Throw Your Weight Away

*Note the audio quality for this sermon recording was very poor

1 Samuel 2-3

Transcript

*Autogenerated

well good evening it’s a pleasure to be with you all and I’m thankful to be here all of you are in a very dangerous territory this evening because i didn’t manuscript my sermon like i normally do and i don’t think we’re live are we? We are live? i hope right um but anyways if you would turn in your bibles to first samuel and we’re going to look at chapters three and four we’ve been working through the book of first Samuel Sunday evenings um last week or i guess that was it last week or was it two weeks ago two weeks ago because of uh memorial day right um brother Antoine spoke to you about the prediction that was gonna happen that was gonna befall the house of eli where the man of god came along and told him all the things that was going to happen we see also hannah’s care for samuel in that passage where she wouldmake the linen um clothes every year bring it to him umthis chapter is gonna discuss his call and this story is very familiara lot of times we hear the story growing up about samuel’s call and what we’re going to see as thefirst point is that samuel is eager to hear the lord’svoice we’re going to see this in these first verses he’s eager to hearthe lord’s voice and just because a little story aboutlistening youth pastors often doembarrassing things um like i just found my other bible that ihaven’t found in a while and literally just now saw it that’s uh that’s an embarrassing thingum but and honestly there’s this story i found when i was researching i was trying to find some good stories aboutlistening and this one particular youth pastor took his youth group on a ski retreatas for some reason youth pastors get tortured with doing such things in the snowand so he sees this interesting pair of skiersone looks like the student the other looks like the instructor they’re going down the slope very slowlybut very close together the instructor in front is saying these commandsvery monotonously straight left slow downright and so the youth group kind of looks at this and they think this is the strangestthing i’ve ever seen and they kind of start to giggle among themselves youth pastors you know how they are theycan be embarrassing and so this youth pastor decides thathe’s going to call out contrary commands to try to throw this student offand so if when the instructor says left he would yell right try to you know just to mess around besilly be funny and he does this for a while but the thestudent is intent on listening to his instructor later on the skier thestudent he turns and he sees on the front a label that says blind skistudent and so the the student wasn’t even able to see he was completely reliant upon hisinstructors instructions to be able to ski properly you can imagine that youth pastor thatmoment i promise it wasn’t me i promise i i try to avoid ski tripslike the plague so he was severely embarrasseduh by that event um but what we noticed about thisstudent was that he was able to drown out all the other voices being directed athim and listen intently on this instructor and one of the things thatwe’re going to see about samuel is his ability to listen his eagernessto listen and that he drowns out other voices contrary to the lord so look at me with me atverse 1 says now the boy samuel was ministering to the lord in the presence of elihe’s probably young to late teenagers according to most scholars and the word of the lord was rare inthose days there was no frequent vision so let’s think about today is the wordof the lord rare in our day you think there’s a yes and no right there’s a lotof pulpits around our country and around the world that exist but do not upholdthe word of god you have some speaker get behind some podium and give you some goodadvice on your life or your marriage or here’s three tips and how to be happy todayand you might leave the church feeling happy like cotton candy but like cottoncandy there’s really no substance there to sustain you so in the sense yes but in another senseno because we have more copies of the bible than ever before and so our problemnowadays is really having to do with selective hearingverse 2 at that time eli whose eyesight had begun to growdim so that he could not see was lying down in his own place the lamp of god had notyet gone out and samuel was lying down in the temple of the lord where the ark was now this isat shiloh before jerusalem before david is king all this other stuff so this is veryearly on just after the time of the judges samuel is that transitionary figure between thetime of the judges into the time of the monarchyyou can see eli he’s going blind he’s very old in agethe time is passing you’ve already seen the pronouncement of judgment in chapter2 verse 4 then the lord called samuel and he said here i am and ran to eli and said here i am youcalled for me but he said i did not call lie down again so he went and lay down and the lordcalled again samuel and samuel arose and went to eli and said here i amyou called for me but he said i did not call you my son lie down againnow samuel did not yet know the lord and the word of the lord had not yet been revealed to himkind of like in a side note for us modern day reader so we know hey this is before everything was goingon this is the initiation of samuel’s