Be a Godly Influence | 1 Samuel 4-7

January 14, 2020

INTRODUCTION

In a world dominated by social media, YouTube stars, and Instagram influencers, the quest for influence has reached unprecedented heights. Many vie for attention, seeking to shape opinions and lifestyles through their social media presence. Yet amidst this digital revolution of influencers, we, God’s children are called to be godly influencers. Drawing inspiration from the biblical narrative of 1 Samuel 4-7, we’ll explore the contrasting examples of Eli and Samuel, highlighting principles for becoming impactful leaders and influencers who reflect God’s character in our modern context.

There is really three main parts to these four chapters.

Battle A: 1 Samuel 4; Israel under the leadership of Eli.

Battle B: 1 Samuel 7; Israel under the leadership of Samuel.

Intermission: 1 Samuel 5-6; The ark of the covenant.

We observe in these chapters a stark contrast between the first battle which ended in defeat when Eli was influencing the nation and the second battle when Samuel was influencing the nation which ended in victory and built up their faith. So it is a tale of two leaders and both of these men are described in these chapters as judges;1 Samuel 5:18 & 1 Samuel 7:17.

Did the outcome of these battles have anything to do with the spiritual health of the nation at that time?

Did Eli and Samuel as leaders influence the spiritual health of the nation at that time?

Do these battles have any correlation to our own lives?

Battle A: Eli as the influencer on Israel

1 Samuel 4

We find that Israel is in a state of defeat before the Philistines. They are defeated, grieving, feeling vulnerable. About 4000 men have died on the battle field. We meet the Philistines for the first time here in 1 Samuel, although it is not the first time that we meet them. We see them multiple times in the book of Judges and they are not a new adversary. They go back all the way to the days of Abraham.

In 1 Samuel 4, Israel is losing to the Philistines. No nation wants to remain in a state of defeat because the next stage after defeat is captivity, so you don’t want to remain there.

1 Samuel 4:3

³When the soldiers returned to camp, the elders of Israel asked, “Why did the Lord bring defeat on us today before the Philistines? Let us bring the ark of the Lord’s covenant from Shiloh, so that he may go with us and save us from the hand of our enemies.”

I want you to note that they did not wait for an answer from the Lord but they determined a strategy immediately. “Let us bring the ark of the covenant of the Lord here from Shiloh that it may come among us and save us from the power of our enemies.”

First of all note where their faith is fixed. “Let us bring the ark of the covenant that it may save us from the Philistines.” So they are placing their faith in this item that they want to use as a mascot or as a lucky charm in war, so that is improper.

The next thing we look at the timing. There did not seem to be any time for them to listen or to wait. Do you remember what Samuel said? Samuel said, “Speak Lord for your servant is listening.” Listening means we are listening until we hear, but they seemed to just move right on.

APPLICATION

Now, I have done this, perhaps you have done it too. You have a dilemma, you begin to pray and before you even start to pray, you have an idea and you begin to execute your brilliant idea. It is easy to do, so I cannot blame them too much and yet we remember it is improper.

How could they have listened in this moment? Well I want to say somethings that is worth listening to. God speaks through what he has already spoken and that is true for us today. God what he has already spoken, for us it is the Bible, it was the same thing for them, the Torah. Listen, they had the law, they knew the proper use of the ark of the covenant, they knew what it was for, they knew that the intention of it was for the spiritual health of the nation. They could have stopped and listened to God what he had already spoken, but they did not. So we don’t want to make that same mistake.

1 Samuel 4:4

So the people sent men to Shiloh, and they brought back the ark of the covenant of the Lord Almighty, who is enthroned between the cherubim. And Eli’s two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, were there with the ark of the covenant of God.

1 Samuel 4:5

When the ark of the Lord’s covenant came into the camp, all Israel raised such a great shout that the ground shook.

They were super pumped. Well the Philistines also heard they were excited. They could hear this and they were also superstitious people and so they said in verse 7.

1 Samuel 4:7

…the Philistines were afraid. “A god has come into the camp,” they said. “Oh no! Nothing like this has happened before.

They were afraid and then we have these 6 words that define this battle in verse 10.

1 Samuel 4:10

So the Philistines fought, and the Israelites were defeated and every man fled to his tent. The slaughter was very great; Israel lost thirty thousand foot soldiers.

