Daily Manna: Eli's Compromise. Friday 29, November 2013

Daily Manna: Eli's Compromise
Friday 29, November 2013
TEXT: 1 SAMUEL 2:20-36

KEY VERSE: “Wherefore kick ye at my sacrifice and at mine offering, which I have commanded in my habitation; and honourest thy sons above me, to make yourselves fat with the chiefest of all the offerings of Israel my people?” (1 Samuel 2:29).

Someone once wrote: ‘some sins, like the falling of heavy burden in still water, produce wider and more violent effects than do others. The effect is always pernicious but when prominent men and professed servants of God sin, the consequences are painfully and conspicuously injurious’.

In the earlier verses of this chapter, we read about the nature of the sin of Eli’s two sons and how they carried them out with recklessness and mindless frivolities. In an apparent sinful acquiescence, Eli their father had only said: “I hear of your evil dealings, by all this people” (verse 23). He could have gone ahead to invoke the necessary penalty. Yet, he curiously refused to do so.

On the other hand, Hannah and her husband never relented in their desire that Samuel should turn out an acceptable servant of God as they continued to visit him with precious and encouraging presents. Little wonder then, the Lord visited Hannah so that she conceived and bare three sons and two daughters. They lent one child, Samuel, to the Lord and got five back. What a gracious God!

Our text teaches us some very vital lessons on sowing and reaping. The lending of the child Samuel to the Lord resulted in a more bountiful blessings as the woman who was mocked for her barrenness became a mother of six.

But Eli’s failure both as a father and a minister of God to discipline his sinful sons attracted God’s judgment upon the entire family. Disrespect and disregard for the priesthood will always attract a just recompense of judgment from the Lord who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity. Paradoxically, the laity who walk humbly and justly with a contrite disposition will surely receive a glorious upliftment from God.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: It is safer to daily work out one’s salvation with fear and trembling.

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