Written by: Danielle Wilson - Agape 

1 Samuel 2 v 4-8
“The bows of warriors break, but weak people become strong.
Those who once had plenty of food now must work for food, but people who were hungry are hungry no more.
The woman who could not have children now has seven, but the woman who had many children now is sad.
“The LORD sends death, and he brings to life.
He sends people to the grave, and he raises them to life again.
The LORD makes some people poor, and others he makes rich.
He makes some people humble, and others he makes great.
The LORD raises the poor up from the dust, and he lifts the needy from the ashes.
He lets the poor sit with princes and receive a throne of honor.
“The foundations of the earth belong to the LORD, and the LORD set the world upon them.

Notes 
Hannah worships the Lord, joyful that He has answered the most grief-stricken and anguished prayer that she has every prayed. He has given her a son - Samuel. Gratefully fulfilling her promise to the Lord, Hannah offers up Samuel to become His servant. Hannah gives praise to God for being the one who has the power to reverse what the world sees as the natural order of things. He has made Hannah, a barren woman, a mother!

This is one of God’s favourite tricks -- to take what is deemed worthless or unusable and to use it for great things. God is famous for doing what no one would have thought possible. Those who are weak become strong. The poor become rich. Sadness becomes joy. The valueless are given value.

God loves to use people who are hurting, people who are empty, people who are at their wit’s end in order to unravel His glorious purposes. 

As you continue to read 1 Samuel, you will see the ways that God was able to use Samuel, all because of the prayer and obedience of a barren woman!

As Jesus said, “For he who is least among you all -- he is the greatest.” (Luke 9:48) 

1 Samuel 2 v 9-11
He protects those who are loyal to him, but evil people will be silenced in darkness.
Power is not the key to success.
The LORD destroys his enemies; he will thunder in heaven against them.
The LORD will judge all the earth.
He will give power to his king and make his appointed king strong.”

Then Elkanah went home to Ramah, but the boy continued to serve the LORD under Eli the priest.


Notes
Hannah prays for God to give her the greatest desire of her heart - a child. When God grants her prayer by giving her Samuel, she is willing to do what for many of us would be the unthinkable - give her precious son back to the Lord. Samuel is left with Eli the priest, so that he can learn to serve the Lord in the Temple.

How must Hannah have felt as she and her husband made the journey home . . . without Samuel? 

Did she feel sorrow at being separated from her son? Did she feel joy in fulfilling her promise to the Lord? Her emotions at such a time must have been quite complex. 

How would you have felt?

Even today, God often asks us to submit to him the gifts that He has given to us. Though you may not have to give up your firstborn child like Hannah, you may very well be asked to release control of something that is extremely precious to you. In fact, if you truly want to follow Christ, this kind of sacrifice is pretty much a guarantee.

This will be different for each of us. You may be asked to submit your career, your talents, or your hopes for marriage. You may even be asked to give your life. 

The question is, how will you respond? Will you be like Hannah, willing to lay her most precious thing at the feet of her Lord? 

1 Samuel 2 v 12-17
Now Eli’s sons were evil men; they did not care about the LORD. This is what the priests would normally do to the people: Every time someone brought a sacrifice, the meat would be cooked in a pot. The priest’s servant would then come carrying a fork that had three prongs. He would plunge the fork into the pot or the kettle. Whatever the fork brought out of the pot belonged to the priest. But this is how they treated all the Israelites who came to Shiloh to offer sacrifices. Even before the fat was burned, the priest’s servant would come to the person offering sacrifices and say, “Give the priest some meat to roast. He won’t accept boiled meat from you, only raw meat.”
If the one who offered the sacrifice said, “Let the fat be burned up first as usual, and then take anything you want,” the priest’s servant would answer, “No, give me the meat now. If you don’t, I’ll take it by force.”
The LORD saw that the sin of the servants was very great because they did not show respect for the offerings made to the LORD.

Notes
Eli’ sons didn’t care about the Lord, and they certainly didn’t care about His offerings. 

