Episode Transcript
[00:00:20] Speaker A: Is when you do. But that brought me right to the dorm room. Oh my gosh. That was what I needed this morning.
[00:00:26] Speaker B: Thank you to our creative team.
[00:00:27] Speaker A: Thank you for how you love and.
[00:00:28] Speaker B: Serve our church as we are continuing.
[00:00:31] Speaker A: Our series today called Faithful in First Samuel. I am, I am excited for this. I don't know about you guys, but.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: Up until this point, like, for me.
[00:00:40] Speaker A: Personally, this series has been challenging, it's been encouraging, it's been heavy at times, but I think really, really needed from my heart.
[00:00:49] Speaker B: And I think the reason is simple. Like, I think if you're sitting in this room, like if you're here right now, it's almost certainly that you're the kind of person who wants to live with faith at their course. Like, we want to figure out how to be people of faith, people who connect with Christ and our church, people who allow our faith, our beliefs to actually seep into our daily lives and our habits. People who are just consistent, right, between what we believe and how we live.
And yet when we get into the weeds of our day to day life.
[00:01:27] Speaker A: It can be so difficult to keep.
[00:01:30] Speaker B: Faith at the core of our person. I mean, heck, it can be difficult to keep faith in the equation sometimes, right? How many of us have had that moment where you, you're sitting in whatever sin pattern you are and all of a sudden you realize, I'm not connected with Christ in days, right? Like, you just have that moment of.
[00:01:49] Speaker A: Clarity, of going, oh, shoot, I am not pursuing the Lord, much less like engaging in like life giving spiritual disciplines or things like that.
[00:01:59] Speaker B: But the thing is, guys, it doesn't have to be that way.
It really doesn't.
Because we serve a God who is endlessly faithful to us and his spirit empowers us to live faithful lives as well. And I'll tell you this, some of you in this room are a testimony to that truth, that a life lived faithfully pursuing Christ actually produces sanctification.
That's a church word that means it makes you increasingly holy that the longer you spend chasing after Christ and giving.
[00:02:37] Speaker A: Yourself over to the truths of the.
[00:02:38] Speaker B: Gospel, that the Spirit of Christ actually begins to mold your heart and your soul and your mind and your life looks differently.
[00:02:48] Speaker A: One of my favorite things on earth is to get a pastoral catch up with some of the saints in our church who've been following Christ longer than I've been alive, and to have conversations with folk for whom spiritual disciplines that.
[00:03:00] Speaker B: To me as a pastor are still.
[00:03:02] Speaker A: A discipline to them are second nature. They are breath in and out.
[00:03:07] Speaker B: It is a joy to sit in those moments and go, oh yeah, Christ actually sanctifies you.
Pursuing Christ actually produces fruit in your heart. It actually changes who you are.
[00:03:21] Speaker A: Like we say this all the time at our church. Our mission statement, right? As Christ pours into us, he pours out of us.
[00:03:27] Speaker B: But that is not a passive thing.
Christ pouring into you? Yes.
[00:03:32] Speaker A: Like we're dependent on the Holy Spirit for His work to reveal Himself and work in our heart. But you have a role to play in your sanctification.
[00:03:41] Speaker B: As we seek after Christ, he faithfully.
[00:03:46] Speaker A: Pours into us so that he's able to pour out of us. We're going to be in 1st Samuel 4 today. If you want to go ahead and turn there.
[00:03:53] Speaker B: If you don't have a Bible with you today, we have house Bibles around the room.
[00:03:55] Speaker A: You can look under the chairs in front of you. They are around.
[00:03:59] Speaker B: We also, by the way, gave away.
[00:04:01] Speaker A: 1St and 2nd Samuel Scripture journals at the beginning of this series so that you can take notes as you're studying and listening. If you didn't get one of those, please talk to Kurt. We have several of those left. We'd love to make sure you have those.
[00:04:13] Speaker B: But we're going to be First Samuel chapter four today.
And what we're going to talk about today is how faithfulness connects to our propensity towards shame, embarrassment and hiding.
That's what we're going to talk. A fun one, just a real lighthearted sermon, you know, Right, right in line with just these real light hearted pick me up sermons we have going on. I think the reality is this, guys.
We are all of us, when we screw up or when others screw up, we are bent toward hiding and covering up.
We do it for ourselves.
We do it for others who we love and respect. We sometimes even want to do that for God.
[00:04:55] Speaker A: We don't want him to lose face, to look bad.
[00:04:58] Speaker B: My point today, and what we're going to see in our text is simply this. And our God values faithfulness over publicity.
What I mean by that is this God. I mean, listen, God is all about his glory 100%.
But he's not concerned with losing face if that means faithlessness from his people.
He would so much rather have you.
[00:05:28] Speaker A: And your heart than an awesome reputation.
And that's an intense way to think about it. But that is the truth of our God as He reveals himself in scripture.
[00:05:38] Speaker B: He is much more concerned with the hearts of his people than he is.
[00:05:43] Speaker A: With the current state of his publicity.
[00:05:46] Speaker B: The reality is, guys, none of us.
[00:05:49] Speaker A: Like to Be exposed. None of us like to be embarrassed, but God is not like us.
God is better than us. Praise God.
[00:05:59] Speaker B: We'll see in our text today that.
[00:06:00] Speaker A: When God faces the sort of situations we often face, where there's screw ups, there's embarrassment, that he just engages them differently.
[00:06:09] Speaker B: There are texts Israel has been led so far from him by Eli's family.
[00:06:14] Speaker A: And their faithlessness and their poor leadership.
[00:06:17] Speaker B: That God decides in the moment to allow both justice and public disgrace so that his people might be turned back to them. He would rather experience the disgrace alongside the justice and restored relationship with Israel than the kind of ignorant cover ups.
[00:06:40] Speaker A: In hiding that ultimately misrepresents God and his amazing gospel.
[00:06:45] Speaker B: And listen, guys, here's the thing. I know as I say this like this is an Old Testament passage, this is a story in a different time and culture, but I know that even as I'm like using some of these phrases, this already stings for some of us.
You don't have to look very far into the news.
I mean, I jokingly say, like anytime.
[00:07:05] Speaker A: A Christian church or denomination ends up in the news, it's because something horrible has happened, right? There's never a beautiful story about the North American Mission Board doing disaster relief.
[00:07:14] Speaker B: It's always some horrific scandal or. Right?
