It seemed to me at first that God was playing favorites with Eli and Samuel, and clearly Eli was not his favorite. Not only did God say in chapter 2 that He was going to bring the hammer down on Eli's house, but then He spoke to Samuel about how He was going to do it! And Samuel was just a kid! There were two prominent things I learned from the three-way exchange between the Lord, Samuel and Eli.
1) Bad parenting hurts.
2) Eli had the best possible attitude when he said, "It is the Lord; let Him do what seems good to Him."
So I thought that God was playing favorites in the OT reading, but then I got to Romans and Paul expressly says, "there is no partiality with God." That's pretty clear; it doesn't leave a whole lot of room to be questioned. I think our definition of partiality is different from God's, though. Modern fairness means equality; I think God deals in justice rather than equality. Prior to the "no partiality" verse, Paul said, "There will be tribulation and distress for every soul of man who does evil, of the Jew first and also of the Greek, but glory and honor and peace to everyone who does good, to the Jew first and also to the Greek."
So I also learned two things from the NT reading:
1) God is concerned with justice over equality
2) Obeying the law is consonant with glory, honor, peace and the Lord's favor. See Psalms 119:24 - "Your statutes are my delight; they are my counselors."
It was surprising to me that Eli just heard what God was going to bring down on him and Eli accepted it and took it. He knew he was in the wrong and accepted it!
ReplyDeleteWhich leads to Romans....Paul said God is the only one who judges yet that seems to be the one thing, or sin if you will, that everyone does without any regard. God doesn't look at me any differently than someone else but boy do I turn that on it's head and judge everybody else for even the littlest things! Kinda sucks knowing you are a hypocrite and yet still continue to act the same, hopefully it ends better for me than for Eli.