Our sermon text this morning is going to come from 1 Samuel, so I'd invite you to open your Bibles with me to 1 Samuel. We'll be looking at verses 12 through 26 of the book of 1 Samuel. Chapter 2 of 1 Samuel, starting in verse 12. This is God's holy and inerrant word. Let's give our attention to it now. Now the sons of Eli were worthless men. They did not know the Lord. The custom of the priests with the people was that when any man offered sacrifice, the priest's servant would come while the meat was boiling with a three-pronged fork in his hand, and he would thrust it into the pan or the kettle or the cauldron or the pot. All that the fork brought up, the priest would take for himself, this is what they did at Shiloh to all the Israelites who came there. Moreover, before the fat was burned, the priest's servant would come and say to the man who was sacrificing, give meat for the priest to roast, for he will not accept boiled meat from you but only raw. And if the man said to him, let them burn the fat first and then take as much as you wish, he would say, no, you must give it now, and if not, I will take it by force. Thus the sin of the young men was very great in the sight of the Lord, for the men treated the offering of the Lord with contempt. Samuel was ministering before the Lord. A boy clothed with a linen ephod, and his mother used to make for him a little robe and take it to him each year when she went up with her husband to offer the yearly sacrifice. Then Eli would bless Elkanah and his wife and say, May the Lord give you children by this woman for the petition she asked of the Lord. So they would return to their home. Indeed, the Lord visited Hannah, and she conceived and bore three sons and two daughters. And the boy Samuel grew in the presence of the Lord. Now Eli was very old, and he kept hearing all that his sons were doing to all Israel and how they lay with the women who were serving at the entrance to the tent of meeting. And he said to them, Why do you do such things? For I hear of your evil dealings from all the people. No, my sons, it is no good report that I hear the people of the Lord spreading abroad. If someone sins against man, God will mediate for him. But if someone sins against the Lord, who can intercede for him? But they would not listen to the voice of their father, for it was the will of God to put them to death. Now the boy Samuel continued to grow both in stature and in favor with the Lord, and also with man. Thus far the reading of God's holy word. Well, beloved congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ, the passage that we have before us this morning records a time of great spiritual darkness in Israel's history. The things of God were being treated with contempt, the text tells us, and the people of God were suffering as a result. It wasn't the outside opposition from the pagan nations coming against the nation of Israel. it wasn't the unrighteousness of the people that surrounded them, but the problem lay within their own gates. The unrighteousness was among them. And it was among the shepherds, the people who had been set apart to serve. The people who had been set apart to serve the people of God and to lead them in their spiritual worship. The darkness is front and center clearly in this text as we read it. The things that are happening in Shiloh are an abomination to the Lord. However, it's important that we see the point of the passage. The author is doing something here that would show us the light shining in the darkness. I'm sure you caught it as we read the text this morning is that there are glimmers of hope that are trickled through the passage, and most importantly, right in the center of our passage, we find this hope. It is the light shining in the darkness where the boy Samuel is ministering before the Lord. The light penetrates the darkness, and we see that the Lord's provision, even in the midst of great spiritual decline and the lack of care for God's name, God delivers His people by providing a faithful priest. And by seeing the light shining in the darkness, we're seeing the point of the passage. We're seeing that God's grace abounds even in the midst of His people being led and kept from worshiping Him. The author is setting up an important contrast for us. And he's doing this in order for us to see the boy Samuel set up in light of the wickedness of Eli's sons. And you and I, we understand the effectiveness of contrast. So we often use contrast, putting one thing against another to make a point. We want to emphasize a certain thing when we're talking to others, things, ideas, concepts, in order to prove our point. It helps us to highlight something specific or showcase a particular aspect. We contrast things like light and darkness and hot and cold and strong and weak. And so the biblical authors do this same thing in order to make a point and to show us something specific to showcase God's grace for us this morning is what we see in the boy Samuel. The authors are teaching us about God, about ourselves, and about the world in which we live. And the book of Samuel can be characterized as just that, a book of contrasts. So we need to get that in our minds as we come to this text this morning because we're going to see that contrast play on itself over and over again. Throughout the book, the author is consistently contrasting two types of people. The one who serves the Lord and the one who rejects the Lord and lives according to his own law. In other words, we see the characteristics of the godly person, the one who fears the Lord and walks according to His commandments. We see that in light of the disobedience of those who had rejected God. So to set the book in its historical context for a minute so we have our bearings, a grasp on what's happening here, we remember that Samuel comes towards the end of the period of the judges. Samuel was really filling this role of prophet, priest, and judge as the last judge of the nation of Israel. With each judge, you remember that there was a cycle, right? There's this cycle of prosperity and then disobedience and then punishment and repentance and restoration. But with each cycle, you remember that as the cycles continued, the spiritual nature of the people of Israel was on the