And we've seen that. You don't have to look far to see the way Christians have engaged in this kind of hiding and covering up to avoid saving or losing face to avoid disgrace, whether for them, for their church, for a leader, for God himself.
And I know that in a space like this, many of us as individuals have been victims of that.
I know from hanging out with you guys pastorally, there are those in this room who have been then in that church context where someone's failure is covered up or protected to protect the ministry because of all the fruit that's being born. And you as a person, instead of.
[00:07:57] Speaker A: Being cared for, are tossed to the side.
[00:08:00] Speaker B: That is awful.
It should not be that way.
The folk would rather a church avoid some kind of division than actually face.
[00:08:10] Speaker A: What'S really going on and the people who really need to be cared for. And I would just say, if that's you today, I would encourage you to step into this text with us.
We need to be reminded, all of us, of the true character of our God, that He does not cover up sin, he does not cover up failure.
He doesn't hide from those things. No, no, no.
Our God takes our sin, our failure. He takes the evils of this world. And through his sovereign power and through the cross, he redeems them. Amen.
Let's pray and jump into this text. Jesus, we need you this morning.
We need you to be our discipler. We need you to be our teacher spirit. We ask that you would speak loudly through this text. Lord, there are some of us in this room who just need a challenge, a kick in the butt to consider our own relationship with our sin patterns, with our shame, with our hiding, that we might walk in the light and walk in freedom. There are some of us in this room, Lord, who have been. Have been deeply wounded and hurt by the way, Christians and non Christians can choose to engage in covering up and avoiding sin and failure.
And Lord, there are those of us in this room who don't even know you yet. And maybe this kind of publicity the Church carries is one of the barriers that keeps them from pursuing you.
[00:09:33] Speaker B: But regardless of the state of our.
[00:09:35] Speaker A: Heart today, we need you to be the one who teaches us, who encourages us, who illuminates your gospel to us through the text. So, Jesus, we ask that you would do this because you were the one with the power to do it. You were the one with the heart to heal us and make us whole. Pray it in your name, Jesus. Amen.
[00:09:53] Speaker B: Okay, First Samuel, chapter four, and we are going to start.
[00:09:59] Speaker A: In verse one, we read this.
[00:10:02] Speaker B: Israel went out to meet the Philistines in battle and camped at Ebenezer, while the Philistines camped at Ephek. The Philistines lined up in battle formation against Israel. And as the battle intensified, Israel was defeated by the Philistines, who struck down about 4,000 men on the battlefield. When the troops returned to the camp, the elders of Israel asked, why did the Lord defeat us today before the Philistines?
Let's bring the Ark of the Lord's Covenant from Shiloh. Then it will go with us and save us from our enemies.
So the people sent men to Shiloh to bring back the Ark of the.
[00:10:38] Speaker A: Covenant of the Lord of Armies, who is enthroned between the cherubim and Eli's two sons, Hakti and Phinehas were there.
[00:10:44] Speaker B: With the Ark of the Covenant of God.
Okay, so we're jumping straight into a.
[00:10:50] Speaker A: Battle story, which is a little intense, depending on your history and relationship with scripture. But this is a good story for us.
[00:10:58] Speaker B: We do need a little bit of.
[00:10:59] Speaker A: Geography, a little bit of history to understand this.
[00:11:02] Speaker B: So the big. The big broad, the broad strokes you need for this is this the area that we call the Promised Land, Ancient Israel was actually an incredibly strategic piece of land. Was really important. It comprised this stretch of land along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea that created a habitable bridge between ancient Egypt and ancient Mesopotamia. These were kind of the two largest centers of human development. And in between them, most of what was in between them is a huge desert where people die when they cross it. But right along the coast of the Mediterranean is this little strip of incredibly fertile land that bridges the gap between the two places. And when you go back to some of the literal, earliest archeological records we have of humanity, period, what you find are the kingdoms of Egypt and the kingdoms of Mesopotamia fighting over this chunk of land. They both want to be the ones who are in control of it because.
[00:11:58] Speaker A: It has access to the sea, but.
[00:12:00] Speaker B: It bridges the gap between these two great cultures.
And then around the same time, two other people groups enter into the scene.
[00:12:09] Speaker A: The Hebrews and the Philistine. The Hebrews, we know from Sunday school.
[00:12:13] Speaker B: Right, like, they come out of oppression in Egypt, and led by the prophet Moses and the general Joshua, they step into that land and they begin to systematically conquer it. And if you look at a map of it, they conquered it from inland toward the sea.
But around the same time as the Hebrews begin to enter into Canaan, another people group enters into Canaan. The Philistines. And we don't know 100%, but it's strongly believed that they had immigrated from either Crete or Greece.
[00:12:44] Speaker A: They seem to carry a lot of the markers of that ancient culture.
[00:12:47] Speaker B: And they conquered the coastline along the.
[00:12:50] Speaker A: Mesopotamia or along the ocean there, the sea.
[00:12:53] Speaker B: And what ends up happening is for most of early Israel history, the main conflict is between these two people groups, The Philistines and the Hebrews are both trying to conquer the same chunk of land. And by the way, they will be the main antagonist of Israel for basically the rest of this book.
Through most of, like, until the middle to near end of David's kingship, the Philistines are the primary antagonist to the Israelites. And the reason is this. They have superior technology to everyone else living there.
[00:13:27] Speaker A: They had a relatively small population and.
[00:13:29] Speaker B: Army, but they outpaced everyone living in.
[00:13:32] Speaker A: Canaan with their technology of war, chariots and spears, and access to different kinds of smelting and those sorts of things.
[00:13:40] Speaker B: And so what we find in our.
[00:13:41] Speaker A: Text is the Philistines are trying to move farther inland.
[00:13:46] Speaker B: And so they've set up camp at.
[00:13:49] Speaker A: This place called Aphek.
[00:13:50] Speaker B: And it's a little bit kind of east of a couple of their large settlements. And it's about halfway between one of the largest Philistine settlements and Shiloh itself.
So Israel realizes, okay, the Philistines are sending a campaign inland.
[00:14:05] Speaker A: We have to muster against them. And so they muster their army and they send it out to this place called Ebenezer. That's a couple miles away. They're.
[00:14:12] Speaker B: They're kind of both camps. You can imagine both camps sitting a mile or two away from each other.
