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1. I Samuel 3 and TBN, Pentecostals, Arminians, Emergents, Church Growthers, Rick Warren, Liberals and some miscellaneous observations with Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown’s “A Commentary” (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1978), 1-9.
2. This is not a commentary on 1 Samuel 3, but a miscellany of after-thoughts in application to the battle lines.
3. The familiar story of the call of one of Israel’s champions, Samuel, a young lad under Eli’s supervision in the temple. The sacred historian notes that the word of the LORD was rare in those days, to wit, was not widely regarded, feared, embraced, believed or heeded. While Eli was the senior leader of the temple, the corruption entered into his family life and governed his sons without Eli’s discipline. During the early morning hours or the pre-dawn before the lights were trimmed for the day, Samuel heard the call of the LORD, a vision, meaning an internal call, sense, and bidding. This call was sovereign, unilateral, efficaceous, invisible, and mighty. Samuel did not ask for this. He thought it was Eli and petitioned Eli. The context suggests that Eli had a diminished sense of the divine calling and bidding. He’d lost the edge perhaps. Eli did perceive, however, that Samuel was being called and instructs the impressionable lad to go back to bed and await the LORD’s further guidance.
4. The LORD instructs Samuel on some basics re: Eli’s future and divine providence. “Behold I will do a thing which both the ears of every one that heareth it shall tingle.” Judgment was to come to Eli, his sons, and their relation to Israel and the divine worship. A purge, judgment and discipline was coming. “I will judge his house” for “the iniquity which he knoweth” and “because he restrained them not.” Samuel is afraid to tell Eli of the vision or internal communication. Under Eli’s compulsion, Samuel tells him the certain future. Judgment and the threatening prospect are met with humble submission and a certain meekness by Eli. Eli appears to have been a godly sort, but he refused to be consistent and he allowed the corruption of worship. He “papered it over” as we might say. "Paper it over?" God will not suffer His honour to be insulted forever and divine providence, as always, in everything, prevails with infinite precision.
5. We get an executive summary of the maturing Samuel without details. Namely, that “the LORD was with him” and that others began to perceive this Presence about him. Need we say more? "The LORD was with him." The LORD’s young prophet was being prepared, the man who would anoint Saul and David in later years. Notice carefully, too, 1 Sam.1-2, to wit, that this elect servant was being prepared. God was making a man of God. The outgrowth and execution of the divine judgments are not mentioned in terms of dates. It may have taken 20 to 30 years for those judgments to unfold? We’re not told. What the sacred historian will tell us later...God did all His good pleasure and His Word was fulfilled.
6. Samuel was applying the Word of God and the Spirit was giving him insight. Eli should have taken God’s holiness and worship more seriously, e.g. Leviticus 10, but he had been dulled. He should have recalled the Law in Leviticus 27 and have been in daily repentance and operating with faith. He was not “honoring God.” Disrespect.
7. God was, again, “pruning” and “shaking off” the drift-wood as he does throughout history. This is a constant dynamic. Repeated over and over and over. The list is long in the Bible.
8. The sacred historian “names names.” That list is long in the Bible too. Talk about being divisive, naming names.
9. Worship corruption in our time? Disrespect for God’s Word like Eli? Tossing the Law and Gospel? TBN, Pentecostals, Arminians, Emergents, Church Growthers, Rick Warren, Liberals?
10. Want this scribe to “give a prophetic Word?” One can simply rely on God’s Word for that. God is not going to be mocked by levity, irreverence, disregard, diminishment, frivolity and other abuses of His name, title, attributes, works, Word and covenantal signs and seals. That ain’t gonna happen. No dates are offered, but the principles obtain. You can count on it.
11. May we read, mark, learn, inwardly digest, fear, believe, obey and apply in our times.
12. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGzuUfQD-G4
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