Verses 1-18
The House of Eli Overthrown
WE have seen that Hophni and Phinehas were corrupt men, and that as a consequence the people abhorred the offering of the Lord. We have discoursed upon the doctrine that bad priests make bad people. We now come to the divine visitation of priestly unfaithfulness. Once and again we are permitted to see with startling vividness the Hand which rules, and in which is the rod of power. Now and again God puts aside all ministries and mediations, and shows us all the glory of his personal presence and all the wonderfulness of his irresistible power. We are glad when he retires, for no man can see God and live. Better to have the ministry of the most inexorable, faithful prophet, who never spares the word of judgment or the stroke of the rod, then stand in the unclouded and blinding blaze of the divine glory. Men prefer sunshine to lightning. They are both, indeed, rays of the divine glory; yet we feel safer under the ordinary daylight than under bolts of electric fire. Let us be thankful, then, that God comes to us through Eli, through human priests, and through man's ministry, being tempered, as it must be, by human limitations, rather than by bringing us face to face with himself, and pronouncing the word to us without minister or medium. At the same time we are made stronger, we are made tremblingly glad by occasional glimpses of his personality. Yet we are thankful that he puts a veil over his face, and communes with us by voices with which we are familiar. Hophni and Phinehas were evil-minded men; Eli was afflicted with weakness which dipped down sharply towards wickedness; and therefore God came out of his hiding-place to vindicate righteousness, to sweep the floor of his Church, and to use his great winnowing-fan.
Eli might have excited pity but for the misdirection of his amiability. There is nothing wrong in amiability, in paternal kindness, in fatherly forbearance and gentleness, within the limits of the household. Contrariwise, there is much that is beautiful and impressive and educational about such paternal administration. But no man may be amiable towards wickedness. The whole doctrine is found in that one sentence. Be amiable, kind, forbearing towards infirmity, natural defect, towards things that are of little or no consequence when compared with the verities of the eternal God. But when a man winks at an evil deed, he deserves the condemnation and wrath of God. When a man is tolerant of evil he himself becomes wicked. This is a doctrine which sometimes has severe application, and exposes a man to terrible reprisals; because people who look at comparative virtue, and not at holiness itself, always have the tu quoque ready for any faithful prophet, for any light-speaking and rod-using minister of God. Be ye clean that bear the vessels of the Lord! If we can keep our garments unspotted from the world we shall have proportionate power over men; though even then there will not be wanting censorious critics who will be quick with their malicious repartee, pointing at a speck as though it were a blot which even God himself could never wash out of our life. Eli was an easy-going indulgent old man; he was more than that. Tell us that at his own fireside his children could trifle with him, mock him, and could turn him into a family joke. Well, it was a very naughty thing for them to do. But Eli was a priest, Eli was the high-priest of the Lord; and when a man's character sinks below his office, he involves himself in complications of evil which ultimately ruin his life. The office requiring strength and character, which is distinguished by nothing but the most senile weakness, when they get together you have a contradiction which involves terrible moral consequences.
In dwelling upon the overthrow of the house of Eli, we will look at the subject under two divisions, personality and doctrine. There were two persons employed in connection with this communication of terrible intelligence to the old high-priest. The first is merely described as "a man of God." So far as the page before us goes we have to deal with an anonymous communicant. Here is no great historic name; here is no illustrious reputation to sustain the man's words. He steps out of obscurity, as it were, and is known by the imperishable name, "a man of God." That is the one name that will do for all worlds, through all ages. You need not have "a man of God" described, ticketed, and detailed. When a man of God confronts you, he brings with him atmosphere and light and moral credentials which instantly show that he has been with Jesus and learned of him. There may be teachers who can analyse the character of a man of God. We prefer not to attempt any such analysis. Better let the character stand there, hear all he says, listen to his overpowering speech, and we shall soon know whether he hath learned his accent in the court of heaven. He was a terrible speaker! Did ever mortal speech exceed in massiveness, in thunderous force, in terrific all-cleaving might, the speech which this anonymous messenger delivered to Eli:
"Wherefore the Lord God of Israel saith, I said indeed that thy house, and the house of thy father, should walk before me for ever: but now the Lord saith, Be it far from me; for them that honour me I will honour, and they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed. Behold, the days come, that I will cut off thine arm, and the arm of thy father's house, that there shall not be an old man in thine house. And thou shalt see an enemy in my habitation, in all the wealth which God shall give Israel: and there shall not be an old man in thine house for ever. And the man of thine, whom I shall not cut off from mine altar, shall be to consume thine eyes, and to grieve thine heart: and all the increase of thine house shall die in the flower of their age" ( 1Sa 2:30-33 ).
