Sermon artwork for What we need is a king
Bart Erlebach photo

1 Samuel 2:27-36

Preached by Bart Erlebach on 5th October 2025

Scripture

27 And there came a man of God to Eli and said to him, “Thus says the LORD, ‘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 for my dwelling, 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.”’”

(ESV)


Generated Transcript

So it's 1 Samuel 2, 27 to 36 on page 2 7 3. Now a man of god came to Eliant, said to him, this is what the lord says. Did I not clearly reveal myself to your ancestor as family when they were in Egypt and a pharaoh. I chose your ancestor out of all the tribes of Israel to be my priest, to go up to my altar, to burn incense and to wear any fad in my presence. I also gave your ancestor's family all the food offerings presented by the Israelites.

Why do you scorn my sacrifice and offering that I subscribed for my dwelling. Why do you keep why do you honor your sons more than me by factening yourselves on the choice part of every offering made by my people, Israel. Therefore, the lord, the god of Israel declares. I promised that members of your family would minister still before me forever. But now the lord declares, far be it from me.

Those who honor me, I will honor, but those who despise me will be disdained. The time is coming when I will cut short your strength and the strength of your priestly house so that no 1 in it will reach old age. You will and you will see my distress in my dwelling. Although good will be done to Israel, no 1 in your family line will ever reach old age. Every 1 of you that I do not cut off from serving at my altar, I will spare to only to destroy, you only to destroy your sight and sap your strength, and all your descendants will die in the prime of life.

And what happens to your 2 sons, hopni, and Finious will be assigned to you. They will both die on the same day. I will raise up for myself a faithful priest who will do according to what is in my heart and mind. I will firmly establish his priestley house, and they will minister before my anointed 1 always. Then everyone left in your family line will come and bow down before him for a piece of for a piece of silver and a loaf of bread and plead, appoint me to some priestly office so that I can have food to eat.

Thank you, sir. Well, please keep the passage open in front of you page 2 7 3. This passage is 1 where there is a key theme of honor, if you want a verse, maybe to, to be a theme verse you would go with verse 30 or or a part of it. Those who honor me, I will honor, but those who despise me will be disdained. Honor is a key theme in this past message, that the honor of the lord, and we're gonna think about what that means, what does it mean to honor the lord, but also those whom the the lord honors, who is it that the lord honors?

In this country, we have honor's lists, don't we, published twice a year. So it's interesting to see who it is the king thinks should be honored in this country. I'm not sure it's just him who chooses them, but who what kind of people is it that he thinks should be honored amongst us. What more important is to say, who is it that god honors? Well, we'll come to that because we need to know how you and I could be honored by the lord.

Is that possible. Well, I I appreciate that if you're new to us and you just sat and heard that reading, you're just re hearing a passage from the Bible. It's a little bit out of context. I need to give you a bit of context. That passage, which were focusing on is god's message to Eli.

It's a message of judgment. Now Eli and his sons were priests at a place called Shiloh. And Shiloh was significant, but again, because it was the place where the tabernacle of the lord was situated. That is, it it's the place where people were to go to worship the lord, and people did. But we find Eli and his sons are not good.

In fact, it says in the passage we looked at last week, Eli's sons are scoundrels. We find that that when people brought them sacrifices that they were to present to the lord that Hoffman and Finias, these sons of Eli would take parts of them and eat them themselves. Now they were allowed some of the, the sacrifices, but they would take the bits they weren't allowed. They would take the best bits for themselves. But more than that, they were also sleeping with the women who served at the entrance to the tent of meeting.

And for the people of Israel, this is a disaster. At the tabernacle, at the place where they are to worship the lord, the priest who are to represent them are violating women and are showing contempt for the sacrifices of the lord. It's a pretty disastrous state to be in. And god is saying to Eli in this message, it cannot go on. He cannot go on.

Judgment must come on Eli and his house. He will be held accountable, and it's significant. It's Eli who held accountable that this message comes to him when it's his sons who are doing these things. It turns out, actually, he is to be held accountable for what's going on, but we'll come to that. This message of judgment that comes to Eli.

There's a lot in it, which is about honor, and the first thing we need to see is god's gracious lifting up. The first thing god says to Eli is not the message of judgment, but it is to say, this is what I've done for you Eli. This is how I lifted you up. This is what I gave to you. So have a look at the verses to see how the lord does this, what he says he's done for Eli and his house.

And we'll see it in 3 verbs that the lord uses. The first in verse 27. He says there now man of god came to Eli. We don't know who this man of god is. What we know is what we've got there, that he was a man of god.