decline. They were continuing to decline. And so the book sits within this time period where the people of Israel were governed by God Himself, but they were requesting a king. They wanted to be like the other nations. They had entered the promised land and they had constructed the tabernacle as the place of God's dwelling. The tribe of Eli was instructed to keep the tabernacle through holy maintenance. And one of these aspects of maintenance was the sacrificial system. Those sacrifices that the Levites were to bring and to offer before the Lord on behalf of the people for their sins and even offerings of thanksgiving and praise. So it's really important that we understand the role of the priests. If we understand the role of the priests when we come to the text and we read, now the sons of Eli were worthless men, we're struck because we know what the priests were set apart to do. Do you see what the author is doing for us so far? It's really important that we understand that the priests were to mediate between God and His people. And as we work through the text, I want us to see this specific point that in the midst of the darkness, God provides a faithful high priest and ultimately a great high priest to mediate between God and His people. Even in the midst of the spiritual darkness, God provides a faithful priest which causes us to look toward the only faithful high priest in Jesus Christ. And we're going to see this theme by looking at three points. We're going to look at the worthless priests, the well-deserved judgments, and the wonderful Savior. The worthless priests first, then we'll look at their well-deserved judgments, but then God's grace toward His people and the wonderful Savior. So first, look with me at verse 12, the worthless priests. Now the sons of Eli were worthless men. They did not know the Lord. Our passage is situated between the prayer of Hannah, who is Samuel's mom, and the Lord rejecting the house of Eli, these worthless men, which is then followed by the Lord calling Samuel to the priesthood. And the author arranges the text to highlight this context in which Samuel is being called. The Lord is rejecting the wicked priest and He is calling Samuel. The sons of Eli were worthless. is what the text tells us. And this phrase, worthless, as our English translates it, is a Hebrew word, Belial. And this term, sons of Belial, the reason I even bring this out is because there's great emphasis here. Eli's sons were sons of Belial. And what that means is that they were closely associated with wickedness. They were associated with evil, worthlessness. But this phrase, Belial, is used once before in the book of Samuel. So I want us to see yet again another contrast. You remember in chapter 1, Eli takes Hannah for being drunk while she is praising God in the tabernacle. And what does Hannah say when Eli takes her for being drunk? She says, do not take me, do not consider your maidservant a wicked woman or a daughter of Belial. The irony here is that Eli mistook Hannah as a daughter of Belial while his very own sons were sons of Belial. So we see this contrast between Eli and Hannah. Hannah presenting her son as a priest before the Lord and Eli's sons, who were the priests, are sons of wickedness. So you see again the contrast. Eli's sons did not know the Lord. And this makes us think back to Pharaoh in Exodus chapter 5. You remember in Exodus chapter 5, Pharaoh says, Who is the Lord that I should obey Him and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, and I will not let Israel go. It's not that Pharaoh didn't know who God of Israel was. It's not that he didn't know the Lord intellectually or in his mind. He had seen even the Lord's power among the people of Israel. Yet, what he means by that he didn't know the Lord is that he was rejecting God and he was setting himself over against the Lord. And he was setting himself up as God. So, like Pharaoh, the sons of Eli, they knew who the Lord was, but they were setting themselves up over against God. And they were leading the people into corruption. So at this point, we need to stop and consider we need to consider the weight of what we're reading here. The weight of the passage. Why is it so bad that Eli and his sons were worthless men? Why is it so bad that those who were set apart to the Lord were living lives marked by sin and rebellion and wickedness? We see here that the spiritual nature of the people of Israel, religion in Israel, had reached an all-time low with this phrase. Those responsible for mediating between God and man were wicked. They were living their own way, causing the people to sin, and the offerings of God were treated with contempt. But the people understood their need to bring these offerings to the Lord. Did you catch that as we read? They wanted to bring these offerings and they were even asking the priest, is this how it should go? And remember, the priest's servant said, it doesn't matter how it should go. This is how we are saying it ought to go. The people understood their need. This is not unlike other places in Scripture where God condemns the shepherds for mishandling their role. You can think of Isaiah 56 or Jeremiah 23 or Ezekiel 34 where the shepherds who were supposed to be feeding and nourishing the sheep were more concerned with themselves and their own selfish gain. The text tells us that instead of feeding the sheep, they were eating the sheep and they were getting fat off of them. That is what we have before us. The priests were taking the sacrifices for themselves and they were getting fat off the offerings that were being brought to the Lord. You may be thinking, but why were these actions of Hophni and Phinehas so bad? We recognize that there is something happening here, but as God's Word told us somewhere else of how things ought to go, what were they breaking? We remember back to Leviticus 7, God commands that the offerings are supposed to go a certain way. Remember, the Lord's portion was the fat. That was to be offered to God and given to the Lord, set aside for Him, and to be burnt as a pleasing aroma. But the priests here are taking as they wish. The second portion was the breast and the thigh, and that was to go to the priest. So it's not as if God had not caused a way for