God Loves You So Watch Out
Tom Shrader walks through 1 Samuel 3–7, tracing five application points from Israel's cycle of rebellion, judgment, and restoration. He shows how Israel's defeat at the hands of the Philistines came from idolatry and misplaced trust, even placing faith in the Ark of the Covenant as a good-luck charm rather than in God Himself. The teaching closes with a call to preach the gospel to oneself daily, recognizing that God disciplines those He loves and that obedience leads to blessing and restoration.
“Disobedience in our life will inevitably produce judgment and calamity — and that does not mean that every hardship that comes in your life is a result of sin.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Samuel
Recorded: 2009 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 45 min
Themes: discipline, obedience, idolatry, repentance, restoration, second chances, trust, gospel, struggling with sin, feeling distant from god, returning prodigal, new believer, someone in a spiritual dry season, parent, young adult, recovering from failure
Scripture: Judges 21:25, 1 Samuel 1:5-6, 1 Samuel 2:12, 1 Samuel 2:18-21, 1 Samuel 2:22, 1 Samuel 2:25, 1 Samuel 2:26, 1 Samuel 2:30-34, 1 Samuel 3:1-21, 1 Samuel 4:1-22, 1 Samuel 7:3, Exodus 20:1-4, Romans 1:20-28, Hebrews 12, 1 John 5:21, John 9, 1 Chronicles 21
Theological Themes: divine discipline, sanctification, becoming holy, covenant faithfulness, idolatry, soteriology, preaching the gospel to yourself, judgment and grace
Full Transcript
Introduction and Overview
We are going today to look at First Samuel, chapters three, four, five, six, and seven. Someone said I just introduced a five-week series, but it is not going to take five weeks — we will finish it next week. Let me give you the five points I want to cover in these chapters. These are application points; there are others you could certainly add to this list, but these are the things that jumped out for me as I did my study.
Here are the five things we are going to look at. Number one: disobedience by God's people brings judgment and calamity. Number two: do not place your dependence or trust on anything but God — not even a religious thing. Number three: God wants His people to be holy. Number four: God is the God of a second chance — and I would add a third and a fourth and a fifth and a sixth. Number five: obedience brings blessing and restoration.
Let me digress for a moment on point three. I am afraid that sometimes we get the idea that God wants us happy, by which we mean some sort of physical or circumstantial happiness — that God wants everything smooth and easy in our lives. That is not necessarily true at all. Indeed, the Beatitudes do use a word that means happy, but it means happy in God's economy, in God's sense of the word, not as we would define or describe it. It means happy in right relationship with Him, and indeed then all is well in my world.
Disobedience brings judgment and calamity; obedience brings blessing and restoration. That really is the story we see in the nation of Israel in these chapters, and in many ways throughout the Old Testament. There would be a time of incredible joy and communion with God, and then they would begin to drift away and wander. There would be apostasy, then repentance, then restoration, and then they would begin the process again.
I remember one time in a small group, we were studying the life of David, and one of the guys said, "I don't understand how this guy can't see this. I don't understand how he can have this in his life and then go over here." And I said, "Isn't that amazing? He is just like us." That is the cycle many of us experience even in our own lives, and it is certainly what is going on in the nation of Israel.
The Word of the Lord Was Rare
We started this book study by referencing Judges chapter twenty-one, verse twenty-five: everyone was doing what was right in their own eyes. If you look at chapter three, verse one: "The boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord before Eli." We will come back to that in a moment. "The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were infrequent."
When we talk about visions here, the word communicates the idea of God speaking through a prophet, God speaking directly to His people. God was not speaking to the nation of Israel through these prophets except on very rare occasions. What you see in God's silence and the absence of His word is a sign of judgment He is pronouncing on these people — withdrawing His light from them. The nation is wandering, sinning, and rebelling, and God is gradually saying, "I have had enough."
