INTRODUCTION
• SLIDE #1
• Today we as we continue on our journey through The Story, we are still see a nation that is not in good shape.
• Chapter 10 of the Story covers the book of 1 Samuel 1 through the early part of chapter 15. These chapters cover Israel through the circumstances leading up to the birth of the final Judge of Israel, Samuel through Israel’s demand for a worldly king and his subsequent failures.
• The key idea for today’s message is the word DISTORTION.
• The word DISTORTION is defined in the Bing Dictionary as “a change that makes something no longer true or accurate, to change the way something looks, sounds, or behaves so that it becomes strange or difficult to recognize.”
• I do like electric guitar distortion! But usually when something is distorted it is not a good thing.
• WE have seen pictures and most of us have heard music through 8-tracks. Maybe out satellite dish pixelates during a movie. 24! Seeing a distorted picture or hearing music that is distorted is no fun.
• The nation of Israel was to be a model nation for other nations to behold.
• The nation was meant for other nations to be able to see God working through the nation, but Israel was really giving the world a distorted view of God.
• So as we explore 1 Samuel in chapter 10 of the Story we are going to examine three major distortions of the perfect picture God set before His people.
• I want to begin our exploration by first examining…
• SLIDE #2
SERMON
I. The backdrop of the three major distortions.
• 1 Samuel opens with what seems like an episode of Sister Wives. A man named Elkanah (EL KAIN NAH) had two wives Hannah and Peninnah (PEN NIN NAH).
• Hannah was childless and heart-broken. She was having a rough time of it because she was unable to have children up to this point.
• On the other side of the coin the second wife PEN NIN NAH had children and she gave Hannah a lot of trouble and provoked her to a deeper pain.
• When men do not get along, they will fight it out and be done with it, but women, and I saw this when I worked for Square D, when women are upset with one another, they would figuratively paper cut their opponent to death.
• In an episode of Sienfeld, Elaine is talking about how boys fight: they punch and hit each other and then afterwards it’s all over.
• But, she said that women fight by talking behind each other’s backs until one of them develops an eating disorder.
• This is what was happening with Hannah and PEN NIN NAH! Hannah developed an eating disorder, she lost her appetite, and she crying all the time.
• SLIDE #3
• 1 Samuel 1:6–7 (NIV) Because the LORD had closed Hannah’s womb, her rival kept provoking her in order to irritate her. This went on year after year. Whenever Hannah went up to the house of the LORD, her rival provoked her till she wept and would not eat.
• Then of course EL KAIN NAH was ask Hannah why she was crying and not eating? REALLY?
• We are not told exactly why PEN NIN NAH was so mean to her other than the Bible tells us that EL KAIN NAH LOVED Hannah and would give her a double portion when it came time for sacrifices.
• After some more time passed Hannah went to Shiloh she was praying, her lips were moving but no sound was heard.
• She had prayed to God and told Him if He would allow her to have a child, she would dedicate the child to God.
• SLIDE #4
• 1 Samuel 1:11 (NIV) And she made a vow, saying, “LORD Almighty, if you will only look on your servant’s misery and remember me, and not forget your servant but give her a son, then I will give him to the LORD for all the days of his life, and no razor will ever be used on his head.”
• Eli the priest was watching her and accused her of being drunk. Once she explained she was not drunk but praying to God from a broken-heart, Eli sent her on her way and said may God grant her prayer!
• Well, God heard Hannah’s prayer and blessed her with her son, Samuel!
• When Samuel was weaned from his mother, she dropped him off to Eli at the Tabernacle so he could serve the Lord as she promised.
• She would go visit Samuel every year with a new robe!
• SO this leads us to the major distortions of the true picture of God the nation would show.
• The church and Christians if not careful can still inflict these same distortions of God to the world around us.
• Let first look at…
• SLIDE #5
II. The distortion of phoniness.
• The distortion of phoniness can really cause the people in wake of this distortion to get a totally garbled picture of God.
• Eli had some problems in his family that reflected this phoniness. At Shiloh he had two wild sons who were very wicked.
• SLIDE #6
• 1 Samuel 2:12 (NIV) Eli’s sons were scoundrels; they had no regard for the LORD.
• These kids were making up their own rules and they would take bribes so they also would pervert justice.
• These young men who were supposed to be priests were morally bankrupt, they were even sexually immoral
• SLIDE #7
• 1 Samuel 2:22 (NIV) Now Eli, who was very old, heard about everything his sons were doing to all Israel and how they slept with the women who served at the entrance to the tent of meeting.
• The whole nation saw these phonies and knew of their antics. DO you know what is really sad, Eli did nothing to stop it.
• He did try to talk with them, but he really did nothing.
• When God shared His judgment against Eli and his boys, He stated that was part of the problem.
• SLIDE #8
• 1 Samuel 3:13–14 (NIV) For I told him that I would judge his family forever because of the sin he knew about; his sons blasphemed God, 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.’ ”
• Eventually God did judge them, the boy were killed in battle, and the Ark of the Covenant was captured by the Philistines.
