I've been asked a number of times why it is that I keep choosing songs that we don't know. And there is a good reason for it. I do pay attention to the songs and to the tunes. As a rule, actually, I go through the whole order of worship and try to play all the songs so that I know that I know all the tunes. and that they are singable. But the reason I choose many songs that we don't know, usually from the Psalms, not from the hymns, is because the word of God should have priority of place when it comes to shaping the thoughts, desires, intentions, and affections of our hearts. John Calvin once said that the book of Psalms is an anatomy of the whole human heart. The Psalms teach us what we desire, they teach us what we should desire, they teach us what the good life looks like, and they teach us how to get there. And so it is for that reason that I will continue to sing songs that we don't know. And it's always good to learn songs that you don't know anyway. And for those who have a particular difficulty with it, just one practical note, there is an app If you don't know what an app is, ask your grandkids, they can help you. There is a Trinity Psalter Hymnal app, and it includes the tunes for all of the songs. And so if we come to a song that's unfamiliar and you'd like to review it before we come to worship, By all means, the app is about, when I bought it, it was 12 bucks, which is not horrible, not horrible at all. It's the only app I've ever paid for, but there are ways to learn the songs that we ought to sing. Now let's go to our text. Our scripture reading for this morning is from 1 Samuel again. 1 Samuel chapter 2, we're going to begin Reading at 1 Samuel 2, verse one, we're gonna finish reading at 1 Samuel 3, verse one. Our focus, our text will be from 1 Samuel 2, verse 11b, all the way to chapter 3a. Now this is the word of God. 1 Samuel 2, beginning at verse one. And Hannah prayed and said, my heart exalts in the Lord, my horn is exalted in the Lord, my mouth derides my enemies because I rejoice in your salvation. There is none holy like the Lord. There is none besides you. There is no rock like our God. No more so very proudly. Let not arrogance come from your mouth. For the Lord is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed. The bows of the mighty are broken, but the feeble bind on strength. Those who were full have hired themselves out for bread, but those who were hungry have ceased to hunger. The barren has born seven, but she who has many children is forlorn. The Lord kills and brings to life. He brings down to Sheol and raises up. The Lord makes poor and makes rich. He brings low and He exalts. He raises up the poor from the dust. He lifts the needy from the ash heap to make them sit with princes and inherit a seat of honor. For the pillars of the earth are the Lord's, and on them He has set the world. He will guard the feet of His faithful ones, but the wicked shall be cut off in darkness. For not by might shall a man prevail. The adversaries of the Lord shall be broken to pieces. Against them he will thunder in heaven. The Lord will judge the ends of the earth. He will give strength to his king and exalt the horn of his anointed. Then Elkanah went home to Ramah, and here our text begins. And the boy was ministering to the Lord in the presence of Eli the priest. Now the sons of Eli were worthless men. They did not know the Lord. The custom of the priest was, with the people, was that when any man offered a sacrifice, the priest's servant would come while the meat was boiling with a three-pronged fork in his hand, and he would thrust it into the pan or kettle or cauldron or pot. All that the fork brought up, the priest would take for himself. This is what they did at Shiloh to all the Israelites who came there. Moreover, Before the fat was burned, the priest's servant would come and say to the man who was sacrificing, give meat for the priest to roast, for he will not accept boiled meat from you, but only raw. And if the man said to him, let them burn the fat first, and then take as much as you wish, he would say, no, you must give it now, and if not, I will take it by force. Thus the sin of the young men was very great in the sight of the Lord, for the men treated the offering of the Lord with contempt. Samuel was ministering before the Lord, a boy clothed with a linen ephod. And his mother used to make for him a little robe and take it to him each year when she went up with her husband to offer the yearly sacrifice. Then Eli would bless Elkanah and his wife and say, may the Lord give you children by this woman for the petition she asked of the Lord. So then they would return to their home. Indeed, the Lord visited Hannah and she conceived and bore three sons and two daughters. And the boy Samuel grew in the presence of the Lord. Now, Eli was very old, and he kept hearing all that his sons were doing to all Israel, and how they lay with the women who were serving at the entrance to the tent of meeting. And he said to them, why do you do such things? For