That was some singing.
I hardly ever hear that hymn.
It is well with my soul.
I think some years ago, I was sitting
in an auditorium in the city of Omaha,
listening to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
I don't know how many of you have
ever had the privilege of hearing them.
They can sing.
Did you know, as I was sitting there
that day, listening to them sing, it struck
me, and I've never forgotten it since I
hear that hymn quite frequently.
I wonder how many in that choir could
really say, it is well with my soul.
I would pray tonight that each and every
one that is here can say, it is
well with my soul.
That if the words of Paul Thessalonians, he's
coming again, if we were to come in
the clouds tonight, and the dead in Christ
shall rise first, and we who are alive
and remain shall be caught up together with
him in the clouds, and so shall we
ever be with him.
Therefore, comfort and encourage one another with these
words.
If that were to become reality before this
day was over, would you say it is
well with my soul?
I pray that would be the song of
each one of us.
Well, I can tell you, it's hard to
believe that this is the sixth message that
I'm going to be giving to you this
wonderful weekend.
I have just been, I tell you, I've
just been overwhelmed at your fellowship.
It's been so good to see so many
of you, young and old alike, come and
introduce yourselves, and we've had a time of
fellowship together and talk over some things that
are going on in your life and mine.
You've made this a real joyous weekend for
me, and I want to tell you all
from the bottom of my heart, thank you
very much.
It has been a wonderful weekend.
We've had excellent weather.
I understand Missouri is not known for having
exceptionally good weather in July.
It's usually kind of warm, real warm and
real humid, but I think we can say
we've had an exceptionally good weekend.
We can thank the Lord for that.
I think it's been a wonderful time for
all of us.
How many of the camp workers have we
got here tonight?
Would you stand?
All of you that are here full-time
workers, would you stand, or they got you
all busy somewhere?
They must be out working.
We'll catch them tomorrow morning.
Tomorrow morning when they're here, we're going to
get them all to stand up, and we're
going to give them one of your yahoos
from down in Texas.
Boy, I'll tell you, they made this weekend
super, especially those that have been out there
when it was just singing a few moments
ago.
They're out there paddling down that Gasconade River
watching us floaters so we don't fall off
and drown and keep away from the sandbars
and the hidden logs and all that stuff.
She's done a great job.
You can swim up and down that thing
three times.
It's got my undying gratitude.
She's some kind of woman.
Boy, I'll tell you.
She didn't have any problems telling the old
preacher, taking
that float trip on the inner tubes down
there.
Do it.
It's a lot of fun.
You'll have to come back because I think
we're all done with that.
But that was a lot of fun.
I really enjoyed that.
Tonight, I'd like to share a study with
you.
It's going to be a rather, a little
bit more lengthy study in the Word of
God.
We've been studying some short character studies in
the Word of God, and tonight we're going
to have a little bit longer one.
Not in time.
I want to quit on time so we
can carry on with the other activities.
We're going to talk about a man who
rejected the priesthood of God.
I think of this man and others in
the Bible as being some of the great
tragedies of the Word of God.
Here was a man who was given the
opportunity to practice probably one of the, in
the eyes of the Israelites, one of the
most prestigious of all positions, that of high
priest, before the living and the true God,
Jehovah.
And this man not only served himself, but
his two sons served with him.
The tragedy of these three lives is our
study for this evening.
But basically, I want to talk to you
this evening and share with you from the
Word of God, the tragedy of a man
named Eli.
Will you turn in your Bibles to 1
Samuel chapter 1, please.
1 Samuel chapter 1.
We're just going to take bits and pieces
and I'll tie some things together, otherwise we're
going to be reading four chapters.
I don't really want to take that much
time.
So we'll be taking bits and pieces and
I want you to stay with us.
1 Samuel 1 verse 3.
Now this man would go up from his
city yearly to worship and to sacrifice to
the Lord of hosts in Shiloh.
And the two sons of Eli, Hosni and
Phinehas, were priests to the Lord there.
Priest to the Lord at Shiloh.
Verse 12.
This is, remember now that Hannah has come
and is praying.
