"The Lord's Exile," 1 Samuel 3:19 - 4:1-22, Sulmane Maigadi

Good morning, Church of the Resurrection.

It's been a while since I've heard that, so it's really nice.

If you are new, my name is Somane Megadi.

I'm one of the pastors here at the church.

I've been gone for two months or so.

So if you've been coming and you didn't see me, here I am.

This is my first sermon since I came back, and I get to preach

on these exciting passages that we just read today.

We're walking through the book of First Samuel and so far we've

seen some very troubling things. Eli's sons, Hofni and Phinehas

have abused the priesthood with greed and immorality.

Eli has dishonored God by not correcting his sons properly,

and in fact, he is living off of the sin of his sons.

And we know that everyone in Israel was doing what was right

in their own eyes. Yet there is a bright light in

young Samuel who grows up in the Lord's presence, hearing his

voice and obeying God. Our passage today is first

Samuel 3 verse 19 to 422. It's found on page two, 13213 At

the beginning of that passage, we see that Samuel now is

recognized as a prophet all across Israel, from Dan to

Beersheba, north to South, and that God appears to him at

Shiloh, where the ark and the Tabernacle are, speaks to him.

Samuel receives God's word, and then he tells God's word to all

of Israel. He delivers it faithfully to

them. And then we come to chapter 4,

which is very dark, very heavy. In chapter 4, God brings about

the judgement that He promised against Eli and his family.

And even worse, something happens that has never happened

in the history of Israel before. The ark of the Covenant of God,

the throne of God, that holy place where God met with Moses

in the wilderness, is captured. God sends himself into exile.

This chapter confronts us with those two sobering realities,

the Lord's judgement and the Lord's exile.

And so we're going to explore both of these as we look in our

passage today. We're going to see how God,

God's judgement comes on his people for their sins, but also

how his exile, paradoxically, is actually a sign of hope, the

very means of deliverance for his people.

So yes, there is darkness and heaviness in this sermon, but

there is light as well. There is hope.

So let me pray for us. Your Word, Heavenly Father, is a

light into our path, a lamp for our feet.

And we pray that you illuminate our hearts by your Holy Spirit

so that we can see your word, that it would speak to us and we

would glorify your Son Jesus Christ.

In your name I pray. Amen.

Amen. All right, stick with me.

The first part of this is heavy, so stick with me.

So back in chapter 2, God condemned Eli for his complicity

in his son's corruption, for letting them defile the

sacrifices and molest the women who were working in the temple.

He promised to bring discipline for their unrepentant hearts,

and that's what chapter 4 talks about.

But Eli and his sons weren't the only ones who were guilty of

sin. The whole nation shared in the

sin. So Psalm 78, the Psalm that we

just read, is actually a summary of Israel history, and part of

that includes covers this particular story as well.

Psalm 78 tells us that all the people were faithless, breaking

God's covenant, and we get a sense of the weight of the sin

right from the start of chapter 4.

The Israelites March out to battle against the Philistine.

There is no order from the Lord. He didn't say do this.

They just went out to do it. They didn't talk to Samuel about

it. And it's probably because

they're seeking freedom from oppression, which is a good

thing. But in the first clash, Israel

loses 4000 men and the elders are wondering why Verse 3 Why

has the Lord defeated us today before the Philistines?

Now notice that they recognize that it was the Lord that

defeated them before the Philistines.

Now if these elders were worth their salt, they would have

remembered Deuteronomy 28, which says, But if you will not obey

the voice of the Lord your God, the Lord will cause you to be

defeated before your enemies. You shall go out one way against

them and flee seven ways before them.

And if they had really been worth their salt, these elders,

they would have gone straight to Samuel.

They knew he was a prophet and they would have said what should

we do? And at the very least they would

have called the people to repentance.

But that's not what they did. They said to themselves, hold

on, guys, come on. Wait.

God might have fought against us just now, but we've got the Ark

of the Covenant. We need to bring it to the

battlefield because if we do that, God must protect us.

The Philistines will have no power over us, as though the Ark

of the Covenant of God were a Talisman.

So they sent for the Ark from Shiloh, this ark.

Now remember the Ark of the Covenant has in it the 10

commandments, right? And when you look at verse 4,

the the the writer says it was the ark of the covenant of the

Lord of host who is enthroned on the cherubim.