calling verse 8. and the lord called samuelagain the third time and he arose and went to eli and said here i am you called for methen eli perceived that the lord was calling the boy and i just want tonote there we see the grace in the perception of the blind eliwhose judgment is coming who’s not reared his sons as he shouldhave he can still yet understand and perceiveeven though he is his eyes are growing dim what is really going onin this situation it’s a it’s a supernatural grace from the lord verse 9 therefore eli saidto samuel go lie down and if he calls you you shall say speak lord for your servant hears sosamuel went and lay down in his place listening to eli’s adviceto listen to the lord samuel could have said i don’t really want to go listen to thelord i want to be like your other sons hoffnai phineas they seem like they’rehaving the best life they ever have but instead he goes right away lies downeager listening for the voice of the lord can we say the same thingfor ourselves are we eager to listen to the voice of the lordpastor tony evans probably one of the greatest preachers of our day he gives anillustration about kids and giftsone time he went on a trip he gave his children a little gift he came homegave his children the gift they were all excited you know and so he being the fatherthought oh well they’re excited that i’m home this is great so the kids are playing with their toy their new stuff andfinally one of the kids comes up to him and says damn when are you going to goawaken they were more interested in the stuff that he was givingthan having him himself in the home can’t we see a similarindictment in our own life so many people go to churchnot to listen to the word of god but so that god would give them a blessing they want to gofor their best life now we though as the true people of godknow that the lord has sincerely spoken to us he has given us his love letterand we come to hear his voice you have that same fervor that samedesire that samuel had when he’s laying there waiting lord please call againwe have that same desire when we come to church when we come in our private timesin the word lord give me a word today let me hear what youhave to say because he’s given to us right here perfectly inherentlyit’s all here everything that we need the bible says that it is able to equip us for everygood work not some right 2nd timothy 3 16 but every good wordverse 10 next point is that despite fear samueltells god’s word and the lord came and stood calling asit other times saying so this is the fourth time here samuel samuel and samuel saidspeak for your servant hears then the lord said to samuel behold i’m about to do a thing in israel atwhich the two ears of everyone who hears it will tingle i’ll pause there doesn’t that sound like a greatverse to sew on your pillow until you read the next verse and find out it’s talking about judgmenton that day i will fulfill against eli all that i have spoken concerning his housefrom beginning to end and i will declare to him that i’m about to punish this houseforever for the iniquity that he knew because his sons were blaspheminggod and he did not restrain them eli was a all bark no bite parentmaybe you’ve seen those parents who will yell and scream at their kids but never givea consequence and so the child learns well as long as i can just endure thislecture i can go off and do whatever i want because i’m not really being held accountablethis is the parenting style that we see eli havehe did not restrain the evil of his children verse 14 therefore i swear to the houseof eli that the iniquity of eli’s house shall not be atoned for by sacrificeor offering for ever hebrews 9 reminds us that the bloodof bulls and goats could never be enough and had to be a humansacrifice and this is a gospel tie-in right here in this passage we seeit is jesus who had to die for us because only a human cansubstitute for human lives and only god can take on the wrath of god and survive this is the importanceof jesus’s full humanity and his full divinity verse 15 samuel lay untilmorning then he opened the doors of the house of the lord and samuel was afraid to tell the vision to eliso as you can imagine you hear about someone if god tells you yeah so and so is going to die i’m going to destroytheir house and they can never be atoned for you’d probably be a little afraid to share that message as welland guess what that’s the that’s the gospel message you look at the book of romans forexample romans 1-3 paul pains all the bad newswe are in sin we have no hope right or think about it like this whatif you went to a doctor they scanned you found out that you hadstage four cancer that’s bad news right but the doctor’s so nice andloving that he just can’t bring it to tell you the bad newswhat would you think about that doctor it’s terrible right for you for him to not let you know thatyou could die soon that is awful well the same thing goes on us aschristians we know the bad news we know that sin has infected the human soulthat people the book of romans says they don’t even seek for godthey ball up their fists in rebellion against them they hate god but it’s against the blackness of thisbad news that the stars begin to shine the golden gem of the gospelthat even though we were sinners christ died for usthat’s the beautiful news of the gospelso samuel as it says he’s afraid to tell