I hear of your evil dealings from all these people. No, my sons, it is no good report that I hear the people of the Lord spreading abroad. If someone sins against a man, God will mediate for him. But if someone sins against the Lord, who can intercede for him? But they would not listen to the voice of their father, for it was the will of the Lord to put them to death. Now the boy Samuel continued to grow both in stature and in favor with the Lord and also with men. And there came a man of God to Eli and said to him, thus says the Lord, did I indeed reveal myself to the house of your father when they were in Egypt subject to the house of Pharaoh? Did I choose him out of all the tribes of Israel to be my priest, to go up to my altar, to burn incense, to wear an ephod before me? I gave to the house of your father all my offerings by fire from the people of Israel. Why then do you scorn my sacrifices and my offerings that I commanded for my dwelling and honor your sons above me by fattening yourselves on the choicest parts of every offering of my people Israel? Therefore the Lord, the God of Israel, declares, I promised that your house and the house of your father should go in and out before me forever. But now the Lord declares, far be it from me. For those who honor me, I will honor. And those who despise me shall be lightly esteemed. Behold, the days are coming when I will cut off your strength and the strength of your father's house so that there will not be an old man in your house. Then in distress, you will look with envious eye on all the prosperity that shall be bestowed on Israel, and there shall not be an old man in your house forever. The only one of you whom I shall not cut off from my altar shall be spared to weep his eyes out, to grieve his heart, and all the descendants of your house shall die by the sword of men. And this that shall come upon your two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, shall be the sign to you. Both of them shall die on the same day. And I will raise up for myself a faithful priest, who shall do according to what is in my heart and in my mind. And I will build him a sure house, and he shall go in and out before my anointed forever. And everyone who is left in your house shall come to implore him for a piece of silver or a loaf of bread and shall say, please put me in one of the priest's places that I may eat a morsel of bread. Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord in the presence of Eli. This is the word of God. We often worry about the state of the church, particularly in our post-Christian Western context. We see decline, we see liberalism, we see apostasy. We see people leaving God for their own imagined theologies. And Paul promised that this would be the case. He said to Timothy, men will not be willing to stand up with sound doctrine, but rather, having tickling ears, they'll go out to find whatever suits their own fancies. There is a problem of apostasy among those churches that call themselves Christian. It's plain to see. You don't have to look very hard. It's often plastered on the front signs of churches. But when we consider the apostasy of various churches around Canada, not only liberal churches, but also some troubling things that we see in Catholic churches, Catholic communions, even from the Catholic Pope, we worry about the reputation of the church. And we do so primarily because we worry about the reputation of Christ. What will men say about the church? What will men say about Christ if the church is so far from him? We worry about the church. But in the midst of our worry, in the midst of our anxiety, we should also have trust. We should have trust that the Lord works, often more quietly than we'd like, more subtly than we'd like, but unlike the works of faithless men, the work of our faithful God is unyielding and unalterable. And that is a theme that comes out loud and clear in our passage today, or rather, I should say, it comes out quietly and subtly in our passage today. It is a passage that deals with apostasy in the house of God. It is a passage that deals with maverick ministers, with apostate priests, men who should be serving God but who instead are serving themselves and their own desires. But at the same time, it's a text that tells us about the unalterable plan of God. that he is king and men are not, that he is the one who will guard his church. The work of our faithful God is unyielding and unalterable. And we see this in this passage because the same sort of phrase becomes repeated again and again and again. In the midst of all this glamorous and big apostasy in the house of Eli, we have this phrase or something like it repeated again and again and again. You may have noticed this while we were reading. Verse 11, the boy was ministering to the Lord in the presence of Eli the priest. Verse 18, Samuel was ministering before the Lord, a boy clothed with a linen ephod. Verse 21, the boy Samuel grew in the presence of the Lord. Verse 26, now the boy Samuel continued to grow