[00:14:16] Speaker A: With just this killing field in the middle where they're going to smack into each other.
Now, what's interesting about this particular piece, I actually have a picture for this. The Battle of Ebenezer kind of gives us a little bit of the geography, if you're more a visual person.
[00:14:33] Speaker B: This battlefield is about 22 miles away from Shiloh.
Now, to put that in your head, that's roughly the distance from where you're.
[00:14:42] Speaker A: Sitting to the arch.
[00:14:44] Speaker B: So the whole story we've taken in so far has been in Shiloh, where the Tabernacle has been set up and.
[00:14:50] Speaker A: Established permanently, where the worship of Yahweh has happened for 350 plus years.
[00:14:56] Speaker B: 22 miles away from us to the.
[00:14:58] Speaker A: Arch, the entire army is mustered and they go into battle.
[00:15:03] Speaker B: And it goes terribly.
Israel, in one day loses 4,000 fighting.
[00:15:10] Speaker A: Men, as that is.
[00:15:13] Speaker B: That's a horrific loss.
It's so easy to kind of lose.
[00:15:17] Speaker A: Track of this when we're reading stories like this because they're already kind of foreign to us and big numbers are just kind of vaguely become big numbers. But think about it this way.
The St. Charles Family arena, you know, where he went to winter jam. You know what I'm talking about.
[00:15:29] Speaker B: The St. Charles Family Arena. Maximum capacity is 10,000 people.
So imagine that arena, almost half full, dead on the ground.
[00:15:40] Speaker A: That's what Israel experiences the morning of this battle.
That's horrific.
Horrific.
[00:15:47] Speaker B: They run away, they regather at their camp.
[00:15:50] Speaker A: And the elders of Israel gathered and.
[00:15:53] Speaker B: Start to assess the situation and look how they consider the situation. Why did the Lord defeat us today before the Philistine?
As strange as that may seem to our ears, that's actually the right question. Like, you have to remember that ancient Israel lived under the Sinai covenant, right? When they were freed from oppression in Egypt, led by the prophet Moses, God revealed himself directly and specifically to Israel. And he deferred to find out the exact limits of their relationship as represented.
[00:16:25] Speaker A: In the Sinai Covenant.
[00:16:26] Speaker B: And if you go and read through, I mean, they're beefy books to read through, but like Leviticus, Exodus, Deuteronomy, you see God spell out in very clear terms exactly what their relationship looked like. And what that resulted in is that ancient Israel understood their life of faith in incredibly concrete terms.
Their experience of faith and relationship to God was incredibly black and white. It was directly connected to how they lived the day to day moments of their life. One of the ways this is most easily expressed, and by the way, this is a hack for reading the rest.
[00:17:00] Speaker A: Of your Old Testament.
[00:17:01] Speaker B: This is one of the easiest interpretive.
[00:17:04] Speaker A: Lenses through which to consider any text in the Old testament.
[00:17:08] Speaker B: In Deuteronomy 28 and 29, at the end, the very end of his ministry, Moses describes for Israel a series of.
[00:17:16] Speaker A: Blessings and curses connected to their covenant. And he basically says this, Israel, you are sworn to this covenant body and soul for all generations, forever, for you and your great, great, great, great grandchildren.
[00:17:31] Speaker B: And here's how it will if you follow the covenant, God will pour out.
[00:17:37] Speaker A: These blessings on you. And he spells them out, it gets granular and specific.
[00:17:42] Speaker B: He says things like, your bread will.
[00:17:44] Speaker A: Taste better than everyone else's bread.
[00:17:47] Speaker B: It's very specific, it's very concrete.
He says, but you break this covenant.
[00:17:53] Speaker A: You walk in faithlessness and you turn away from God.
Every single blessing will turn into a curse.
[00:18:00] Speaker B: Every single thing that God was handing.
[00:18:03] Speaker A: You and blessing you with will turn into suffering.
[00:18:06] Speaker B: Your bread will be terrible.
[00:18:08] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:09] Speaker B: By the way, we talked about this.
[00:18:11] Speaker A: A little bit at the beginning of this series because one of the blessings promised in the covenant was fertility.
[00:18:17] Speaker B: And this really spoke into Hannah's self.
[00:18:20] Speaker A: Understanding and her struggle with her own infertility. Was she being withheld from the blessings of God's covenant?
[00:18:27] Speaker B: Right.
And they really should have, when they had this discussion, they should have remembered and maybe gone back and read Deuteronomy 28 and 29. Because God doesn't just spell out the blessings and curses here, he spells out the relational aspect.
What he says is, look, if you break the covenant, all the blessings turn to curses. And it's specific things that includes, by.
[00:18:52] Speaker A: The way, victory in battle. If you're in the covenant, you're in the blessings. I will protect your cities. I will go before your armies.
[00:18:59] Speaker B: I will fight for you.
[00:19:00] Speaker A: You will win your conflicts. If you break the covenant, your cities will not be defendable, your armies will fail. No matter how strong you are, you'll never be able to overcome the lack of my fighting for you.
[00:19:13] Speaker B: They should have known that was the connection. And to some extent they did. Right? Why did God defeat us? But if they'd gone back and read Deuteronomy 28, 29, what they would have seen is that God's solution for covenant curses is incredibly simple.
He actually says right at the end.
[00:19:29] Speaker A: Of the passage, if you ever tire of experiencing the curses of broken covenant, all you need do is turn your heart back to me in repentance and humility.
[00:19:40] Speaker B: There's no big grand thing. It's not like, oh, you're in trouble. So now you know. Just, if you ever get tired of those curses, if you look down at.
[00:19:48] Speaker A: Your life and go, this is awful. I hate this. Why am I doing this?
Hey, I hate that too.
Repent and turn back to me and be restored and receive all the blessing.
That's how God spelled out their relationship.
[00:20:02] Speaker B: But Israel only gets halfway there in our tech. They realize something's wrong. They realize God did not go with them into battle and they lost. And it's terrible. But rather than being drawn back to the truth, which is if you're out of covenant, the solution is repentance. And turning back to God, they turn to what? One commenter I read this week called it rabbit's foot theology.
They go, we lost today. God didn't win for us. I know, let's go get the Ark of the Covenant.
Let's bring it with us. And they might have been thinking back to some of the grand battles in.
[00:20:38] Speaker A: Israel's history, like the battle of Jericho and things like that, where the Ark.