Now it came about as she continued praying
before the Lord that Eli was watching her
mouth.
As for Hannah, she was speaking in her
heart.
Only her lips were moving, but her voice
was not heard.
So Eli thought she was drunk.
Then Eli said to her, how long will
you make yourself drunk?
Put away your wine from you.
But Hannah answered and said, no, my Lord,
I am a woman oppressed in spirit.
I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink,
but I have poured out my soul before
the Lord.
Do not consider your maidservant as a worthless
woman, for I have spoken until now out
of my great concern and provocation.
Then Eli answered and said, go in peace,
and may the God of Israel grant you
your petition that you have asked of him.
Verse 18.
And she said, let your maidservant find favor
in your sight.
So the woman went her way and ate,
and her face was no longer sad.
Here is a portion of scripture that we
need to lay as foundation.
Eli was a priest before the living God.
One of the things that the priest was
concerned about was to those who would practice
praying or that would practice being holy, that
he would judge them.
He would look at them, and as high
priest, he would in his own way judge
them.
And here he did it, and isn't it
interesting?
A woman who was sincere of heart, praying
to the living God.
Eli looks at her and considers her drunk.
Now I ask you, consider the situation of
Eli.
Who was in the right, and who made
the misjudgment?
For it was Eli who was to be
the one who had the discernment, and here
we see he is not a very good
discerner of the truth.
Let's turn now to chapter 2 and verse
12.
Note the striking condemnation in this verse.
Now the sons of Eli were worthless men.
They did not know the Lord.
And yet in chapter 1 we read that
Hophni and Phinehas were priests before the Lord.
But now a short time later we read
in the word of God, they were worthless
men.
They did not know the Lord.
And the custom of the priest with the
people, when any man was offering a sacrifice,
the priest's servants would come while the meat
was boiling with a three-pronged fork in
his hand.
Then he would thrust it into the pan
or kettle or cauldron or pot.
All that the fork brought up, the priest
would take for himself.
Thus they did in Shiloh to all the
Israelites who came there.
Also before they burned the fat, the priest's
servant would come and say to the man
who was sacrificing, give the priest meat for
roasting as he will not take boiled meat
from you, only raw.
And if the man said to him, they
must surely burn the fat first and then
take as much as you desire, then he
would say, no, but you shall give it
to me now, and if not, I will
take it by force.
Thus the sin of the young men was
very great before the Lord, for the men
despised the offering of the Lord.
What a condemnation we have here of Eli
and his sons, Hophni and Phinehas.
He gives us a very striking condemnation.
They were worthless men.
They did not know God, but yet in
the eyes of men, they were practicing the
priesthood before the living God.
Let's look at verse 18 of the same
chapter.
Now Samuel was ministering before the Lord as
a boy wearing a linen ephod, and his
mother would make a little robe and bring
him up from year to year when she
would come up with her husband to offer
the yearly sacrifice.
Then Eli would bless Elkin and his wife
and say, may the Lord give you the
children from this woman in place of the
one dedicated to the Lord, and they went
to their own home.
And the Lord visited Hannah, and she conceived
and gave birth to three sons and two
daughters, and the boy Samuel grew before the
Lord.
Now Eli was very old, and he heard
all that his sons were doing to all
Israel, and how they lay with women who
served at the doorway of the tent of
meeting.
And he said to them, why do you
do such things, the evil things that I
hear from all these people?
No, my sons, for the report is not
good which I hear the Lord's people circulating.
If one man sins against another, God will
mediate for him, but if a man sins
against the Lord, who can intercede for him?
But they would not listen to the voice
of their father, for the Lord desired to
put them to death.
The Lord desired to put them to death.
Verse 27, Then a man of God came
to Eli and said to him, Thus says
the Lord, did I not indeed reveal myself
to the house of your father when they
were in Egypt, in bondage to Pharaoh's house?
And did I not choose them from all
the tribes of Israel to be my priests,
to go up to my altar, to burn
incense, to carry an ephod before me?
And did I not give to the house
of your father all the fire offerings of
the sons of Israel?
