← Pastor David Buchs – Sermons and Bible Studies
Pastor David Buchs – Sermons and Bible Studies
Honest Confession and Faithful Witness (Psalm 40 & 1 Samuel)
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In this Bible study, Rev. David Buchs leads us through Psalm 40 and into the opening chapters of 1 Samuel, showing how honest confession gives way to joyful proclamation. We see that the Christian witness does not begin with tactics or pressure, but with knowing what God has done for us—and letting that good news overflow naturally to others. This study also traces the sobering collapse of Eli’s house and the rise of Samuel, teaching us why sin cannot be managed or reformed, but must be put to death so that God may build something new. The result is both a warning and a comfort: despair closes the door to mercy, but repentance never comes too late. Sunday Bible Study, February 8, 2026 – Grace Lutheran Church, Little Rock, Arkansas Taught by Rev. David Buchs Key themes include: • Confessing sin honestly as the doorway to forgiveness • Why sharing the Gospel flows from gratitude, not obligation • Faithful leadership, repentance, and the danger of despair • God tearing down corrupt “h...
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Good morning. Good to see you all here. Welcome back to Bible Study. We're gonna just dive right in. We got so much to do. We're gonna dive right in. We'll begin with Psalm 40, which you can see on the screen in front of you. This one's a little bit lengthy. Let's see here. We've got 17 verses. But when I begin to try to edit God's word, something inside of me says, don't do that. Just give him the whole thing. So we're gonna recite the whole thing from beginning to end. Psalm 40 altogether. I waited patiently for the Lord. He inclined to me and heard my cry. He drew me up from the pit of destruction out of the miry bog and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure. He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God. Many will see and fear and put their trust in the Lord. Blessed is the man who makes the Lord his trust, who does not turn to the proud, to those who go astray after a lie. You have multiplied, O Lord, my God, your wondrous deeds and your thoughts toward us none can compare with you. I will proclaim and tell of them, yet they are more than can be told. In sacrifice and offering you have not delighted, but you have given me an open ear. Burnt offering and sin offering you have not required. Then I said, behold, I have come in the scroll of the book it is written of me. I delight to do your will, O my God. Your law is within my heart. I have told the glad news of deliverance in the great congregation. Behold, I have not restrained my lips, as you know, O Lord, I have not hidden your deliverance within my heart. I have spoken of your faithfulness and your salvation. I have not concealed your steadfast love and your faithfulness from the great congregation. As for you, O Lord, you will not restrain your mercy from me. Your steadfast love and your faithfulness will ever preserve me, for evils have encompassed me beyond number. My iniquities have overtaken me, and I cannot see. They are more than the hairs of my head. My heart fails me. Be pleased, O Lord, to deliver me. O Lord, make haste to help me. Let those be put to shame and disappointed altogether, who seek to snatch away my life. Let those be turned back and brought to dishonor, who delight in my hurt. Let those be appalled because of their shame, who say to me, aha. Aha. But may all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you. May those who love your salvation say Continually. Great is the Lord. As for me, I am poor and needy, but the Lord takes thought for me. You are my help and my deliverer. Do not delay, O my God. Let us pray. Lord God, Heavenly Father, we thank youk that yout have not restrained you'd mercy from us, but that yout have poured out abundant love on us and done wondrous works for us, rescuing us from sin and death and every evil. Grant that our lips would always be open to sing your praise. That we would say evermore. Great is our Lord. In your most holy name we pray. Amen. What stands out to you? Anything catch your attention? Well, the thing that. Do I need approaching legs? I mean, this is definitely just recognizing. Yeah, good. So it's fitting for Lent, recognizing your sin and your weaknesses and turning towards the Lord for mercy. I love the honesty of it. How many? How many are my iniquities? How many are my sins? Do you remember what it said? Yeah. So that. Yeah, make the jokes you want about that. More than the hairs on my head are my sins. I can't number them right. Yes. There it is. Thank you. I don't know whether to take that as a compliment or an insult. Excellent. And pay attention to that this morning when we go to church. That's going to be part of the substance of the sermon. There is no sense, no sense at all in being dishonest about your own sin, in covering it, in minimizing it, in excusing it. There's no sense in doing that, because what that does, the only thing that accomplishes is keeps you from receiving forgiveness. That's the only thing it accomplishes. And so we get to be like the psalmist and say, boy, I can't get to the bottom of this mess, Lord. You're going to have to deal with it. Right. Okay. Anything else catch your attention? Do you know who wrote a song about this psalm? This is some trivia for you famous band. You, too. Thank you. Sean, you, too, wrote a song about this psalm. It's called 40. I don't know. I can't remember if it's on Joshua Tree. Maybe. I don't know. There you go. Go and listen to is. It's on Joshua