the vision to eli verse 16 but eli called samueland said samuel my son he said here i am and eli said what was it that he told you do not hideit from me may god do so to you and more also if you hide anything from meof all that he told you well that’s a pretty convincing argument right verse 18 so samuel told himeverything and hid nothing from him and he said it is the lord let him do what seemsgood to him so eli’s response seems to beone of humble submission to what the lord is going to have happen here verse 19 and samuel grewand the lord was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground so whatever samuel saidwhen it says fall to the ground you can probably get the picture um something’s grounded has no effectnot any good it’s useless so the lord made it worse none of samuel’s wordsfell to the ground verse 20 and all israel from dan to beersheba knew that samuelwas established as a prophet of the lord and the lord appeared again at shiloh for the lord revealed himself to samuelat shiloh by the word of the lord to hear that repetition of words there with lordremember when lord is in all capital letters like that in your translation it’s representing the fact that it’s talkingabout yahweh the one true god the name that god revealed to moses in exoduschapter three so again here the point is despite fear samueltells god’s word the same thing is true for us we live in a culture that is extremelyhostile to christianity and everything that has to do with christianity we livein danger of being ridiculed being looked down upon all these sortsof things because of what we believe what we hold to is absolutetruth there’s certainly fear involved when we speak the truth but the questionis for us are we going to stand and say itanyways there is a man who lost his businesshe was an immigrant here or a second generation i believe hispanic individual named joseriesco he started a business right i believe it was hisparents business it would start out as a grocery and then it ended up being a deliin the chicago area as you know there’s some politicalturmoil and other types of turmoil going in that cityand people were protesting out in front of his deli and he decided to proclaimon the loudspeakers you don’t really care about black lives all you careabout is continuing your political positionand because of the influx of what we see going on in our culture thiscritical race theory all these terrible ideas happening yes if you have your windows down youprobably want to lift them up it’s kind of raining hardum we live in a culture that is increasingly antithetical to whatwe believe in christ and and the scary thing isyou could potentially lose everything for standing up for what the scriptures sayis true an australian rugby player lost his job on a on a rugby teambecause he quoted romans 1 on his social media just quoted a passage of scripture thatwas all lost his position on the team countless stories of believers speakingthe truth and being shunned or cancelled by our culturedespite fear we must speak the truth that’s something we can learn fromsamuel’s life look at chapter fourand the word of samuel came to all israel now israel went out against thephilistines they encamped at ebenezer ebenezer means stone of helpand the philistines and encamped at aphek the philistines drew up in lineagainst israel and when the battle spread israel was defeated before the philistines who killed about4 000 men on the field of battle and when the people came to camp the elders of israel saidwhy has the lord defeated us today before the philistines let us bring the ark of the covenant ofthe lord hear from shiloh that it may come among us and save usfrom the power of our enemies so if you guys haveheard of a talisman or a good luck charm i brought with methis evening anyone know what this is it’s a rabbit’s foot yeah someone i hadas a as a child i never believed it had any power orworked or anything but supposedly they bring good luck um the israelites hereretreating the ark of the lord like a rabbit’s foot well maybe if we bring the arkinto battle we will win because surely the lord is with us you rememberin the book of joshua where the angel of the lord the leader of the lord’s army comes and visits with joshuaand uh joshua says whose side are you on ourside are theirs and the angel right there the angel of the lord is like nope that’s not how itworks the question is are you on god’s sideand we can’t manipulate god god is not a good luck charm andthis is how the people were viewing him so let’s find out what happened verse four so the people sent to shiloh andbrought from there the ark of the covenant the lord of hosts who’s enthroned on the cherubim and the two sons ofeli hoffnein phineas were there with the ark of the covenant of god as soon as the ark of the covenant ofthe lord came to the camp all israel gave a mighty shout so that the earth resoundedverse 6 and when the philistines heard the noise of the shouting they said what what is this great shouting in thecamp of the hebrews mean and when they learned that the ark of the lord had come to the camp thephilistines were afraid for they said a god has come into the campand they said woe to us for nothing like this has happened before woe to us who can deliver us from the power ofthese mighty gods these are the gods who struck the egyptians with every sort of plague inthe