Theological Commentary: Click Here
There’s something
cool about being honest with God. When
we are actually honest with God, He gets an opportunity to demonstrate why He
is God. When we allow ourselves to
confess our humanity to Him, He gets an opportunity to expose why the divine is
so much better than the human. Do you
recall one of the places where I said yesterday that I was perplexed? I said I was perplexed how a woman who
mourned because she could not have children would so readily give up the child
God gave her? I still stand by
that. I don’t know many people in the
world today that would be so willing to give up a child that came to them after
being proven to be barren so long. It’s
perplexing.
But look at
what God does. As I said yesterday,
observe how God uses that. God inspires
Hannah to use that moment of sacrifice as an incredible moment of worship of
God. Only God can take a hard moment in
a person’s life and turn it into a moment of praise. Second, God opens her womb and blesses her
again and again with more children. God
shows us that He provides he doesn’t just give us enough, His provision
abounds. This lesson is made even more
powerful because the impetus for this blessing is an action that perplexes us
greatly.
The rest of
this chapter deals with Eli. This is a
sad part of a story, but it also teaches us a good bit about humanity. Eli is a faithful priest. Eli is abiding with God. But his sons are not. Here we go again with a story about how the
faithfulness of the parent does not automatically transfer to become the faith
of the child. Eli’s sons are not
interested in serving God; they only want to use their position to serve
themselves.
However, God
does not abandon Eli. He does condemn
Eli’s family. In fact, He closes the
door on Eli’s genetic line. But He does
not abandon Eli. God gives Eli something
far better. God gives Eli spiritual
family. Whereas Eli’s own biological
family weren’t interested in being spiritual family to him, God has given
Samuel to Eli. God says it Himself. He will raise up a priest who will do
according to His will.
<><
No comments:
Post a Comment