Tree. Yeah. But I love this psalm in particular because it describes how the wondrous works that God has done for us naturally give way to sharing this good news with everyone around you. So sometimes when we think about sharing the good news, sharing the gospel, it feels, what can I say, like an academic exercise. Oh, let me make sure I have my Doctrines all in order, and let me make sure I can recite the facts from the Scriptures. There's a lot of value, and we're going to talk about this in a moment, in knowing the doctrines and knowing the facts. But the psalm reveals to us that the speaking, the proclamation that a Christian does flows naturally out of recognizing the good things God has done for you. So, for instance, if you find out that there's a, you know, a great sale on Snickers bars down at the gas station, and there's a limit on how many you can buy, and so you go and buy all the ones that you can, and you. I'm going to go home and I'm going to. I'm going to call every one of you. I'm going to say, load up on Snickers bars and you can drop them off at my desk later in the week, right? This good news that I've discovered, this wondrous thing, I mean, it's the most natural thing in the world to share it now, make it more extreme. You've got some ailment, some sickness, some weakness, and you discover the cure, the remedy, right? You read an article on the Internet and you implement what it says. You drink more coffee like they told you to, and all of a sudden your problems are all solved. What are you going to do? You're going to tell everybody? The psalm reveals that that's the way Christians think about sharing the good news. So the exercise for you is not, when you think about spreading the gospel. The exercise is not strategies and tactics. And how can I make sure I'm formulating things properly? The exercise is, think about what God has done for you. Do you know what he's done for you? Think about what he has done for you, right? And think about the people around you for whom he would do that as well. And then sharing the good news is the most natural thing in the world. God gives you comfort in your grief, right? He comforts you in your grief, so you know the comfort that's available to others in their grief. God has forgiven you your sins, which burden your conscience. And so when you meet someone who's burdened because of what they've done, you know what to give them when God has saved you from the fear of death. And so when you meet someone who is afraid of death, you know the cure, you know the remedy, right? That's the way to think about sharing the good news in the first place. Now there's room for tactics and strategies and evangelism and outreach as a. As A congregation and so forth. But primarily it starts with you just knowing what God has done for you. Right. Knowing what God has done for you. Any. Anything else about this, John? You're exactly. That's right. I saw it and I'm. I'm telling you what happened. That's exactly right. That's right. Yeah. That's right. You're not a salesman. You're not a salesman trying to make a quota. You just. You have some good news and you want to. You want to share it with people. Right? That's what it amounts to. The Lord will do with it what he pleases. Yeah. Okay, let's turn to the catechism for just a moment. I'm going to continue to make it just a habit to share with you portions of the catechism because it's always good for review. Here's a website. If you are ever, you know, if you don't. If you don't carry around your little small catechism with you everywhere, but you do carry around your phone. You can access the catechism anytime, helpfully@catechism cph.com I know it's too small. I can't make it bigger. Catechism CPH Concordia Publishing House. That's our synod's publishing house. Catechism.cph.org and this website has gotten better over the years and they give you the parts of the catechism, ten Commandments, Apostles Creed, Lord's Prayer, baptism, confession, the sacrament to the altar, daily prayers. Often overlooked is the table of duties. So we're going to spend just a few moments over the next many weeks here. I'm sorry. Sure is. There's an app. Yeah, yeah. If you go to that website, they'll say, do you want to download the app? Yeah. Yeah. Table. The table of duties is an often overlooked part of the catechism. It's very helpful because it just gives specific scriptural instructions for you, for people concerning the good works that God invites you to in your life. Very often we imagine that good works, things that are pleasing to God, are highfalutin and mighty. And they have to be, you know, headline making. Nope. The good works that please God most of all are the ordinary things that get overlooked, where you're just loving the people that God has placed into your life. So what Martin Luther does in this section, he gives a table of duties depending on who you are. Are you a mother, father, son, daughter, husband, wife or worker? Right. Depending on who you are, consider your responsibilities. We're going to go through these just Today, just for a moment, the first one, which is my responsibilities. It's helpful for you to know catechism cph.org. yes to bishops, pastors and preachers. And it's worth it for you to know this so you can know what to expect from me. And it'll be worth talking for a moment about why this matters to bishops, pastors and preachers. First Timothy, chapter three, Paul lists the qualifications for an overseer. Now, these words, it's worth also noting in the New Testament, words like overseer, bishop, elder, preacher, they're all used kind of interchangeably. They all describe the pastoral office. The