wilderness take courage be men o philistines lest you become slaves to the hebrewsas they have been to you be men and fight so the philistines are trying to counterthis rightit’s crazy they even know the stories about what the lord did in egypt verse 10so the philistines fought and israel was defeated and they fled every man to his home andthere was a very great slaughter for thirty thousand foot soldiers of israel fell and the ark of god was captured and thetwo sons of eli hofney and phineas died okay so we see a lot of things in this passageone we see fulfilled prophecy what sin what god told the samuel is true it’shappening in this very moment the point or one of the main points i want to pullfrom this passage is treating god like a good luck charm does not honor himthe people even the pagans know that this god is powerfulwe modern church goers we know that god is powerful we know that god can bless us but treating godlike a good luck charm is not honoring himhow do people treat god like a good luck charm i was trying to think of some examples there’s a lot of poststhat go around on facebook by inspirational people that will say things like i will neverencounter any harm i will always be prosperous i will always have lots of money and anice house in the name of jesusyes that’s right don’t forget that part you’ve got to make sure that you send itto others because you’ll break the chain the magic will wear off and then you’ll be cursedand a lot of times as well the the name jesus has an extra syllable at the end it says in the nameof jesus you got to say that just right so that you can get your blessingwhat does in the in the name of jesus mean though it’s not you know it’s not a magicincantation it’s not a magical phrase that you automatically add it to the end of your prayer and thenall of a sudden all your wishes come true doing something in the name of someonewhen we put it in a different context maybe it’ll help us understand a little bit better if i gosomewhere an ambassador maybe maybe i become an ambassador i go to another country i’m there in thename of the president and i’m doing these things in the name of the president right what does that mean that means myauthority doesn’t come from myself but it comes from the president what i’m doing as a representative ofwhat he would want when we pray in the name of jesuswe’re praying not because we have authority but because jesus has authority when wepray in the name of jesus we pray what jesus would actually want us to praymaybe jesus doesn’t want you to have a really nice house what does jesus want for you accordingto romans 8 28-29 to be more like jesusbe more holy be more christ-like maybe that doesn’t include a nice house it could maybe it doesn’tthe lord knows what’s best for us even when we don’t so treating godlike a good luck charm does not honor him the word honor is a word that’s used a lot in thispassage it’s also used glory weight and honor all around thatsame word honor weight and glory okay that kind of goes i didn’t explain the titleand you’re probably wondering what in the world does this title mean um you know it was based uponthe phrase you hear someone say someone’s throwing their weight around when they’re abusing their authorityokay um and so my encouragement to us was to throw our weight awaythrow away what we when we glory in ourselves when we give ourselves weight so tospeak we take it away from god the one who actually deserves it we need to give the weight to god weneed to give the glory the honor to him what we see with eli’s lifeeli was someone who was intent on giving the weight to himself literallyphysically so he was picking portions of the sacrifice that he wasn’tsupposed to and literally getting more weight by doing what he wasnot commanded to do and we’re going to see the result ofthat in this passage look at verse 12 a man of benjamin ran from the battle lineand came to shiloh the same day with his clothes torn with dirt on his head verse 13 when hearrived eli was sitting on the seat by the road watching for his heart trembled for the ark of god another signof grace by the way and when the man came into the city and told the news all the city cried outwhen eli heard the sound of the outcry he said what is this uproar then the man hurried and came and toldeli now eli was 98 years old and his eyes were setso that he could not see and the man said to eli i am he who has come from the battle ifled from the battle today and he said how did it go my son verse 17. he who brought the news answered andsaid israel has fled before the philistines and there has also been a great defeat among the people your two sonsalso hof nine phineas are dead and the ark of god has been capturedverse 18 as soon as he mentioned the ark of god eli fell over backward from his seat by the sideof the gate and his neck was broken and he died four the man was old and heavythere’s that key word again he had judged israel for 40 years look at verse 19. now hisdaughter-in-law the wife of phineas was pregnant about to give birthand when she heard the news that the ark of god was captured and that her father-in-law and her husband were dead she bowed and gavebirth for her pains came upon her and about the time of her death thewomen attending her said to her do not be afraid you’ve borne a sonbut she did not answer or pay attention and she named the