Why do you kick at my sacrifice and
at my offering which I have commanded in
my dwelling, and honor your sons above me
by making yourselves fat with the choices of
every offering of my people Israel?
Therefore, the Lord God of Israel declares, I
did indeed say that your house and the
house of your father should walk before me
forever.
But now the Lord declares, far be it
from me, for those who honor me I
will honor, and those who despise me will
be rightly esteemed.
Behold, the days are coming when I will
break your strength and the strength of your
father's house, so that there will not be
any old man in your house, and you
will see the distress of my dwelling, in
spite of all that I do good for
Israel, and an old man will not be
in your house forever.
Yet I will not cut off every man
of yours from my altar, that your eyes
may fail from weeping, and your soul grieve,
and all the increase of your house will
die in the prime of life.
And this will be a sign to you
which shall come concerning your two sons, Hosni
and Phinehas.
On the same day, both of them shall
die.
But I will raise up for myself a
faithful priest, who will do according to what
is in my heart and in my soul,
and I will build him an enduring house,
and he will walk before my anointed always.
And it shall come about that everyone who
is left in your house shall come and
bow down to him for a piece of
silver or a loaf of bread and say,
Please assign me to one of the priest's
offices, so that I may eat a piece
of bread.
This to me has to be one of
the saddest commentaries that I read in the
word of God.
A man who was blessed of God to
serve before him as a priest, a high
priest, one who went yearly into the holiest
of holies to serve the living and the
true God, the one who had the rare
and precious privilege to serve before the living
and the true God, to see the glory
of the living God, to enter in before
the ark, and how lightly he esteemed that
position.
Samuel was an elderly man by this time.
He had two sons, Hosni and Phinehas.
By right of their birth, they served as
priests, but they were worthless men in the
eyes of God, and God calls them to
account in the eyes and in the ears
of their father.
There is something there that we need to
see in the life of Eli.
In the first portion that we read, we're
reminded that Eli rebuked Hannah because he thought
she was drunk.
For that, he would challenge a woman.
But for his own two sons who were
married, he challenges them with a simple exhortation.
It's like, boys, you know, I'm hearing these
stories, and that's not making me too happy.
You know, you're doing these things.
These things ought not to be.
You know, the one thing that I can
think of is that I wonder how Eli
lived his life before God.
An example to his sons.
Did he fear God?
Did his sons understand that God judges sin?
What a challenge for a father to bring
up his children, to bring them up in
the love and fear of God.
Reverential fear, a fear that says God judges
sin, and as a priest they knew the
law.
Thou shalt be holy even as God is
holy.
And to take upon themselves the ephod and
serve as priests, and yet defile themselves so
blatantly in the eyes of all Israel and
before the living God.
What a rebuke to God.
How they abused the privileges and the honors
of the priesthood.
One of the things that I can see
is that the tragedy of Eli is the
patience of God.
Out of all these things, in a way,
I can see how patient God is with
those whom he loves.
In spite of all of his failures, I
believe that God really loved Eli.
To let him serve the many years that
he did as a high priest.
And yet, I wonder if God would have
implanted in the heart of Eli something to
challenge him to straighten out his sons.
Or was this God's plan?
Understanding the sovereignty of God is one of
the lessons of Eli.
God is a sovereign God.
For we read in the challenge of the
word that the man of God, the man
of the Lord, brings to Eli.
He says to Eli, thus says the Lord.
And then he begins very slowly and very
methodically to lay down the groundwork, the basis
of the coming judgment.
We need to understand from the word of
God that God does nothing haphazardly.
He has put before us his word, his
commandments, his statutes, his laws, his precepts.
He has set them before us as a
foundation.
He has explained to us the judgment that
will come upon us for failure to be
obedient to his word.
He has set before us clearly and succinctly
everything that we need to know concerning our
lives before him.
For we are priests.
We are priests before the living and the
true God.
The man of the Lord, the man of
God comes and says to Eli, thus says
the Lord.
And then he begins.
He reveals to Eli the great sovereignty of
God.
God says, did I not choose?
