Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
The cross is the physical place where God forgave the sins of the world. In other words, everything was leading there, including the stories we forgot and the artifacts that we lost. All of it points to Jesus, even these stories from Samuel. Alright. We are halfway through the series now.
Jeremy Duncan:We have made our way through the era of the judges. And last week, Bobby introduced us to the last of them. And that is our boy, Samuel, the last judge in Israel. Today, there's a lot of ground to cover as we follow Samuel's ascension to the role of judge in Israel. And so we're going to jump straight over a recap.
Jeremy Duncan:But please check out Bobby's last two sermons on the podcast and our YouTube channel. If you missed those, catch up with those online. Today, we're going to jump right into Samuel's ascension. But first, let's pray. God of grace and peace who invites us to see ourselves reflected in the whole story.
Jeremy Duncan:In the priest with wayward sons, in the mother who longs for a child, in the boy Samuel who hears the voice of God and yet struggles to make sense of that call. In each of these faces and more, we see our emotions, we see our stories reflected back to us. And in that, might we begin to realize that you are not surprised or caught off guard, but instead always present with us when we stumble and we struggle and we wrestle to understand our journey ahead of us. Even today as we continue to trace the story forward, we pause and we breathe and we prepare our hearts to learn but also to be seen and to be understood in the light of your grace. May that reassuring presence be the posture through which we encounter these characters today, but also the posture through which we offer grace to ourselves and extend that welcome out into all of our relationships.
Jeremy Duncan:Both those well worn and those relationships still yet on the horizon. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen. Alright. Today it's Samuel finally stepping into his role as judge.
Jeremy Duncan:And that means we've got a lot of ground to cover and a lot to pack in. And we are going to talk about the problem with priests and the raiders of the lost ark. Off to war we go. And what happens when God loses. But even as we begin to talk about this last judge in Israel, you're probably getting the vibe by now that things have been pretty chaotic in this whole period.
Jeremy Duncan:Not only is there this on again, off again relationship with God, the Israelites honor God, and then they don't. And then they do, and then they don't. But there's also this very nebulous category of judge that has undergirded this entire era. Shamgar, remember him? He was a judge.
Jeremy Duncan:But it gets one sentence in the whole story. Deborah was a judge, but she was also a prophet and a civic leader. And she outsourced the military to Barak. Samson was a judge. But, honestly, like, he doesn't really seem to do anything much of any kind of recognizable leadership in the story.
Jeremy Duncan:Honestly, nobody even wants his chaotic energy around for the most part. Even last week we're introduced to Samuel, but at least so far in the story, his role seems to be less of a leader and more of a priest. And even that is a little bit messy. See Samuel was brought to the temple by his mother at age 2. And from what we read in the story it seems that he is dedicated to the temple, which means he lives there with Eli training to be a priest.
Jeremy Duncan:Remember, Samuel was the gift that his mother Hannah had prayed for. She had been unable to conceive, and so in gratitude for this miraculous gift, she dedicates her child to the service of God. Chapter 3 verse 1 even says that Samuel trained with Eli and quote, ministered before the Lord with Eli. Now that's exactly what priests did in this era. In fact, they were the only ones who ministered before the Lord on behalf of the people, and offered certain rituals on behalf of the nation.
Jeremy Duncan:The only problem with that is there are also pretty clear rules that outlined that the priests of Israel must be descendants of Moses' brother, Aaron, and that they must be from the tribe of the Levites. Now, you may have heard that term before, Levites, as in the book of Leviticus, that book that outlines a lot of the rules for those Levites. Well, Samuel's father was according to 1st Samuel 1 verse 1, Elkanah son of Jeroham, the son of Elahahu, the son of Tohu, the son of Zuph and Ephraimite. Actually, he goes through a lot of details to give us his whole lineage. So that's Samuel's tribe, Ephraim.
Jeremy Duncan:He's not a Levite. And what do we do with that? Well, there are some attempts to make it all work. For example, in the first half of Samuel 1 verse 1, it says that Samuel's father Elkanah was from the hill countries of Ephraim. And in the book of Joshua, if we scroll back, we are told that some of the Levites, the sons of a man named Kohath, settled up in Ephraim.
Jeremy Duncan:Even the high priest at the time there, a guy named Phineas, decides he wants to live up there as well. And that was kind of part of the deal of being a priest at the time. You didn't get your own land. You did get a tithe from all the other people to look after yourself, and so the Levites were then kind of scattered around amongst all the other tribes on other people's land. That kind of makes sense.