pastoral office. So an overseer does what I do, oversees a congregation as a shepherd, his sheep. Okay, here's what St. Paul says. The overseer must be above reproach. The husband of one wife, of but one wife. Temperate, self controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach. Not given to drunkenness, not violent, but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him with proper respect. It's worth repeating these things out loud regularly because it always cuts a guy to the heart. Right now it's worth thinking about why Paul gives these qualifications for being a pastor. I read an article this week. I haven't thought this through thoroughly yet. I'm just going to share you share with you my first reactions. A friend of mine shared an article. I didn't read the whole article. I read the synopsis. It was comparing the difference between two political action efforts of the last 30 years. Drug Abuse Resistance Education. DARE, remember that one? And MADD, Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Okay. It was comparing the way that those two organizations operated. I'll get. I'm going to try to make this really brief because I want to talk about the Bible. Drug Abuse Resistance education was, according to the article, was implemented as a sort of top down effort. Top down effort. Here's what you're going to do. And it happened in all kinds of places. Schools. I grew up in the 1990s. You know, drug abuse, resistance education in schools. You heard the talks, right? So it was very success at mobilizing. It took place in all of these schools and all of these communities. There were drug abuse resistance education efforts. One of the things they discovered, however, is that it produced the opposite result at times, that it actually kind of prompted a curiosity about drugs and alcohol that wasn't there in the first place. Okay. A top down effort that was very good at making sure in every school this was taking place. Mothers Against Drunk Driving was a grassroots kind of an effort where the pitch wasn't, here's what you must do. But look, franchise. You do what fits well in your community, in your location. You take up the cause and make sure that people understand. And that has proven much more successful. Not as much necessarily at mobilizing, but organizing, making sure that it's a lasting effort. Okay, that distinction is really interesting. Sometimes we think about the church as a top down effort. In fact, somebody said to me recently when I asked, well, do you read. None of you said this to me. When you do you read the Bible at home? The answer was, well, that's the priest's job. That sounds like a top down kind of approach. Right? The pastor, the priest is going to read the Bible and then give instructions. And you can take them or leave them, you can do them begrudgingly, whatever you want. Okay? That's not effective. What is effective is when you have a model, an example, and you take ownership of it for yourself. When you say, I would like to implement that for myself. This is why St. Paul says the pastor should be exemplary in the life that he lives. That is visible to you right now. This is always. I'm always self conscious about this because I don't want to be like, hey, do like I do. Watch me follow my example. Of course, St. Paul says that very thing. He says, be imitators of me as I am of Christ. Okay? This is a much more fruitful model for pastors. It also puts a lot more emphasis on the hidden things. Right? It matters that the pastor be actually a Christian. Right. That when nobody's looking, I'm saying my prayers and reading the Bible. Right. That I'm not just, not just a matter of performance, but that from the ground up, from the bottom up, I'm living my life in a Christian way. Which is why I would ask that you constantly pray for my faithfulness. Right. My adherence to God's word as well as that God would keep me in holy living. Adherence to his Word and keep me in holy living. You know, too often pastors fall, right? Pray that that would not happen because God has put me here in a place to be as an example for you. Okay? That's the first thing that St. Paul says. Exemplary. The exemplary. So that you all can say, we want to do that. We want to follow that example. Okay? Next, St. Paul says he must not be a recent convert or he may become conceited and fall under the same judgment as the devil. We know that plants can spring up quickly, but unless they have deep roots. This is the lesson again for us today. When persecution comes or when temptation comes, they can quickly wither. So not a recent convert. Okay. He must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it. Hold firmly to the trustworthy message. The message is the thing. The message is everything. Which is why if you ever hear me taking shortcuts or qualifying what God's word says or not giving you the whole loaf, you come and talk to me about it. Don't let me get away with it. All right? It's imperative that pastors hold firmly to the trustworthy message. That pastors not be tempted to chase outcomes or popularity or the popular opinion. Right. Instead, the message. That's the key. Right. This is really helpful. It's really indicting. We're coming for you next week. What hearers owe to their pastors. But this is what I owe to you. Any questions? Any questions about that? The whole counsel of God. Yeah. From beginning to end. This is what Jesus says when he is about to ascend into heaven. Go and make disciples of all nations. How? Baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them what? All the things I have commanded you. Right. I don't get to leave anything out. All right. Okay. Okay.