[00:20:42] Speaker B: Did march forth with the army and.
[00:20:44] Speaker A: God won their battles, Right? But here's the problem.
[00:20:49] Speaker B: This has nothing to do with them actually assessing their relationship to God and.
[00:20:55] Speaker A: Looking for their sin and their failure in returning to Him.
[00:20:58] Speaker B: This is them looking for a magic.
[00:20:59] Speaker A: Weapon to win their battle.
[00:21:02] Speaker B: This is about them looking to get their luck back, looking to get the right talisman in their midst to control unknown spiritual forces to get the outcome they want.
They bring the Ark, the Ark of the Covenant. And look how the author describes the Ark. He goes of his way to let you know this is a holy and sacred thing.
The mercy seat enthroned between the cherubim where the presence of God dwells on earth. A holy and sacred thing that they treat like their rabbit's foot.
[00:21:36] Speaker A: JD Greer, commenting on this passage, says.
[00:21:38] Speaker B: That they they want God's benefits, His.
[00:21:41] Speaker A: Blessings, victory and battle. But they don't want to deal with the burden of his holiness and what relationship with holiness looks like.
Here's the truth, guys.
Relationship with a holy God requires holiness.
Relationship with a holy God requires holiness.
[00:22:03] Speaker B: You can't get the benefits, but not engage the reality of who God is. This is why Israel had the sacrifice system so they could be connected to God in His holiness. But for years now, for literal years, Israel's priests, the one who should have been connecting them with God, have themselves been blaspheming God and distorting the sacrifices and leading Israel into broken relationship and broken covenant.
And so they bring out the ark, thinking its presence will fix their problem.
[00:22:40] Speaker A: But notice here the contrast, all the holy language.
[00:22:44] Speaker B: Oh, this is the Ark.
[00:22:45] Speaker A: This is the Lord of armies. He's enthroned between the cherubim.
[00:22:48] Speaker B: But then immediately, the author draws you.
[00:22:51] Speaker A: Back to Eli's sons, who's carrying the ark, Hockney and Phinehas, these men who have blasphemed the Lord who have led Israel so poorly, who have incurred all this judgment. No one should have let them within a mile of something as holy as the Ark of the Covenant.
The author wants you to see the discrepancy here, because Israel is missing the holiness of God. They've been led so badly for so long, they have no clue how far they are from his heart.
[00:23:20] Speaker B: And listen, guys, it's easy when we.
[00:23:24] Speaker A: Read stories like this to point our finger at Israel.
[00:23:28] Speaker B: They should have known better.
Didn't they read Deuteronomy 28 and 29?
Didn't Eli get two prophecies against him? Like, shouldn't they have known how bad this was?
And listen, that's fine, but make sure.
[00:23:42] Speaker A: You also take a minute to look in the mirror. Right?
[00:23:45] Speaker B: How often are we just as bad.
[00:23:48] Speaker A: As Israel in this story?
I think often when life gets hard, our first instinct is to use God rather than submit to him.
[00:23:58] Speaker B: Oh, this is painful.
Oh, I'm struggling. Work is hard, my marriage is hard. This relationship is hard. I'm overwhelmed at school. I don't have enough money. God, I need you to show up right now.
I need you to fix this for me.
[00:24:12] Speaker A: Or how about this?
Maybe you fall into some sin pattern, one that you're used to, one that you come back to a lot.
And when you come to a clarity of mind, you think, oh, shoot, I'm so messed up now. I'm not going to be able to really, like, be good with God or good with my church until I engage in some spirit. I got to offset this. I need to, like, read my Bible for three days in a row.
I was sinful in my anger, so now I have to be spiritual again before me and God are good, because that's easy to do.
And it's the same thing.
It's the same thing Israel is doing in this text. And here's the problem.
[00:24:50] Speaker B: It doesn't work.
That doesn't work. God isn't like that.
He's not your lucky charm, and you don't have a transactional relationship with him where you can say the right things. And all of a sudden he does what you want.
[00:25:08] Speaker A: Beloved, God is not your vending machine.
He's a person to be known, not a power source to be tapped into.
[00:25:17] Speaker B: The person to be known. In Jeremiah 7, the prophet, he looked at the folk in Israel, in Jerusalem, who were so convinced. They were so convinced in spite of all of the prophecies, of all the prophets saying, jerusalem, you're in sin. God's going to judge this city in spite of all that. They go, nah, God won't do that because the temple's here. Doesn't matter how sinful we are.
[00:25:37] Speaker A: He's not going to let his temple be destroyed.
[00:25:39] Speaker B: And Jeremiah says, yeah, I got bad news for you.
[00:25:43] Speaker A: He will super let his temple be destroyed.
[00:25:45] Speaker B: He doesn't care about it that much.
If you guys continue in sin, the whole thing's going to get blown up. And sure enough, that's exactly where it goes. This is exactly what Israel is doing here, dragging the Ark out into battle. And it's the same thing we do when we convince ourselves that our spiritual disciplines, our Bible reading, our church attendance will somehow bend God to our will.
[00:26:12] Speaker A: But just like the prophet Jeremiah, the same is true for us. God wants your heart.
Everything else is gravy.
You can't manipulate him.
You can't trick God with your awesome spiritual disciplines or how many Bible studies you've been to, or what your Bible app streak is.
It's not going to convince God that you were somehow more awesome than you are.
You can't manipulate him. It doesn't work.
[00:26:41] Speaker B: Read on with me.
[00:26:42] Speaker A: Verse 5.
[00:26:44] Speaker B: When the ark of the Covenant of.
[00:26:45] Speaker A: The Lord entered the camp, all the Israelites raised such a loud shout that the ground itself shook.
[00:26:51] Speaker B: The Philistines heard the sound of the war cry and asked, what this loud shout in the Givers camp? When the Philistines discovered that the Ark of the Lord had entered the camp, they panicked. A God has entered their camp, they said. Woe to us. Nothing like this has happened before. It has, but that's regardless.
Woe to us. Who will rescue us from these magnificent gods? These are the gods that slaughtered the Egyptians with all kinds of plagues in the wilderness.
Show some courage and be men, Philistines. Otherwise you'll serve the Hebrews just as they served you. Now be men and fight so The.
[00:27:25] Speaker A: Philistines fought and Israel was defeated, and.