both in stature and in favor with the Lord and also with men. And then three, verse one, now the boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord in the presence of Eli. In between these longer sections that reveal to us the apostasy at the heart of Israel's religion at this time, the Lord reminds us quietly, subtly, he's not done working. This is the state of things now, but the Lord always gains the complete victory. And we'll see that in the two sections that our text holds before us this morning. The first section that I've titled, Maverick Ministers, displays the rebellion of God's priests from verse 12, or rather verse 11b to verse The second section deals with God's response to that, His word by a certain man of God, and that'll come in verses 27 through 3a. We begin with the ministry of Eli's worthless sons. There's a particular technical Hebrew term here. They're referred to as sons of Belial. And if you read Hebrew, you don't read Hebrew, but you'll know that Hannah took a similar phrase upon her lips when Eli accused her of being drunk in the tabernacle. She said to him, no, I am not a worthless woman. I'm not a daughter of Belial. And this phrase occurs more often in the Old Testament. It signifies someone who is absolutely worthless, who is a moral degenerate, who is doing what they ought not to do because they are supposed to be a sanctified person, but they are instead setting themselves apart for their own service. And these are the sorts of men that Eli's sons were. And the sons of Eli were worthless men. They did not know the Lord. And you'll remember what Malachi tells us about priests, that the lips of a priest should guard knowledge. The priests had a responsibility not only to offer the people sacrifice, to carry out their service in the tabernacle, but they had a responsibility also to teach the people of Israel what it was that their Lord would have them believe and what their Lord would have them do. This is reintroduced to us in the story of Asa, who was a more faithful king of Israel. He sent the priests out throughout the nation of Israel to remind the people of who the Lord was and what the Lord required of them to hold, if you will, catechism lessons and Bible studies throughout the land of Israel. That was the responsibility of the priests. The sons of Eli did not know the Lord, and so they did not teach the people, in fact, In fact, they were so far from the knowledge of the Lord that they in fact taught the people to commit idolatry. They taught the people to join them in their apostasy. Verses 13 through, yeah, verses 13 through 17 tell us about how these sons of Eli, how these worthless men demonstrated their worthlessness. Before we get there, I'd like to summarize what the offerings of the Lord were supposed to look like. There were five basic types of offerings that Israel offered to the Lord. You can read about those if you'd like in Leviticus 1-7. And there also, it tells us not only what was to be offered, but how these offerings were to be offered to the Lord. Some of these offerings were to be consumed completely by fire. The whole animal, the whole carcass was for the Lord, all the impure things were taken out of it, and then the whole animal was burned up, the entire animal on the altar. But there were some other sacrifices, like the sin offering, and like the thank offering, like the grain offering. that were partially burned on the altar before the Lord and then partially eaten either by the priest or by the priest and the people. And so in chapter one, we had Elimelech, not Elimelech, that's the wrong book, Elkanah and his family sharing together a meal, a commemoration, if you will, similar to our Lord's Supper. taking the body that had been offered into their mouths, into their stomachs as well, and so sealing the promise of God. The animals were to be slaughtered. Their parts were to be taken apart. The fatty parts, the best parts, the richest parts of the animal were always reserved for the Lord. They were to be burned on the altar. Those belonged exclusively to the Lord. And then the lean bits with the fat cut off them was to be eaten by the priest and by the people. But 1 Samuel 2 tells us that that was not what was going on in Shiloh. Ordinarily, it was the custom of the priests in Shiloh for the priest's servant, the young man of the priests, this could even be a reference to one of the sons of Eli, would come to the sacrifice as it was being prepared and would say, no, no, I don't want one of the lean bits, fat's a lot tastier than lean meat, so I'm going to take whatever the fork brings up. But then it goes a step beyond that, from the bad to the ugly. Not only did the priests demand that they be allowed to take what they wanted from the altar, the fat bits instead of the lean bits, they demanded that the people of Israel, who knew better than the priests, aid and abet their crime against the Lord. As if it wasn't enough that the priests took the parts that were to be reserved for God, They brought the people