30,000 deaths. That means that there was probably not a family that did not lose a husband or a father or a son or a brother. Thirty thousand fighting men, this is an enormous defeat.

1 Samuel 4:11

The ark of God was captured, and Eli’s two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, died.

A man from Benjamin ran to Shiloh with the news of this battle. He came to 98-year-old blind Eli and in verse 17 his message was this

1 Samuel 4:17

The man who brought the news replied, “Israel fled before the Philistines, and the army has suffered heavy losses. Also your two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, are dead, and the ark of God has been captured.”

1 Samuel 4:18

When he mentioned the ark of God, Eli fell backward off his chair by the side of the gate. His neck was broken and he died, for he was an old man, and he was heavy. He had led Israel forty years.

He was a leader, the judge of Israel for 40 years.

Eli was not a good leader and it is no wonder that Israel was struggling because their leader was struggling. God’s leaders need to learn to do what is right, to do the right thing.

This is why Paul gave Titus those qualifications for the area that he was ministering.

Titus 1:6-9

⁶An elder must be blameless, faithful to his wife, a man whose children believe and are not open to the charge of being wild and disobedient. ⁷Since an overseer manages God’s household, he must be blameless—not overbearing, not quick-tempered, not given to drunkenness, not violent, not pursuing dishonest gain. ⁸Rather, he must be hospitable, one who loves what is good, who is self-controlled, upright, holy and disciplined. ⁹He must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it.

How can you manage the church of God or the nation of God if you cannot manage your own house. Eli we learnt could not manage his own house. He could not manage his sons. It is said that he honoured them above the Lord.

So battle A can be summarized now with a few words that Phinehas’s wife says as she went into labour, she gave birth and out of her pain and grief she named her child ‘Ichabod.’

1 Samuel 4:19-22

¹⁹His daughter-in-law, the wife of Phinehas, was pregnant and near the time of delivery. When she heard the news that the ark of God had been captured and that her father-in-law and her husband were dead, she went into labor and gave birth, but was overcome by her labor pains. ²⁰As she was dying, the women attending her said, “Don’t despair; you have given birth to a son.” But she did not respond or pay any attention.

²¹She named the boy Ichabod, saying, “The Glory has departed from Israel”—because of the capture of the ark of God and the deaths of her father-in-law and her husband.

²²She said, “The Glory has departed from Israel, for the ark of God has been captured.”

Very, very sad. Thirty thousand men are dead, Hophni and Phinehas died, Eli died, the ark of God was captured. The woman was right, the glory had departed from Israel. From the time at the base of mount Sinai when the ark was built until now this has never happened. So this is a big deal.

The Ark:

First of all the ark is a box that was plated in gold, but there were two cherubim on top and they were solid gold. So imagine solid gold cherubim on top, this was a heavy object. But the ark was to Israel what the heart is to a human body. It was the most precious place in the holy of holies, it was the mercy seat, it was the location the place of the propitiation of sins on the day of atonement

“He who sits enthroned on the cherubim.”

1 Samuel 4:4 is the last time the ark is referred to as the ark of the covenant of the Lord of hosts. Twenty eight more times it will be called the ark of God or the ark, but never the ark of the covenant. Until we get to 2 Samuel 15 and there is a new priest named Zadok that will be carrying the ark. But it is interesting the terminology changed.

It was a terrible thing, it was tragic. What would Israel do now? They did not have this heartbeat of their covenant with God. It had been captured.

APPLICATION

Is not that the way our lives go sometimes? We keep moving along in life until we lose something really significant and does that get our attention.

Intermission

Now we are going to come to the intermission: It is all about this capture of the ark of the covenant. Two chapters on how God deals with the situation. Chapter 5 begins this way.

1 Samuel 5:1-2

¹After the Philistines had captured the ark of God, they took it from Ebenezer to Ashdod. ²Then they carried the ark into Dagon’s temple and set it beside Dagon.

Who is Dagon? He is an ancient demigod that has been around for a long time, since about the days of Abraham. He had the head of a fish and the body of a man. I think that that was to express the god of land and sea kind of a thing, and he was also revered as the god of Baal. They built a temple to him and the Philistines put the ark in the temple of Dagon either to add to their collection of Gods, trophies or to offer it to Dagon like, “look what we brought you, you have subdued this God.”