Did I not choose you and your father's
house out of all the tribes of Israel?
Did I not take Levi to serve as
priest before me?
It was my choice as God.
And he chose the people to be his
priest, the sovereignty of God.
He begins to lay down the basis of
who is speaking to him.
It is God speaking to you, Eli, and
you need to remember who I am.
For in order for these things to become
clear to you, you must understand who I
am.
Did I not choose them?
Did I not choose them to be the
priest?
He chose the time.
He chose the people.
And now he chooses to explain to them
their duties.
He says your duties are to serve before
me, to go up to my altar, my
altar.
Notice how God explains that to us.
It's his altar.
He says to my altar, to burn incense,
to carry an ephod before me, before me.
And did I not give to the house
of your father all the fire offerings of
the sons of Israel?
God said it was my provision for you.
As we consider the priesthood of the Old
Testament, of the people of Israel, we see
some remarkable things that need to speak to
us.
So often when we get into these things
that consider the priesthood in the Old Testament,
and as we consider God speaking to the
people of Israel, we say, well, that's for
them.
You know, that's past.
You know, one of the saddest things is
that they call the First Testament of the
Bible old.
The Old Testament.
You know, for us in the now generation,
we don't like those kind of words.
Old.
The Old Testament.
So we sometimes we kind of gloss over
the things.
I would venture to say this evening, if
we went around and looked at your Bibles,
that you would notice that the greatest amount
of thumbprints and fingerprints are on the New
Testament and how little we really spend.
I'm not saying all of you.
I know some of you understand the work
in the entire word of God, but a
great majority of us fail to go into
the Old Testament to learn the foundations that
God has laid in his word that we
might function as priests in the New Testament.
These great foundations are laid for us in
the life of Eli, the sovereignty of God.
He chose the time and the people he
provided for them.
And he said before them their duties.
It was God's will that these things be
this way.
And here we have three Eli and his
two sons who rebuked, rejected and abused the
privileges of priesthood.
God forbid that any of us would do
such a thing in our holy priesthood, for
it was a sad commentary.
Thus sayeth the Lord and judgment was pronounced.
It's a serious matter, a very serious matter
for anyone of the priesthood of God to
abuse the grace of the living God.
God's patient is great.
All of us can say, I know of
God's patience.
Look how long he's been patient with me.
But another thing that Eli was to find
out and we need to understand today, it
is a terrifying thing to fall into the
hands of the living and the true God.
A terrifying thing.
We have lost our sense of reverential awe
of the living and the true God, and
we need to regain it.
We need to regain it in these last
days.
We stand in more in awe of man
and his devices than we do of the
God of all creation.
The one who by the very breath put
into existence all of our worlds.
It's God who cast the judgment.
It is God who carry out the judgment.
Let us not be deceived.
God is not mocked.
What we sow, we shall reap.
Hosni and Phinehas and Eli sowed the seeds
of disobedience, and the seeds of disobedience are
still the same today as they were in
their days.
The wages of sin is death.
And in their case, it became a physical
death.
A physical death.
For God said, and he told Eli, I
will require your son's life.
Now, being a father with two sons myself,
if a man of God came to me
and said, thus saith the Lord, your two
sons' lives shall be required of them, I
would be crushed.
Literally crushed.
For their disobedience, for their abuse, for their
rebuking, I will take their lives.
As a father, I would be crushed to
no end.
I wonder what Eli thought when those words
came.
You know, I firmly believe that Eli knew
it's just.
It's just.
For how can I argue with God?
It has to be true.
And he knew.
He knew he carried the guilt as they
carried the guilt.
For here was the man who had the
power to take his own sons and remove
them from the priesthood and to banish them.
And he would not, because he knew that
if they were truly judged according to the
law, they would be taken outside the camp
and killed.
But he would not count.
He would not take into account the sins
that they had done and do his office.
So God judged.
We need to learn this lesson that if
we fail to judge our lives.
God is patient, but there will come a
day when he will judge.
He will judge.
So often we believe that.
Well, we get away with these things and
nobody knows.