into their sin as well and forced them into apostasy as well. Verse 16, if a man should say to him, let them burn the fat first and then take as much as you wish, he would say, no, you must give it now. And if not, I will take it by force. You must give it now. or I'll have my way by force. You must give in now or I'll force you out. They were acting, if you're familiar with pagan religions of this time as well, they were acting like the priests of foreign gods, the priests of the nations who were afforded all kinds of privileges, all kinds of luxuries, these priests who could make or break the rules at will. And verse 17 does something that's quite unusual in the books of 1 and 2 Samuel. It tells us what the Lord thinks about the work of these young men. Thus the sin of the young men was very great in the sight of the Lord. For the men treated the offering of the Lord with contempt. They cared nothing for the Lord. They cared nothing for his sacrifices. And so the apostasy at the house of Eli was tremendous. But at the same time, the author of 1 Samuel and the Lord God wants us to remember that though the big men were rebelling against him, he had his small man in the sanctuary as well. Verse 18, Samuel was ministering before the Lord, a boy clothed with a linen ephod. And his mother used to make for him a little robe and take it to him each year when she went up with her husband to offer the yearly sacrifice. Then Eli would bless Elkanah and his wife and say, may the Lord give you children by this woman for the petition she asked of the Lord. And then they'd return to their home. So yes, the big people are unfaithful to the Lord, the big people or ignoring what the Lord commands, but the small people continue to do what is right. And this has been the way it has been so many times in church history. You can think, for example, of the 19th century Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper, who was a member of what might be termed an apostate church, which did not serve the Lord as the Lord demanded. And he was brought from the error of his ways, not by some professor in a university, not by some fellow minister, but by what he called the Kleine Leiden, the small people. Because they, though the great were faithless, the small were faithful. And here we see that pictured for us in Samuel and also in Hannah. Hannah continues to serve the Lord. Not only was the first fruit of her womb the Lord's possession, but she continues to serve as the Lord's maidservant. And she provided Samuel with a linen ephod, a little robe, each year as he grew out of the last one, she provided him with a new one. Now there's a question I've been asked a few times, and I'll just take a slight detour here to answer it. And that question regards Samuel serving in the temple. Was Samuel allowed to serve in the temple? If you know your Bibles, you know that only the house of Levi was allowed to serve in the temple. Other people were not allowed to serve in the temple. You can think, for example, the story of King Uzziah. He went into the temple to offer incense. The priests of God tried to stop him, but Uzziah was stubborn and he had his way. But while he was attempting to minister before the Lord, the Lord struck him with leprosy. Uzziah was not at the house of Levi. He had no place in the temple of God. It was rebellion against God for him to serve there. So was it rebellion for Samuel to serve in the house of Levi? After all, we read in 1 Samuel 1 that his father was an Ephratite or an Ephraimite. And there are three ways that this question has been answered. First way, and I think the most likely, is that Samuel was a Levite. If you go to the genealogies, that part that none of us pay much attention to, if you go to the genealogies in 1 Chronicles, you'll read this name Elkanah repeated again and again and again. In the lines of the Levites, among the sons of Korah, Kohath rather, there were many men named Elkanah, and perhaps this Elkanah was one of those. At the very least, it seems that Elkanah was a Levitical name. A second explanation is that, well, Samuel was the firstborn. And you might remember from Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, that the tribe of Levi had actually taken over the job of serving in the temple from the firstborn sons of Israel. And so, as a firstborn, Samuel had a rightful place there. The third explanation, and this is also less likely in my opinion, is that Samuel was a Nazirite. He was devoted to God's service. And so, of course, he was in the temple. But the explanation that I'll stick with, and the text certainly suggests to us that there was nothing wrong, there was nothing inappropriate with Samuel's service here in the house of the Lord, is that Samuel himself was a Levite and therefore service in the temple was part of his job. But also, if you're not satisfied with that explanation, you can note that he's not doing explicitly priestly things. He's not doing explicitly priestly things. He's not entering into the holy place or the holy