It's like he wants to emphasize that this is the emblem of God's

glory, right? It's being brought into the camp

by the priests under the supervision of Hofni and

Phinehas, sort of the poster children of Israel's corruption,

with their unrepentant hearts weighed down by sin.

The people don't realize that they were not bringing victory

into the camp. They were bringing judgment, and

so they rejoice loudly. But God's glory and his covenant

carried, carried in the ark, stood as judgment against them.

And at the very least they were breaking the third commandment

by reducing the relationship with God to a transaction.

Or worse yet, they were treating him like a genie.

Give me whatever I want right now.

They were commanding God to bless the work of their hands

while they remain steeped in their sin.

And in so doing they were taking the name of the Lord their God

in vain. These idolatrous, Sabbath

breaking parent dishonouring, murderous, adulterous, lying,

covetous, unrepentant sinners, we're daring to ask God to bless

the work of their hands. In 2014, several news outlets in

Nigeria ran a story about four armed robbers that have been

arrested in Lagos. And these armed robbers

confessed that before every one of their operations, they would

pray to God Almighty to grant them success.

And they were very clear to God, please only send us sinners so

that the innocent would escape. I mean, I OK, so I think of

that. And the thing that comes to mind

is Psalm chapter 2, where God laughs in derision against the

Psalms 2 · chapter mention

witches. Like what are you all doing?

And that's exactly what's going on here with Israel.

But Psalm 78 tells us that God was not having it.

And so he stirred up the fears of the Philistines.

What is that loud uproar that we are hearing?

The camp of the Israelites, their gods have come amongst

them. These are the gods that

devastated Egypt, that superpower.

Whoa. We need to man up and fight.

Otherwise they're going to make us slaves the same way that we

have made them slaves. So take courage and fight, and

God hands His people over to the sword of the Philistines.

Their priests, Hofni and Phinehas were cut down in the

slaughter. And most devastating of all,

Psalm 78, verse 61, God delivered His power to

Psalms 78:61

captivity, His glory to the hand of the folk.

You see, the Philistines didn't on their own power capture the

ark. God gave Himself over to them.

He went into exile. Judgment had come, but the

judgment wasn't complete just yet.

The story continues in verse 12, a man from Benjamin runs back

with the news to Shiloh. He sees Eli sitting at the

gates, the gate where judgment is usually meted out, ironically

enough. But he doesn't stop there.

He runs into the city, and he tells the people the news, and

there is an uproar. The people are mourning, and

this one stands in stark contrast.

The shout of joy when the Ark first arrived at the

battlefield. This uproar is right.

The people were right to weep over what had happened.

At least now they were beginning to feel, if only faintly, the

sorrow the God himself had carried for years as they

languished in their sin. Has anyone heard of drunken

Shakespeare? Yeah, yeah.

It's a theatre show where actors perform Shakespeare well while

one of them is deliberately intoxicated the whole time

they're drunk. The show is probably very, very

funny. I've never been there, but the

mastery is in how do these sober actors work with this one actor

who is really, really drunk the whole time?

When I first heard about it, I laughed.

It's a hilarious concept. It's probably very funny.

But then I have to check my spirit because the question came

to mind, Would Jesus be laughing at this or mourning because of

this? And what other things in my life

do I treat the same way? Things where my feelings don't

line up with God's feelings about that particular thing?

Am I really attuned to the sorrow that God feels over sin

in my life, in my community, in my city, in my nation, over what

I watch, what I read, listen to, participate and promote or

oppose? So I've been praying prayers

that God would give me his heart for all things.

God, you say I should love my enemies.

Well, please give me love for my enemies.

You said I should love all the people in this room, so please

give me love for all the people in this room.

You have told me that there are some things that I should abhor

and I should hate, and I should call an abomination because you

call them an abomination. So give me a heart that sees

these things as abominations, A righteous indignation against

these things, because I don't want to be rejoicing in the camp

when I actually should be mourning.

I don't want the judgement of God to be the thing that wakes

me up to the reality of his heart in my life.

Eli, blind as a bat. His physical blindness is

mirroring the dullness of his heart toward the Lord.

He hears the uproar and he asks what does this commotion mean?

And the man tells Eli everything.

Each piece of news is devastating, but nothing was as

catastrophic as the ark being carried off into exile.

Eli in his heart trembled. Rightly so, for the Ark of God,

the Kabode, the weight, the glory of Israel, was taken into

exile. And when this old priest heard

it, he fell backward. His own kabad, his own

heaviness, his own weight of sin was too much for him, and he

broke his neck. He was the high priest of God.