This almost instinctively brings to mind the New Testament. In the book of Romans, chapter one, Paul talks about the power of the gospel and the idea that God has revealed Himself — that creation shows us God's invisible attributes, His eternal power, and divine nature. But people have pushed that back and rejected it. After a period of time, God, in verse 24, "gave them over to the lusts of their heart." Verse 26: "gave them over to degrading passions." Verse 28: "gave them over to a depraved mind." You begin to see the downward cycle of a person, and in that case, of a whole group of people and even a nation.
The same thing is happening in the nation of Israel. They are walking away from God, rebelling against Him — His own people — and they have embraced other gods. God, through His silence, is beginning to pronounce judgment on them.
God Is Still at Work
Yet even in the midst of this silence, God is still working. Samuel is ministering to the Lord before Eli. Remember, in the first chapter, we saw that Hannah was childless. She prayed for a child, and then we saw why she was childless: verse five and six tells us the Lord had chosen to close her womb. God was going to do something very special. She was suffering incredibly — her rival wife was berating and provoking her, year after year, as verse seven of chapter one says. Hannah cried out to God and made a vow: if You give me a child, I will present him back to You. That is exactly what happened. She became pregnant with Samuel and presented him to the Lord. We saw in chapter two the magnificent prayer she offered. Samuel is now the boy God is going to use in a significant way in the nation of Israel.
go out tonight? And I said, what happened? And she said, it's over. And in that moment, I was not jealous in a petty, insecure way. I was jealous in the sense that I wanted her exclusively. I wanted her for myself. And that is exactly what God means when He says He is a jealous God.
God's Jealousy Is Not Like Human Jealousy
When God says He is jealous, He is not expressing some petty, insecure emotion. He is expressing that He wants us exclusively. He created us. He loves us. He delivered Israel out of Egypt. He has done everything for His people, and He will not share them with a false god. That is the nature of His jealousy. It is a holy jealousy, a righteous jealousy, rooted not in insecurity but in love and in the covenant relationship He has established with His people.
So when He says, "You shall have no other gods before me," He is not being unreasonable. He is being a God who loves His people enough to demand their whole heart. And when His people begin to divide that heart between Him and foreign gods, He takes it seriously. He takes it personally. And as we see in the story of Israel in the time of Samuel, He acts on it.
Israel's Wandering and God's Response
This is precisely what has happened to Israel. Samuel's message in chapter seven makes it clear: the nation has introduced foreign gods, the Asherahs, the idols, and they have begun to serve them alongside or instead of the Lord. The commandment could not have been clearer. "You shall have no other gods before me." Yet they wandered. They always wandered. And God will not stand for it.
The Philistines in this narrative represent God's judgment on the nation. They are the archenemy of Israel, a people consumed with conquest, constantly in battle with God's people. And now they come and defeat Israel. It is the picture of what happens when a people turn their hearts away from the Lord and toward false gods. The judgment of God arrives, not because He stopped loving them, but precisely because He loves them too much to let them go without consequence.
Yet even in the middle of the nation's spiritual collapse, God has not abandoned His people entirely. Back in chapters two and three, while Eli's sons are living in open wickedness and God's word is rare in the land, Samuel is there. Samuel is growing in stature and in favor with the Lord and with men. God always has a remnant. There are those moments when we almost despair and we cry out, "Where are You, God?" And He is right there. He knows what we need. He always has someone, always has something, always has a plan.
The Sign of Judgment and the Hope Within It
God pronounces His wrath and judgment on the house of Eli and on the nation. And He gives a sign so that they will know when that judgment has fully arrived. In verse 34 of chapter two, the sign is this: both of Eli's sons, Hophni and Phinehas, will die on the same day. That is the marker. That is the moment when they will know God's word has come to pass and His judgment is upon them.
But the story does not end there. Even as the judgment is announced, Samuel continues to minister. Even as God's visitation to the nation becomes rare and His words scarce, His man is in place. This is the hope God places in the middle of the darkness. The nation is falling away, and yet God has not left Himself without a witness. He never does.