I wonder how often we really believe that
God doesn't know about it.
Do we really think that the sins that
are done in the darkness are not known
to God?
Do we think that we're getting away with
something that we're pulling the wool over the
eyes of God?
Would we believe that for a moment?
And yet all of us have to say
deep inside.
There are those things that I haven't really
brought before God.
And repented of them.
Oh, God, don't let me walk that way
anymore.
Give me strength to withstand the wiles of
Satan.
Tomorrow morning, we're going to spend some time
looking at really who Satan is.
Oh, beloved, we need to understand that even
if Satan was alive and well in the
days of Eli and working in the life
of Eli and Hophni and Phinehas, he's alive
and well today and he's still doing the
same work.
He's still saying the same thing that he
said to Eve in the Garden of Eden.
And can't you hear him?
Now, you really don't think that God's going
to do that, do you?
You don't really believe that God would judge
you and take your life, do you?
Did God really mean that?
And those little seeds of doubt begin to
take root in our minds.
Now, I wonder if God does really judge,
you know, so-and-so, he gets away,
they get away with everything and nothing's happened
to them.
You know, we see some people that are
professing Christians and we know the things that
they're doing.
We've all read about those that are prominent,
what I call the video Christians.
You know, you can turn on the you
can turn on the boob tube on Sunday
mornings and you see them up there.
And man, send us your bucks, you know,
and we'll send you something that's really going
to make you great and holy before God,
you know?
And people are sending them the dollars.
They're emptying their bank accounts and sending them
money because they feel here's a man that
has some kind of secret connection with God
that they don't have.
They want to get into something that's going
to pacify their religious obligations.
Oh, how Satan works today.
We say, look at how much they get
away with.
You know, if I pulled something like that,
God would probably strike me dead.
But then we see that God doesn't judge
or that he isn't judging in the way
that we think he should.
And we say, well, they get away with
it.
Why can't I?
We may not come out and say that,
but inside of us, we know.
This is something that I'm going to try.
What happens?
But you see the problem that we read
in the word of God is God says
that he's patient and he's loving, but he
will judge.
But the thing that he doesn't say is
when he will judge.
It's when he will judge.
Some people believe they can do things in
their lives.
And then when they repent and come before
God, everything's going to be OK.
All the things that they've done to this
body of theirs is not going to have
a price.
I've set in on in my studies for
counseling and alcohol rehabilitation and treatment.
And I've seen some people that have drank
themselves almost right to the point of death
and God in his mercy dealt with them
and they no longer drink.
But yet the wages of their sin has
taken its toll upon their bodies, for they
have cirrhosis of the liver and they have
other kinds of physical ailments associated with what
they've done.
But yet they are Christians, but their sins
have still demanded a price.
I know some young people that were once
in the drug culture.
Now they're Christians.
And I know one young man has told
me, he says, years ago, it's been a
good number of years ago.
He says, I took some strong stuff, Larry.
He says it's some of the strongest LSD
that was around.
And he says there are times when he
says I had the most horrible flashbacks and
he says I haven't touched anything, any kind
of drugs in over 10 years.
And he says I have some of the
worst flashbacks that you can ever imagine.
He says there are times when I absolutely
wish I was dead.
He said it is so fearful.
Do we believe that God does not judge?
This young man is a child of God.
I believe his testimony.
I believe he's repented.
I don't think he's taken any drugs in
the amount of time that he said.
But when he did, it was disobedience to
God.
And today he's still paying the price.
We need to understand.
I'm not saying that God works that way
in every situation.
I'm not this.
I'm not God.
I don't know how God judges in every
situation.
But dear children of God, I think we
need to get a firm view of the
Bema, the judgment seat of Christ, because one
day we will stand before him.
You say, yes, but my understanding of Scripture
is that, you know, I'm not going to
have my life isn't going to be blown
up on a TV screen for everybody and
their brother to see.
I don't know exactly what the judgment seat
of Christ will be, but I know it's
going to be a revelation.
And I know that for all of our
sins, we shall suffer loss.
But you say our sins are our sins
are taken away.
They're remembered no more.