The man of god came to Eli and said, this is what the lord says. Did I not clearly reveal myself to your ancestor's family. That's the first thing. God says, I revealed myself to you. To your ancestor's family, to those who came before you.

That is to, Aaron is the 1 who's probably in view here. It's when they were in Egypt under pharaoh. So aaron would have been his ancestor, brother of Moses, and god saying I revealed myself to him. Not just that they exist. It's not just god saying I'm here, but that god entered into relationship with he says, I did that for your ancestors.

I revealed myself second. I chose your ancestors, first 28. I chose them to be priests, and then he describes what the priests do. The priests go up to the altar. That is they they bring the sacrifices before the lord, the sacrifices of the people.

They represent the people in bringing their sacrifices, and burning incense, which is an offering the lord, but also represents the prayers of the people and to wear the ephod. Now the ephod, you may have heard remember last week we heard of Samuel wearing an ephod. This is a different ephod. This is the ephod the high priest. And on that ephod, there were gems on which were engraved, the names of the 12 tribes of Israel.

In other words, that priest, the high priest, as he comes before the lord represents god's people before god wearing that e fod. And each bit of this is about him representing the people, bringing the sacrifices, burning the incense, wearing the e fod. That's what they were to do. And what a huge privilege for and his house to to be this representative of the people, to be the priest before the lord. God revealed himself to Eli's household or Eli's ancestors chose them to be priests, and and then gave to them end of verse 28.

I also gave your ancestors family all the food offering presented to the Israelites. You see, the priests didn't have their land. When god gave the people land, he gave them different portions of land to different tribes, but to the priest, he said you don't get a bit of land. You get the food that is presented at the altar. In other words, it's almost God saying, no, you dine at my table.

What a privilege or none. And we just need to pause there and recognize before we hear a god's judgment. We are hearing of god's grace to god's goodness, god's kindness, that they didn't deserve. And do you see that makes a difference as we're gonna come on to hear about god's judging, Eli, and his family, that god has been overwhelmingly generous to them. It makes a difference, doesn't it?

That, actually, god we see it underlines god's right to judge them, that god has provided them so much. I gave you all these things, and it underlines god's right to judge us too, because there's no judgment without out first, god being generous to people. We will all come before god, and he will judge us, but he has been overwhelmingly generous to every 1 of us. Because everything that we have, all that we comes from the lord. All the possessions you have.

Yes. He uses means, but everything that you have, the home that you have, the family you have, if you have a family, everything comes from the lord, and even your very life comes from him. And therefore it's right that god holds us to account for everything in our lives, isn't it? After all it, if you were to give to charity, maybe you give a to a charity, maybe you just give a few pounds to a charity. You might rightly say, well, I I wanna know how my money's gonna be used, but you might not inquire a huge amount.

But if you give thousands to a charity, tens of thousands, maybe you bankroll the whole charity, you say, I I basically give all the money to this charity. You'd want to know more about where your money is going. Wouldn't you? You'd want to inquire and find out exactly how it's being used. You'd have a greater level of scrutiny because you've given a thing for this charity to exist?

Well, god has not just given you a small amount. He hasn't just given me a small amount. He's given us our very existence. It is right that he would scrutinize us and say, well, what you done? It is right that god judges Eli for what he has done because he's given him everything.

And there's no 1 the lord judges who he has not already been generous to. And that includes you and me. Second oh, you've already got the second. You were ahead me. Second, the sin of misplaced honor, the sin of misplaced honor.

The Lord goes on and says to Eli verse 29, why do you scorn my sacrifice and offering that I prescribe for my dwelling. He says, why do you do given that I've given you all these things, why do you scorn my sacrifice? And we we thought about this last week that that's what Hoffman and Finius were doing. More literally, it's not so much that you scorn my sacrifice is that the word is actually more that you kick my sacrifice. This is quite that's quite an incredible thing to think.

And it the the lord is saying, you treat my sacrifice. You treat them as if you're just kicking them around. As if people are bringing sacrifice, it may be the a goat or some as a sin offering to the lord. And and the priest sacrifice it, and rather than presenting it to the lord, it's like they just treat it like a football and just kick it around. Now he's not saying they actually did this, but he's saying that's your attitude to the sacrifice.

That's what you've been doing. And he says, why do you honor your sons more than me by fattening yourselves on the choice parts of every offering made by people, Israel. Why do you honor your sons more than me? It's significant. This is coming to Eli.