This is the pattern we see again and again in Scripture and in our own lives. God loves His people too much to simply look the other way when they chase after other gods. He confronts it. He judges it. But He never abandons His people entirely. His judgment and His hope exist side by side. That is what it means that God loves you — and that you should watch out.
God's Jealousy vs. Our Jealousy
When I read that God is a jealous God, I cannot help but think of my own jealousy. But if you make that comparison, you miss the point entirely. My jealousy was all about me. In some convoluted way I wanted what was best for the other person, but really all I cared about was myself. That is all it was ever about.
When we say God is a jealous God, it does not mean He is only concerned about Himself. He is concerned about what is best for you. He is also a God who understands what is right and fair and just, and He will not share the worship that is due Him exclusively with anyone else.
Idols in Our Lives
What had happened in Israel is that they had brought in idols. If we fast-forward to our own lives, we might think we do not have that problem — we have not made any golden calves, we do not have idols. But we may have our own different version of an idol. It is anything that has crept into your life to which you are looking for significance, meaning, happiness, and fulfillment that should come only through Christ. It could even be a good thing.
We are instinctively idol worshipers. First John ends with this remarkable statement — First John chapter five, the very last verse — "little children, guard yourself against idols." It is a strange way to end that letter, but God understands us.
Remember what we saw last week: God is immutable, God does not change, but neither does man. We are the same sinful, deceitful, insecure, weak people prone to sin, wanting our own way, running back to the garden to eat the fruit and rebel against God day after day. We fight that, don't we? So drive those idols out of your life.
When Judgment Comes
In the midst of this, when those things come into your life, know that God will judge. What is interesting, tucked away in chapter four verse three, is how deep into denial we can sink. In verse two of chapter four, Israel is defeated. In verse three, the elders of Israel come and ask, "Why has the Lord defeated us today before the Philistines?" They knew full well what the reason was. God had warned them again and again, and yet their response was, "Why, God? Why would you do this?"
I think about that in our own lives. A young man called me once and wanted to meet, so we sat down together. He began telling me a little about himself and then explained why he was there: he wanted to know God's will for his life. I told him my favorite thing to do is simply ask someone to tell me their story, because everybody has one and everybody loves to tell it.
So he told me his story, and I kept hearing about his girlfriend — though it sounded like more than just a casual relationship. I asked him about her, and what came out is that they were living together. I said, "Well, that is serious. I can see why you would say you are serious about each other." And I figured I ought to ask the direct question: if you are living together, I would assume you are having sex. He confirmed it, then said, "But I didn't come to talk about that. I want to talk about God's will for my life."
I told him I thought I had stumbled onto part of that, because I do not know where God wants him to go to school or what God's specific plan is in those areas. But I do know this: God says flee all immorality. He simply did not see the connection. He could not connect what he was doing with why God might not be revealing the rest of His will to him. Why would God show you more of His will when He has already shown you His explicit will and you have thumbed your nose at it? That makes no sense.
Preaching the Gospel to Ourselves
It is the same thing that was going on in the nation of Israel. Is it not remarkable? They were wondering why they were being defeated when God had already told them exactly why it would happen. They had rebelled. This is the same thing we need to be called back to constantly — which is why we say we need to preach the gospel to ourselves every day.
I think for too long, in my own life and really in our whole generation, we have talked about the gospel as though it is primarily something that lost people need, and then they respond to it. That is true, but that is only the beginning of living in the gospel. We need to preach the gospel to ourselves every day. We need to be reminded daily of our sinfulness and of God's grace and mercy. We need to keep Christ's death fresh in our minds.
Not Every Hardship Is Linked to Sin
When a calamity comes in our life, we need to understand that it could be linked to sin — not necessarily, but it could be. Think back to Hannah. She had this painful circumstance of being unable to have children, and no doubt people around her were asking what she had done wrong. The same thing happened to Job — all his friends kept asking what he had done wrong, and the answer was nothing. It was like the situation in John chapter nine with the blind man: "Who sinned, this man or his parents?" Neither. God was doing something special.
