart crying before the Lord and some drunkard turning into the Shiloh's sanctuary on one day.

And because of his influence and the decadence of Hophni and Phineas, not only was worship at Shiloh a scandal throughout the whole of Israel, but the very name of God and the glory of God seemed to depart from the people. That's the legacy that they left behind when they thought in years to come of Eli and Hophni and Phineas. They thought of a glory that had departed.

When you die, my friend, what will we think? Will we remember the days when through your influence and your ministries you glorified the Lord? Or will they think of you? Instead of your life being a triumph, it was a tragedy. Instead of being a delight, it was a disaster. Eli Ichabod, Hophni Ichabod, Phineas Ichabod.

One family's legacy. But what about the other man? What about Samuel? Well, if I had to give him a surname, I think I could supply it, and I can do it from the Hebrew language. And I can do it without showing off either, because you can do it yourself.

And that is by turning to 1 Samuel and chapter 7 and verse 12. And there you will discover the context not relevant at the moment, though you can read it for yourself later. There you will discover an incident when Samuel records the intervention of God and his blessings upon the nation.

And we are told then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mishpah and Shem. He named it Ebenezer, which is a Hebrew for saying, thus far has the Lord helped us. And that was the family motto.

This is what he had learned from Hannah. You read her prayer, her Magnificat in the second chapter. She speaks of the way that the Lord had lifted her up, how the Lord intervened in her circumstances, how God could constantly make his presence known and liberate people from the bondage that bound them, that now Hannah was a good teacher.

I don't know if Samuel didn't return to Hannah and her care after Eli's death, because he was only a young lad at that time. And maybe she took over again the instruction that she commenced during those first three years. And maybe Hannah, it was said as John Wesley said of his mother Susanna, she taught me more about God than all the theologians of Israel.

And one of the things that Samuel never forgot was that God was the man who would help him, and help him that he did. To the end that when Samuel comes to the completion of his public ministry, or nearly so, he is able to confront the people to whom he's directed the word of the Lord. And in the twelfth chapter and the third verse he says, here I stand, testify against me in the presence of the Lord and his anointed.

Whose arcs have I taken? Whose donkey have I taken? Whom have I cheated? Whom have I oppressed? From whose hand have I accepted a bribe to make me shut my eyes? If I have done any of these things, I will make it right. And the people chorus to a man, you have not cheated or oppressed us. You have not taken anything from anyone's hand.

Samuel never played the part of Hophni and Phineas. Why? Because he knew from his mother's cradle that there was a God who could intervene and grant him all that he needed. Samuel lived his life by the word Ebenezer.

Hitherto the Lord helps. And his final comment to the Hebrew people was this. In the twenty-third verse of the twelfth chapter, ask for me, far be it from me, that I should sin against the Lord by failing to pray for you, and I will teach you the way that is good and right.

Samuel left a legacy. He left a family name. Hannah Ebenezer.

Elkanah Ebenezer. Samuel Ebenezer. You see, there were two families that really, we are asked to adjudge as we read the second chapter of 1 Samuel.

The one is Eli's family and the other is Hannah's family. Now my friend, which identifies more closely than the other with you? Where would you be more at home? With Eli? I trust not. We don't want people with the name Ichabod written over them, do we, in the term? Would you rather identify yourself with Hannah and Samuel? And could you not make Ebenezer a term by which you live your life, realizing that through the provisions of God at Calvary and the salvation work of our Lord Jesus Christ, He has intervened to bless you and to grant you redemption and has given you a lease of years to offer in His service until the day comes when you, like Samuel, are taken to be with the Lord.

And when that day comes, can it be said by the pastor, the preacher who conducts your memorial, that this woman, that this man, live their lives as one marked out by the Lord, whose influence stretched throughout the town, as someone who lived consistently for the honor and for the glory of Jesus? You mums and dads, you older church folk who've got influence over younger people, then dedicate that influence to the Lord and ask that He may bless our families and bless our church circle here at the town so that we might be pleasing to Him and our youngsters may be catapulted in the category of a Samuel and not shaped in the fashion of Hophni and Phinehas. Let's pray. We're going to sing that little song as we pray.

In my life, Lord, be glorified. In your church, Lord, be glorified. In my home, Lord, be glorified.

Then one of our elders, Bob Mortimer, just commits us to the Lord before we take our final hymn. In my life, Lord, in your church, Lord, in my home, Lord, be glorified. Father, enable us to take sensitively the bread and the wine in remembrance of the one who brought God's glory back into this sin-stained world.

And those who must leave us at this juncture, send them out with your blessing and help us all to live for your honor. In Jesus' name, Amen.