Jeremy Duncan:I mean, if you need a Levite to offer certain sacrifices for you, you're going to want to have a few of them nearby. And so baby Samuel is actually a descendant of Aaron, who just happened to be living in Ephraim. That's why he could serve in the priesthood role with Eli. Now, to do that you have to completely ignore the second half of the verse that very specifically says, he is an Ephraimite from Ephraim. But that is exactly what First Chronicles and Psalm 99 tried to do.
Jeremy Duncan:First Chronicles 6 says that Elkanah and his son, that's Samuel, were descendants of Kohath, who is himself a descendant of Aaron. And then in Psalm 99, we get this little song that says, exalt the Lord your God and worship at his footstool for he is holy. Moses and Aaron were among his priests. Samuel was among those who called on his name. They called out to the Lord, and he answered them.
Jeremy Duncan:Now that one in the Psalms doesn't quite specifically say that Samuel was a descendant of Aaron, but at least tries to hint at that, give you a little plausible deniability if you need it. And the reason I bring this all up is because if we're going to learn to interact with the Hebrew scriptures on their terms, then we have to try to engage them honestly. And just like we talked about with those conquest narratives, we have to understand that these stories are part of an ongoing, evolving relationship between the Hebrew people and their God and their rules. Remember, the story of Samuel is the transition out of the absolute chaos of the judges. Think about what we heard in the story of Samson.
Jeremy Duncan:He's running around. He's marrying Philistine women. He's fighting lions with his bare hands. He's lighting foxes on fire for goodness' sake. Absolutely every slight that Samson perceives escalates into more and more violence and revenge.
Jeremy Duncan:And the book of Judges even ends with, quote, everyone doing what they thought was right in their own eyes. And then here comes Samuel, a miraculous birth from the wrong kind of parents, lacking the right kind of credentials, given to the wrong kind of mentor, who somehow still develops the right kind of character to bring the people out of all the muck that mires them and into what it is that God has next. See, I think the God of the Hebrew Bible, as God comes to us in the scriptures, is far more flexible than we sometimes imagine. Sometimes I think we see all these rituals and these sacrifices and these rules that honestly seem pretty bizarre to us. And so we think, Oh, man.
Jeremy Duncan:God must have been a real stick in the mud back then. And, yet, what we find in scripture is that God seems to be consistently willing to bend, even break the rules when it's necessary to move the story forward. Think of the story of Sodom and Gomorrah from Genesis 19. Right? God is like, look, this town is awful.
Jeremy Duncan:There's nobody righteous here. It needs to go. And Abraham's like, well, what if I could find a 50 good people? Would that be worth saving? And God's like, yeah.
Jeremy Duncan:Sure. So Abraham says, 45? God's like, alright. What about 40? 30?
Jeremy Duncan:20? What about 10? Would you reconsider for 10 and God just keeps saying, yeah. One of the really fascinating things about reading the Hebrew scriptures is just how open to dialogue God seems to be. To quote Bobby from last week, the complex portrayal of both people and God says that we are involved, and God is at work.
Jeremy Duncan:That we have agency, and yet the world is still held by God. And maybe God likes it that way. Except here's the difficult part. God may like it. I think sometimes we like to clamp it all back down.
Jeremy Duncan:You see the reason 1st Chronicles tries to make Samuel a Levite is because 1st and second Chronicles are written much later, centuries later, looking back and trying to clean things up a little bit. In your Bible, 1st and second Samuel will flow right into 1st and second Kings. That's how the story unfolds. And if you keep going though, you'll find 1st and second Chronicles, which retell the story from a slightly different perspective. That's not, however, what happens in Jewish Bibles.
Jeremy Duncan:Because you see in the Tanakh, 1st and second kings are part of the Nevi'im, or the prophets. That's why they go together with 1st and second Samuel. But 1st and second Chronicles, those come at the very end of an entirely different section of the Bible called the Ketuvim or the writings. In fact, they're the very last books of the Hebrew Bible. And that's because Jewish people understood them as much later books that were looking back and trying to make sense of the story.
Jeremy Duncan:In other words, there's the messy prophetic telling of the story, And then there are the writings that try to make it all fit. And don't get me wrong. I like the work of trying to make it all fit. That's what I do for a living. I've dedicated my life to studying.
