Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2184
“What is the thing that the Lord has said unto you?” 1 Samuel 3:17.
THE Lord would not speak directly to Eli, although he was the High Priest. In ordinary circumstances it would have been so, but Eli had grieved the Lord, and thus had lost his honorable standing. God had not cast him off, but He viewed him with such displeasure that He would only speak to him through another person—even as great kings, if they are offended with their courtiers—send them messages by other hands. The Lord sent, first, a man of God to warn Eli of what would be the sure result of his lack of firmness with his sons. And when He gave him a second warning, it was sent through one who was a little underling in his family.
O you saints who live upon familiar terms with the Lord, take heed of sin, lest you lose your close communion, your favored fellowship and stand in a second place! God will speak to you, but it will be in warning and in a roundabout way—not face to face, with His lips to your ear, as He has been known to do while you have pleased Him. God will not cast you off, but He may set you aside for a time. You may still hear His message through others, but He will be silent to you, personally. You may have to live in the frigid zone of doubt and anxiety, instead of sunning yourselves in the full blaze of Divine Love. It was so with Eli—he had forborne to rebuke sin in his own house—and had brought the anger of God upon himself! And, therefore, he had no comfortable union and no honor with Jehovah, but must be schooled by a
child.
Further, when God had sent a man of God to Eli and the message did not awaken him to a sense of his sin in overindulgence of his sons and toleration of evil in those under him, the Lord sends him a threatening word by a child, for God has many messengers. The sending of the child, Samuel, to bear the terrible tidings to the aged priest was a sweet but stern rebuke of Eli. The child is awake, while the old man is locked in the slumber which comes of a seared conscience. Experience must now be admonished by childhood and wisdom by simplicity! Gray hairs, in this case, yield not a crown of glory to the erring ruler, but he must bow his head in sorrow at a rebuke brought to him by a lowly boy. The child is evidently more trusted by God than the venerable priest! It was the beginning of the Divine chastisement that his honor should pass away and an aged priest should stand reproved by a youthful Prophet. There was much mercy in it, yet we clearly see the Lord stripping His servant of his decorations and setting him in a lower place—making the Urim and the Thummim which he wore upon his breast to be of secondary power for showing the future, while the Spirit rested more fully on a holy boy.
He, whose talk was still that of childhood, becomes a mouth for God, while the venerable ruler of his people has nothing to say but to submit to his inevitable punishment! Eli was a man of God and, notwithstanding his great chastisement and his mournful death, I doubt not that he died in the Lord. But he brought dishonor on his own name and he was condemned to know that his holy office would not be continued in his line—that none of his descendants should live to old age. He had not duly honored the Lord and, therefore, he heard the sentence pronounced on him and on his race. “They that honor Me, I will honor, and they that despise Me shall be lightly esteemed.” He had spared the rod of rebuke and, therefore, the axe ofjudgment fell on his house, “because his sons made themselves vile, and he restrained them not.” O Brothers and Sisters, let us beware of sin—of allowing sin in those under our charge—lest the Lord lay us low and send an affliction upon us, which shall cleave to our race forever!
We will now use Eli’s question, by which he extracted from Samuel the message of God, and we will view it in three lights. First, as put to Samuel. Secondly, as coming from Eli. And, thirdly, as capable of being turned upon ourselves. We will ask it of ourselves, as another might ask it. And we will answer it to our own hearts, so that we may, by a rehearsal, become ready to give an answer to him that shall ask us in days to come. Come, my heart, answer to yourself, “What is the thing that the Lord has said to you?” May the Holy Spirit help you by bringing all things to your remembrance, whatever He has said to you!
I. First, let us view this question as addressed TO SAMUEL.
The first remark which we shall make upon it is that God does speak to men. Otherwise this would be a senseless ques-tion—“What is the thing that the Lord has said unto you?” God does communicate with mortals. He is not shut up all alone by Himself in sublime solitude. He has not placed His creatures at an immeasurable distance, with an impassable abyss between their littleness and His own grandeur. It is not true that He cannot hear their cries, nor respond to them in tones of love. In ways suitable to their feeble nature, the Lord has spoken to men.