That's right.
They're remembered no more.
But the time that we took doing all
these sins are times that can never be
reclaimed.
That's one thing that we can truly say
yesterday cannot be reclaimed.
Five minutes ago cannot be reclaimed.
The time that we spend in sin cannot
be reclaimed and we will suffer loss.
And I think the sad tragedy of the
judgment seat of Christ is going to be
this.
That God is going to hold up before
us through his son, Jesus Christ.
He's going to say, here's what you could
have been for me, but here's what you
were willing to settle for.
The sad tragedy of the judgment seat of
Christ.
Now, you may have your own understanding, and
I'm not going to debate the issue.
But I firmly believe we need to understand
that God is still in the business of
judging sin.
He still understands.
That we have the sin nature.
But he still calls us to a life
of holiness.
And it was a sad day for Eli.
A very sad day.
Look at chapter four for Samuel, chapter four
and verse twelve.
Remember now that Hathnai and Phinehas have taken
the ark of God out into the battlefield.
The men who God despised picked up the
ark of the living God.
They were not even supposed to touch it.
They have picked it up.
They have taken it out into the battlefield
where the Israelites and the Philistines are at
war with one another.
And we read of the results in verse
twelve.
Now, a man of Benjamin ran from the
battle line and came to Shiloh the same
day with his clothes torn and dust on
his head.
When he came, behold, Eli was sitting on
his seat by the road eagerly watching because
his heart was trembling for the ark of
God.
Let's stop there for a moment.
Eli's heart was not trembling for Hathnai and
Phinehas.
His heart trembled for the ark of God.
He trembled for the ark of God.
So the man came to tell it in
the city and all the city cried out.
When Eli heard the noise of the outcry,
he said, What does the noise of this
commotion mean?
And the man came hurriedly and told Eli.
Now, Eli was ninety-eight years old and
his eyes were set so that he could
not see.
And the man said to Eli, I am
the one who came from the battle line
and he said, How did things go, my
son?
Then the one who brought the news answered
and said, Israel has fled before the Philistines
and there has also been a great slaughter
among the people and your two sons also.
Hathnai and Phinehas are dead and the ark
of God has been taken.
And it came about when he mentioned the
ark of God that Eli fell off the
seat backward beside the gate and his neck
was broken and he died for he was
old and heavy.
Thus he judged Israel forty years as a
corrupt man as he was.
Still, there was that relationship with God through
it all.
His concern was not for Hathnai and Phinehas,
for he knew the judgment of God had
already been set upon them, for Eli was
sitting there beside the city gate upon his
lifted seat where he would sit and listen
as a judge for the people of Israel.
This seat may have been six feet high
off the ground, could have been any distance
depending upon what they had at that time,
but usually they were about six feet high
and he listened.
And when he heard about the ark of
the living God, it says he fell off
his seat backwards and broke his neck for
he was heavy.
He was old and he was heavy.
His eyes were set.
He could not see, but he was more
than blind physically.
He was blind spiritually, but yet through it
all, this one word comes.
He was more crushed over the ark of
God than he was over his own two
sons.
I wonder if we have that same idea
toward the priesthood that Eli had.
I would pray not.
Because you see, as Christians, we are given
a very special place.
We have the same as the priesthood of
the Old Testament.
See, it's the sovereign God who again chooses
us.
It is he who knows the time that
we are chosen.
We have been chosen, as Paul says in
the Ephesians, even before the foundations of the
world were set.
God knew those who were his own.
He's the sovereign God.
He knows those who are his.
We have something very special and Peter gives
us some insights into it in 1 Peter
chapter 2.
1 Peter chapter 2 and verse
5.
You also as living stones are being built
up as a spiritual house for a holy
priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices to God
through Jesus Christ.
You are being built up a spiritual house,
a holy priesthood.
Notice that in verse 9.
But you are a chosen race, a royal
priesthood, a holy nation of people for God's
own possession that you may proclaim the excellencies
of him who has called you out of
darkness into his marvelous light.
Now, I know Peter was talking to the
redeemed of Israel, but the words are for
us.
