Tag: 1 Samuel 4

The Power of the Invitation

To this point Israel has had 14 judges (including Eli —but not his children— and Samuel). And they all judged Israel for years, and they had some crazy exploits and military victories over the enemies of Israel. But you know what we never see? Repentance. I’ve talked about that before. Israel continually asks God to save them, but they don’t actually repent of what they’ve done wrong.

But what’s interesting is that none of the judges even ASK them to repent… until Samuel…

7:3 Samuel said to all the people of Israel, “If you are really turning to the LORD with all your hearts, remove from among you the foreign gods and the images of Ashtoreth. Give your hearts to the LORD and serve only him. Then he will deliver you from the hand of the Philistines.” 7:4 So the Israelites removed the Baals and images of Ashtoreth. They served only the LORD. 7:5 Then Samuel said, “Gather all Israel to Mizpah, and I will pray to the LORD on your behalf.” 7:6 After they had assembled at Mizpah, they drew water and poured it out before the LORD. They fasted on that day, and they confessed there, “We have sinned against the LORD.” So Samuel led the people of Israel at Mizpah.

1 Samuel 7:3–6, NET

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the power of the invitation! Even a people as terrible as the ones described in Judges 19-21 can be brought to repentance with the power of the invitation. Don’t be afraid to ask. Don’t be afraid to say something. You simply don’t know when God will use the simple invitation you have extended to accomplish His greater goal(s). Your simple step of obedience can become a real difference-maker.

Never underestimate the power of the invitation.

1 Samuel 4:12-8:22 | 100/365

God Isn’t Your Good Luck Charm

There are many things you can point to as proof that the human is not smart. But my personal favorite would have to be that we needed to invent the helmet. What was happening, apparently, was that we were involved in a lot of activities that were cracking our heads. We chose not to avoid doing those activities but, instead, to come up with some sort of device to help us enjoy our head-cracking lifestyles. And even that didn’t work because not enough people were wearing them so we had to come up with the helmet law. Which is even stupider, the idea behind the helmet law being to preserve a brain whose judgment is so poor, it does not even try to avoid the cracking of the head it’s in.

Jerry Seinfeld, watch his delivery here

Jerry’s take on helmets came to mind when I was reading today’s passage. The high priest has two sons who are terrible people. They rob from the Israelites and from God, they are promiscuous users and abusers of their priestly office.

God warns Samuel that he plans to visit a terrible fate on these boys because their father refuses to discipline them. When Samuel tells their father, he essentially seems fine with God’s judgement.

Where it gets interesting is when the Philistines attack Israel and they decide that if they’re going to win, they’ll need some extra “oomph” behind them. So they bring the Ark of the Covenant (the covenant which they have abandoned, by the way) along with them and the two wayward priests oversee the whole thing. Well, turns out the Israelite army suffers heavy losses and the Ark is stolen by the Philistines.

What does this have to do with Jerry Seinfeld? Israel dragging out the Ark is like the rest of us inventing helmets. It’s not addressing the root problem that LED to their being oppressed by the Philistines, but rather trying to protect themselves from the consequences of that oppression. And of course God refuses to dance when the people clap or throw a nickel at Him. If you make ZERO attempt to walk in the path God has set before you, don’t be surprised when He isn’t there when you need Him. If you tell Him to go away, don’t be shocked when He does! We need to keep God at the centre of what we do. We need to make sure we are not trying to put on a helmet in a bad situation instead of getting out of the bad situation altogether.

If you ask Him to leave you, He will. If you ask Him to lead you, He will.

1 Samuel 1:9-4:11 | 099/365