Do not miss this: disobedience in our lives will inevitably produce judgment and calamity. But that does not mean that every hardship—
God Disciplines Those He Loves
Not every calamity that comes into your life is a result of sin. I have been around many people in the midst of a sickness, a cancer, or whatever it might be, and they ask, "Did I do something? Is God punishing me?" You cannot know for certain that He is. The flip side is this: if you sin, He will not simply punish you — He will discipline you. God disciplines those He loves, those He cares for as His children. That is the way He works, and that is what we see in Hebrews 12.
Hebrews 12 tells us that those whom He loves, He disciplines. It also says that if you are without discipline while living in sin, you may be an illegitimate child. To illustrate this, consider something I notice whenever I am out in public: children who are acting up drive me crazy. You can go with me to any restaurant you choose, and I guarantee you will end up sitting next to a one-and-a-half-year-old banging a spoon on the table while a parent either does not notice or finds it charming. In all my time surrounded by other people's children behaving that way, I never disciplined any child but my own.
In reality, I only spanked one of my daughters — Sarah, not Haley. Why did I discipline her? Because she was mine and I loved her. The end result of that process is that she would love me even more. That is exactly what God is doing with the nation of Israel.
So here is a direct point of application: if you are in the midst of some ongoing sin right now and God has not yet brought discipline on you, there are two things to consider. Either A, duck, because it is coming — or B, and this is worse, it is not coming because you are not His child. Disobedience brings judgment and calamity.
Have you not seen homes destroyed through the disobedience of one member? It could be a child — you have seen the havoc a rebellious child can wreak on a family, on parents, on grandparents. You can flip it around as well. You have seen parents decide to simply do their own thing, and watched an entire family plunge into calamity. In student ministries we constantly encounter kids who are an absolute mess, and when you trace it back, you go right back to a parent. The bottom line remains: He disciplines you because He loves you.
Samuel Hears the Voice of God
Let us return to chapter three. Verses two through ten reveal God's kindness. Beginning in verse four, the Lord called to Samuel. Samuel said, "Here I am," then ran to Eli and said, "Here I am — you called." Eli replied, "I did not call. Go lie down." This same process repeats in verse six, and again Eli sends him back.
Verse seven explains what is happening: "Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, nor had the word of the Lord been revealed to him." If you are sharp, you might notice that this sounds familiar. Back in chapter two, verse twelve, Eli's sons were described as worthless — and the problem was that they did not know the Lord. Is Samuel's situation the same? No. This is a different kind of knowledge. The call of a prophet has not yet come upon Samuel's life, and God is in the process of revealing it and calling him to it.
A third time Samuel arose and went to Eli. At that point Eli understood that something was happening and instructed him: "Go lie down, and it shall be that if He calls you, you shall say, 'Speak, Lord, for Your servant is listening.'" So Samuel went and lay down. Then the Lord came and stood and called out as before, "Samuel! Samuel!" And Samuel answered, "Speak, for Your servant is listening." Three times God had appeared to him, and now He was beginning to speak to him as a prophet.
The Weight of the Prophetic Word
The Lord said to Samuel, "Behold, I am about to do a thing in Israel at which both ears of everyone who hears it will tingle." Something enormous was about to take place. "In that day I will carry out against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house, from beginning to end."
If you recall what we examined last week in 1 Samuel chapter two, verses thirty through thirty-four, that judgment was now about to be fulfilled. "I have told him that I am about to judge his house forever, for the iniquity which he knew, because his sons brought a curse on themselves and he did not rebuke them." He did rebuke them, but they would not listen. "Therefore I have sworn to the house of Eli that the iniquity of Eli's house shall not be atoned for by sacrifice or offering forever." There was nothing to be done. That was the message.
