God Means Business!

 1 Samuel 2:27-36

27 And there came a man of God to Eli and said to him, “Thus the Lord has said, ‘Did I indeed reveal myself to the house of your father when they were in Egypt subject to the house of Pharaoh?

28 Did I choose him out of all the tribes of Israel to be my priest, to go up to my altar, to burn incense, to wear an ephod before me? I gave to the house of your father all my offerings by fire from the people of Israel.

29 Why then do you scorn my sacrifices and my offerings that I commanded, and honor your sons above me by fattening yourselves on the choicest parts of every offering of my people Israel?’

30 Therefore the Lord, the God of Israel, declares: ‘I promised that your house and the house of your father should go in and out before me forever,’ but now the Lord declares: ‘Far be it from me, for those who honor me I will honor, and those who despise me shall be lightly esteemed.

31 Behold, the days are coming when I will cut off your strength and the strength of your father’s house, so that there will not be an old man in your house.

32 Then in distress you will look with envious eye on all the prosperity that shall be bestowed on Israel, and there shall not be an old man in your house forever.

33 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.

34 And this that shall come upon your two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, shall be the sign to you: both of them shall die on the same day.

35 And I will raise up for myself a faithful priest, who shall do according to what is in my heart and in my mind. And I will build him a sure house, and he shall go in and out before my anointed forever.

36 And everyone who is left in your house shall come to implore him for a piece of silver or a loaf of bread and shall say, “Please put me in one of the priests’ places, that I may eat a morsel of bread.” ’ ”

One of the most difficult aspects of child-rearing for me was discipline. I hated being the bad-guy although I did play the part when necessary. But declaring that some action was punishable and then following through with that punishment was never easy. (I learned in later years that often those punishment efforts were sources of laughter, so you can see, I wasn’t very good at it.) In today’s reading, we see God describing a punishable action and declaring what that punishment would be; we will see in later verses that He does indeed follow through. And trust me, no one was laughing.

For many, reading about God’s voice of judgment and punishment is difficult. We’ve discussed before how we don’t like to think about God that way. Our focus naturally wants to draw toward the loving and merciful God who would never actually punish a sinner. But then He wouldn’t actually be God. He would be our puppet and that is no God at all. We have read of the terrible sin of Hophni and Phinehas and have learned that they didn’t even know God. They merely used their position as His servants to fulfill their self-centered, hedonistic lifestyle. They were an abomination to a holy God. The judgment He pronounces on them is a tough one. Not only will they lose their own lives (on the same day), no one in their family would live to see old age. Eli, their father, would die and old man, but he would be the last. This is a tough judgment that would reach forward into the coming generations. Here is one of those events that are hard to defend to the non-believer.

Part of the reason we shy away from these kinds of stories is that we hope God never speaks words like that in our direction. We don’t want to be on the receiving end of such punishment, for we know that we are guilty of much and deserve similar treatment. Here we have to be careful not to “prioritize” sins. It would be easy to say, “well, I never stole a sacrifice from God or slept with temple prostitutes. I’m not as bad as those guys.” Self-justification is not a defensible stance – ever. We are all sinners and to God, sin is sin. We all deserve the same punishment as Hophni and Phinehas. Those who would deny that are merely deluded. But, we stand on the opposite side of the cross. We know that Jesus died for every single one of those sins and we will never have to justify ourselves as God has already done that for us. Was there ever hope for Hophni and Phinehas? Yes. They could have believed in God (which they didn’t) and understood that He was sending a Savior, just as their ancestors did. Their hope could have been in Jesus just like ours is, despite the fact that they didn’t know exactly what that salvation was going to look like and how God would make that happen. While God punished sin in the Old Testament, He never punished those who believed that He would save them.

Today when you think you are being punished, you are not. God has done all of His punishing for sin on Jesus. But when times are difficult, consider it God seeking to get your attention. He may allow you to suffer the consequences of your sinful behaviors, but He is not punishing you. There is no fear for those who live in Him.