Useless Users

Why is it so easy to go numb to God when I've been around church my whole life?

Hophni and Phinehas had the family, the clothes, and the tabernacle, and none of it kept them from treating God as a fixture of their routine. Familiarity did not soften them; it hardened them. Anyone who has grown up close to holy things can feel the same drift toward callousness.

Now the sons of Eli were wicked men. They didn’t know Yahweh. The custom of the priests with the people was that when anyone offered a sacrifice, the priest’s servant came while the meat was boiling, with a fork of three teeth in his hand; and he stabbed it into the pan, or kettle, or cauldron, or pot. The priest took all that the fork brought up for himself. They did this to all the Israelites who came there to Shiloh. Yes, before they burned the fat, the priest’s servant came, and said to the man who sacrificed, “Give meat to roast for the priest; for he will not accept boiled meat from you, but raw.” If the man said to him, “Let the fat be burned first, and then take as much as your soul desires;” then he would say, “No, but you shall give it to me now; and if not, I will take it by force.” The sin of the young men was very great before Yahweh; for the men despised Yahweh’s offering.

1 Samuel 2:12–17

The child Samuel ministered to Yahweh before Eli. Yahweh’s word was rare in those days. There were not many visions, then. At that time, when Eli was laid down in his place (now his eyes had begun to grow dim, so that he could not see), and God’s lamp hadn’t yet gone out, and Samuel had laid down in Yahweh’s temple where God’s ark was,…

1 Samuel 3:1–3

Create in me a clean heart, O God. Renew a right spirit within me. Don’t throw me from your presence, and don’t take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation. Uphold me with a willing spirit.

Psalms 51:10–12

Beware, brothers, lest perhaps there might be in any one of you an evil heart of unbelief, in falling away from the living God; but exhort one another day by day, so long as it is called “today”, lest any one of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have become partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence firm to the end, while it is said, “Today if you will hear his voice, don’t harden your hearts, as in the rebellion.”

Hebrews 3:12–15

Am I serving God, or am I just using him and using people to get what I want?

The three-pronged fork was a small piece of machinery that let the priests take the best portions before anyone else could. It is a picture of a heart that wants the benefits of belonging to God while keeping the costs at arm's length. The sermon names this as the root of all sin, the decision that I will determine what is mine.

The custom of the priests with the people was that when anyone offered a sacrifice, the priest’s servant came while the meat was boiling, with a fork of three teeth in his hand; and he stabbed it into the pan, or kettle, or cauldron, or pot. The priest took all that the fork brought up for himself. They did this to all the Israelites who came there to Shiloh. Yes, before they burned the fat, the priest’s servant came, and said to the man who sacrificed, “Give meat to roast for the priest; for he will not accept boiled meat from you, but raw.” If the man said to him, “Let the fat be burned first, and then take as much as your soul desires;” then he would say, “No, but you shall give it to me now; and if not, I will take it by force.”

1 Samuel 2:13–16

Why do you kick at my sacrifice and at my offering, which I have commanded in my habitation, and honor your sons above me, to make yourselves fat with the best of all the offerings of Israel my people?’

1 Samuel 2:29

Where do wars and fightings among you come from? Don’t they come from your pleasures that war in your members? You lust, and don’t have. You murder and covet, and can’t obtain. You fight and make war. You don’t have, because you don’t ask. You ask, and don’t receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.

James 4:1–3

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will tell me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, didn’t we prophesy in your name, in your name cast out demons, and in your name do many mighty works?’ Then I will tell them, ‘I never knew you. Depart from me, you who work iniquity.’

Matthew 7:21–23

Is it really such a big deal to stay quiet when a family member keeps doing wrong?

Eli heard what his sons were doing, spoke a few words, and changed nothing. He is not in his sons' sinning, but he is eating at their table every night, and his passivity becomes its own kind of permission. Hannah, by contrast, is far away but keeps showing up with a robe that grows a size each year.