of holies, but he's just generally described as someone who served in the temple of God. So this boy Samuel served in the tabernacle, in the temple, in the shrine in Shiloh, and he's provided with what is necessary to carry out that service by his mother. Here we have a demonstration of faithfulness in the midst of faithlessness. But in response to this faithfulness, what do we see from Eli? Well, knowing his sons, this might be unexpected to us, but knowing what he did in 1 Samuel 1, it might not be so unexpected to us. Then Eli, seeing Elkanah and his wife, he would say, may the Lord give you children by this woman for the petition she asked of the Lord. He blesses Hannah, he blesses Elkanah. And he invokes the name of the Lord as was his right as a priest. He blesses them in the name of the Lord and in response to the blessing of Eli, the Lord blesses Hannah's womb. Even while he's judging, even while he's preparing, rather, to judge the apostasy at Shiloh, the Lord knows what it is to be kind to his saints, to Hannah, to Elkanah, and also to the boy Samuel. And so we read, the boy Samuel continued to grow in the presence of the Lord. Now we move back to the darkness, from the glimmer once again into the gloom. Verse 22, now Eli was very old. And he kept hearing all that his sons were doing to all Israel. See, his sons added to the sin of selecting the fatty parts of the offering for themselves, what was reserved for God for themselves. They added to that sin, the sin of sleeping with the women who were serving at the entrance to the tent of meeting. They were heaping moral sins on top of their ceremonial sins. But even these moral sins have a certain ceremonial component to them. If you know something about ancient pagan religions in the ancient Near East, you'll know that cultic prostitutes were often part of the official religion of pagan nations. And so the priests had to sleep with the cult prostitutes, but these women were not prostitutes. We hear about them in Exodus chapter 38 as well. In Exodus chapter 38 verse 8, we read that the mirrors of the women who served in the house of God were used to make a covering for the altar of God. These women were not prostitutes, they were not priestesses, if you will, but these young men, they were acting, again, they were acting like pagans. They were acting very much in line with a particular kind of manliness that is touted in our culture today, both inside and outside of the church. This sort of false manliness that takes whatever it can. Because in this worldview, that's the essence of what it means to be a man. Men are strong. They are courageous. They dominate. It's in their nature. There's this false sort of manliness that is driven by the need to be superior in all things. It's poisonous. But the opposite of this, what we see from Eli, it's not much better. How does he respond to his sons? He says to them, why do you do such things? Come on, boys. For I hear, I hear of your evil dealings from all these people. No, my sons, it's no good report that I hear the people of God spreading abroad. You notice, it's not his response to what they had done. He's not saying, I've seen you doing these things. I know that you're doing these things. But he's saying, I've heard from the people. I've heard from all the people. There are these rumors floating around. There's this emphasis on the action of hearing. Verse 22, he kept hearing. Verse 23, I hear of your evil dealings. Verse 24, it is no good report that I hear the people of Israel spreading abroad. It's not a response to the desecration of the holy place. or of their holy office. It's not even a response to the desecration of God's maidservants who are also serving in the tabernacle. No, it's a response to the reputation of the priesthood, not to the reputation of God. Eli's sons sinned in what we might characterize as a toxically masculine way, and yes, it's the right way to use that phrase. Their sin was one of conquest and aggression and domination, but Eli's sin is the other extreme. What we might characterize, quite rightly, as timidity and cowardice. Because you know what Eli should have been doing, right? You remember after the story of Balaam, Balaam who was a pagan prophet who tried to curse Israel but couldn't, you remember that after Balaam was unsuccessful in cursing Israel, the women of Midian and Moab went among the Israelites to try to trick, not even try to trick them, it didn't take much effort, but to bring them into sexual immorality so that God himself would judge the people of Israel. And so God sent a plague against the people of Israel, but to stop that plague and to stop the sexual immorality of the people of Israel, Phineas, a different Phineas, Phineas the son of Aaron, he takes a spear and he thrusts it through one of the elders of Israel who's sleeping with a Moabite woman. Eli at this point should not be warning his sons. He should not be tut-tutting them. He should not be wagging his finger at them. Eli should be protecting the sanctity of God's