We are a holy priesthood.
We read again as John writes in the
Revelation, Revelation chapter 1.
Let's read there, Revelation 1, verse
4.
John to the seven churches.
The seven spirits who are before his throne
and from Jesus Christ, a faithful witness, the
firstborn of the dead and the ruler of
the kings of the earth to him who
loves us and released us from our sins
by his blood.
And he has made us to be a
kingdom priest to his God and father to
him, be the glory and the dominion forever
and ever.
Amen.
We are priests.
Every child of God is a priest.
Now the challenge of Eli that I want
to leave with you this evening concerning your
priesthood.
I tell you, when I made this study,
this revelation made me quake in my boots
to think of this.
I am a priest before God, the living
God, the God who is above every other
God.
This little bit of Lord, I serve as
a priest before God.
If God was to send a man of
his came to me and said, concerning your
priesthood, thus says the Lord, would it be
a condemnation such as Eli heard or would
it be a well done thou good and
faithful servant?
We need to understand the priesthood.
We need to understand what it means to
be a priest before God.
It is a chosen position, chosen by God
for us.
He has laid down in his precious word,
the duties of the priest.
And we read and what a challenge they
are to us.
And Paul gives us the duties of the
priest.
We read these words and the old nature
rises up in rebellion and says, no, absolutely
not.
It cannot be.
There has to be something else.
But Paul says it very clearly in the
epistle to the Romans, chapter 12 and verse
one.
I urge you therefore, brethren, by the mercies
of God to present yourselves a living and
holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your
spiritual service of worship.
And do not be conformed to this world,
but be transformed by the renewing of your
mind that you may prove what the will
of God is, that which is good and
and perfect.
I remember one time we were studying about
being priests, a priesthood of the believer.
And I rose one time and I read
this portion.
I said, a priest offers sacrifices.
And I understand from the word of God,
this is to be my sacrifice to him.
Another man rose up and I considered this
man to be a very saintly man, a
godly man.
I knew his children.
I had the pleasure of performing his daughter's
marriage, wedding ceremony, very dear friends of ours.
And he says, Larry, when you read those
words, something welled up within me.
I said, no, no, no, I don't want
to be a sacrifice because sacrifices are consumed.
And I want to be me.
He says, I'm humbled.
I didn't know that was within me.
But he said the challenge of the scriptures
came home to me that day.
That moment that you read those words, sacrifice,
sacrifices are consumed and that they are.
He challenged my heart that night.
I said, do I understand what I read?
Do I understand what God's telling me that
you, brethren, by the mercies of God, present
your bodies a living and holy, holy sacrifice
that in itself brings us before God in
a way that humbles us as nothing else
can.
But something else touched my heart about the
priesthood.
Where does the priest serve?
Eli served in the temple.
But I read also from the Apostle Paul
in First Corinthians chapter three, some very interesting
words.
Many of you, I know these are familiar
scriptures, but if there's one heart here this
evening that doesn't understand the priesthood, these are
the challenges of the word of God.
First Corinthians chapter three and verse 16.
Do you not know that you are a
temple or a sanctuary of God and that
the spirit of God dwells in you?
If any man destroys the temple of God,
God will destroy him for the temple of
God is holy.
And that is what you are.
You are a temple.
Isn't it wonderful?
Isn't it dynamic?
What God has given to us in the
priesthood of the believer in the walk of
faith, we are called priests before God.
And what greater privilege could we have than
this?
God dwells within me.
The spirit of the living God, the Holy
Spirit of God dwells within me.
And through that living Holy Spirit dwelling in
me, I offer up sacrifices to the living
God and the temple.
The temple is to be holy, not desecrated
as in the days of Eli and how
Eli in his blindness allowed things to go
on that he knew should not be.
They should never transpire in the household or
the temple of God.
Present yourselves a living sacrifice.
I was reading in a book not too
long ago, the story of a woman who
was a missionary in Africa a number of
years ago, and she wrote this little commentary
on this verse.
She says, I never really understood this verse
until I saw it in life.
It was the time for the feasts of
thanksgiving.