The priests were allowed to take a portion of the offering. According to tradition, a random thrust of the fork into the boiling pot of sacrificial meat was meant to determine God’s providence of food for them. By law, the only method of cooking prescribed for the priests’ portion was boiling -- roasting was reserved for a special time: Passover. To ask for the meat to be roasted was not lawful. And to force a worshipper to give their sacrifice in this way was to rob them of the gift of voluntary worship.

God saw this lack of respect for His offerings, and ultimately, for Himself, as a great sin. As priests, all of their actions should have been a physical representation of reverence to God. They were making sacrifices for the sins of God’s people -- this very act being symbolic of the sacrifice Jesus was going to make on the Cross. But instead of being in awe of the God they were meant to serve, they made a mockery of His offerings. 

The Lord demands respect. He demanded respect in the time of Eli’s wicked sons, and He demands respect now. He is very serious about this. 

In the midst of the rituals they performed day in and day out, Eli’s sons somehow missed the point. They chose to feed their greed and their own selfish pleasures. They missed the joy and necessity of giving glory and deference to God. 

Jesus said that this is the first and greatest commandment: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and will all your soul and with all your mind.” (Matthew 22:37) 

This is the respect that God deserves. 

1 Samuel 2 v 18-21
But Samuel obeyed the LORD. As a boy he wore a linen holy vest. Every year Samuel’s mother made a little coat for him and took it to him when she went with her husband to Shiloh for the sacrifice. When Eli blessed Elkanah and his wife, he would say, “May the LORD repay you with children through Hannah to take the place of the boy Hannah prayed for and gave back to the LORD.” Then Elkanah and Hannah would go home. The LORD was kind to Hannah, so she became the mother of three sons and two daughters. And the boy Samuel grew up serving the LORD.

Notes
As a result of Hannah’s tremendous sacrifice, giving up her son Samuel, for His work, God blessed Hannah with five more children. Even though Hannah was fulfilling her promise to God, it must have been very difficult to leave her son with Eli - basically, allowing Samuel to be raised by another. But what a reward from God for her obedience! Five more children!

If we make sacrifices for God, can we expect the same kind of blessing? If we give God £10 can we expect to get back £50?

God will always reward us for our obedience, but it’s not a simple equation. Your blessing may not look the way you think it should. Sometimes it may be like Hannah’s - gifts in great abundance, but sometimes rewards wait until we are in heaven.

I have really struggled with this in my life. A few years ago, God clearly told me to do something, a big thing - a new job, moving seven hundred miles from my home and family! I was obedient. However, instead of bringing great happiness and blessing (as I assumed it would), my doing what God asked brought about one of the most difficult and humbling trials of my life. How do you explain that?

The Apostle Paul was obedient, God used Paul to carry His name to the Gentiles, but he didn’t have an easy life. Stoning, ridicule, martyrdom, no surprise. In fact, God promised at the start of Paul’s ministry: “I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.” (Acts 9:16)

Sometimes, as followers of Christ, we will receive blessings by the truckload. Other times, we will be asked to obey God with no clear rewards, or even the promise of suffering as a result. Are you ready for that?

1 Samuel 2 v 22-25
Now Eli was very old. He heard about everything his sons were doing to all the Israelites and how his sons had sexual relations with the women who served at the entrance to the Meeting Tent. Eli said to his sons, “Why do you do these evil things that the people tell me about? No, my sons. The LORD’s people are spreading a bad report about you. If you sin against someone, God can help you. But if you sin against the LORD himself, no one can help you!” But Eli’s sons would not listen to him, because the LORD had decided to put them to death.

Notes
Eli’s words of warning to his sons were far too late. Their sin had gone on remorselessly for so long that God was already determined in His judgement against them. Though his words were wasted on his sons, Eli spoke the truth: “If you sin against someone, God can help you. But if you sin against the Lord himself, no one can help you!”