Jeremy Duncan:That's the work of theology. But I am also endlessly fascinated by the fact that the prophetic voice of the Hebrew Scriptures is consistently the one that imagines God unbounded by our expectations of the divine. To quote Walter Brueggemann, the God of ancient Israel, who is the creator of heaven and earth, is a God in relationship, a God who is ready and able to make commitments, and who is impinged upon by a variety of partners who make a difference in the life of God. In stark contrast to much of classical theology, such relatedness is intrinsic to existence and definitional for all agents, including the God of the Hebrew scriptures. Sometimes, I think we fall into the trap of wanting God to make sense more than we actually got want God to shape us and guide us through the mess of life.
Jeremy Duncan:And look, that's okay. We have been doing that for a very long time, at least since the books of the chronicles looked back and tried to make it all make sense. Just know that chapter 1 verse 1 says that Samuel was ineligible to be a priest. And the rest of Samuel says that God didn't seem to care all that much about that. I will wager that there will come a day in all of our lives at some point where we will want God to stick to the rules.
Jeremy Duncan:And God will reply, telling us that the story demands something new. And in that moment, we have to decide whether we follow our rules as we have understood them or whether we will trust the way of Jesus that lies ahead of us, calling us forward. And all of that is there in the mess of scripture. And so with that, Samuel's word came to all Israel. Now, the Israelites went out to fight against the Philistines.
Jeremy Duncan:They camped at Ebenezer, and the Philistines at Aphek. The Philistines deployed their voices to meet Israel. And as the battle spread, Israel was defeated, and about 4,000 were killed on the battlefield. When the soldiers returned to camp, the elders of Israel asked, why did the Lord bring defeat on us today before the Philistines? Let us bring the ark of the Lord's covenant from Shiloh, that he may go with us and save us from the hand of our enemies.
Jeremy Duncan:So the people sent men to Shiloh, and they brought the ark of the covenant of the Lord Almighty, who is enthroned between the Jeroboam. And Eli's 2 sons, Hophni and Phinehas, were there with the ark. Okay. Let's pause here, because we're about to see the crisis that sets Samuel on the road to leading Israel. But already there's an important question here.
Jeremy Duncan:What on earth is the ark of the covenant of God? And interestingly, even though the ark is the subject of a lot of speculation, and the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark, by the way, there's actually not a whole lot of detail available in scripture about it. For example, there are some conflicting descriptions of exactly what it looked like, and where it was kept. And we don't even know when it disappeared from history. There's a couple battles in the books of 1st and second Kings that are speculated to be where the ark was lost, but we just don't know for sure.
Jeremy Duncan:The scriptures don't tell us. What we do know is that with varying levels of intimacy, the ark was a physical artifact that represented God's presence for the Hebrew people. Essentially, it was just a fancy box that housed the tablets of the Ten Commandments. And it served as a focal point for Hebrew religious practice. Now, sometimes it seems to be a place where God is actually physically present on the earth.
Jeremy Duncan:At the lid of the ark was called the mercy seat. And some descriptions seem to suggest that God actually physically came and sat there to forgive the sins of the people on the day of atonement. But in general, I think it's fair to say that this box represented God on the earth for the Hebrew people. Now, since we're here, dark is long gone by the time in the New Testament. It doesn't really factor into Christian thought.
Jeremy Duncan:But it is referenced a couple times. For example, Romans 325. Paul says that God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement. That's the NIV. Some older translations will say, God presented Christ as a propitiation for God.
Jeremy Duncan:That's a fancy way of saying that Christ's death appeases God's anger. What's interesting is Paul doesn't actually say any of that. What he says is that God presents Christ as an and is the Greek word for the cover of the ark of the covenant. That's the mercy seat where God showed up to forgive sins. Paul's not saying that Jesus is an appeasement to an angry God.
Jeremy Duncan:He's not even describing Jesus as a sacrifice, at least not in that passage. Those are possible theological implications from what he says, but what he's directly saying is that the cross is the physical place where God forgave the sins of the world. It's the new mercy seat. In other words, everything was leading there including the stories we forgot and the artifacts that we lost. All of it points to Jesus, even these stories from Samuel.
Jeremy Duncan:I like that. Still, that leaves us with an ark of the covenant that represents God on the earth. And the Israelites go into battle and they lose. And so they figure, well, what if we bring God with us next time? In fact, there's this kind of interesting quirk in the text where it says, let us bring the ark of the covenant.
Jeremy Duncan:A more literal translation would be something like, let us bring to us the ark. There's a sort of conspicuous repetition. Let us bring to us. There's this sort of implication that they think of God's presence as something they can wield against their enemies here. And that would not be particularly surprising as a posture for an ancient military.
