1 Samuel 2:22 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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1 Samuel 2:22

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The narrative then returns to the subject of the wayward sons, to whom we have been introduced early in the chapter. Something else terrible is added now. They not only stole, and not only mangled the ceremonies, but ‘they lay with the women that assembled at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation’, and they did it scandalously and openly. This was not just a single event which would have been scandalous enough, but had been going on so long that it was well known that it took place. How could true worship continue in such a situation. The godly must have been grieved beyond words. On a similar occasion at the start of Israel’s priesthood, God had intervened to judge the two sons of Aaron and had taken their lives (Numbers 3:4), but here it was Eli’s task to bring reproof and correction. How did Eli respond? This is going to be the meekest, mildest, most inappropriate reproof in the whole of the Bible. What a sad, sad thing! ‘He said unto them, Why do ye such things? for I hear of your evil dealings by all this people.’ Everybody knew; everyone was appalled at the conduct of his sons, the priests. Eli was the high priest. What should he have done? Well, according to the law these sons of his should actually have died. They should have died for their terrible inequities, and at the very, very least they should have been thrown out of the priesthood and prevented from operating, but Eli doesn't actually do anything. He comes across as a nice man in so many ways, but he doesn't do anything about terrible things. ‘Nay, my sons, for it is no good report that I hear. Ye make the Lord's people to transgress. If one man sinned against another, the judge should judge him, but if a man sin against the Lord, who shall entreat for him?’ Our tone should be governed by the seriousness of what we are about to say. Eli spoke to them as if he was helpless to do anything and they were stronger than him, but God had given him an authority, and he ought to have used it. He could see the terrible nature of their crime and he reasoned about it, but he gave up and left them in position and left it to the Lord to deal with. That was an abdication of his responsibilities. But he was right in what he said. It is one thing to quarrel with a man, and to come under human justice with its sanctions and punishments – human justice is a known quantity. It is quite another thing to quarrel with God. Who can intervene on your behalf? Who can defend you against the wrath of God? There is no judge over him who will urge him to come to terms with you. He will do anything he wishes and he has unlimited power at his disposal.Eli said all this, but he didn't do anything. ‘Notwithstanding they hearkened not unto the voice of their father, because the Lord would slay them.’ They had already gone too far and the Lord seems to have hardened them judiciously in their obduracy and their crime. By contrast, Samuel prospered. He was unaffected. What a lad to be unaffected, obviously pained by the things he observed, but he himself remained uncontaminated, untainted. Of course, it was not his responsibility as a child to do anything about this situation. Ther are times when there is chaos all around us, and yet we can be at peace in the Lord.

Application

You find it in the Christian church today. There are very often people who seem to be nice people, but they overlook terrible things. Terrible things are going on in worship, terrible things in doctrine. People are denying the doctrine of penal substitution, the death of Christ: the Evangelical Alliance there doesn't throw them out. What is happening? Some terribly nice people and earnest people, and they just don't seem to mind about the most shocking breaches of God's rules, of God's laws. The way people are worshipping – scandalous irreverence and so on – and nobody does anything about it. We thought it was terrible in the early 1970s when a college principal of the Baptist Union churches denied the deity of Christ, and the Baptist Union Council said, we are not going to do anything about it; it’s within his rights. What an awful thing! And this kind of thing goes on and on. So we are not so surprised after all, when we see Eli, a nice chap and a gracious man and a kindly man, with a huge blemish of character in that he will not maintain the discipline of the house of God, as he should have. The task fell to him, not only as a father, but as the high priest. God held him responsible that he did nothing, as we will see.

Every local church is a family of God's people and we want to walk in love and in fellowship and in kindness, and we don't want a shadow to cross the scene of our worship and our fellowship. But if it should happen that somebody committed a terrible sin, we would have to face it, and that person would have to be severely reproved, and, if the sin was that bad, put out of fellowship, and we must do it. You cannot say, ‘You know, we will just be nice, and pretend this hasn't happened.’ That was the crime of Eli. God forbid that anybody who has a heart that feels and beats should in ten, twenty, thirty years’ time, become a complacent old Eli who won't even reprove his sons. What is it that makes us mellow in the wrong sense? What is it that makes us soft and complacent and weak? What is it that turns a young spiritual firebrand into an ageing softy? What is it? It’s a lack of heart and feeling the things. A lack of feeling, friends. We've always got to be able to look round this land of ours and feel pain that there is so little witness, so little work, so little being done. Otherwise in ten, twenty years’ time, if the Lord tarries that long, or doesn't send awakening in the meantime, we will be among those who go to these rarefied conferences, passing towns and villages, totally unmoved disinterested, unaffected, to talk about esoteric Calvinistic themes or something or the other. It will be just the same. Eli could have done that. It didn't burn him up that his sons were causing so much trouble, that there was no clear witness. You must always maintain yourself as a man or a woman of great feeling, concerned for things. You will protect yourself against being complacent, mellow, weak, and soft, as poor Eli became. Let's learn from what can happen even to a man of his stature and of his position.

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1 Samuel 2:22 Commentary and Bible Study