Now Eli was very old; and he heard all that his sons did to all Israel, and how that they slept with the women who served at the door of the Tent of Meeting. He said to them, “Why do you do such things? For I hear of your evil dealings from all these people. No, my sons; for it is not a good report that I hear! You make Yahweh’s people disobey. If one man sins against another, God will judge him; but if a man sins against Yahweh, who will intercede for him?” Notwithstanding, they didn’t listen to the voice of their father, because Yahweh intended to kill them.

1 Samuel 2:22–25

Moreover his mother made him a little robe, and brought it to him from year to year when she came up with her husband to offer the yearly sacrifice.

1 Samuel 2:19

For I have told him that I will judge his house forever for the iniquity which he knew, because his sons brought a curse on themselves, and he didn’t restrain them.

1 Samuel 3:13

Correct your son, and he will give you peace; yes, he will bring delight to your soul.

Proverbs 29:17

You fathers, don’t provoke your children to wrath, but nurture them in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

Ephesians 6:4

If I've wasted years on myself, is there any hope that I could actually become useful?

The sermon ends with Onesimus, a man whose name means useful and who had been the opposite of it. Paul sends him back to Philemon not as a runaway but as a brother, saying the gospel had made him useful to both of them. The question underneath the whole passage is whether God can do that with any of us.

If one man sins against another, God will judge him; but if a man sins against Yahweh, who will intercede for him?” Notwithstanding, they didn’t listen to the voice of their father, because Yahweh intended to kill them.

1 Samuel 2:25

I will raise up a faithful priest for myself who will do according to that which is in my heart and in my mind. I will build him a sure house. He will walk before my anointed forever.

1 Samuel 2:35

I appeal to you for my child Onesimus, whom I have become the father of in my chains, who once was useless to you, but now is useful to you and to me. I am sending him back. Therefore receive him, that is, my own heart, whom I desired to keep with me, that on your behalf he might serve me in my chains for the Good News. But I was willing to do nothing without your consent, that your goodness would not be as of necessity, but of free will. For perhaps he was therefore separated from you for a while that you would have him forever, no longer as a slave, but more than a slave, a beloved brother—especially to me, but how much rather to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord.

Philemon 1:10–16

For while we were yet weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a righteous man. Yet perhaps for a good person someone would even dare to die. But God commends his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

Romans 5:6–8

For you see your calling, brothers, that not many are wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, and not many noble; but God chose the foolish things of the world that he might put to shame those who are wise. God chose the weak things of the world that he might put to shame the things that are strong. God chose the lowly things of the world, and the things that are despised, and the things that don’t exist, that he might bring to nothing the things that exist, that no flesh should boast before God. Because of him, you are in Christ Jesus, who was made to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, that, as it is written, “He who boasts, let him boast in the Lord.”

1 Corinthians 1:26–31

How does what Eli's household did connect to Jesus being handed over to die?

The sermon reads God's promise to raise up a faithful priest as a pointer forward, and it finds the same pattern in Peter's sermon at Pentecost, where Jesus is put to death by God's settled plan. The guilt of using God and using people is not waved away; it is laid on a substitute.

I will raise up a faithful priest for myself who will do according to that which is in my heart and in my mind. I will build him a sure house. He will walk before my anointed forever.

1 Samuel 2:35

…him, being delivered up by the determined counsel and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by the hand of lawless men, crucified and killed; whom God raised up, having freed him from the agony of death, because it was not possible that he should be held by it.

Acts 2:23–24

All we like sheep have gone astray. Everyone has turned to his own way; and Yahweh has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

Isaiah 53:6

For such a high priest was fitting for us: holy, guiltless, undefiled, separated from sinners, and made higher than the heavens; who doesn’t need, like those high priests, to offer up sacrifices daily, first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people. For he did this once for all, when he offered up himself. For the law appoints men as high priests who have weakness, but the word of the oath, which came after the law, appoints a Son forever who has been perfected.

Hebrews 7:26–28