[00:27:30] Speaker B: Each man fled to his tent. The slaughter was severe. 30,000 of the Israelite foot soldiers fell.
The ark of God was captured, and.
[00:27:42] Speaker A: Eli's two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, died.
[00:27:48] Speaker B: At first, here, the image is really inspiring, right? Like, the Israelites have suffered this terrible loss. They've had friends die this morning. Their leaders say, we need God's presence.
And over the horizon, you can imagine the scene. Like, they're all huddled in camp, and up over the horizon comes these priests carrying the ark. And everyone sees, like, God is entering into our camp, and they're cheering and they're shouting, and it's so intense that the Philistines can hear their shouts at their camp, and they become terrified. Like, on paper, this all looks like an awesome thing, right? This is just the thing they need.
God's people shouting and worship and joy that he's arrived.
And yet it ends in absolute massacre.
[00:28:31] Speaker A: The Philistines rally themselves. Like, the scene is actually really interesting to read because they give us, like, this dialogue there, right?
[00:28:37] Speaker B: Even though they don't know Yahweh, his reputation is such that they know how.
[00:28:42] Speaker A: Bad it is for Yahweh to lead Israel into battle.
[00:28:46] Speaker B: They're ready to be massacred themselves. But at the end of the battle.
[00:28:51] Speaker A: 30,000 Israelites lay dead.
That's the enterprise center where the blues play holds 18,000 people.
Fill that up almost twice.
And if you're wondering to yourself, how many more analogies are you going to make connected to the capacity of stadiums?
[00:29:09] Speaker B: As many as possible.
You don't know how many times I Google how many people fit in Bush Stadium.
[00:29:15] Speaker A: 43,000.
[00:29:19] Speaker B: That's a lot of people.
30,000 Israelites dead. It's difficult to even fathom that kind.
[00:29:27] Speaker A: Of death in a single day.
But as sorrowful as the scene is, it's also, like, tragically ironic.
[00:29:35] Speaker B: Like, we got to hear through their.
[00:29:37] Speaker A: Dialogue, the fear of these pagan Philistines.
[00:29:40] Speaker B: At the real and present work of Yahweh.
[00:29:44] Speaker A: But Israel, who actually has God's presence, didn't fear him enough to bring themselves into right relationship with Him.
And God allows all the curses of the Sinai covenant, including loss in battle, to fall on Israel.
And Israel is defeated if 30,000 men die.
[00:30:07] Speaker B: When it says that each man fled.
[00:30:09] Speaker A: To his own tent, this means the army gave up all formal discipline. They stopped being an army, and everyone said every man for themselves and fled to take care of their own stuff and their own family. A complete and total breakdown. It's a humiliating defeat. The Ark of the Covenant itself was captured and Hot Day and Phinehas, these high ranking priests were killed.
Yet it's important to note here, so God warned Israel and Eli that this is the path they were on.
[00:30:40] Speaker B: It's not as if God woke up one day and just said, I think.
[00:30:42] Speaker A: I'm going to smite a bunch of them.
[00:30:44] Speaker B: God warned Israel.
He set prophets to tell Israel, get off this path.
[00:30:53] Speaker A: You will incur the curses of the covenant if you don't get off this path.
But they don't.
And God does not step in and he allows the curse, the reality of worldly evil. He removes his blessing and his protection and the curses of this cursed world play out against Israel.
Exactly what we see here.
Beloved, it's important to note here this is heavy, but it's true.
Religious enthusiasm is not the same thing as spiritual vitality.
Israel was incredibly enthused that morning, but their faith is not alive.
You can shout really loud. You can show up to church and sing. You can sign up for all the Bible studies. But if your religious practice is disconnected from real gospel relationship with the living God of the universe, hear this church.
[00:31:46] Speaker B: It is pointless practice.
It is a waste of your time to engage in empty religious ritual without connecting but the actual God of the.
[00:31:58] Speaker A: Gospel, it's worse than pointless. In Matthew 7, Jesus describes it like this.
[00:32:03] Speaker B: He says, not everyone who says to me, lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who.
[00:32:07] Speaker A: Does the will of my Father in heaven.
[00:32:09] Speaker B: And on that day, many will say to me, lord, didn't we prophesy in your name, drive out demons in your name and do miracles in your name? And I will announce to them, I never knew you depart from me.
[00:32:20] Speaker A: I don't say this to try and beat us up.
It's just incredibly important to remember, beloved, we connect to God in one way.
[00:32:30] Speaker B: One way. There's one way that sinful human beings.
[00:32:34] Speaker A: Connect to our creator.
[00:32:36] Speaker B: It is when we approach Jesus Christ in humility and confession and repentance of sin, and we are restored and brought into the family. It is only by the gospel work that Jesus accomplished on the cross the that we can be right with God, period.
[00:32:52] Speaker A: And if you do not have that foundational saving relationship with God, all the spiritual practice in the world will do nothing for you.
Will nothing for you.
[00:33:01] Speaker B: But I think there's actually even another.
[00:33:03] Speaker A: Idea here we need to embrace.
[00:33:05] Speaker B: Because in a space like this, many.
[00:33:08] Speaker A: If not most of us are already believers. We do have saving knowledge of Jesus, but we struggle to remain faithful in our lives of faith.
[00:33:16] Speaker B: We fall back into the sinful and.
[00:33:18] Speaker A: Worldly patterns that we've always known.
And when this happens, the temptation often is for us to cover up, cover up for ourselves, cover up for God by manufacturing excitement or hiding our failures.
[00:33:37] Speaker B: We have to be good because God is in our lives and people know that. So our lives have to be good. If the world sees God's team lose and God looks bad, if I still struggle with depression even though all my co workers know I'm a Christian, then maybe the gospel isn't real.
[00:33:55] Speaker A: That's real.
It's easy to go there.
But here's the thing, beloved.
The gospel doesn't work that way.
You are not perfectly sanctified.
Can we all agree on that?
[00:34:07] Speaker B: Can we disagree that all of us.
[00:34:09] Speaker A: In the room like we've not achieved perfect holiness?
[00:34:13] Speaker B: You are not perfectly sanctified.
[00:34:14] Speaker A: You do wrestle with the flesh. You fall back into sins.
[00:34:18] Speaker B: And even if you are in Christ.
[00:34:20] Speaker A: You will still step back into sins and the patterns of the world. You will still fail and struggle. And that does not mean God has failed.