Remember that these writings were originally meant to be heard. They did not have this printed, it was passed down, it was recited, it was read to people. I can only imagine how much the young people loved getting to this next part.

1 Samuel 5:3

When the people of Ashdod rose early the next day, there was Dagon, fallen on his face on the ground before the ark of the Lord! They took Dagon and put him back in his place.

Dagon falls face down and they had to get up in the morning and put him back up.

1 Samuel 5:4

But the following morning when they rose, there was Dagon, fallen on his face on the ground before the ark of the Lord! His head and hands had been broken off and were lying on the threshold; only his body remained.

God was making a statement because the Philistines thought that they had defeated the God of the Hebrews but God was beginning to show them that he was actually defeating them in this.

1 Samuel 5:6

The Lord’s hand was heavy on the people of Ashdod and its vicinity; he brought devastation on them and afflicted them with tumors

Some translation say he smote them with emerods, the King James says, is basically a haemorrhoidal tumors or dysentery.

This is dreadful. When the Philistines realized they were having these problems, they just began moving the ark from city to city. So it went from Ashdod, Gath, Ekron but the people of Ekron said, “No we need to talk this over.”

1 Samuel 5:11

So they called together all the rulers of the Philistines and said, “Send the ark of the god of Israel away; let it go back to its own place, or it will kill us and our people.” For death had filled the city with panic; God’s hand was very heavy on it.

1 Samuel 6:1

¹When the ark of the Lord had been in Philistine territory seven months, (The ark had been in Philistine territory for 7 months. The finally call the priests and diviners to figure out what to do with the ark of the Lord.) ²the Philistines called for the priests and the diviners and said, “What shall we do with the ark of the Lord? Tell us how we should send it back to its place.”

³They answered, “If you return the ark of the god of Israel, do not send it back to him without a gift; by all means send a guilt offering to him. Then you will be healed, and you will know why his hand has not been lifted from you.”

⁴The Philistines asked, “What guilt offering should we send to him?”

They replied, “Five gold tumors and five gold rats, according to the number of the Philistine rulers, (the Philistines had 5 cities and each had a Lord) because the same plague has struck both you and your rulers. ⁵Make models of the tumors and of the rats that are destroying the country, and give glory to Israel’s god. Perhaps he will lift his hand from you and your gods and your land. ⁶Why do you harden your hearts as the Egyptians and Pharaoh did? When Israel’s god dealt harshly with them, did they not send the Israelites out so they could go on their way.

They did learn from history. They did know history and they learnt from it. They were making a complete parallel between what was going on right now in the Philistine territory and what had gone on when Israel was in Egypt. They knew about the plagues in Egypt. They looked at that history and they said there was lice and there was frogs and there was all these gnats and all these things and Pharaoh hardened his heart and would not let the people go. So, these priests were saying don’t do that, that did not work out well. Don’t be like those people, don’t be stubborn.

So the plague was all over the Philistine territory and it does seem true that it was a plague of animals that God had sent.

The Philistines wanted nothing more to do with this trophy of war. They could not just bury it in the ground. They could not abandon it. They could not send it back in a military procession and so the consultants came up with an idea. They said you need to know for sure that their God has taken it back.

So here is our idea, here is what you do, you built a cart you get yourself two cows, cows that have never towed a cart, much less pulled it together and cows that have young at home so they are towing against nature, and you get this all organized with your boxes of gold things and you send it on the way.

1 Samuel 6:10-14

¹⁰So they did this. They took two such cows and hitched them to the cart and penned up their calves. ¹¹They placed the ark of the Lord on the cart and along with it the chest containing the gold rats and the models of the tumors. ¹²Then the cows went straight up toward Beth Shemesh, keeping on the road and lowing all the way; they did not turn to the right or to the left. The rulers of the Philistines followed them as far as the border of Beth Shemesh. ¹³Now the people of Beth Shemesh were harvesting their wheat in the valley, and when they looked up and saw the ark, they rejoiced at the sight. ¹⁴The cart came to the field of Joshua of Beth Shemesh, and there it stopped beside a large rock. The people chopped up the wood of the cart and sacrificed the cows as a burnt offering to the Lord.