child ichabodsaying the glory has departed from israel because the ark of god had been capturedand because their father-in-law and her husband and she said the glory has departed fromisrael for the ark of god has been captured last pointchurches live in danger of ichabod when they cease to listen to godchurches live in danger of ichabod when they cease to listen to godi might have rhymed that on purpose ichabod is talking about the glory departingin this case israel in our case churcheswhen we cease to listen to what god has said to us we riskthe danger of the glory of the lord departing from us and a lot of ouryour sunday schools i believe you’re even talking right now about what does a healthy church look like from the letters in revelationand what a beautiful picture they paid for us not to lose our first lovein being in christian college and seminary a lot of differentchurch models are thrown at you as far as what is a what does a goodchurch do what does it mean for a church to really reach out to people and really do what a church needs to doto make things happen back in the 50s 60s 70s80s early 90s big push was programs we’re gonna haveprograms for the kids we’ve got programs for the young adults we’re gonna have programs for the older adultseveryone has their own little program so that they keep to entertain because goodness we don’t want people bored todeath with god nowadays it’s a little bit opposite nowthe push is well i think they realize what happened was they looked at their churches and they’re like oh my goodness we have 5000 programs and so now the push is well let’s simplify it simple church is the new methodologythat’s pushed i’m going to read to you something i wrote a while back thinking about what itmeans to be a true and healthy church one of the things that was often debateda long time ago was something called the regulative and normative principle and now no oneeven talks about those things the regulative principle commands that we do only what god has explicitly commandedwhile the normative principle rules out only what god has explicitly prohibited so these two groups woulddebate and say well we can’t do this we can do this that sort of thing now by the way nowadays everything’s thrownyou know that that debate’s thrown away we just do whatever we want in church because why not as long as it workspragmatism is key nowadays whatever works do it tony morganuh recently posted 20 politically incorrect thoughts on the church in america recently thiswas 2014 so not as recent anymore in his article mr morgan makes severalpithy matter-of-fact statements on church matters he founded the unstuckgroup it’s an organization that operates like a doctor for churches they diagnose problems try to fix it and try to healit so he is very pro modern church servicemodel and he works around that buzzword that imentioned earlier which is simple make the church simple so after thedebate over the regulative enormous principles were never mentioned again the biblical foundations for churchmodels vanished instead these models were swallowed up by programs appealing to the worldage segregation and relevance you’ve got to be contemporant right toget a crowd this produced churches that maintain several programs and different worshipservices all trying to captivate people so they can get bored with church the rebellion symbol came ontothe scene recently here’s a quote from mr morgan it’s not possible to offerthree different types of worship services and do them all well it’s also confusing to the people you’retrying to reach i agree with this at face value but there’s several things that arewrong that he assumes the first thing is that the church’s main purpose excuseme let me make this very clear the church services main purposeis not evangelism the church service where weare gathered together the main purpose is not evangelism let me be very clearof what i’m trying to say i’m not saying that evangelism can’t happen or shouldn’t happen that isgreat when it does visitors should come in but the main focus for a pastorpreaching should be to equip his flock to go out of the walls and be on missionevangelizing the lostso did you notice one of the reasons morgan stated it was not good to have multiple types of worship services hesays um because it’s confusing to the congregants no it’s confusing to the people you’retrying to reach the line between worship service and evangelismhas been blurred for so long that there seems to be no difference any longer one of the bible’sreferences in the words of church is the assembly a believer nowhere in the bible dobelievers invite unbelievers to church for evangelism that’s how i was trained to evangelize as a youthjust invite them to churchin the early church in the book of acts the assembly the church gathering was designed toencourage and exhort believers so that they could go out and evangelize you don’t see anybody inthe book of acts going around saying hey you should come over to the the solomon’s portico in the templethe apostle peter he’s really hip and cool and you’re gonna love that music it’s great that’s that’s not whathappens stephen goes out and he proclaims the gospel and he’s stoned for it that’s missionthat’s what the church looks like number two another wrong assumption isthat the church should cater to culture what appeals to modern americans todaybe simple