That does not mean the gospel isn't true. It just means you're not in heaven yet.
You're still a sinner who gives into the world sometimes. And here's the thing, as this text shows, God is more concerned with the repentance of your heart, with the restoration of your relationship than he is with his publicity.
[00:34:51] Speaker B: He would rather let his ark be.
[00:34:53] Speaker A: Captured by the pagan Philistines than let his people continue on in hypocrisy and curse and broken covenant. He would rather you flame out and he looked bad.
That's what drives you back then.
You guys ever flame out so bad that there's no way to spin the story in your favor? You ever have one of those experiences where you just.
You just go all in on worldliness in the flesh for just a little too long and a few too many people see it. And when you come back to your senses, you just go, there's no spinning that one.
[00:35:30] Speaker B: Anyone?
[00:35:31] Speaker A: Anyone else?
[00:35:31] Speaker B: Just me.
A couple years ago, Millie wanted to.
[00:35:35] Speaker A: Have her birthday party in the backyard. She wanted to have all her friends over. We just got in the trampoline. She wanted to have all her friends over and she wanted to hang out in the backyard and have this big party. And if you guys know me, I'm sorry, this is going to change some of your opinions of me. I am the neighbor that does not mow my grass. Like, I am the neighbor that all my retired neighbors hate because I have a bajillion kids, and there's just toys and socks and empty cups strewn all over my yard and every yard adjacent to mine. And my grass is a foot taller than everyone else's because I never have time to mow. It's bad. It's bad.
[00:36:06] Speaker B: I put off mowing as long as I can. And I have this. I have this big, large rider mower.
[00:36:11] Speaker A: That my dad got for me when we bought the house. And it's old and beat up, and it breaks about one time for every half time I mow the yard. Like, that's about how often it breaks down. And so we were getting closer and closer to Millie's party, and Kim told me, you need to mow the grass. You need to mow the grass. It's a jungle out there. You need to mow the grass. And I did the wise thing, and I waited till the night before her party to mow the grass.
And so I go out and I can't get the mower to start, which is normal, and I jump it, and I'm like, oh, the battery's dead. What's going on? I finally get it running. I go out, I'm mowing the grass. I have the grass about 80% mowed, and I go and I make a pass. Pass our swing set in the backyard. And I kind of bump into it a little bit, but it didn't feel like a big deal. And then I go around to my front yard, and about the time I make it to my front yard, my mower sputters and dies. Which, again, not super unusual, but I.
[00:36:57] Speaker B: Get off it and I realized it's.
[00:36:59] Speaker A: Out of gas, but that's weird. Had a full tank when I started. So I go and I fill it up, only to find the gas chugging out of the huge hole in the gas tank that I punched by brushing up against our. Our swing set, chugging out that empties out on the ground in my grass.
And I. I even kept it cool at this point, by the way, But I call the lawnmower store and I go, hey, you have the gas tanks? Yeah, we can have one next week. That doesn't help.
So here's what I decide. Here's my plan. I decide. I know gasoline dissolves glue and plastic, but I've got such a small amount of the yard left to mow. If I take off the gas tank and I dry it off and I wrap it like a mummy in duct tape, put it back on, put the.
[00:37:45] Speaker B: Gas in, it the gas will dissolve the duct tape, but not fast enough.
[00:37:51] Speaker A: I'll be able to finish mowing.
So take off the plastic, take off the gas tank, cover it in duct tape, put it all back together, put.
[00:37:58] Speaker B: Gas in it, get on the mower, go to start it.
[00:38:00] Speaker A: It won't start.
The battery had died.
Now I have a timer because there's gas dissolving the duct tape. So I go and I get my Jeep and I drive it into my yard, and I go to hook up the cables.
And at this point, I have neighbors watching me and children watching me. And I go to hook up the cables, and in my stress and in my flusteredness, I hook up the cables backwards, and I don't realize it, and I go to start the mower, and I destroy the starter. Smoke comes out, and I get off the mower at that point, and at this point, confessionally, I gave into the.
[00:38:40] Speaker B: Flesh to say it that way.
I had what can generously be called a temper tantrum. I yelled, I screamed, I kicked, I.
[00:38:50] Speaker A: Punched the mower, damaged my hand.
It was incredibly embarrassing. My neighbors were watching at the end of my tirade, my wife standing at the front door because she could hear me from inside yelling, and she says, are you done?
Which this actually. That actually didn't help calm me down.
[00:39:07] Speaker B: I'm being honest. It wasn't hard to.
[00:39:09] Speaker A: In the magnet.
Here's the thing, guys.
[00:39:12] Speaker B: Here's the thing.
[00:39:14] Speaker A: I hate telling that story that is.
[00:39:16] Speaker B: Actively embarrassing, even now, to share that story. Like, there is not a way. Like, even as I'm telling it, what.
[00:39:24] Speaker A: I want to do is stack up all the reasons why I had stress building that week and why you should give me a pass for that behavior.
[00:39:31] Speaker B: Because it's that embarrassing. I don't like being known that way in this moment.
I want you guys to give me grace on that.
[00:39:40] Speaker A: I want you to think through extenuating circumstances.
But here's the deal. There just isn't room for that.
I was irresponsible, and I had some bad luck, and I had a temper tantrum, and I sinned in my anger in front of my lost neighbors and in front of my kids and in front of my wife. And that's what happened.
[00:39:59] Speaker B: That's what it was.
That's what I did. And when I cooled off, you know what I did?
[00:40:05] Speaker A: I called Lucas Montaigne.
He came to my house with his mower.
He helped me finish mowing, get ready for the party, heard the story, made fun of me, and then left. And I apologized to my family. And we were fine, and we moved on.
[00:40:22] Speaker B: And I share that.
[00:40:23] Speaker A: Listen. It is a little cathartic to share the story, but it is actually embarrassing.
But I think as we consider what it means to be people who live with faith at our core, it's actually vitally important.
[00:40:36] Speaker B: It's good.
[00:40:37] Speaker A: It's good to live in the light, to live confessionally.
It is often beloved, our failure, our flameouts, our sin, our breakdowns, our regressions that actually lead us back to the power of the cross in our lives.
It is often the moments when we completely fail our conviction and live into our flesh that the Holy Spirit, through brothers and sisters in Christ, through His still, small voice, through His Word, through fellowship, through confession, can draw us back to, hey, yeah, you actually are that bad, and the cross is actually that good, and you were okay.