It wasn't him who was doing this, who was actually taking the wrong parts of the sacrifice. It wasn't him who was sleeping with with the women at the entrance to the tent of meeting, but it was his sons who were doing it. And the lord is saying you are honoring them more than me. How is that? Well, because Eli should have stopped them.

He confronted them. He spoke to them. He said you shouldn't be doing this. This is wicked, but he didn't stop them. And the commentaries, I I I think are quite right to say.

It may well be he couldn't stop them from doing bad things. He he could have stopped them being priests. He could have sacked them. He could have taken them out of office and said, you are no longer gonna do this in front of the lord, but he didn't. He allowed them to continue to disobey the lord, to showed contempt for the lord's offering, sleep with the women at the entrances to the tent of meeting, and they kept doing this as priests, and he should have stopped them.

He let their desires, their disobedience, trump obedience to the lord. He showed he was more concerned about their pleasure than about honoring the lord. And this helps us, again, to understand sin. Last week, we thought about sin as sometimes being over reaching that god gives us something good, but then we want more beyond what he said, and we want it in a way that the lord says we shouldn't. Here we see, sin is also about honor.

Who do we on honor the most. And we need to think about that in terms of application, don't we? Because actually, we're all tempted to honor things other than the lord. Let's think about this. I mean, since the passage is about a parent and children, I think it's right that we apply this in that way, although there are other applications, and I we have thought about parenting.

We've applied in parenting a number of times in recent sermons, and that's a good thing. There are parents here, but I recognize there are those who aren't parents, and we need to think also about those things, but I think it's right here to think about parenting because that's in the passage? How is it that parents might be tempted to honor their children more than the lord? I think this is a big temptation for us in our culture. Because the big people will say is, and we are quite people will say that, you know, it's a generally recognized thing that you want to say is I want my children to be happy, and people will say that is their greatest desire that they want their children happy.

And for our children to be happy, we are told they need to feel fulfilled. They need to be able to do what they want to do, and the things they're good at to excel in those things. But what if it looks like your son is gonna be the next Harry Kain or the next Ben folks, or your daughter the next time around a canoe? And what if their clubs are on Sundays? And that's the only time that their clubs are gonna meet or the time when the matches are.

What do you do? They've gotta be happy. They've gotta be fulfilled. We think. Now I wanna recognize this is a hard this is a hard pull because the pull away from church and away from the things of the law is not easy for parents because your children will have coaches telling them not to come to church, but to go and do their thing.

We had it in 1, cricket club, you know, 1 of my kids, the coach was saying to, you don't wanna go to church. You wanna come and play because the matches. The 18 matches are on a Sunday morning. You wanna come and play? Of course, you wanna come and play.

Come and play? You'll be in the 18. Don't wanna go to church. He was saying it right in front of me. Knowing I was the pastor of the show, So I I had the last word because I I spoke to my son in the car.

But there's a poll there, and it's particularly hard. I'm not saying what conversation have with my children, but it is really hard if your child then says, but I find church boring, and I want to go and do that thing. I want to. How do you cope with that? That's card, isn't it?

And I'm not gonna give you a blanket rule. It needs to be times when you teach your children how they're gonna make decisions, how they're gonna make priorities. And there can be other ways that that that you're on another board, you know, going to services that of times. Maybe you can't do that here, but but, you know, there are other ways. I'm not saying there's a blanket rule.

There's, you know, it's just obvious. It's just easy, but this is a heart issue, isn't it? This is a heart issue. And if my child child's happiness comes before obedience to the lord. What does that say about my heart?

What does that say about who I honor? But there's an honor rivalry in all our hearts. Whenever we're called to obey the lord, and we don't wanna do it. There's an arrivalry going on? Who are we gonna wanna, the lord or someone else?

It isn't just a problem for parents. But I think we do need to ask the question. I want to, you know, talk about it afterwards. How is it that parents are tempted to honor their children above the lord. Let's talk about that.

The sin of misplaced honor. Third, those who honor the lord will be honored those who despise him will be detained. Here's where we come to the judgment. And he's from verse 30. Onwards verse 30 starts, therefore, the lord, the god of Israel declares.

Here is the judgment of the lord against Eli. In light of all I have done for you, Eli, that I have honored you. I have lifted you up And yet you have dishonored me. This is what's gonna happen. And the principle is there, verse 30.

We've already read it out. The principle towards the end of verse 30, those who honor me, I will honor, but those who spies me will be disdained. And what we see in the rest of the verses in our passage is the lord god fulfilling that principle. He says, He will take Eli and his family away from being priests. He will cut short their strength, verse 31.