holy place, the sanctity of Israel, the sanctity of the priesthood. but instead he simply warns them and does not take action like he should. He was bold enough when he thought a young woman was intoxicated in the sanctuary, but all such boldness disappears when it comes to dealing with his sons. If someone sins against a man, God will mediate for him, but if someone sins against the Lord, who can intercede for him? And his point here is right. You know, if one man sins against another, they can come together and they can bring their case before God's judge and God's judge will mediate and those men will once again be at peace. But if the judge himself, if the priests of God themselves are corrupt, who will intercede between the priests and God? See, if they are eating the sin offerings and disallowing those offerings to come into the presence of God, if you will, There is no intercession that will remain for them. Eli warns his sons that they're committing the unforgivable sin. He warns them that they are in persistent, hardened rebellion. Yes, he's weak in his admonition, but he warns them all the same, but his weak words go unheard. But they would not listen to the voice of their father, for it was the will of the Lord to put them to death. The bus of the priesthood, if you will, is careening toward a cliff, and the screams of the passengers go unheeded. The Lord is still at work. Yes, there is great darkness in this apostate priesthood. Yes, the warnings that are coming even from God's apostate priests are going unheeded, but, verse 26, now the boy Samuel continued to grow both in stature and in favor with the Lord and also with men. Remember, even in this apostate sanctuary, the Lord is at work. His servant is being formed. And this should give us great encouragement, shouldn't it? When we look at the apostate churches that we see around us, and even when we see tendencies of apostasy in churches that we love and have fellowship with, Even in apostate churches, even in wicked churches, the Lord is at work. The Lord has never been without his people, nor will he be without a witness on the earth. The Lord will always have his witness. He will always have his people, his servants. And he will judge those who lead his people into wickedness. As we'll see in our second point in verses 27 and following, there came a man of God to Eli and said to him, see, the priests aren't doing their job, so God sends a prophet. God sends a prophet to bring his message of condemnation to them. The first thing this man of God does is reminds Eli of the great honor that has been shown to his house. Thus says the Lord, did I indeed, and these are questions that should be answered in the affirmative with a yes, did I indeed reveal myself to the house of your father when they were in Egypt subject to the house of Pharaoh? Did I choose him out of all the tribes of Israel to be my priest, to go up to my altar, to burn incense, to wear an ephod before me? I gave to the house of your father all my offerings by fire from the people of Israel. He tells Eli, Eli, remember Aaron. Remember Aaron, your forefather in the priesthood. He was a slave in the house of Egypt. He was a slave in the house of Pharaoh. But I took his house and I exalted it from that place of slavery. And I made them not slaves in the house of Pharaoh, but servants in the house of God. And I gave them great honor in my house, in my dwelling place. And yet, though you have been shown great honor, you have shown me great dishonor. Verse 29, why then? Do you scorn my sacrifices and my offerings that I commanded for my dwelling? Why do you honor your sons above me? By fattening yourselves on the choicest parts of every offering of my people Israel. We find out here that Eli, though he seems good and somewhat faithful at times, Eli had been fattening himself with the same sacrifice that his sons had been fattening themselves with. Eli had been taking that which belonged to the Lord for himself. And there's this repeated emphasis. My sacrifices, my offerings, I commanded, my dwelling, my people, Israel. This man of God comes to Eli and says, Eli, your family has been exalted by God, has been given this incredible privilege, and yet what have you used it to do? You have used it to abuse God's own people, to abuse God's good name, to steal God's sacrifices and God's offerings. And so God tells Eli through this man of God that judgment will come to his house. Therefore the Lord, the God of Israel, declares, I promised, and this is a promise made to Aaron, Eli's forefather, I promised that your house and the house of your father should go in and out before me forever, but now the Lord declares, far be it from me. For those who honor me, I will honor, and those who despise me shall be lightly esteemed. Behold, the days are coming when I will cut off your strength and the strength of your father's house, so that there shall not be an old man in your house. Then in distress, you will look with envious eye on all the prosperity that shall be bestowed