That's why we have church family, because God knits us, speaks to us through them, and uses our failures to sanctify us. Read honestly, verse 12.
[00:41:34] Speaker B: In that same day, a Benjaminite ran.
[00:41:35] Speaker A: From the battle and came to Shiloh. His clothes were torn and there was dirt on his head.
[00:41:39] Speaker B: When he arrived, there was Eli sitting.
[00:41:41] Speaker A: On his chair beside the road, waiting.
[00:41:43] Speaker B: Because he was anxious about the Ark of God. When the man entered the city to give a report, the entire city cried out. Eli heard the outcry and asked, why this commotion?
[00:41:53] Speaker A: The man quickly came and reported to Eli.
[00:41:55] Speaker B: At that time, Eli was 98 years old, and his eyes didn't move because he couldn't see. And the man said to Eli, I'm the one who came from the battle. I fled from there today. What happened, my son?
[00:42:05] Speaker A: Eli asked. And the messenger answered, israel has fled from the Philistines. And there was a great slaughter among the people. Your two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, are both dead, and the Ark of God has been captured. And when he mentioned the Ark of God, Eli fell backward off the chair by the city gate. And since he was old and heavy, his neck broke and he died.
Eli had judged Israel for 40 years.
The text goes from sorrow to sorrow. After Israel's horrible defeat and the loss of the Ark, a messenger runs to Shiloh. Imagine the scene, right? Eli at 98. He's blind, but he's posted up at the entrance to the town awaiting news. He's received multiple prophecies about his son's fates. And so we don't know if he associated this battle with those prophecies.
[00:42:50] Speaker B: But we do know his primary worry.
[00:42:52] Speaker A: That day was the fact that they had taken the Ark out of Shiloh. He's eager for its return.
And when the messenger arrives and Eli hears the horrible news, he falls back out of his chair and he dies.
They don't need to linger here for too long, but it's important that the the author definitely wants us to see this story in light of the prophecies made against Eli and his family.
He's had years to deal with their grievous sin, and he's not.
And it's had disastrous results for his family and for the whole nation of Israel.
I don't want to linger here too long, but I think there is a striking truth here. We must engage, which is this. Your private sin never stays private.
[00:43:36] Speaker B: And I don't just mean the fact.
[00:43:38] Speaker A: That you will be exposed in your sin.
What I mean is that sin always goes farther than it tells you it will.
It always ripples out to your community, to your relationships. And a leader's sin affects everyone they lead.
Years of blasphemous leadership have left Israel not knowing how to actually take the necessary steps of faith for their very survival and have their hearts actually connect with God. And thousands die as a result.
Each of us here, this church, each of us should be willing to engage our sin.
We all struggle with it.
[00:44:14] Speaker B: We all fall back into patterns. We all fall back into habitual sins. We have ones that our hearts are more bent toward. And it's so easy to just go, you know what?
I've dealt with that one. But it's just, it's the one I come back to, and I'm probably just.
[00:44:26] Speaker A: Going to struggle with that until the Lord comes back. And so it's all good. Beloved, I would beg you, urge you not to be content with your pet sin.
It's worth engaging them for the glory of God, for the sake of your own heart, for the sake of your connection, relationship to Him. But hear this beyond you, for those in your circle who are, who are affected by your sin, it's worth engaging.
Consider this.
[00:44:57] Speaker B: Imagine for just a moment, imagine you.
[00:45:01] Speaker A: Were able to just have five minutes to see how your sin patterns will bear an effect on your great grandchildren.
[00:45:10] Speaker B: Imagine you were able to look forward.
[00:45:12] Speaker A: Past the end of your life and see the way your sin patterns have tumbled forward and affected those who come after you.
Because make no mistake, beloved, sin drips down generation by generation.
Do you struggle with anger?
Your spouse and your children learn to walk on eggshells to avoid conflict at all costs.
Your kids grow up with a damaged ability to engage unnecessary and healthy conflict.
They don't know how to have relationship with their own anger.
They begin to stuff it down because it makes them uncomfortable until they hit a tipping point and then it blows up out of them like a volcano. And they grow up and they get married and their kids learn that anger and conflict are to be avoided at all costs. Because anger is explosive and unreasonable. You don't know what it's connected to. It's mysterious and unpredictable and they bring that into their own adulth and I could go on and on, but you need to know, beloved, that cycle will continue generation after generation until the Gospel of Jesus brings real healing.
It will until the Gospel of Jesus changes your family tree, you will carry the sins of your fathers to your children.
We all do. Beloved. Sin is a debt we give to our descendants.
It's worth considering that.
Don't be Eli.
Don't put on blinders to your own heart. Come to the cross of Jesus afresh today.
See your sin confessed, see your sin forgiven. And beyond this, work with your family, your faith family, your community, your pastors. A good gospel centered counselor to see.
[00:46:48] Speaker B: Your life actually set free, to see your sin patterns and actually defeated. Beloved, you can walk in freedom through the power of Christ.
You can.
You may have struggled with that sin pattern for the last five decades of your life. I promise you the Gospel of Christ is sufficient to heal what is broken in your heart.
There is no sin so dark, so deep, so rooted in you that Christ's work on the cross is not sufficient to defeat it and sanctify it and set you free.
[00:47:23] Speaker A: You can walk in freedom, beloved. And I know we convince ourselves we can't. We convince ourselves it's easier, less painful to just avoid that sin pattern.
But beloved, you don't have to.
You don't have to carry that backpack. You don't have to hand it off for your kids. Years from now, you can toss it in the trash where it belongs.
And that's difficult.
And that takes time.
[00:47:47] Speaker B: That takes honesty and confession and walking in the light and digging through the reasons why it's so powerful to you.
[00:47:54] Speaker A: And allowing Christ to work on you slowly.
[00:47:57] Speaker B: You may need a ton of people on your team to do it, but.
[00:47:59] Speaker A: Beloved, you can do it.
Because the Holy Spirit is in you and he is sufficient to heal your heart.
Don't ever believe the lie that he isn't. Don't ever lose that land out this text I'm talking too long today. Verse 19 Eli's daughter in law, the wife of Phinehas, was pregnant and about to give birth when she heard the News about the capture of God's ark and the death of her father in law and her husband. She collapsed and gave birth because her labor pains came upon her as she was dying.