Samuel was cutting his teeth as a prophet, and God dropped a real bombshell on him. Samuel lay down until morning and then opened the doors of the house of the Lord — but he was afraid to tell Eli the vision. It is certainly implied, though not directly stated, that God expected him in his role as prophet to go and deliver this word. And Samuel was afraid. Why? Eli was his mentor. He had run to this man three times in the night. His entire life had been spent in service to Eli, and it is reasonable to assume he held a deep sense of...
How We Speak the Truth
What I admire here is that Samuel did not simply receive this message and go straight to Eli and dump the whole load on him. He stopped. He took inventory. There was no question what the message was, and my assumption is there was no question what he needed to do with it, but he humbly needed to prepare himself for that moment.
Let me offer a word of caution. I frequently meet people who say things like, "I just tell it like it is. It's my job to speak the truth — in essence, I'm like a prophet." Let me offer this as an insight: how you speak is as important as what you say. Is it important to declare the truth? Absolutely. But it matters how you say it. It matters the manner in which you communicate the message.
One commentator, writing about Samuel's response, puts it this way: "There is a holy caution in Samuel's response. He was humbled by God's call and most solemnly affected by the prophecy that God had given him. A true prophet preaches with tears in his eyes, especially if his message is a difficult one. The faithful preacher of the word can only preach as a dying man to dying men." Why? Because love for God is his motive, and a compassionate knowledge of the human predicament is part of the fabric of his own person and experience, tempered by his awareness of the mercy of the Lord, which has covered his own sin.
This is true as we begin to deal with one another. I understand how important truth is, but I also understand that there is an appropriate way of gentleness and love through which to deliver it. Those of you who are Christians, when you begin to share with the lost — yes, they need to hear the gospel, and we need to share it — but it matters how that is done. It matters that as you speak that truth, people sense your love, your care, and your brokenness over sin.
Remember the video we saw a couple of weeks ago with Penn from Penn and Teller? Penn was talking about how he expects and even understands the appropriateness of proselytizing, of sharing our faith — but it needs to be motivated by love and care. A dying man preaching to dying men. I really believe that every time you are headed into one of those conversations, whether it is an appointment at Starbucks to share your faith or one of the outreach points we have had on campus over the last few weeks, it is so important to first recall your own sin. Preach the gospel to yourself again, so that you share the truth in love and kindness with a broken heart over your own sin before you start dealing with everybody else.
Samuel and Eli: The Message Delivered
That is what is going on here, and Samuel is incredible. He does not barge in and say, "Eli, you screwed it up and your time has come — get out of the chair, move out of the office, I'm taking over." He does not do that.
Look at verse 16: "Eli called Samuel and said, 'Samuel, my son.' And he said, 'Here I am.' And he said, 'What is the word that He has spoken to you? Do not hide it from me. May God do so to you and more also if you hide anything from me of all the words that He spoke to you.'" Eli is saying: tell me the truth, do not hold anything back — and if you do, I am praying God's curse on you. Tell it like it is. So Samuel told him everything and hid nothing from him.
And Eli said, "It is the Lord. Let Him do what seems good to Him."
It Is What It Is — And He Is Who He Is
If you go to 1 Chronicles, around chapter 21, David takes a census. He was told not to. It does not seem like a big deal, but he was told not to, and that makes it a big deal. God decides to discipline him for it. An angel of the Lord comes to David and says, in effect, you can have door number one, door number two, or door number three — here are your options for punishment. And David says, "I am not about to make a choice. I am in no position to make a choice." He knew God's holy right and justice, and so he let God judge. If you remember, 70,000 people were slaughtered as a result of David's sin. That same sense is at work here. Eli, at least, has reached a point where he understands that the Lord is good.
There is a phrase that has reached a real familiarity with almost all of us — rarely does a day go by that I do not either use it or hear it. It goes like this: "It is what it is." We say it in a whole bunch of different ways, but the meaning is the same. Over the last week or so, as I hear that phrase, what has been going through my mind is what I hope becomes the second part of it: "It is what it is — and He is who He is."