Rather than be filled with the kabad, the heaviness, the weight

of God's glory, he was filled with the kabad, the heaviness of

his own sin. And in one day, the word of

judgement spoken against Eli's family came to pass.

Now Eli stands as a warning to all of us who confess that Jesus

Christ is our Lord, our King, our Savior.

We too can become weighed down with sin to the point that even

though we carry some kind of pious concern for the things of

God, which is good, we do nothing about it.

We remain confined to our spiritual wheelchairs, unable to

see the light of God's truth. God wants more than just the

heart posture. He sees.

My heart is not enough. He actually wants us to do what

is right in His eyes. And this is especially a warning

to church leadership, to me, to Dan, to Andrew, to anyone who is

in spiritual authority, because we have agency and

responsibility to set things right in the sphere of

influence. In our sphere of influence, if

we sit in the sidelines and do nothing, we are in for it.

We must call out sin when we see it to do what Eli and the elders

of Israel refused to do. And we want to be able to say to

you, like Paul said to the Ephesians, that we are innocent

of the blood of all, for we did not shrink from declaring to you

the whole council of God. If we do not call out sin when

we see it and repent of it when God reveals it to us, we have

failed you. And most importantly, we fear

the Lord Jesus Christ. We want to be Samuel to you, not

Eli. And you know, this is really

hard work. It's overwhelming.

Trust me, it's over. If you are thinking of becoming

a minister, really take time to think about it.

This is not easy work. I plead with you, please pray

for us as we pray for you. We want to be Samuel to you, not

Eli. The story gets darker.

God had promised that Eli would have descendants and the

judgment on him and his house would pass down to them.

So Phinehas's wife gives birth to a boy she named Ichabod.

The glory has departed. The glory is in exile for the

rest of his life. Here's what Ichabod had to look

forward to for Samuel 233. The only one of you whom I shall

not cut off from my altar shall be spared to weep his eyes out,

to grieve his heart. And all the descendants of your

house shall die by the sword of men, Ichabod, a man of sorrows.

And you know it's entirely possible that he died before the

ark of God was ever returned to Israel.

Now that seems atrociously unfair.

Unfair. I mean, why should the Son

suffer for the sins of the Father?

But let's remember Ezekiel, what Ezekiel said.

If Ichabod walked in righteousness, he would not not

die for his father's guilt. Yet still his birthright now in

this chapter stood as a sign that God's glory had departed

into exile. And what about Finhas's wife?

Poor woman, being married to such a scum like Phinehas, what

did she go through? There are no victimless sins.

Even private sins have victims. And I know that many of us feel

like we are Ichabod or like we are Phinehas's wife, Suffering

for the sins of other people. Your whole life of felt like has

felt like 1 suffering after another laid on you by the sins

of others. Hold on with me just a little

longer, because there is hope. What adds to the tragedy of

First Samuel 4 is that the judgement was not only on Eli's

house and on the people and on his descendants.

It also fell on Shiloh, God's own dwelling place.

Psalm 78 verse 60 says God forsook his dwelling at Shiloh,

Psalms 78:60

the tent where he dwelt among mankind.

And you know something, He never returned to Shiloh ever.

Rather, during Solomon's time, Solomon builds a temple for God

where God's glory settles in. But even that temple would prove

just as vulnerable to the people sin.

Listen to what God says to Israel centuries later when they

were yet in another cycle of sin.

Jeremiah 7 Go now to my place that was in Shiloh, where I made

my name dwell at 1st and see what I did to it for the

wickedness of my people Israel. And now, because you have done

all these things, says the Lord, and when I spoke to you

persistently, you did not listen.

And when I called you, you did not answer.

Therefore I will do to the house that is called by my name, in

which you trust, and to the place that I gave to you and to

your ancestors, just what I did to Shiloh.

And that's exactly what happened.

God's glory left Solomon's temple and it was destroyed.

The Church of God today globally carries.

The glory of God, but it also carries the glory of God

individually, more importantly as a community.

Jesus Christ, since enthroned in and through us the fierce glory

and power of the Almighty is upon our shoulders.

If the Church of God, if the Church of the resurrection.

If you and I have been overtaken by sin and are unrepentant, if

you and I, all of us, are as heavy as Eli, weighed down by

sins that so easily ensnare us with no heart of repentance,

Make no mistake, God will remove our lampstand from before Him.