be real look at all these businesses and their mission statements now they have to incorporate somethingthat sounds very humane and nice you gotta add it all in make it simplewhy though should we cater to what unbelievers desirelet’s say we start a book club in this book club we read books i know that’s shockingone day we notice that we’re not very popular and it’s a suit we assume that it’s because most americans enjoywatching movies so we decide to set aside books and start watching movies at our club meetings but we still call ourselvesa book club when appealing to the culture does theculture assimilate to the church or does the church assimilate to the culturesimple church services stopped exhorting or encouraging believers through biblical preachingtrue fellowship and biblical worship and they have turned to the culture forrelevant messages or as mr morgan puts it every church should do a marriage seriesa money series and a series on life purpose every year christians need it i’m guessingunchurched people do too they have gathered for themselves so many peoplethat there can be no true fellowship in that body they have turned aside everything that makes a church what it is but theystill call themselves a church this practical denialof the sufficiency of scripture is the word of god enough or do you needto add something to it do we need to go to the sociologist out in the culturedo we need to go to the secular media and find out what they want what they think is best and bring it inhere or is god’s word enoughsimple church looks to the surrounding culture to determine its services it draws a crowd andassimilates it to their particular entity whatever etherealnature you want to call your church the rock church or the river or i’m not sorry i say thesenames i’m not calling out churches that happen to be named by that in our community anything like that sodon’t hear what i’m not sayingthe point of the church is by the power of christ we set aside all our extremedifferences and come together for one purpose jesus it’s not to separate out differentpeople groups to cater to their fleshly desires jesus was born in a manger he wentoutside the camp to the outcast when the church service models cater to the majority of the societythey put out those that the society outcasts we have outcasts in our societytoday that these simple churches they don’t service because they’re not looking to the wordof god to find out what they should be doing they’re looking out to what the culture wantsthree another wrong assumption every church should be actively planning to add a service at a campus or plant achurch the modern protestant church model has somewhat been drawn back into theroman catholic model rome’s motto is sola ecclesiawhatever the church says it’s good it’s right the bible describes the church as thepeople that make it up makes sense the building itself is not the church we are as thepeople under the new movement what we see withthe modern churches though is whatever relevant name they come up withit’s this hierarchy it’s like it’s almost like another entity that existsoutside the people of god maybe i can make this clear we are thechurch sandy valley baptist church is not some entitythat we worship and look to you i e our sandy valley baptist churchnot some sort of thing that goes above us when you when you see a lot of thesestickers on people’s cars that say i heart my church what are they sayingare they really saying i enjoy the fellowship i have we’re gathering with these other peoplea lot of times what they’re saying is i love the services my church providesme the way my pastor i’ve never met in person speaks the things people i don’t even know oridentify with my church do that are put on display in the servicesthat’s how one church entity can have multiple services multiple campuses or multiple plants andstill be considered one church just like the roman catholic churchthen i’m all for planting new churches that’s a great idea but the new churches should be separateand autonomous it’s one of the baptist marks that brother tim millwood came and spokeabout not that long ago they don’t need to identify with some higher entitysandy valley part two we are the churchand all of this is a result i’m sorry i told you guys you were indangerous territory all of this is a result of us notlistening to godwe churches face the danger of ichabod when they stop to listen or cease listening to godwhen we think about a church that truly honors and glorifies godwe need to look to what he says throw away our weight to the world withour money to the world with our success we need to honor him glorify himand listen to him let’s pray togetherfather grateful for who you are we’re so thankful for your word for your scriptures for your truth forthe example of samuel the prophet who listenslord i pray that we would catch the same vision a vision to listen to what you have tosay to not glorify ourselves lift up ourselves to throw outour programs as something for others to consider wow this isamazing this is great look at what they have to offer but we would focusinstead on making you our first and primary goal to glorify you to putyou first and if you increase us so be it if you smother our name intodust so be it all that your name might be glorified because it’s allabout you it’s not about us help us to seelord help us to see amen