It is what it is. I get that. It is the cancer. It is the judgment. It is the lost job. It is what it is. But He is who He is — the holy, righteous judge and provider and King. The One you sang about, that you love, that loves you with a perfect love. Even in the midst of sin and discipline, we can come to the point where we say, "I know God, and I know that He is good. It is what it is — but He is who He is."
The Mark of a True Prophet
Verse 19: "Samuel grew and the Lord was with him and let none of his words fail." That, by the way, was the mark of a prophet. If a prophet spoke something that did not come to pass, he was no longer considered a prophet — in fact, they would stone him. So when someone pitches me Nostradamus, I think: what is his score, seven out of ten? Six out of ten? When researchers actually graded psychics like Jeane Dixon over a span of years, they tracked the predictions and scored them.
Don't Place Your Dependence on Anything but the Lord
In Israel, if a prophet missed even one prophecy, they were done — one and done. That was the sign of a true prophet. All Israel, from Dan to Beersheba, from north to south, knew that Samuel was the prophet. The Lord appeared again at Shiloh, because the Lord revealed Himself to Samuel there by the word of the Lord.
Now, here is God's man in place at Samuel, but still judgment is coming. The word of the Lord through Samuel comes to Israel, and Israel goes out to meet the Philistines. Verse two: the Philistines drew up a battle array to meet Israel, and when the battle spread, Israel was defeated before the Philistines, who killed about four thousand men. On that very day, the judgment comes.
This brings us to the second point: do not place your dependence on anything but the Lord. When Israel was defeated, they asked in verse three, "Why has the Lord done this thing?" They said, "Let us take the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord from Shiloh, that it may come among us and deliver us from the power of our enemies." The Ark of the Covenant was a small box, about three to nearly four feet long and two and a quarter feet wide and deep, and it represented the presence of God in their midst.
The Ark carried with it messages of reconciliation and revelation, and it had frequently been present as God defeated enemies. So Israel began to put their faith and trust not in God, but in the Ark itself. They thought: let's get the Ark.
Idols We Don't Recognize
This is something we still do today. There are people who walk around with a little St. Jude medal in their pocket, or statues. But let me tell you something that may be a little closer to home for some. There are Christians who have elevated something to the level of an idol — who have displaced worship of the one true God with mere study of the one true God. They have focused so much on the Word of God that they have missed the God of the Word. They think that if they just study and learn a verse, somehow God is then obligated to protect them. Watch out.
And it gets more serious. When they go to retrieve the Ark of the Covenant, they violate the specific laws God had given them for handling it. This brings up a life lesson worth pausing on: you may not know what to do, but you often know what not to do.
I see this frequently. I was with a man not long ago who was sinning in response to a difficult situation, and his answer was, "I didn't know what to do." I told him I was fine with that, because there are plenty of times none of us know what to do. But you know what not to do. Even if you don't know the right path forward, you know when your response is sinful.
This is a basic counseling principle: so often when we are sinned against, we respond sinfully. A husband or wife will sin against their spouse, and the spouse then sins right back. It is like a penalty in the NFL or the NBA — it is not the first foul that gets called, it is the second one. Because so often when we are sinned against, our sinful response is the one that draws the flag.
So often when we do not know what to do, we want to do something — and the one thing we end up doing is the thing we know we should not do. Israel knew how to handle the Ark. They knew this was inappropriate. They knew it was wrong. But they thought, we will bring the Ark — our good luck charm. Maybe if we rub it hard enough, we will get three wishes. They had denied the one true God. They were in open rebellion against Him, bringing in other idols and other gods. And yet they clung to this box.
The Judgment Falls
So the people sent to Shiloh and they carried the Ark back. And look at who comes with it in verse four — Hophni and Phinehas. These corrupt sons of Eli are now the guardians of the Ark. When Philistine reconnaissance reported the Ark's arrival in the Israelite camp, verse seven tells us the Philistines were afraid. They said, "God has come into the camp." They cried out, "Woe to us, for nothing like this has happened before. Woe to us! Who will deliver us from the hand of the mighty gods?"