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You know our way, we work.
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Right.
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Side job.
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Yeah. Yeah.
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I've been reading a lot in the New Testament and Jesus says when he sent out in 72 to go take no curse. Take no, don't take anything. Eat what's given to.
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Yeah.
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A man.
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What.
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What's he say? The worker deserves his way.
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Yes.
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Okay. But then Paul talks a lot about how he made his own.
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What? Yeah, that's correct.
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Evidently. I don't know how he had time, but I've read that from time to time where he said. I said myself and I. Yeah. That seems a bit of a conflict.
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You're very astute, Kay. The question is, it seems that. That pastors. The ideal is if pastor makes his living from being a pastor. And Jesus describes that St. Paul himself says that a worker is worth his wages. Do not muzzle the ox while he treads out his. The grain. These are the passages that come up next week for. For what hearers owe to their pastors. But what about the example of St. Paul who works as a tent maker? A couple of things. Or the example of the apostles who go out without taking anything with them? Right. Okay. So a couple of Things. First of all, there are different kinds of ministers. Some are called to be evangelists. Some are called to be evangelists where. Where they're going, not to a congregation that already exists. And so there's no one to support them. Right. And so they may, under those circumstances, as St. Paul did, have to support themselves. St. Paul also goes out of his way, especially among the Corinthians, not to receive support from them, because he knew that their particular weaknesses meant that if they were supporting him, they would think that he owed them. And this is always a tricky thing about wages. Right. It. It. It feels like it's transactional, like a boss, employer kind of relationship. St. Paul had the liberty to say, no, thank you. I'm going to work for my own living. In part because he didn't have a family. Right. And he had. He had kind of practiced this kind of contentment with very little. Right, yeah. Good question, though. Okay. Yeah. You're welcome. Anything else? Let's go to the Old Testament. Old Testament. We're in First Samuel, and I have to resist spending too much time in 1st Samuel because it is my favorite narrative in the Old Testament. It. It brings together so many pieces. But we're going to take a few kind of episodes. I want to show you the trajectory, and then we have to move on to first and Second Kings. At some point in the future, we'll come back and we'll do a Bible. A whole year just on 1st and 2nd Samuel. And I will be in heaven. Okay. But for now, for now, we have to kind of scoot along. If you remember the setup for First Samuel, it's contemporaneous with the books of Judges and Ruth. Judges and Ruth, Joshua, Judges, Ruth. Right. First and Second Samuel, they all happen about the same time. And what characterized that time was that although the people of Israel had come into the promised land and had done some conquering, they had neglected to drive out all of the foreign gods. They had neglected to defeat all of the people that God told them to defeat, primarily because they were afraid. They said, they have chariots of iron, they have bigger guns than we do. How can we defeat them? Right. Which is silly. God was on their side. The problem, however, is that because they didn't trust in God now, they opened the door for the enticement back into idolatry. And in fact, that's exactly what God says. He says to them, you didn't do what I told you to do. So now I'm going to make these foreign nations, these foreign gods, a snare to you, they're going to catch you. And the way they catch you is you'll start to worship at their altars, which is sin. But when you worship at their altars, you'll also forget to cry out to me, and so you won't receive good things from me. And it'll be a downward spiral, okay? And that's the story in Ruth and Josh and Judges and First Samuel. It's this downward spiral. And when they hit rock bottom, when they kind of come to their senses, like the prodigal son, they cry out to the Lord, and he sends them a savior like Samson or Gideon, and their enemies are defeated, okay? That's the cycle. So at this point in time, when Samuel is going to be born, it is a time when the word of God is scarce. No one's listening to God. In fact, we kind of reckoned with that because Hannah went to pray in the sanctuary, and Eli the priest, was sitting there. And when he saw her praying, he didn't know what she was doing. He thought she was drunk, evidently, because people didn't very often come to the sanctuary to pray. Meanwhile, his own sons were worthless. And we heard about the things that they did last time. They were supposed to be the mediators between God and the people, receiving the sacrifices and giving blessings to the people. But instead, they turned it around and they took the best parts of the sacrifices for themselves and they abused the people. Okay, Eli's worthless sons. At this point in the Book of Samuel, we're setting up this contrast between Samuel, who is growing in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and men, and Eli's worthless sons. Compare the difference between those two sets of sons. Samuel's not a son, properly speaking, but he's about to become an adopted son. Okay, questions? You see where we are? Okay, now, second Samuel. Sorry. 