on Israel, and there shall not be an old man in your house forever. I'm going to judge your house, God says. To allow your house, your family, to continue as my priests would be to leave my flock in the hands of wolves. and bring dishonor to my name. Eli, you've tricked yourself into believing that it's all about you, that this priesthood that has been given to you is for your own good. And it would have been, it would have been for your good if you had honored me. But because you decided that the priesthood was all about you and the sanctuary was all about your service, I will cut off your strength and the strength of your father's house. so that there will not be an old man in your house. And God goes on. In distress, you will look on the prosperity of Israel. There shall not be an old man in your house forever. The only one of you whom I shall not cut off from my altar shall be spared to weep his eyes out, to grieve his heart. And all the descendants of your house shall die by the sword of men. And this that shall come upon your two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, shall be a sign to you. Both of them shall die on the same day. Only one of you shall not be cut off from my altar." I might spoil the book of 1 Samuel for you if you haven't read it before, but if you have read it before, you know the story of Doeg, Doeg the Edomite. who saw David while he was running from Saul in the house of God at Nob. See, the house of God was moved from this place to Nob, a different town in Israel. And this man Doeg saw David there. He brought a report to King Saul. King Saul ordered his men to kill all the priests at Nob, and his men refused, but Doeg, the Edomite, a foreigner, someone who did not know the Lord, was all too happy to carry out the command of Saul. And so Eli's house was slaughtered. All but one priest, you'll remember, Abiathar. Abiathar, the great, great grandson of Eli. But even Abiathar was expelled from the priesthood in 1 Kings 2 by Solomon for siding with Adonijah against Solomon, for rebelling against God's anointed. The only one of you who shall not be cut off from the altar shall be spared to weep his eyes out, to grieve his heart, and all the descendants of your house shall die by the sword of men. And then God particularizes this judgment, and he gives a sign of this judgment in the persons of Hophni and Phinehas, and he tells Eli, your sons are going to die. the same day they will die. And in several weeks, Lord willing, we will find out what exactly happens to Hophni and Phinehas. God promises judgment on Eli's house. Your house has become hollow. Your house shall become destitute. But God does not leave his people without hope. He goes on in verses 35 and 36 to make a promise of a new priestly house. He says to Eli, and I will raise up for myself a faithful priest. You guys are faithless. I'm getting rid of you. You shall not serve in my house, but I will raise up for myself a faithful priest who shall do according to what is in my heart and in my mind. You did according to what is in your heart and your mind, and you led the people of Israel to do the exact same thing, but I am going to raise up a priest who will do what is in my heart and in my mind. And I will build him a sure house, and he shall go in and out before my anointed forever. And who is this priest? Well, the easy answer is Jesus, but not yet, not yet. First, Zadok, Zadok. A priest who honors the Lord throughout his life and chooses to be faithful instead of faithless to David's line, to the line of the Messiah, when Solomon comes to the throne. And God promises of Zadok, I will build him a house. I will not leave my people without a priest. I will not leave my people without someone to atone for their sins, but the building of this house for Zadok also means that God himself will prosper and protect that line until such a time as that kind of atonement becomes unnecessary. He shall go in and go out before my anointed forever. The first referent, again, to this promise, it's Zadok the priest during the time of David. And then Ahimaaz, his son, Azariah, his son, Johanan, his son, and Azariah, his son, and on and on through the generations. It was the responsibility of the priests and their sons to go in and out before the anointed of the Lord, before David's line, before those who were anointed, or in Hebrew, those who were the messiahs of the Lord. And you even see this at the time of Israel's lowest ebb, at the time of Zerubbabel and Joshua the high priest. You can read about them in Haggai, in Zechariah, in Nehemiah, in Ezra. There also, the priesthood and the kingship, or rather the kingly line, go hand in hand. It was the responsibility of the priests and their sons to go in and out before the anointing of the Lord forever. Then going on a little farther in the history of God's people, what is it that we read in Luke chapter 1? We read that one of the descendants of the priests from the division of Abijah, and you can read about Abijah in 1 Chronicles 24, he receives a visit from an angel. And the angel promises the priest, using the exact words that we have here in the original, the angel promises him that his son will go before the anointed. He will go in and go out. If you wanna bring it back to the Hebrew, he will go in and go out before the anointed, before the Messiah. And so here we have what might be considered the very first prophecy, not only of the Messiah, but of his forerunner, John the Baptist. And you remember what that son of the priest of the line of Aaron said about his ministry and Christ's ministry, that he must increase, the priesthood must decrease, but Christ's ministry must increase. He saw very clearly that the entire old covenant, the priests, the sacrifices and all, it was finding its fulfillment, not in the priests as such, but in Christ. Here at last was the priest, the Lamb of God, to take away the sins of the world, the priest to end all priests, the one who was both priest or sacrificer and sacrifice. Here we have at last not just a priest to stand in the presence of the anointed, to go in and out before him, but we have a priest who is the anointed, one who is both priest and king, whose priesthood is an everlasting priesthood, unlike that of Eli or even of Zadok, and whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom. And then finally we get to verse 36. And everyone who is left in your house shall come to implore him, beg him for a piece of silver or a loaf of bread, and shall say, please put me in one of the priest's places that I may eat a morsel of bread. At the beginning of the story, we heard about how the sons of Eli were fattening themselves with the best parts of the people's sacrifices. But before we got there, in Hannah's song, we heard about how those who were full have hired themselves out for bread. Those who were hungry have ceased to hunger. Eli and his sons refused to feed the people of Israel and instead fed themselves. But the Lord is in the business of reversing the fortunes of his people. And he is faithful to do just that. And the song tells us that the two go together. And so if there is a promise of the full hiring themselves out for bread, we should be prepared to see the hungry ceasing from hunger. After all, the people of Israel under Eli were starving, not for food and drink, but they were starving for the word of the Lord. And this theme is picked up in a much later passage, Ezekiel chapter 34, where again the priests, who are supposed to be the shepherds of Israel, are feeding themselves, fattening themselves and scattering the flock. The Lord promises, I will go after them. I will go after my sheep. I will strike the shepherds, I'll be rid of them. that I myself will go after the sheep and David my servant shall be shepherd over them. So there will be one flock and one shepherd, a passage that is quoted, of course, by Christ in John chapter 10. The famine in the house of Eli points us toward the feasting in the house of Christ. Eli's sons and even Eli himself, they used their office to be served rather than to serve. They were the anti-ministers. You might even call them the anti-Christs in God's courts. But Christ, you'll remember, told his disciples while he was still on earth that even the son of man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. Christ was a priest. Not a priest like Eli or his sons, a priest of a different stripe. The author of the letter to the Hebrews tells us he is a merciful and faithful high priest in the presence of God. who covers in God's sight the sins of the people. He doesn't eat the sacrifices that are meant to cover their sins. No, He Himself is the sacrifice that covers their sins. He is the Apostle and the High Priest of our confession, who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, able to sympathize with our weakness, who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. innocent, unstained, separated from sinners and yet the friend of sinners, exalted above the heavens, seated at the right hand of the throne of the majesty in heaven, a minister in the holy places, in the true tent that the Lord has set up, not men, not a priest who lacks holiness and demands to be served like Eli's sons, nor a priest who lacks courage and cares only for his own reputation like Eli himself, but one who came to serve, to make himself of no reputation, one who, far from fattening himself on the sacrifices of his people, became the very sacrifice that his people required. Let me close with this, the beginning of chapter one, the last glimmer in the gloom. Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord in the presence of Eli. We're reminded once again, the Lord is the Lord of his church. Old Testament or New Testament, he will guard his church. And he uses men like this unnamed man of God. He uses men like Samuel and David. But the rising and the falling of ministers and missions is Jesus' business. He will build his church. And neither the gates of hell nor the apostasy of faithless men will be able to stop him. Let's pray.