The next messenger that came was a little child. This is how God educates us, by putting tutors on both sides, behind and before. You hear a man who tells you what to you may be evil tidings, sharp, startling messages to your judgment and to your conscience, and you say, "The man is a fanatic." You walk away, and before you have got a mile further a little child gets up and smiles at you the same message, says it in smiles, in tender looks, in trembling childlike tones, and you begin to think there is something in it. You go further, and the atmosphere seems to be charged with divine reproaches and divine messages. So you go on, until the oldest, best, and stateliest men tremble under subtle, impalpable, all-encompassing, irresistible influences. There are some testimonies which are so terrible that they cannot be believed on the spot. Some men have such a way of speaking piercing, crushing that when they are heard the auditor says, "This cannot be so; it is an exaggeration." So God hath appointed elsewhere child-priests, little prophets, young ministers, unexpected interpreters of his heart and will. When the thunder and the gentle breeze unite in speaking the same message men begin to open their ears to it to cause their hearts to listen to the strange, the bitter, yet the most needful word. Very beautiful is this part of the story detailed, the part, namely, which relates to Samuel, the little child about the holy place who did not know the Lord. Samuel had no acquaintance with God. That is a most important point to observe. Read the exact words of the narrative:
"Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, neither was the word of the Lord yet revealed unto him" ( 1Sa 3:7 ).
This incident brings before us some of the most solemn moments of life. Life is not one long holiday. Life is not to be spent upon one continuous level. There are some single moments in our life which make us old. There are some visions, which are but the flash of an eye, yet they make us old men. Look at Samuel, for the first time hearing of God. Is it not a solemn moment when we get our first notion of the infinite? Can you recall your mental sensations or spiritual condition when you first began to feel that yonder distant, dim horizon was but a trembling, almost transparent curtain, and that just behind it, so to speak, lied God's eternity? After such a moment as that, a man can never, if he has made right use of it, fall back into the littleness and contemptibleness of the life that thinks the world a nutshell, that calls time all duration. Some have had these solemn moments in life; when they have heard a Voice they did not know, and from that moment have never ceased to hear it; it has been the sub-tone of all that has reached the ear, it has been in the hum of all nature, it has been softer than softest zephyr of the spring. A man is never great until he knows all about this solemnity. The child who hears a voice, naturally thinks it is a human voice. Can any voice be so human as God's? Thou canst not thunder with a voice like his; thou canst not speak in so fatherly or motherly a tone either. Herein is the incarnation mystery, God always showing his power to talk humanly, and to shoot out the lightning of his word from human lips. God has always during the history of the world been incarnating himself.
Samuel is taught that there is a voice other than Eli's. The old man has still force enough left in him to speak this wondrously beautiful word to the bewildered child, groping about in the darkness, "When thou hearest the voice again say, Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth." That is what we are called upon to do; to be listeners, receivers, mediums of God. Do we ever see beyond our own limited circle? Do we know that there is a world larger than our England: that over that little thimbleful of water, which we call the sea, there are other countries? It is a difficult thing for some Englishmen to believe that there is any other land; very difficult for an islander to believe in a continent. Yet really we know that there are other places besides England. Are there no other spheres than the world which we call "the great globe itself"? There may be. Why then should we be compressing ourselves, minifying ourselves, and getting into the most microscopic compass? Why not pray for larger life, larger intellectual dominion, higher, sublimer moral sympathies? Why not, having infinitude around us, set ourselves as if we meant to take in as Guest and King the whole God? We shall never know what life is until we have passed this solemn moment which occurred in the history of Samuel, at the point to which we have now come. The non-religious man is not alive. How many are prepared to testify that they never knew what greatness was, what immeasurableness was, and what majesty was, until through Christ's life they had one peep into the incomprehensible eternity and infinity of God!
Now we can believe the man of God, who speaks the keen, cleaving word, or we can believe the gentle little Samuel, who comes and puts into monosyllables the thunders of the divine will. They are both the same; only some men cannot endure the man of God he crushes them, he is a tyrant an imperial, dominating man, in the way of whose arm there is death! Let such be thankful that they can hear the same message not in a less noble music or more tender strain, so far as the man's intent is concerned from children, from other ministers and interpreters of God.