1 Samuel, chapter 2, verse 22. Why did it turn out this way for Eli's sons? Eli bears the brunt of the responsibility. Now, Eli was very old, and he kept hearing all that his sons were doing to all Israel and how they lay with the women who were serving at the entrance to the tent of meeting. Just add another crime to their list of crimes. And Eli said to them, why do you do such things? For I hear of your evil dealings from all these people. No, my sons, it is no good report that I hear the people of the Lord spreading abroad. If someone sins against a man, God will mediate for him. But if someone sins against the Lord, who can intercede for him? But they would not listen to the voice of their Father. For it was the will of the Lord to put them to death. Okay, now, at first glance, it sounds like Eli's paying attention. Come on, guys. Why are you doing this rotten stuff? Okay. Problem is, that is not a proportional response to the rottenness of what they are doing. Okay? When the priests who are appointed to be mediators of God's grace are filling their bellies and. And laying with the women who serve at the tent of meeting, it is not enough just to say, hey, come on, guys, would you knock it off? Right? Nope. They. What Eli should have done is depose them from their offices and probably put them to death. Probably put them to death. Okay, that. Now that's a hard thing to do, right? But you note here the struggle that's underway. Eli's Eli is struggling to discipline his sons. Nevertheless, at the same time, verse 26, the boy Samuel continued to grow both in stature and in favor with the Lord and also with man. Verse 27. And there came a man of God. Sorry, that's a big wall of text, isn't it? 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, did I choose him out of all the tribes of Israel to be my priest? He's talking about Aaron and the Levites. 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. 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? We're going to find out in a moment that although Eli had kind of chastised his sons, hey, come on, guys. He was also literally growing fat because he was a glutton. When he dies, it's going to be because his weight was too heavy for him and he falls over and breaks his neck, okay? He was enriching himself on those sacrifices as well. Well, how can you do this to me? 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 honour me, I will honour. And those who despise me shall be lightly esteemed. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. That should have been underlined as well. Hang on, I can do this, can I? There. And he shall go in and out before my anointed forever. 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 priest's places that I may eat a morsel of bread. Okay? This is a brutal message, comes from a prophet to the priest, Eli. And notice how it all centers on what's going to happen to the house. The Lord from the beginning is involved in creating, building a house. And in that house, fathers and sons are crucial. And here, the house that he has constructed, in which he has placed Eli and his sons in order to serve the whole world, they have turned it upside down so that the house is now corrupt. And so what is God going to do? He's not going to reform that house. He's not going to come in and, you know, tear down the drywall and give it a fresh coat of paint and all of that. No. What's he going to do? I'm going to build a new house, right? This house is coming to an end. It's going to be a new house. This. This tells us something about the problem of sin. We tend to imagine that sin is only so severe that, like, if you just tried a little bit harder, you could overcome it, right? That's what we often feel like we're lacking is, look, if I just had a little bit stronger will, a little bit more self control, then I wouldn't have to struggle with sin, right? But the problem is so deep that what does God say about you? What must happen to you in the waters of baptism? You have to be drowned, right? Not just dunked, right? Not Just gasping for breath, but dead, right? And when he sees the corruption of this house, Eli and his sons, he says, that house is done. Now, you can imagine how the story of the Old Testament plays out in this way. How about this house? Fathers and sons? How about Samuel and his sons not going to make it? How about David and his sons not going to make it? When will we have a house that can stand? Okay, this is the setup of the Old Testament. When will we have a house in which there is a faithful father and a faithful son? Well, it's only. It's only when we reach the seed of the woman who crushes the serpent's head. It's only when we reach Jesus. So all along the way, what we learn in the Old Testament is how you are not going