An interesting little side note is that many scholars think that this great stone that was there is actually the very same great stone that Manoah and his wife offered that fellowship offering when the angel of God came and told them they were going to have Samson. But in verse 15

1 Samuel 6:15-16

¹⁵The Levites took down the ark of the Lord, together with the chest containing the gold objects, and placed them on the large rock. On that day the people of Beth Shemesh offered burnt offerings and made sacrifices to the Lord. ¹⁶The five rulers of the Philistines saw all this and then returned that same day to Ekron.

So it was a great day. It was a miraculous return. But in that moment not everyone treated the ark with respect.

1 Samuel 6:19

But God struck down some of the inhabitants of Beth Shemesh, putting seventy of them to death because they looked into the ark of the Lord. The people mourned because of the heavy blow the Lord had dealt them.

Instead of realising what they had done wrong and repenting, apologizing; it seems to me that what these people did in this moment is, they blamed God. Because they could not live the way they wanted to look at what they wanted to and do what they wanted to without the discipline of the Lord coming. So instead of saying, “We should not have done that, we know better.”

1 Samuel 6:20

And the people of Beth Shemesh asked, “Who can stand in the presence of the Lord, this holy God? To whom will the ark go up from here?”

Like who among us does not do wrong, this was so unfair of him to do this.

To whom will the ark go up from here?”

What they were saying was we don’t want this among us. We would just as soon have distance between us and God. What about those people in Kiriath Jearim. They seem to be kind of holy people, may be they will want it. We don’t want to live with this among us.

APPLICATION

We can have a similar response today. We want to do something, it brings a discipline of the Lord and sometimes rather than recognizing that and repenting and saying, “Oh! I am in the wrong, your in the right. I am going to change my ways.” We blame God and we distance God, out of sight, out of mind and that is what they did.

1 Samuel 7:1-2

So the men of Kiriath Jearim came and took up the ark of the Lord. They brought it to Abinadab’s house on the hill and consecrated Eleazar his son to guard the ark of the Lord. ²The ark remained at Kiriath Jearim a long time twenty years in all. Then all the people of Israel turned back to the Lord.

Twenty years without church, 20 years without their covenant being fulfilled, 20 years without the day of atonement, propitiation for sins.

Battle B: Samuel as the Influencer of Israel

Samuel is now the influencer over Israel. Eli died a long time ago. Years have passed and what we find encouraging is the people are lamenting after the Lord.

APPLICATION

Sometimes it takes a loss in our lives, it takes the loss of something in order for us to pay attention and to lament after the Lord and say, “I don’t want it to be this way, I need to change.” Israel needed a revival and revival begins with the sense that something is missing. That is how revival begins, a sense that something is missing in my life that I need a closer connection with the Lord, that God is absent from my life.

I want us to play close attention to this battle:

1 Samuel 7:3

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.”

I want to linger on verse 3, and see this phrase-by-phrase for our benefit because the Philistine problem parallels for us, problems that we have in our life. It is a parallel with the temptations that we have in our life with the flesh and the world and the devil. Those are our Philistines. We want to be victorious, but we don’t always do the right things, so we are not always victorious. Samuel was a godly leader and he gave excellent advice.

Return to the Lord.

1 Samuel 7:3

This is an honest question for us to ask ourselves. We experience distance from God, we all do. Sometimes it is unintentional, unintentional distance from God. What do I mean by that?, like for example our culture. Our culture has kind of stripped away so many of the things of the Lord. Our culture is growing very, very different. That is an unintentional distance from the Lord.

Look at all those people in Israel, it was not in their mind to send the ark of the covenant into battle, they did not want to do that, it just happened. It was what it was and they had to live all those 20 plus years having a distance from the Lord. So there is some unintentional things that come into our lives.

Secondly, on top of it we purposefully create distance from the Lord by ignoring or removing things of the Lord. This is what the people of Beth Shemesh did. God disciplined them and they said, “No we don’t want any of it and they distanced, they specifically said, “Send that ark away, we want distance between us and God because we want to live the way we want, we want to look at what we want, and we want to do what we want.”

APPLICATION

This happens to us we need to return to the Lord.

With All Your Heart.

1 Samuel 7:3

The next thing that Samuel said is with all your heart, fully devoted. This is my intention to return to the Lord with all of my heart, but that is the intention, that is not the action.

