One of the qualifications for leadership in the church that
Paul set forth for Timothy's consideration was that the leader needed to have
control of his family, his children needed to be examples also. Eli apparently didn't believe that. His sons didn't know the Lord and they
treated the law with contempt and in doing so brought dishonor on the Name of
the Lord, the giver of the Law. These
two also slept with the women who served the needs of the tabernacle. Remember back to the day Eli saw Hannah
praying and concluded she was drunk.
Here, what he says to his sons isn't that he saw what they were doing
and was angry with them, it was because of what he heard others saying about
them that caused him to warn them. How
could he miss such obvious things as this and only hear of them
second-hand? In spite of this failure,
the little boy Samuel flourished in the service of God, kept from the sins of
these two.
Every time I read this I think how it must have been for the
men who asked this ridiculous hypothetical question when they saw Jesus at the
right hand of God. What a horrible thing
to realize how silly and misguided you were because you failed to believe in
anything more than scientific principles, that nothing could be literally
super-natural. Belief in the
resurrection requires something more than knowledge of science, that life, once
dead, can be re-established. Our faith
is that there is more to life than science can know. As we know not how we came to be, we affirm
that we also know not what comes next by scientific investigation. The Bible tells us what comes next and Jesus'
resurrection from the dead affirms it as true.
He, however, pointed to scripture that they affirmed and the question
then was turned on them, did they believe the Word of God or not? Leaders must affirm truth as revealed in the
Word or they should not be leaders in the church.
Some asked the right question, "What does this
mean?" Interpretation is always
key. Experiences always have to be
evaluated. They observe that the men
speaking are Galileean so there would be an expectation that they would be
speaking a particular dialect. They
hear, however, in their own languages from all over the known world, all hear
and understand in their own language.
That cannot be true in the natural so they ask the right question. Some, however, mock and say they must be
drunk. What a silly statement, it
doesn't answer the question at all. The
hearing and understanding is what must be explained, not the speaking. Peter knows the Word and the Spirit took him
to the right place in Joel to explain the situation. In this first part of the sermon no one has
to affirm Jesus, only that the Word of God is true and this experience is in
keeping with the Word. The leaders of
the people were about to be shown to be more like sons of Eli, in it for
themselves.
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