to make it on your own. You are not going to succeed on your own. God has to do all of the heavy lifting, thanks be to God. That he's willing, right? That he has questions about that. Yes, ma'. Am. An ephod. Good. It's a breastplate that the priest would wear. Kind of a garment like a vest, a very important vest. It contained stones in it, 12 stones, one for each of the tribes of Israel. And it also had other stones that were used for inquiring of the Lord. The way to think about the ephod, whenever you hear about the ephod, a garment that the priest would wear, it is like the Ark of the Covenant, except more portable. Okay. So it signifies the presence of God going with the people of Israel. I'm glad you asked that, because we're going to hear about the ark in just a moment and how they kind of misused these things. There comes later note. It's in the Book of Judges. One of the priests decides to make an ephod for himself, not the ephod that God prescribed. What's he thinking he can do? Well, I can make God come with me and do what I want. Always a bad idea when you. Whenever you think to yourself, God will have to. You're done. Okay. All right. Other questions? Yes, ma'. Am. Yeah, yeah, Yeah. I think all we can say. All we can say with certainty is that Eli didn't do what he should have done, and it would have been better for him had he done it. Yeah, right. Yeah, that's a good. It's a tough question to. And I. I always want to do this, too, to kind of go and consider the alternate outcomes. Right. It's hard to. Hard to trace that at times. What we can say for sure is that you should do what God tells you to do for sure. Right. And that will be better. Yeah. Okay. A man of God came to Eli and said all this. And then in some ways, it happens again. Now, you know this story about little boy Samuel who's ministering in the temple, right? The boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord in the presence of Eli. And the word of the Lord was rare in those days. There was no frequent vision. And while Samuel was sleeping, he heard a voice say to him, samuel. Samuel. And Samuel naturally thought Eli was talking to him, right? So he gets up and runs to Eli. Eli says, it wasn't me. You're dreaming. Go back to sleep. That happens three times. And on the third occasion, Eli, he still has this. This remnant, this legacy of knowing how the Lord works. And he says, oh, I get it now. You're not just dreaming. It's the Lord who's talking to you. So when it happens again, you say, here I am, Lord. Okay, so when the Lord. When the Lord called to Samuel. I'm sorry, where is it? Here. Verse 11. Then the Lord said to Samuel. No. Verse 10. And the Lord came and stood calling at us. At other times, samuel, Samuel. And Samuel said, speak for your servant hears. And the Lord said to Samuel, behold, I'm about to do a thing in Israel at which the two ears of everyone who hears it will tingle. And then he basically rehearses to Samuel what the other man of God said to Eli. Already there's a day of judgment coming for Eli and his sons. Well, Eli and Samuel wake up the next morning, and Eli wants to know what the Lord said. And Samuel has the hard task of telling Eli what the Lord said. So Samuel told him everything and hid nothing from him. And this is the. As far as I'm concerned, this is the nail in the coffin for Eli. When Eli hears that God's judgment is coming on his house and on his sons Hophni and Phineas, and that they will die together in the same day, Eli says, it is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him. Give me a better response from Eli. What should he have said? Yeah, I'm so sorry. How can I make this right? Right? Please be merciful to me and my sons. Right. He throws up his hands in despair. And this is the thing about despair. Despair is the opposite of hopefulness. Despair says there is no hope. You see how he's kind of a fatalist? He's become a determinist about God. Well, God's going to do what he wants to Do. So why bother with repenting? The Lord's patience and his speaking is always meant to call us to repentance. And here's the thing. It is never too late, right? That was the lesson last week. The workers in the vineyard, he goes out into the. Into the Marketplace at the 11th hour, and he sees some standing around with their hands in their pockets, and he hires them as well. It is never too late, right? And Eli reckons it as too late. It's never too late to repent and to live righteously. Right? And in fact, let me tell you that one of the most potent witnesses to the mercy of God is when somebody repents, when it seems too late, when the cost is so high and the truth about their life and what they're leaving behind is so harrowing. When somebody repents under those circumstances, it really makes you stop and say, this must be good news, that it's worth changing my story for. Right. But Eli won't have it. Questions, observations. Yes, ma'. Am. Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, this is the thing about. So it's like Jonah, in a way, when Jonah gets mad at God. Jonah didn't want to go to Nineveh, and we think maybe he just didn't want to do his job. He was lazy. But he gets there after God forces him. And then God is merciful to Nineveh. And Jonah says, see, that's what. Exactly what. I didn't want to happen. I knew, I knew it, that if you preached to them, they would believe in you. Ah, right. What a guy, you know? So that's. This is exactly like that. Right? Despairing of the Lord's mercy. Right? I don't want that. Not now. Yeah, Because, I mean, again, this. This connects very well, because in what it implies, receiving the Lord's mercy means that you had done it all wrong. Right? This is what's so great about Nineveh. The king of Nineveh was cut to the heart, so that he made everybody sit in ashes and fast. Even the animals had to fast because the king of Nineveh said, we have been doing this all wrong. Right. But if you don't want that, then there's no mercy. Right. Okay, so let me give you briefly, then, what happens here in chapter four. And then next week we'll come back and we're going to accelerate through the rest of the book. But this episode kind of sets the stage for how things. Things continue to fall apart for the people of Israel. The Philistines are regularly harassing them. They're Always causing them trouble. And the Philistines line up against the people of Israel at apac. Okay, The Philistines drew up in line against Israel. And when the battle spread, Israel was defeated before the Philistines, who killed about 4,000 men on the field of battle. And once again, we've talked about this before, but if you are Israel and you lose a battle, that does not tell you that your enemies were too strong for you. It tells you that you are caught in sin. Right? If you, if you are Israel and you lose a battle, you should stop and repent. This is actually what happened at the beginning of the book of Joshua. They conquered Jericho soundly, following the Lord's instructions, except for this one guy named Achan who kept some of the riches from Jericho and he hid them in his tent. So then they went out to do battle against the next city. They were following God's instructions, they went to the next city, AI, and they lost that battle. And right away they said, somebody must ascend here. Which one of you is it? And then they started casting lots and the lot fell on Achan. And he told the truth. He had stolen from Jericho. They did it exactly as they were supposed to do it. Okay, if you are Israel and you lose in battle, you stop everything and you say, wait a minute, who sinned? Probably all of us. Let's repent. Okay, what do the people do now? This one makes my gut sink. And when the people came to the camp, the elders of Israel said, why has the Lord defeated us today before the Philistines? Let's bring the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord here from Shiloh that it may come among us and save us from the power of our enemies. Let's make God help us. Right? So they go and get the Ark of the Covenant and they trot it out before the Philistines. And if you have ever seen Raiders of the Lost Ark, you know that you just, you just don't do things like that with the Ark of the Covenant. Right? That's really low hanging pastor joke fruit. So I love that one. Okay, so they trot out the Ark of the Covenant and you can guess what happened. They were utterly defeated. And the Philistines stole the Ark of the Covenant. Okay, so now the Ark of the Covenant is going to go spend some time in Philistia with the enemies of God. And in fact they're going to do abominable things. They're going to place it alongside their God Dagon in one of their temples. How do you think God feels about Being put next to another God in that God's house. Well, they wake up in the morning. The Philistines wake up in the morning and that statue has fallen over, right? And then it's. I think it falls over twice. And the second time his head is toppled off and his hands are laying on the ground. And then the Philistines are better than the people of Israel because they say, I think we might have made a mistake here. Let's get. Let's send this back to them. Okay? The news that the ark has been stolen and that Hophni and Phineas, Eli's sons, were defeated in battle, and that the people. That they were killed in battle and that the whole army was defeated. That news comes back and Eli is sitting in his chair when the messenger comes and he hears the news, Israel's been defeated in battle, and Hophni and Phinehas, your sons, have been killed. And when he hears that the ark of God has been stolen, he tips over backwards in his chair and breaks his neck. That's the end of Eli hearing that bad news. One of the wives of the sons of Eli is giving birth at that time, and when she hears the news, she names her son Ibad. Ibad. Which means the glory has departed. Right? They knew what was up. They didn't know what to do about it, or they were denying what to do about it. Repent. Repent. Repent. Repent. They reckoned. They reckoned with how bad things were, but they would. They wouldn't receive mercy. Right? It is in that context the ark has been stolen, the priest has been killed, his sons ruined, the Israelite army dead in battle. It is in that context that the boy Samuel is growing up now to be a prophet among the people of Israel. Okay. And that's where we'll go next week. Any questions about any of that? All right, let me invite you sit down sometime and just read all of First Samuel from beginning to end in one sitting. Maybe it would take you an hour and a half. Maybe. Think of it like a feature length movie. Okay. Very much worth your time. We'll come talk more next time. Let's pray. Lord, remember us in your kingdom and teach us to pray. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen.