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I was reading through the beginning of 1 Samuel with a friend yesterday, and I was amazed by how applicable these stories could be if I just meditated on them for a while. There’s the inspiration of the surrendering Hannah in chapter 1, who took joy in giving her child to God, and there’s the pointing to the Messiah in 2:25 and 2:35. But even more mind-blowing to me was the story of Eli.

To give some context, Eli was an old priest, and he had two sons who were very disobedient in their priestly jobs. So Eli confronted them and tried to reason with them, and just check out what the Bible says about his sons in the second part of 2:25. “But they would not listen to the voice of their father, for it was the will of the Lord to put them to death.”

That’s insane. And that’s not all. In chapter 3, God appears to Samuel, a young boy at the time, and gives him a message. “Behold, I am about to do a thing in Israel at which the two ears of everyone who hears it will tingle. On that day I will fulfill against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house, from beginning to end. And I declare to him that I am about to punish his house forever, for the iniquity that he knew, because his sons were blaspheming God, and he did not restrain them. Therefore I swear to the house of Eli that the iniquity of Eli’s house shall not be atoned for by sacrifice or offering forever.”

That scared me out of my skin. God swore that the sins of Eli’s family would not be atoned for by sacrifice or offering forever. We often refer to Jesus as our substitutionary atonement.  It seems pretty clear that this did not apply to Eli’s family. In other words, Eli’s family is going to hell. God swore it. And so I wonder, what would be the proper reaction to such a message from the Lord? Let’s look at what Eli did. Starting from v15…

“Samuel lay until morning; then he opened the doors of the house of the Lord. And Samuel was afraid to tell the vision to Eli. But Eli called Samuel and said, ‘Samuel, my son.’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’ And Eli said, ‘What was it that he told you? Do not hide it from me. May God do so to you and more also if you hide anything from me of all that he told you.’ So Samuel told him everything and hid nothing from him. And he said, ‘It is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him.’”

Eli’s response was, “It is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him.” That is the true recognition of God’s sovereignty. Even when God has pitted it all against you, simply recognize that God is in control, and comply with his plan. If it is the Lord’s will, how can we run against it? How can we cry “injustice” into the face of the God of justice?

I’ve heard people say to me that they could never follow a God who condemns people to hell. But the issue isn’t God but us. God has told us in the Bible that he condemns people to hell. That’s been the case ever since the world began. The issue is whether or not we are going to follow such a God. If God told me somehow that my parents were going to hell, or if my brothers were going to hell, it would definitely be something I would wrestle with, but at the end of the day, I would have to admit, “It is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him.” Does not Jesus say in Matthew 10:37, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me”? It’s a hard truth, but Jesus asks for our all. Even if God’s good runs contrary to what we believe is good, it must pass. And we must watch it pass.

- Larry

Someone once told me, and I think I’ve talked about this here before, that pet peeves often point to something that is wrong within the individual who is having that pet peeve. This theory has proved correct once again.

Here are some past pet peeves of mine.
- People who are stuck up.
- People who show off.
- People who are quick to give instruction to others though they are not of competence in the subject matter, especially in a large group setting, probably to portray that they are more competent than they actually are.

Now I’ve been becoming more aware of another pet peeve. I get turned off by people who spend most of their conversations talking about themselves.

When two or more friends bump into each other, there often is the usual fake filler material. “How are you doing” and “what do you have going on today” and the like. But after that, it seems like when people realize that they’ve done a good enough job portraying themselves as decently polite and friendly, they relax back into their true selves. And these specific people who annoy me start talking about their lives as if they were all that mattered. These end up to be one-way conversations, where one individual does most of the informative talking, and the other individual(s) politely compliments here and there with “yeah I know” or “totally.” As if it were a charismatic preacher and a couple of “amens.” Here’s an example to show you what I mean.

“You know today I was with Freddie McDonald, and I was so hungry and wanted to go out, but he was like, ‘Wait I gotta finish my problem set.’ As if he was actually doing it or something. He was like texting at the same time. And he had to go take a crap because he had beans last night or something. And I had to wait for like thirty–no–forty-five minutes starving to death. I didn’t even have lunch that day because that same idiot girl in my math class needed help again. I don’t even know why I help her. She doesn’t even seem to try. I swear, it’s such a joke that she even got into Cornell. And since we’re on the topic of people who annoy me, that math professor ran late today again. I’m gonna start going to the 12:00 lecture, because I can’t stand this guy. Plus, I’ve never met such a boring guy in my life.”

Note: I am only referring to casual conversations. This is irrelevant to sermons or presentations or anything like that.

I’ve been thinking about this recently, and like most pet peeves, I’ve been coming to see that the problem is in me just as much as it is in them. I’ve been catching myself interjecting into the conversation and almost changing the topic in order to talk about myself. Or sometimes we’ve been talking about myself, the conversation moves on, and I interject and return the conversation back to myself. It’s so ridiculous I can’t believe I never noticed it before.

Here’s why I think this is dangerous. If a conversation takes up time, and if time is money, and if a person is spending the majority of the conversation on himself, what does that mean? It means he is valuing himself more than anybody else who is participating in the conversation. That’s really what it comes down to. But here’s the thing. No man has the right to value himself more than anybody else. We have plenty of words to describe them. Pride, bigotry, and self-righteousness are a few.

There is one exception, and that is God. The reason why Jesus could say stuff like “I am the light of the world” and “I am the good shepherd” was because he actually was more important than the people he was talking to. Not only was he important, but he was beneficial. It was for the good of his audience that he was talking about himself, because their whole lives were dependent on his identity. Jesus had to be who he was in order for people to be saved from eternal damnation. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary that Jesus talked about himself.

But if it was any other person, what reason can he have to direct the conversation to himself? Can any other person honestly redirect a conversation to himself, afterwards claiming that his audience’s eternal damnation was on the line? I don’t think so. Nobody is in that position of authority.

If a man does talk about anybody, he talks about Jesus. Why? In the Christian walk, a man is realizing daily the magnificence of God, and he is realizing daily the magnificence lacking in himself. Therefore he will realize how unnecessary it is to talk about himself and how necessary it is to talk about God. But how do you get to talking about God? Start by talking about them. Why? This is how they know you love them. This is how to rejoice in their joys, to suffer in their sufferings. After all, that’s what Jesus did.

This is all over the the book of John. In John 4, Jesus talks to a Samaritan woman about her previous husbands, and then he tells her that he is the Messiah. In John 6, Jesus feeds the five thousand, and the next day he says he is the bread of life. In John 9, Jesus heals a blind man, and then, more than thirty verses later, he tells him he is the Son of Man. In John 11, Jesus has conversations with Martha and Mary, weeps with them, and then he raises Lazarus from the dead to show that he was the resurrection and the life.

So when having good (in the eternal sense) encounters with people, this is how it works. 1) Talk about them. 2) Talk about Jesus. Talking about yourself just loses its worth.

- Larry