The women taking care of her said, don't be afraid. You've given birth to a son. But she did not respond or even pay attention.
She named the boy Ichabod, saying, the glory has departed from Israel, referring to the capture of the Ark of God and to the deaths of her father in law and her husband. The glory has departed from Israel, she said, because the ark of God has been captured.
What a sorrowful ending to a sorrowful death.
In this moment, when all hope seems lost and the very story of God's blessing. Hannah is inverted, right?
Israel is defeated, the ark is stolen, the priests are dead, and a young lady dies in childbirth in sorrow and hopelessness. Woof.
By the way, Shiloh is rarely mentioned in scripture again.
And biblical archaeology tells us that the Philistines took advantage of this specific victory and ransacked Shiloh, destroyed the tabernacle complex, and everyone who didn't flee was killed. The city was abandoned, and the ark and the worship of God was never in that place again.
[00:49:42] Speaker B: Next week, we'll see how God provides.
[00:49:45] Speaker A: For his ark and brings it back to Israel and restores their walk and real repentance. But Shiloh is done.
That moment I mentioned earlier in Jeremiah 7, Jeremiah looks back at this moment in Israel's history as an example to the people of Jerusalem. God allowed Shiloh to be destroyed and never to be rebuilt.
And he will do the same to Jerusalem.
Our text ends with Phineas wife dying in childbirth. She hears about the disaster and goes into premature labor and is so much for her. And her last words are to name the boy Ibad, which means the glory has departed.
To her, the loss of the ark was the end of the story.
And in many ways it was.
In the eyes of ancient Israel, the ark being gone meant the presence of God was gone. And to be honest, that's a pretty accurate picture of the spiritual health of Israel at this time. This is the end of the era of Judges. And if you go and you read the last three chapters of the Book of Judges, that kind of leads into these stories, goes out of your way to let you know Israel is abominable.
They live horrifically. They have rejected the truths of God, the truths of their covenant. They are just as bad, if not worse than the world.
There's no greater tragedy, tragedy than the absence of God in our lives. But even though our text ends in this moment of sorrow. Beloved, the story isn't over because we know our God works through defeats and failures to bring about redemption.
[00:51:15] Speaker B: Beloved, this is the gospel of Jesus.
Just as God allowed the ark to be captured and himself to be shamed.
[00:51:24] Speaker A: To deal with the sins of Israel.
[00:51:25] Speaker B: He allowed the true and better Ark, our sweet beloved Jesus, to be captured and shamed and defeated. Defeated, quote, unquote, on the cross.
[00:51:34] Speaker A: And yet on the cross, God wasn't defeated.
[00:51:37] Speaker B: He wasn't just judging the sins of.
[00:51:40] Speaker A: One priestly family or one faithless nation, but he was judging all sins.
[00:51:44] Speaker B: Caring for our family, for us, for everyone.
[00:51:48] Speaker A: Well, that's why cover up culture never works.
That's why it doesn't work.
Because we worship a God who doesn't hide from our sins and failures, who isn't concerned when he loses faith.
We worship a God who willingly went to the cross.
[00:52:07] Speaker B: Our God is willing to be brought low. He's willing to seem to lose. And it's in that, that apparent loss that our God brings about ultimate life and victory. Paul said it like this in the Christ hymn. Christ, existing in the form of God, does not consider equality with God as something to be exploited, but instead emptied himself and assumed the form of a servant, taking on the likeness of humanity. And when he had come as a man here, this church, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
And for this reason, God highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that the name of Jesus, every knee will bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth. And every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Amen.
Our God does not hide from defeat, he redeems it.
He does not hide from our failures, our sins. He doesn't cover them up. He faces them. And then he conquers them with the cross.
[00:53:09] Speaker A: You may feel like in moments your life has become an ibad.
We all feel that our lows, that the glory is gone, that we failed again.
But God's accomplished work on the cross means there is always a way back.
There's always a path back. Our God is faithful, beloved.
[00:53:33] Speaker B: He's faithful.
[00:53:34] Speaker A: And his justice doesn't just punish sin, it redeems sin.
He works through anything, he works through everything to make a way for us back to the cross.
So we need not hide, we need not pretend, we need not cover up, we need not be ashamed, manned. If you want to come back up, you worship a God who knows Your failures already.
Who sees your weaknesses?
Who sees the wrongs done to you?
And beloved, he is working through them in his sovereignty, even through those.
He is working to draw you back to Him.
You don't need to cover up who got.
You know, when talking about those who oppose the truth of the scriptures, the famous Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon, he said, you know, you don't defend a lion, you just let it out of its cage and get out of the way.
You don't need to fix God's reputation.
You don't need to worry about how he looks in this world.
You don't need to cover out for some leader. You don't need to pretend things are.
[00:54:42] Speaker B: Better than they are.
[00:54:44] Speaker A: You don't need to do any of that.
You can be honest.
You can be real.
Because God is strong enough to worry about his own reputation.
He's strong enough to worry about your reputation, your failures. You and I, what we get to do, we get to trust him.
We get to turn to him, seek him and in him to find our rest, our forgiveness and our redemption.
I want to invite you to take just a minute in prayer to engage with the Lord to hear what he might have to say to you today.
I'm not going to lie, guys. I feel like the Lord is speaking in hearts this morning.
I would encourage you to not let this moment pass by.
Take a moment in prayer and if you can do that in your seat, that's fine. If you want to get on your knees somewhere, that's fine. If you want to grab one of the pastors being Craig and Jim are here in the room, we'd love to pray with you.
Take just a few minutes, connect with the Lord, hear what he has to say to you today. And for those of you in the room who are in Christ, I would encourage you to continue to end out your time of reflection by taking communion.
Scripture says when we take the elements, we are proclaiming his death until his return.
It's a Bible way of saying that when we take of the elements, his body broken, his blood poured out. We are saying Christ's work is sufficient.
The cross was enough.
I think we need to declare that today.
Declare it for ourselves, our own lives, our own hearts, our own stories. For our brothers and sisters in the room, the cross of Christ is sufficient.
So when you have met with Christ in a way your heart needed, I would encourage you, those of you who are in Christ, to come forward, receive the elements, proclaim the sufficiency of Christ's work accomplished on your behalf, and then we'll end out our time with some worship. Beloved, meet with the Lord as your heart needs.