Jeremy Duncan:In fact, fetishizing gods into war talismans was sort of de rigueur for the time. I mean, that's what all their enemies would have been doing. So why not them? Let's bring God with us. How can we possibly lose?
Jeremy Duncan:Except it doesn't work. Round 2. They bring the ark with them. It's actually Eli's scoundrel sons from last week that bring it. Everyone gets excited.
Jeremy Duncan:The battle re engages. The Philistines route the Israelites, and they win. And this time they head home with the Ark of Covenant in tow. Actually, it gets worse than that. Because during the battle, Eli's 2 sons are killed.
Jeremy Duncan:And when a messenger runs to tell him the news, he falls back in his chair, breaks his neck, dies on the spot, leaving Israel without a leader. And all of that happens in less than a chapter, by the way. But this is also why that earlier conversation about God not playing by our rules was important. Because one of the assumptions of the ancient world was that the gods operated on the same kind of shame and honor valuations that we do. That the gods derive their self esteem, their satisfaction from winning battles and being praised for it.
Jeremy Duncan:Like the precise reason that you might want to bring your god into battle with you was because that god would be shamed, humiliated even, if you lost while they were present. And that means that maybe you can force or at least coerce your god into doing what you want and supporting your military agenda. And yet in this instance, this god says, not interested. In fact, I'm so not interested, maybe now is a time for a reset in the nation. See, it's interesting to me that all the way along through all of the judges, always the catalyst for a new leader to emerge has been a battle.
Jeremy Duncan:Even in the story of Deborah, who doesn't lead the military directly herself like the other judges, she's still the one who directs Barak to throw off the oppressive weight of Jabin and Sisera. But each time all the way along, the battle, the fight is always presented as a fight to throw off some kind of oppressive force that's bearing down on Israel. Right? God raises up a judge to save them from that. And yet here, if we're reading closely at the start of chapter 4, we don't get any of that.
Jeremy Duncan:The Philistines aren't attacking. It just says the Israelites went out to fight. In fact, my favorite translation of Samuel comes from a scholar named Robert Alter, and he renders this line. The Israelites sallied forth in battle against the Philistines. And I like that first, because, I mean, nobody gets to use the word sallied forth these days.
Jeremy Duncan:That is underused verbiage, in my opinion. But also, I think he's on to something here. He's doing this on purpose. Right? Because the whole problem with this story is that they're not being oppressed.
Jeremy Duncan:At least not here. They just simply want a fight. And God wants none of it this time, even if that means this God looks like a loser. This is a pretty important moment in Hebrew history. The realization that God is willing to lose when that's the better choice.
Jeremy Duncan:So what happens? Well, the Philistines bring the ark back to one of their cities, and they set it up in front of one of their gods, a guy named Dagon. And in the morning, the Philistines wake up to find Dagon fallen over in front of the ark. And they think to themselves, oh, that's kind of weird. But they put Dagon back on his feet, and they go about their day.
Jeremy Duncan:And then the next day they wake up, and they find Dagon fallen over. But this time his hands and his head broke off when he fell. That's a little disconcerting. Well, what really gets them worried is when everyone in town starts developing hemorrhoids, and the town gets invaded by rats. That's like, okay.
Jeremy Duncan:This is enough here. Now, in your English Bible, it's probably going to say tumors. That's fine. The base word in Hebrew here means swelling. But the scribes have actually let us know precisely what they meant, because they've included the vowels for another word that very specifically meant butt swelling.
Jeremy Duncan:By the way, my kids would love this story. So there you go. What's probably happening here is that scribes figured that was a little too cheeky, pun very much intended, to read in church. So they used a more generic word for swelling. And then they basically put an asterisk in the margin to clarify where that swelling actually was.
Jeremy Duncan:So the Philistines don't want to give up on the ark yet. They like it. So they think, okay. Let's move it to another town. Short answer, nothing good happens this time.
Jeremy Duncan:And so after 7 months of all this, they decide, okay. We're going to return it. Get this, though. In order to make things right, they decide to return the ark, along with some gifts, 5 golden hemorrhoids and 5 golden rats. And sometimes you get those gifts, and you're like, I'm not sure what to do with this.
Jeremy Duncan:This is kind of one of those situations in Israel here. Anyway, this is how the story ends. The Philistines send the ark back with the golden gifts. And the men of Kiraz Jearim came and took the ark of the Lord. They brought it up to Abinadab's house on the hill and consecrated Eleazar his son to guard the ark of the Lord.