This church will not last. It won't, because the judgment

begins with the House of God, with his temple.

Take a breather. Let's pivot a little.

I applaud you for sticking with me, because these are hard

things to hear, and rightly so. Sin is not to be trifled with.

God is not to be trifled with. But paradoxically, God's exile

is actually a means of redemption and salvation for His

people. So Psalm 78, verse 65 to 66 as

Psalms 78:65–66

then the Lord awoke as from sleep, like a strong man

shouting because of wine, and He put his adversaries to rout.

He put them to everlasting shape.

You see, under normal circumstances, it should have

been the people who were sent into exile, and that will happen

later on in Israel's history. But here God Himself steps in,

goes into exile in in their place, and he tramples their

enemies. In the chapters that follow,

chapter 5-6 and seven, we see God in Philistine territory,

sort of the realm of death, and he defeats and humiliates Dagon,

the God of the Philistines. And he inflicts the Philistines

with tumors and with panic, and then he compels them, forces

him, forces them to take his art back to Israel, sort of like a

resurrection of sorts. And then in Chapter 7, he grants

people, his people, victory over the Philistines through Samuel.

If that sounds familiar, it's because it is.

This is the Jesus story right there, chapters 5-6 and seven.

And I think it's right to hyperlink Ichabod's birth to

another birth centuries later. Ichabod's birth was a sign of

God's absence. Jesus's birth is a sign of God's

glory coming to dwell permanently amongst his people.

And when he arrived, one of the things he did was to go to

Jerusalem. And just like God shut down

Shiloh, Jesus shut down Jerusalem's temple and he

declared that it was going to be destroyed.

And then he declared I am the new temple, a new Shiloh, if you

will. Then he enters into the exile of

death and he tramples hell and Satan under his feet.

He defeats sin and death, and then he resurrects from the dead

and then offers us freedom and triumph from death and sin and

anything that causes pain and evil in this world.

Somebody please say Hallelujah. I mean, come on.

So while this message in First Samuel 4 is a sobering message

of judgment, it's in the end points us to the love of Christ

that surpasses all knowledge found in the life, death and

resurrection of Jesus Christ. Look it.

Jesus loves us. He who died, heaven's gates to

open wide. He will wash away our sin.

Let his children come in. That's what we.

OK, I wish, I wish that I and all of us here knew how much

Jesus loves us. It's an impossible thing to

actually know, which is why in Ephesians, Paul prays this

prayer. He says to them, I pray that God

will give you strength by his Holy Spirit so that you will

know the height, the depth, the length, the width of the love of

Christ for you, which is beyond all comprehension, so that you

might be filled with the fruits of righteousness in Christ

Jesus. We cast off the heaviness that

weighs us down. We can awaken to the light of

Christ so that we are no longer blind in Christ Jesus.

Every Ichabod, everything he has, his wife has abundant life,

freedom. That's what he does for us.

OK, we carry the glory of God with No Fear because of what

Jesus did, but we must remain repentant before Him.

Now you might be thinking of the sins that all the people around

you need to repent of. I have done the same thing.

But you can't control other people's repentance.

You can only control your own. And you might rightly be

thinking, but I truly have no sin that I'm aware of.

That is a fair, that's possibly a fair estimation.

So I recommend that you frequently read the 10

Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount slowly, other passages of

Scripture that teach us how to love God and love neighbors

slowly, and then have this prayer as you read.

Lord, search me and try me. I think I'm living righteously,

but I might very well be deceived.

See if there is evil or wickedness in me, and please

lead me in the way of righteousness.

Let that prayer be on your lips for yourself, for your people,

for other believers around you, for the church at large.

The parable that Jesus told in Luke chapter 13, it's a very

Luke 13 · chapter mention

scary parable to think about. You've got this fig tree that

he's planted and three years coming and going, he sees no

fruit on that fig tree. And he says to the vine of the

the vineyard dresser, it's like there is no fruit here.

Let's just cut it down. It's using up ground and the man

says to him, one more year I'm going to apply fertilizer and

let's see if it bears fruit. And I, I'm just wondering, are

we that fig tree as a church? I don't think so, because I do

believe we are bearing fruit, but perhaps we need to bear more

fruit. The glory of the Lord rests upon

us. Let us be worthy of that glory

through Jesus Christ our Lord. In the name of the Father, of

the Son of the Holy Spirit, Amen.