With regard to the doctrine brought out in connection with these events, it is plain in the first place, that God requires holiness in all who serve him. Why were Hophni and Phinehas dismissed with divine reproaches? Because they were wanting in original thought? We now dismiss our ministers because they are not very original, We do not learn that Hophni and Phinehas were dismissed from the priest's office because they were wanting in vitality and freshness of brain power. Why were they dismissed? Because they were behind the age? The age! Oh, what a ghost that age is to some people. We do not read that Hophni and Phinehas were dismissed because they were behind the age, but because they were corrupt men. Corruptness cannot be atoned for by genius. Gifts are no substitute for grace. Better be the poorest, slowest, dullest thinker; better be a man of stammering tongue, than be the most brilliant and gifted man who does not know what it is to be under the power of divine grace. Holiness, then, is the fundamental requirement in all persons who would interpret God and serve him in any department of the great ministry of his kingdom. Holiness is genius. Holiness hath keen, piercing eyes that see every filament of divine truth and holy communication to men. When the ministry is holy, when the Church is holy, when every man, high-priest and doorkeeper, is holy, then the world will begin to feel that there is something in it that is not of its own nature.
It is evident, also, in the second place, that all the covenants of God are founded upon a moral basis. "I said indeed that thy house, and the house of thy father, should walk before me for ever." There is the bond, there is the covenant of God repeated by a servant. How, then, can Eli be overthrown? How can Hophni and Phinehas be dismissed from their office? "But now the Lord saith, Be it far from me." Is then the Lord fickle? Is he man that he should change, or is he the son of man that he should repent? "Be it far from me." Why? "For them that honour me I will honour, and they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed." Where is God's unchangeableness in the shape of trees and plants, in the order of the stars and the worlds, in any outside appointments, arrangements, and adaptations? Where do we find the unchangeableness of God? Only along the line of righteousness. When he speaks, he speaks upon a moral basis; all that he says is conditioned upon moral purposes. Hath he promised thee, O man, and art thou living upon that promise? Know thou, that the promise is always secondary; the character is primary righteousness first. If the first archangel whom God summoned into his own solitude were to sin against him, he would dethrone him and banish him into outer darkness! Let us look at details, at outside arrangements, and see if this is fickleness on the part of Providence, or changeableness of disposition on the part of God. Go to the first line the great line on which all true things are built, all lasting empires and monarchies are founded and you will find that along the line of righteousness God never moves to the right hand or to the left, on from eternity to eternity, never a break or a deflection in the line of infinite righteousness!
In the third place, it is evident that some of the communications of God are at first very startling and terrible. Think of little Samuel making his acquaintance with the Lord through a speech like this! Understand that at the beginning Samuel did not know the Lord; that he received from Eli instruction as to his position; that having assumed that position, the introductory words of the divine communication are these:
"And the Lord said to Samuel, Behold, I will do a thing in Israel, at which both the ears of every one that heareth it shall tingle" ( 1Sa 3:11 ).
We have spoken of holiness, a word we can but dimly understand upon the earth. One day we shall recollect the sun as a poor pale beam that we could just see with, by using our eyes very sharply and putting our hands before us lest we should fall over something. One day we shall think of our professed sanctification as a poor morality. But as to holiness, the question is asked by many anxious hearts, How is this holiness to be had? In one way. "The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin." There is "a fountain opened to the house of David for sin and for uncleanness." "Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thought, and let him return unto the Lord, and he will abundantly pardon." That is the only answer. Some ministers of Christ have been saying that for twenty-five years, for forty years, and they can find no better thing to say. It is the same in every ministry, to whatsoever part of the great universe of truth we may go. If any man asks how to get up there, we have to point to the old way, the Cross of Christ; to Christ, who tasted death for every man; to the atonement made by the Lamb of God! We want no other way. We never feel the need of any other way. When we have tried any other path, we have only had to be brought into some deeper sorrow and more bitter agony to call out after the living God to help us back again to the old way of the cross. He who walks that road finds his way to heaven!
Prayer
Almighty God, we have trangressed gainst thy covenant, and thy commandments have often been of none effect in our lives. We have forgotten God. We have lived in ourselves; we have been our own law; we have been our own gods. Truly, thou hast been angry with us. Thou hast scourged us until our life has become a daily pain. Thou hast impoverished us until we have seen the emptiness and vanity of our own resources. Now take us to thine heart again. Come through the dark cloud of thy judgment, and in answer to our penitence speak comfortably to our souls. We seek thee only through the covenant which thou didst make with thy dear Son. We stand behind him. Our hearts are safe in the infinite security of his righteousness and compassion. Give us joy in thy presence, yea, fill us with the peace of God! Amen.
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