The time is coming, so it's not gonna be immediate. It's gonna be ground. Dual. The time is coming when I will cut short your strength and the strength of your priestly house so that no 1 in it will reach old age. They're all gonna die young.

And he says, though, is rail will see success, your family won't. What you have here is, it's like a covenant cur like the covenant curses got pronounced on Israel. If they disobeyed him, it's like god is applying them just to this family. And there'll be a sign for Eli, verse 34, that both his sons will die on the same day. He won't see the whole of a fulfillment of what god says, but he will see this, and he'll know that it's gonna happen, that both his sons will die on the same day.

And then verse 36, here's where they will be. Then everyone left in your family line will come and bow down before him for a piece of silver and a loaf of bread and plead, appoint me to some priestly office so that I can have food to eat. And if you were to hear a few weeks ago, maybe this is ringing bells of something that you heard in Hannah's prayer, when she said those who are full hire themselves out for food. That's what's happening here to Eli's family. And what we see in the coming characters in 1 Samuel is this fulfilled.

This is, this is what the lord does. There is a massacre of the priests, and 1 of them survives a guy called Abiatha. And when Solomon becomes king, Abiatha is removed from the priesthood, and it says this about him in 1 king's chapter 2. So Solomon removed Abiatha from the priesthood of the lord, fulfilling the word of the lord, the the lord had spoken at Shiloh about the house of Eli. In other words, what's been said in our passage, said that's been fulfilled when Abiala is removed from being a priest.

What do we see from that? The the lord does judge. Judge fell on the house of Eli. And we need to recognize here that the lord is a god who is gracious, is generous, was generous to Eli and his house and he judges as well. And sometimes people react against that.

They don't like the idea of god as judge. And what do we say to that? Well, we need to recognize that god is who he is. We have no right to make up our own god, to make a statue of god with the bits that we like and bits we don't like. You know, when you say it gets statues of celebrities, I mean, if you're all, you know, of people in the past, you get a statue of them.

You look at them, and I I generally think they don't look very much like the person they're supposed to be? Do you get that feeling at times? You go, it doesn't look very like them. We do that with god. If we say, well, I I I don't like thinking about that bit about god.

I don't want that bit. I want him to be a judge. I just want him to be like this. That's like us getting a hammer and chisel and saying, well, we'll, we'll make god to be what we want him to be. And, actually, you end up not with god at all.

What you need is god to reveal himself to you and to say, this is what I'm lying. Doesn't matter in a sense what you think about Well, I like to think of god, that doesn't matter. It's who god actually is that matters. And he is a judge. But we also want to see, don't we?

That god is just. We want we do want just distinct. I mean, I I was very thankful that I thought John's prayers were fantastic earlier, praying for so many different parts of the world and so well, and praying for peace, and we want peace around the world. We want just justice as well, though, don't we? And we want justice for the victims of of the killings in Manchester.

We want justice there. We want justice for Gaza and Israel. We want justice is to happen. Don't our hearts long for that. And this is a god.

He's a god who will bring justice. He will judge, and that is a good thing. He'll judge on the big scale and on the small scale. And that includes you and me. But what's frightening there is as we've already started to think there's more of eli in you and me than we like to think, isn't there?

We we may not have committed the big acts, but don't we at times just stand by and voice our complaint against them, but not actually do anything. Isn't there more of Eli in us than we like to think? So what's a solution for you and me? Well, we need to see that's why we need a priest. That's why a priest is needed in the first place.

Of all, the lord doesn't now say a stuff the priesthood. We don't need 1 of them. You guys have been rubbish at that. Let's just get rid of the priesthood. No.

He makes a promise. First 35, have a look at it with me. Would you, if you've closed your bibles to in the MAC again verse, page 2 7 3, he says, verse 35, I will raise up for myself, a faithful priest who will do according to what is in my heart and mind. I will firmly establish his priestly house, and they will minister before my anointed 1 always. Now who is this faithful priest.

I think you might be ahead of me on this. Who is this faithful priest? Well, the context would say it would be Samuel, because he is also ministering in in the tab anachlan, and he's doing faithful things and seems good things. And, actually, we need to see there's more than 1 fulfillment of this promise. As often in the old testament, there's more than 1 fulfillment.

So Samuel is a kind of fulfillment of this promise. God is raising up a better so let's look out for him as we go on. But Samuel isn't perfect in this. He's not the great priest, and Samuel's children actually aren't that great either. He's not really the he's April for the number the fulfillment.

Others then point to another priest who comes later called Zadoc. You know, well, he's he's he's good, but he's not the priest. Now this is pointing us through to Jesus. This is a promise that his old ultimately fulfilled in Jesus, because Jesus succeeds where Eli and his family completely failed. Jesus, you honored the father.

He honored the lord god more than anything else. Eli honored his sons above the lord, Jesus always honored and obeyed his father. He was not afraid to confront sin, to turn over the tables in the temple, and was even prepared to honor and obey his father to the stent of being nailed to a cross. He totally and wonderfully honored his father. And some of you might ask, why was he dishonored then?

If the lord says, I honor those who honor me and Jesus perfectly honored the lord. Why was he dishonored? Why was he hung on a cross in such shame? And the answer is he was being the perfect priest. You remember the priest wore the ephod with the names of the tribes of Israel?

So represented the people before god. Thank what Jesus did as the great high priest. He represented us. You and me. It's like he bore our names on his chest as he died on the cross.

He presented him so health as the priest he was both priest and offering. He presented himself and took our dishonour, our disgrace, what that we deserve. He was cut off from the land of the living for the transgressions of his people. Jesus was being the perfect priest. And why did he do it.

He did it to lift you and me up. To give us positions and privilege, are higher than any other. The book of Ephesians talks about this. It says that if you have trusted in Christ, you have been raised with Christ to seek and seated with him in the heavenly realms. That's true of you.

And you might think, well, no, I'm pretty sure I'm still sad in normally at school. But it's saying, this is genuinely true of you. If you've trusted in Christ, you are sat with christ in Christ in the heavenly realms. Now, you may not appreciate how significant that is, but what you need to see is a little bit earlier in the book of Ephesians. It says of Christ that after he was raised from the dead, he was seated at god's right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule, authority, power, and dominion.

That's where Christ is. He is in the position of greatest honor, and those who have put their trust in Christ, it says, are seated with him in the position of honor, not because of you, because of him, because is your priest, because he is your representative. Only because of him. You are in the position of greatest honor. The verse says god honors those who honor him.

And yet the honor you and I have as Christians, if you're a Christian is not your honor. It is Jesus's. 1 by him. Mark Twain wrote a story, the prince and the pauper you would know, probably. About 2 boys who looked almost same.

1 was a prince, and the other, a pauper, poor person. And 1 day, they swapped clothes. And then the prince dressed in pauper's clothes is kicked out of the palace, and the pauper dressed in prince's clothes is treated as royalty. And that is a picture of a what's true of us? In Christ, Christ gets our sin and is treated with dishonor and disgrace because of your or my dishonoring of god in the past.

Maybe you feel guilty for things that you have done in the past. You say, actually Jesus takes them. And you are clothed in his honor. You get his position. Not yours.

They kind of feel like these aren't my ropes? No. They're not. They're Jesus's. And as it says in the song, the maybe we sometimes sing, I can't remember, says, your majesty, I can but bow.

I lay my all before you now. In Royal Roads, I don't deserve. I live to serve your majesty. Now do you see what this does to your my heart? You see, the temptation from this passage, a big application is, honor the lord, honor him above everything else.

And if all you do is take that away, well, it's true, but it doesn't affect your heart. You just think I've just gotta try harder. But I want you to see Jesus is your priest, and through him, you have a position of honor. And the more you think on that, the more you dwell on that, the more I dwell on that, the more you will go, I want to honor Jesus. Above all things, not to gain a position of honor, but because I've already got a position of honor.

He's already given it to me, and therefore, my heart is his, and I want to love him and honor him above all things. And so in a sense, the application is the same, go honor Jesus above all things, but the motivation comes from knowing he is your priest, and he achieved your honor. And therefore, we can say to our children. We can say to them because of what Jesus has done for us. We're going to honor the lord, and you may not play for England, and you may not star in the west end, but in Christ, we have something far more valuable.

And so we will honor him above all things. Heavenly father, we praise you for Jesus, that he is our great high priest. Father, we see Eli and his sons and the mess they made of things, but then we our own hearts and the mess we make of things. And we rejoice that pre that Jesus is our great high priest, who represents us, who offered him self on the cross so that we could have positions of honor that we do not deserve. And so, father, captivate our hearts, we pray, as we Jesus us to delight more in him, and help us, therefore, in light of seeing Jesus more clearly.

And what he did for us at the cross, what he won for us, help us to go from here with hearts logging to honor you above all things.