God is a merciful and loving God. If any sinner comes to Him repentant, God will forgive them. Jesus came to earth with that in mind. He came to provide a way for those who did wrong (namely, EVERYONE!) to be forgiven of their sins. 

No matter what you have done wrong, it doesn’t matter how big or how small, God cares. He sees everything you do. He is always there, ready and waiting for you to say that you are sorry, because He wants desperately to forgive you. He wants to have a relationship with you that continues throughout eternity. 

But Eli’s sons never understood that God wanted to have a relationship with them. They never saw the need to love and obey God. They sinned against the Lord Himself by showing incredible disrespect for the sanctity of His offerings. They were so caught up in their sin that they didn’t even realize that they should have been extremely afraid of His wrath.

1 Samuel 2 v 26-29
The boy Samuel grew physically. He pleased the LORD and the people.
A man of God came to Eli and said, “This is what the LORD says: ‘I clearly showed myself to the family of your ancestor Aaron when they were slaves to the king of Egypt. I chose them from all the tribes of Israel to be my priests. I wanted them to go up to my altar, to burn incense, and to wear the holy vest. I also let the family of your ancestor have part of all the offerings sacrificed by the Israelites. So why don’t you respect the sacrifices and gifts? You honor your sons more than me. You grow fat on the best parts of the meat the Israelites bring to me.’

Notes
Eli’s sons were responsible for terrible sins -- they had disrespected the offering and had committed acts of sexual immorality. But it was Eli who received this severe admonishment from God. Eli allowed His sons (who were under his authority) to continue in their roles as priests, even though he knew of their evil actions. Eli even partook in the spoils of their deceit by eating meat that was wrongly obtained from the worshippers

God accused Eli of putting his sons before Him! By knowingly allowing these actions to continue, Eli was as guilty as his sons were. He had turned a blind eye to the sinfulness of his sons for too long, and now Eli was going to pay the consequences right along with them.
Eli had disrespected the God that he served. 

Reaping the benefits of sin, or allowing wrongful actions to continue when you have the power to do something about it, is sin! 

There are many times in our lives when we can choose to act, or we can choose to look the other way. The co-worker we observe stealing from the office, watching a fellow student become the object of bullying . . . In these situations, we can choose to take the high road and do the right thing, or we can join with the wrongdoer in their sin.

Most of the time, it just seems easier not to rock the boat -- just let it slip by. But there is a just God who is watching. He was watching to see if Eli would intervene. Eli failed and was judged as guilty with his sons.

1 Samuel 2 v 30-33
“So the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘I promised that your family and your ancestor’s family would serve me always.’ But now the LORD says: ‘This must stop! I will honor those who honor me, but I will dishonor those who ignore me. The time is coming when I will destroy the descendants of both you and your ancestors. No man will grow old in your family. You will see trouble in my house. No matter what good things happen to Israel, there will never be an old man in your family. I will not totally cut off your family from my altar. But your eyes will cry and your heart be sad, because all your descendants will die.

Notes 
God had had enough of the sins of the spiritual leaders of His people. He had to put an end to it. He dealt swiftly and harshly with those who had dishonoured Him.

How sad. It doesn’t make me sad that God acted justly by punishing these men. It makes me sad that these men never got it. They never understood the rituals that surrounded them day after day. They never realized that the sacrifices they were making for the people were a part of a bigger picture. They didn’t understand what the forgiveness they gave out to people actually meant. And they didn’t understand how horrendous it was that they could defile the sacrifices that brought that forgiveness. 

It makes me sad, but it doesn’t surprise me. I am surrounded everyday by people who hear and see the promises of God. They’ve heard that Jesus loves them and was willing to die for them. But these people don’t get it either. No matter what you say, they don’t seem to understand.

“For the message of the Cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:18)

My only consolation in this is that it is not up to me. It is my mandate to continue to tell people what they need to know in order to know God, but it is only God Himself who can make the words make sense to them. 


word-on-the-web uses the Scripture text taken from the Youth Bible, New Century Version (Anglicised Edition) copyright 1993 by Word Publishing Milton Keynes