I'm not God

This morning I was reading through 1 Samuel. In it, I was learning about the priest and judge over Israel: Eli. He was a judge over Israel for around 40 years and is best known for confirming to Hannah that she would have a son and going on to disciple Hannah's son Samuel, training him to be a priest. Samuel grew up to be the last and greatest judge of Israel and anointed Israel's first two kings.

While Eli was certainly successful in rearing Samuel, the same can not be said for his two sons Hophni and Phinehas, who were raised to be priests. While serving in the temple, they defrauded the Israelites who came to offer sacrifices, became corrupted by their positions of power and authority, slept with women who served at the temple, and had no regard for the Lord. Eli lacked in his paretning abilities. Rather than correcting his sons with firm discipline, he let them carry on with their wicked schemes.

Here's where it gets interesting. God comes to Samuel and says this, "See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make the ears of everyone who hears of it tingle. At that time I will carry out against Eli everything I spoke against his family--from beginning to end. For I told him that I would judge his family forever because of the sin he knew about; his sons made themselves contemptible and he failed to restrain them. Therefore, I swore to the house of Eli, 'The guilt of Eli's house will never be atoned for by sacrifice or offering.'" 1 Samuel 3: 11-14.

Earlier, a man of God had prophesied that Eli's lineage would be cut off and that his two sons would both die on the same day. So, in the previous passage, God is confirming to Samuel that he is about to carry out this plan.

After God spoke to Samuel, Eli asked Samuel to share with him everything that God had said, hiding nothing. Samuel told him everything and Eli's immediate response is, "He is the Lord; let him do what is good in his eyes." 1 Samuel 3:18b

Eli's response leapt off the page when I read it. Samuel tells him that God is about to destroy his family (his two sons are killed in battle shortly thereafter and Eli himself dies the same day). Eli doesn't throw a conniption fit, give excuses as to why he failed to raise his sons to fear the Lord, and he doesn't go on and on about it not being fair etc. Instead, he immediately acknowledges that God is the Lord and he will do what is good in his eyes. This blows me away! He accepted God's plan calling him sovereign Lord. For all his faults, he understood that God is God alone and he is the sovereign ruler over all the earth.

I confess that I often try to be the god of my universe. When something happens that I deem as unfair to me, I am very likely to throw a little fit about it. How I long to be more like Eli! I want to constantly affirm that God is God. God is good. God is sovereign. God's ways are above my ways. I can't fathom what he has done from beginning to end.

Lord, make me more like Eli, trusting in your sovereignty!

"For my thoughts are not your thougts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the Lord. "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." Isaiah 55:8-9