When all of the natives in that particular
vicinity would come and they would bring to
the Lord, the Christian natives, they would bring
to the Lord offerings of thanksgiving for all
that he had done for them.
Many would bring out of their fields, some
of their crops, some would bring beautiful flowers,
some would bring fruit.
And she said, I stood there that day
and she says, I watched the long line
and all of those carrying the variety of
gifts of thanksgiving sacrifices that they were willing
to offer up.
Because they were things that were important to
them, that they gave out of their lives.
But she said, I saw in that line
a native girl that was very dear to
me.
And she held nothing in her hand.
She held her hands to her side.
But she said her hand was clenched.
And she said, I wondered as she came
close to the place where they were laying
down their various offerings.
She said, I watched her.
I wondered what she was going to give.
And then it was her turn.
And she said, the native girl stretched forth
that clenched hand and out of that clenched
hand came a bright, shiny silver dollar.
And the woman immediately, the missionary, where in
the world would she have gotten that?
For only the wealthy landowners had money.
She said her curiosity would not be still.
So she sought out the girl.
She said to her, I know I should
not ask, but I must ask, where did
you get the silver dollar?
She says, you know, I've heard about so
much what Jesus did for me.
He gave his life for me.
She says, I thought and I thought for
a long time, what could I possibly give
back to him in thankfulness for all he's
given to me?
And she says, only one thing seemed to
satisfy.
She said, I went to the landowner and
I sold myself to him for one year
for a dollar, for that's all he would
give me.
She says, I belong to the landowner for
a year.
I am his servant.
But she says, I have the dollar and
I gave it to him who loved me.
She says, it's a simple sacrifice, but she
says, I wanted to do it.
A girl that was willing to sell herself
to a landowner in servitude for a year,
for a dollar, that she might give it
an offering of thanksgiving.
What an example for us.
She understood the priesthood of the believer far
better than we do often.
Well, here's the challenge.
God calls us to offer up spiritual sacrifices
and that spiritual sacrifices ourselves.
The lessons of Eli and Hophni and Phinehas,
we just barely scratched the surface of the
priesthood, but our time is gone.
Think about your priesthood.
Tomorrow morning, 930, here in this place that
our Lord cherished, we have the opportunity to
exercise our priesthood.
I wonder how many of the men will
accept the responsibility of the priesthood to offer
up sacrifices of praise audibly.
I wonder how many of the ladies in
humbleness before God will silently offer up sacrifices
of praise.
And when we sing together as priests before
the living God, I wonder if the melody
that is in our hearts will be a
sweet savor before God.
Will the incense of our prayers be a
sweet smelling savor in his nostrils?
The priesthood of believers, what a challenge for
us to understand.
And what an opportunity.
What an opportunity.
And most of all, what a privilege.
What a privilege to be a priest before
God.
You know, it's important for us to understand
the priesthood of believers.
For you see, we're going to be priests
before God for all eternity.
Our priesthood here is but a prelude to
our priesthood that is eternal.
For you see, in eternity, our spiritual service
of worship will be to offer praises to
our God, who has provided us an eternal
home.
Heavenly Father, again we come into your presence.
And Father, as we've been reminded sometimes, thy
word is like sandpaper upon our lives.
But yet, our Father, we know that many
times the roughness of our life needs to
be smoothed, and we need to be made
smooth by thy hand.
No, Father, we would pray that this word
that we've heard tonight would not be something
that would gnaw at our hearts, but it
would be something that would encourage us to
better understand what a great and precious privilege
it is to be a priest before thee.
To be able to go past the veil
to the Holy of Holies, unencumbered to see
him in all of his resplendent glory, and
to know him, the God who is truly
the God.
Father, we thank you for the blessing of
this beautiful day and the time that we've
had in fellowship.
And we would pray, our Father, that this
word would have been an encouragement to each
and every heart.
And now, our Father, we pray for thy
hand of blessing upon the remainder of the
evening.
And Father, we would pray that all of
our activities might bring glory and honor to
his precious name, for it's in that name
we pray.
Amen.