Now, they got part of that wrong — they were polytheists, so they spoke of gods in the plural. As they thought about the nation of Israel, they described Israel's God in terms of their own framework. But they had heard what God had done. They had heard how He delivered Israel from Egypt, how He sent plagues, all of it. And they said, "We are in deep trouble." They rallied themselves, saying, "These are the gods who struck the Egyptians with all kinds of plagues in the wilderness. Take courage, be men, O Philistines, or you will become slaves to the Hebrews as they have been slaves to you. Therefore, be men and fight."
So the Philistines fought, and Israel was defeated, and every man fled to his tent. The slaughter was very great. Thirty thousand foot soldiers of Israel fell. And the Ark of God was captured. And the sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, both died — the fulfillment of the judgment God had pronounced.
The News Reaches Eli
A man of Benjamin ran from the battle line and came to Shiloh that same day. His clothes were torn and there was dust on his head — the signs of mourning, repentance, and calamity. When he arrived, Eli was sitting in his seat by the road, eagerly watching, because his heart was trembling for the Ark of God. The man came into the city and cried out, and when Eli heard the noise and the outcry, he asked, "What is the commotion?"
The man came and hurriedly told Eli what had happened. Eli was ninety-eight years old, and his eyes were fixed so that he could not see. The man said to him, "I am the one who came from the battle line. Indeed, I escaped from the battle line today." And Eli said, "How did things go, my son?"
Closing the Series: God Disciplines His People
To give it to you in a paraphrase: Israel fled before the Philistines. There was also a great slaughter among the people. Eli's two sons were dead, and the ark of God had been taken. When the messenger mentioned the ark of God, Eli fell off his seat backwards beside the gate, his neck was broken, and he died — for he was old and heavy. Thus God judged Israel for forty years.
God disciplines His children. Disobedience brings judgment and calamity. You make a mistake if you think, "There is the ark, there is the presence of God — that is enough." No. What is required is a meaningful relationship with God and with who He is.
In the midst of all of this, what we learn is that God wants a holy people. That is what we will pick up with next week. The third point is that God is concerned about us — not our happiness per se, certainly not as a primary interest — but He is concerned about a holy people. He is holy, and He wants His people to be like Him.
A Word Before We Go
Can I give you some freedom for today? Enjoy this day. This is a great day. It may seem funny to say that when we have been talking about disobedience and judgment and all of these things, but Super Bowl Sunday has become the equivalent of a national holiday. Some of you are going to be with family and friends — love it.
Others of you are going to be in situations where discussions will come up about Christ and spiritual things. This will be an opportunity for many of you to relate to people around you in a way that you perhaps have not before, and to allow them to see something different and unique about you. I want you to have fun — I think it is a terrific day. But there may be spiritual opportunities today as well, so make sure you take advantage of those.
Closing Prayer
Father, thank You for Your Word and Your truth. Thank You for the reminder that You discipline us, and that when we are disobedient it brings calamity and plague into our lives, literally. Let us put our dependence on You and You alone.
Father, as Your people, help us understand that these are principles that will not change — that we cannot violate Your principles and not see these results. Even this morning, looking at the news, there are thousands and thousands of job layoffs, and the hurt and pain is beginning to spread all through the land. There may be people in this room who are really suffering today, whether financially, relationally, or in some other way, and they are beginning to feel the burden of a test — which is good. God, give us the opportunity to pray with them. The pastors are at the front of the room and would love to do that.
We also love to pray with those who are rejoicing today, so that we could rejoice with them. God, we want to fulfill what You command: to rejoice with those who rejoice and to weep with those who weep. Let us use the balance of this day as we should use every day. Let us take advantage of the unique opportunities we will have today to glorify You, to worship You, and to praise You. We love You, and we pray to You in Christ's name. Amen.