• As for Eli, upon hearing about his sons then the Ark, fell over backwards and broke his neck. This is found in 1 Samuel 3-4.
• Eli was the spiritual leader of Israel who could not even control his own kids. His sons had the outward garb or appearance of religion, but they were fake on the inside.
• There is a difference between struggling in your faith and being fake, God knew at their core, Hophni and Phineas were as fake as they came.
• When we are not genuine in our faith people will get a distorted view of God.
• The Westboro Baptist church, who has made a name protesting at the funeral of some of our hero’s and are spreading a message of hate, people see God in a different light or they lump all Christians in with those folks.
• We need to be authentic, when we are not we distort the picture of God. Authenticity does not mean we NEVER stumble, but it means we strive to live for Jesus and when we stumble, we repent and make a course correction.
• We must and we do live what we believe! Outward appearances will not cut it, we need to really live out or faith!
• The next major distortion is…
• SLIDE #9
III. The distortion of conformity.
• Time goes on, Eli died years ago, and actually 20 years had passed since the Ark had been returned to the nation and was moved to KIR E ATH- JEAR IM.
• We are told the whole house of Israel was starting to seek God. This was God’s opening to use Samuel to deliver Israel as its’ final judge.
• SLIDE #10
• 1 Samuel 7:3–4 (NIV) So Samuel said to all the Israelites, “If you are returning to the LORD with all your hearts, then rid yourselves of the foreign gods and the Ashtoreths and commit yourselves to the LORD and serve him only, and he will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines.” 4 So the Israelites put away their Baals and Ashtoreths, and served the LORD only.
• Time goes on, all seems to be going fairly well, but a problem was developing. Samuel was getting old so he appointed his sons to Judge over Israel, Joel and Abijah.
• SLIDE #11
• 1 Samuel 8:3–5 (NIV) But his sons did not follow his ways. They turned aside after dishonest gain and accepted bribes and perverted justice. So all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah. They said to him, “You are old, and your sons do not follow your ways; now appoint a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have.”
• Sound familiar?
• So the people are not too keen of these boys ruling over them. The people decide that rather than trust God, they wanted a king and did you catch the end of verse 5?
• now appoint a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have.”
• Samuel is upset! He feels the people are rejecting HIM! But that was not the case.
• SLIDE #12
• 1 Samuel 8:7 (NIV) And the LORD told him: “Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king.
• The people want to be led by a guy who looks the part. They want what the other nations had, they wanted a front man!
• WE MUST protect ourselves from the distortion of conformity.
• Don’t aim to be like everyone else. God’s people are to be distinct. We are not called to be like other people. We are God’s unique people. We are citizens of heaven, we cannot allow the world to swallow us up and make us irrelevant.
• Our mission to reach lost people is too important!
• The final distortion we see is…
• SLIDE #13
IV. The distortion of misrepresentation.
• In chapters 9-15 we see that God gives the people what they wanted and we will see the consequences of that fateful decision for the people.
• God allows the people to have a king (permissive will) though it was not God’s perfect will.
• Samuel anoints Saul who is empowered by the Spirit to defeat the Ammonites. 1 Samuel 11:1-11
• Saul was good looking, he was tall, a head taller than anyone else. He looked the part. The people were pleased, God gave them the empty suit they were looking for.
• It seems like a good move, Saul is winning battles and doing Old Spice Commercials. He is looking good! But Saul has a real flaw.
• Saul disobeys God by not obeying God’s command to destroy the Amalekites for their sin. 1 Samuel 15
• God told him to completely destroy the Amalekites for some previous sin against Israel when they left Egypt. Saul was to kill everyone and take nothing.
• Saul was 0 for 2!
• Since God promised all of the Amalekites would be destroyed, Saul by his disobedience misrepresented God to the surrounding nations. So God rejects Saul as King.
• SLIDE #14
• 1 Samuel 15:26 (NIV) But Samuel said to him, “I will not go back with you. You have rejected the word of the LORD, and the LORD has rejected you as king over Israel!”
• We, too, are representatives of God to the world. When we disobey God we distort God to the world. Let us be like Samuel who obeyed God and not like Saul who disobeyed God.
• The rejection of Saul leads us into Chapter 11, next week!
CONCLUSION
• When Hannah was able to have a child, from a lower story perspective it looked like God was just being nice to a desperate housewife, which in part is true.
• Hannah follow through with her word and gives Samuel to the Lord, by the way, Hannah had five more children!
• The whole time God’s upper story is being played out, even when the people cried out for a king, it did not look good.
• The best thing for the nation would have been for God to be their king, but they did not want that. Plus God does not tax like a king!
• But even through that issue, God had His plan, even when Saul failed miserably, God’s upper story was still in play because it was going to open the door for a young man whom we have heard of before, David to be king!
• From the line of David will come Jesus!
• Let’s not make it harder for people to see God than it already can be. Let’s show the world a true picture of the God we serve. NO phoniness, no conformity to the word, and no misrepresentation of Jesus!
• Let’s give the world the most clear undistorted picture of God that we can possible give them!