the priest to be provided for. They were to be given a portion of the offering, yet that wasn't enough for them. They were taking all that they wanted and taking it by force. They were rejecting the way that the Lord had commanded the offerings and how they ought to be done. And they were doing this for personal gain. But in verse 16, I mentioned it, that the people understood their need. Look at verse 16. And if the man said to him, let them burn the fat first and then take as much as you wish. So you see here the text is very clear that the people understood that they were to bring the offerings to the Lord and the fat was to be burned first because that was the Lord's portion. Even the people recognized how things ought to go. And they were being kept from worshiping the Lord because of the wickedness of the priests. What was driving the motives of the priests? What was causing them to live with contempt before the offerings of the Lord? What was causing them to reject God's law? Maybe it was their greed. Maybe it was their pride that lured them into placing themselves above God. Were they enticed by their deep-seated, rooted hunger and thirst for evil? What was it? Brothers and sisters, in the sins of the wicked priests, can you see yourself and your desire for things to be your own way? Can you see in yourself a desire for selfish gain? Perhaps this is most evident when we're confronted with God's law and we see that he is holy and we are not. Like the wicked priest, can you think of times that you have been driven by selfishness? That you have been driven to set yourself up above God and have things your own way? Or what about the pride that so easily entangles you and drives yourself to place yourself above others? You see, when we read about the wickedness of the priests, our hearts are laid bare before God because we also have broken his law. The sin of the priests exposes our sin, and we quickly find that under the law we are all condemned and guilty. The sons of Eli had rejected God, and the hardness of their apostasy had made it impossible for them to repent. And though we see our sin in the wicked priests, It's important that we don't miss the point of the passage. What was the point of the passage? That the light shines in the darkness. That God provides where we failed. But first we want to consider this well-deserved judgment. We've seen what the priests were doing. So what was this judgment that they deserved? It was well-deserved because they had broken the law that God had set before them. And we're given more details about the extent of the priest's sin as the narrative unfolds. Eli was made aware of what his sons were doing, verse 22. They were even laying with the women who were at the entrance of the tabernacle. With every verse, we see the sins and the wickedness of the priest piling on itself and piling and piling and coming to a point where we recognize that this is just pure wickedness before us. It's heightened with each detail. And as the high priest, Eli should have executed judgment on his sons immediately. But instead, he offers a half-hearted rebuke. Here we're reminded of how serious God is about the holiness of His tabernacle and the place of worship. Hophni and Phinehas were interfering with the fellowship between God and His people. Look with me at verse 25. This is really the crux of the passage 25. If someone sins against man, God will mediate for him. But if someone sins against the Lord, Who can mediate for him? Who can intercede for him? This is a legal setting. God mediating between two people, and he did this between the priests. But who was it that was supposed to be mediating or interceding between God and man? Well, it was the priests. Are they doing a good job at that? Are they doing what they had been set apart to do? The text is clear. They are not. God created and promised. The reason why this is so important is because God had promised to dwell among His people. And the way that He was dwelling among His people was in the tabernacle where His people would come and offer sacrifices. And the dwelling of God was there and communion with God was there and fellowship with God was there. But the priests were interfering with that. Thus, they deserved judgment. throughout redemptive history we see that this is the best promise that god would be a god to us and to our children and that we would dwell with him and the tabernacle symbolized this very presence of god where the people were communing with their god yet they weren't able to do that because of the wickedness of the priests one of the most important aspects of communion with god in this time was offering of sacrifice for sins before the Lord and them offering sacrifices of thanksgiving. If these sacrifices are not offered, how are the people to dwell before their God? The people are being held from communion. Do you see the weight of the problem? Do you see the issue here? The priests were treating the things of the Lord with contempt, and they should have been judged immediately. And as the narrative continues, we find that the house of Eli was going to be destroyed. But before that, we get again a glimmer of hope that God would not leave his people in this time of disobedience of the priest or the wickedness that the priest were bringing before his people. But instead, that he would provide, he would bring grace to his people by providing a faithful priest. The people of Israel would not be left with wicked priests, but God would send one who was worthy to bring communion or to restore, in some sense, communion between God and His people. And that leads us to our third and final point, which is a wonderful Savior. A wonderful Savior is what God provides in the midst of the wickedness and the depths of the darkness that the priests had descended into. When it seems like all hope of purification had been lost, God provides a faithful priest. The light shining in the darkness and the darkness could not overcome it. We find this glimmer of hope in this boy Samuel who was clothed in a linen ephod, priestly clothes. Look with me at verse 18. This is the central focus of the passage. Verse 18-21. Samuel was ministering before the Lord, a boy clothed with a linen ephod. The boy Samuel had been set apart as a priest to the Lord, which is contrasted with the sons of Eli who were treating the offerings of the Lord with contempt. Whilst Eli and his sons are busy defiling the tabernacle, there the boy Samuel is ministering before the Lord. This is just like the character of our God, is it not? Think of 1 Corinthians 1, 27. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. You see, the foolishness of a boy, a little boy ministering before the Lord is what God uses to shame the wise, to shame the wickedness of the sons of Eli. Samuel is set apart as one who would restore the practices of the tabernacle in some sense. He would restore right worship. So there is hope, but he would still only be able to offer sacrifices. He would still only be able to restore the sacrificial system that had been broken by these priests. But those sacrifices did not effectually take away the sins of the people, Hebrews 10.4. But notice what verse 21 says. The end of verse 21, the second half, and the boy Samuel grew in the presence of the Lord. And look now down at verse 26. Now the boy Samuel continued to grow both in stature and in favor with the Lord and also with man. Do these phrases sound familiar to you? They do because it's the same language that's used of our Lord Jesus in Luke chapter 2. You remember Joseph and Mary, they go up to the temple and when they begin their journey home, the boy Jesus is gone. Where did they find Him? They found Him in the temple. Doing what? Ministering before the Lord. And that chapter ends with Luke saying that Jesus increased in stature and in favor with God and with man. You see, what Luke is doing, he is picking up language. He's not creating his own language, but picking up language from our passage to show this parallel, this foreshadowing that the boy Samuel was looking forward to in the great high priest that we find in Jesus Christ. In the time of religious decline in Israel, God provides an upright priest in Samuel. But ultimately, Samuel causes us to look forward to the great high priest in Jesus our Lord who would restore communion once for all with God and with His people where Samuel could not. He would offer Himself as an unblemished lamb to be crucified for the sins of His people, to be crucified for you. Where communion had been broken because of your sin, Jesus takes your sin upon Himself and bears the wrath of God for you. That you might be saved. This sacrifice would be once and for all. This sacrifice was better because Jesus lays down His own unblemished body. It is better than the high priests, one who would never fail us. In the system that Samuel restored, think of Hebrews 9, gifts and sacrifices are offered that cannot perfect the consciousness of the worshiper. But when Christ appeared as high priests of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent, not made with hands, that is, not of this creation, hear this, He entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of blood of goats and calves, but by the means of His own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. And as we conclude, we remember that God has always promised to dwell among His people. And we see that promise come to a fuller sense, we could say, when Jesus Himself takes on our own flesh, both body and soul, lives perfectly under the law, goes to the cross, lays His life down for our sake, dies, rises again conquering sin and death, ascends to the right hand of the Father from which He rules and reigns now by His Spirit, and that is our hope, people of God. Because Jesus lives perfectly under this law that He came under, He fulfills this law perfectly in order to give us His righteousness. It is not by your own righteousness that you stand before God, but it is the righteousness that has been credited to your account if you are looking to Christ in faith. The good news is that our only hope is in Jesus Christ, who this boy Samuel foreshadowed. The light breaks into the darkness, and we see a glimmer of hope in Samuel, but that causes us to look forward to the one perfect sacrifice in Christ. And as we saw ourselves in the sins of Eli's wicked sons, You remember the weight of that as we considered how we have sinned against God. Well, the Christian turns from themselves to fix our eyes on a wonderful Savior who came to offer Himself for us. To shed His blood on our behalf and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. To forgive our sins and to promise us life everlasting. The wicked priest rejected God, but the Christian leans into and trusts in God's provision. They look away from themselves and look to their faithful Savior. Christian, look to your faithful Savior. Because apart from Him, there is no forgiveness of sins. There is no cleansing of your unrighteousness. and remembering this theme that in the midst of the darkness, God provides a faithful priest, which causes us to look forward to our great high priest to mediate between God and man. We remember that the boy Samuel, a faithful priest, nonetheless foreshadowed the great one who would come that we now have in Jesus. And as we live in light of this accomplishment, the law now comes to us And we are able to live in gratitude because of what God has accomplished for us in Christ. Communion with God was interrupted by the wickedness of the men. However, God intervened and provided a faithful priest to restore this right worship. And it's now in and through our Lord Jesus that we can approach the throne of grace and boldness, seeking communion and fellowship with our God. Let's pray. Father in heaven, as we've considered your word this morning and the ways in which you have shined in the darkness, that you have provided a faithful high priest in Jesus Christ, our Lord, that in and through him we can come, confessing our sins to you, being cleansed from all unrighteousness, the complete remission of our sins because of His person and work. We're thankful, Lord, for You giving us Your Word, revealing the Gospel to us. We're thankful for Your Spirit working in our hearts, causing us to look to You in faith. And we ask, O Lord, that You would strengthen our faith this morning as we consider the work of Christ on our behalf. And we do pray in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.