Jeremy Duncan:The ark remained at Kiraz Jearim for a very long time, 20 years and all. And all the people of Israel turned back to the Lord. So Samuel said to the Israelites, if you are returning to the Lord with all your hearts, then wid yourselves of your foreign gods and the Ashtoreths and commit yourself to the Lord and serve Him only. And He will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines. So the Israelites put away their ba'als and their ashtras.
Jeremy Duncan:These are essentially idols of Canaanite gods. And they commit themselves to serving the Lord only. Then Samuel said, assemble all Israel at Mizpah. I will intercede with the Lord for you. And when he had assembled, they drew water.
Jeremy Duncan:They poured it out before the Lord. And on that day, they fasted, and they were confessed. We have sinned against the Lord. Samuel was serving as judge of Israel that day. And Samuel is now officially the last of them, the last judge we will see in Israel.
Jeremy Duncan:So, what do we take from a story like this? Well, I think there's actually a couple of really important things that we can hold on to. First, sometimes the Bible is messy. And we've seen that all through this series. We will continue to in all the violence of judges.
Jeremy Duncan:Stories come to us from the heat of the moment, and agendas sometimes get confused and mixed in with gods. Sometimes rules get bent, or maybe even broken a little bit. And sometimes I think that throws us for a loop. How can God be present in a story if the details aren't pristine, we ask. And yet, I think what we seem is that God is as perfectly happy to be present in the mess of Scripture as God is in the mess of our lives.
Jeremy Duncan:And to me, that's actually a source of great comfort. That I'm not just here to follow rules and check boxes. I'm here to slowly uncover the heart of God that leads me all the way back to Jesus. Trusting that God is still willing to bend our rules when love requires it today. And that means a lot to me.
Jeremy Duncan:Because, second, I think even here in this story, amidst all of the violence that we've seen in this series, we are also beginning to see the way back to God, that God is not our warrior. God is not interested in our wars. God takes no joy in our violence. And yes, of course, the violence of humanity begets more violence, and God is always on the side of the oppressed. But here we see that God is not interested in ruthless aggression even when that aggression comes from God's own chosen people.
Jeremy Duncan:In fact, God would rather lose and look the fool than prop up our endless pursuits of war. And that is something that every one of us, Christian or Hebrew, pacifist or not, should learn to take to heart. Because that simple realization that God is willing to lose for the sake of love, that is the beginning of the way that will culminate in a place where sins are finally forgiven for good. And Jesus shows us just how deep God's commitment to peace and mercy can really be. You see, once you and I confront the fact that we cannot conscript God to our wars, I'm convinced that slowly what happens is that we will be conscripted to God's peace.
Jeremy Duncan:And once we realize that God can't be carried around in our back pocket to support our agenda for what we want, maybe then we can slowly get on the path of participating in God's kingdom here on the earth all around us even today. Let's pray. God, for all of those times when we have tried to treat you like a talisman, something that we could bring with us to support our war, our agenda, our goals. And we have lost. And you have looked the fool.
Jeremy Duncan:Might even that disappointment be a story that teaches us about who you really are? That your concern is not how you look in the eyes of us or anyone around us. Your concern is your plan, your imagination for this world redeemed and healed and moved forward, and that if that takes losing, if that takes humility, if that takes service, that is what you are willing to do and that is the path that you call us to follow as well. God for those times when we've tried to use you to support our agenda, we repent and we ask you by your spirit to realign us to what you are trying to do in the world, bringing more grace, more peace, one step at a time to move the story forward. May all of our heart slowly be conformed to everything that we learn in Jesus and might we then look back and see at how every step along the way you are moving the story toward your kingdom.
Jeremy Duncan:Might that give us great hope and excitement for the ways we can participate today. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen. Hey. Jeremy here.
Jeremy Duncan:And thanks for listening to our podcast. If you're intrigued by the work that we're doing here at commons, you can head to our website commons.church for more information. You can find us on all of the socials at commonschurch. You can subscribe subscribe to our YouTube channel where we are posting content regularly for the community. You can also join our Discord server.
Jeremy Duncan:Head to commons.church/discord for the invite and there you will find the community having all kinds of conversations about how we can encourage each other to follow the way of Jesus, we would love to hear from you. Anyway, thanks for tuning in. Have a great week. We'll talk to you soon.