Next, Samuel gave them the action:

Put Way Foreign Gods.

1 Samuel 7:3

He told them put away foreign Gods, that is the action. Get rid of it.

APPLICATION

Whatever gives us comfort in our lives instead of God could be described as a foreign god. It is an idol in my life. Samuel told them to put away, demolish, destroy, get rid of anything that they were serving instead of Jehovah or alongside of Jehovah.

APPLICATION

This is where it hits us because probably none of us in this room serves an idol instead of God. You would not be here if that was the case. But how many of us have a collection of idols that we serve in addition to God, that is a real thing.

So he is saying to them “Get rid of those things.” I think about the apostle John who says at the end of 1 John, his last words are:

1 John 5:21

Dear children, keep yourselves from idols.

That is how he closed his book. Dear children, keep yourselves from idols.

Direct Your Heart to the Lord.

1 Samuel 7:3

Now that the idols are removed we are free, we are unchained to direct our attention to the Lord only. And what do we do with that?

Serve Him Only.

Samuel said serve him only. We are no longer double-minded, serving many idols. We are single-minded now and we are free to serve him only. We are free to serve him and serve him only.

Then the last thing that Samuel says was a promise:

He Will Deliver You.

1 Samuel 7:3

To the person who goes through this kind of a revival, this sort of repentance, you can freely say, “God will deliver me. God will deliver you. He will deliver you.” What a promise.

God will deliver us from our enemies, from our temptations, from the things that snare us.

This is a daily renewal. What Samuel is saying here describes what we would call the Christians daily renewal, and this is a daily experience for us.

1 Samuel 7:5-6

Then Samuel said, “Assemble all Israel at Mizpah, and I will intercede with the Lord for you.” ⁶When they had assembled at Mizpah, they drew water and poured it out before the Lord. On that day they fasted and there they confessed, “We have sinned against the Lord.” Now Samuel was serving as leader of Israel at Mizpah.

When you follow that pattern that Samuel just gave us for proper repentance, you are no longer in denial and you can freely say, “We have sinned before the Lord, but we are doing something about it.”

The attitude is completely different. Israel was now in a different attitude than they had been with battle A. The attitude with Battle A when Eli was influencing the nation was bring the ark it will save us.

Now we find out that they are going to say something different.

1 Samuel 7:8

They said to Samuel, “Do not stop crying out to the Lord our God for us, that he may rescue us from the hand of the Philistines.”

Do you see how their hope was set firmly on the Lord, not the things of the Lord?

1 Samuel 7:9-10

Then Samuel took a suckling lamb and sacrificed it as a whole burnt offering to the Lord. He cried out to the Lord on Israel’s behalf, and the Lord answered him. ¹⁰While Samuel was sacrificing the burnt offering, the Philistines drew near to engage Israel in battle. But that day the Lord thundered with loud thunder against the Philistines and threw them into such a panic that they were routed before the Israelites.

What was that an earthquake, thunderstorm? I don’t know it does not say. May be he just spoke.

1 Samuel 7:12-13

¹²Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen. He named it Ebenezer, saying, “Thus far the Lord has helped us.”

¹³So the Philistines were subdued and they stopped invading Israel’s territory. Throughout Samuel’s lifetime, the hand of the Lord was against the Philistines.

So, we get this idea of offering praise to God. So in the same way that Hannah took her ordinary words of praise to God that became a permanent monument of praise. Her son now Samuel takes an ordinary stone consecrates it in a way to the Lord and says, “Thus far has the Lord helped us and turns it into a permanent monument of God’s work in his life.”

APPLICATION

So sometimes we talk about what has God done in our lives that deserves this sort of recognition, that deserves praise. What is your Ebenezer? We should have lots of Ebenezers. If you don’t have a recent Ebenezer then I would suggest you go back through Samuel’s phrases and you seek a revival in your life, because God is willing to do things and waiting to do things that we can praise him for.

It can be a physical breakthrough, a spiritual breakthrough. It can be like, “I was having this sin in my life, I have having this temptation in my life. I prayed and I asked God to help me overcome this. And God has helped me overcome my temptations.” I am talking about those kinds of things where we petition the Lord for his work in our lives.

1 Samuel 7:13

¹³So the Philistines were subdued and they stopped invading Israel’s territory. Throughout Samuel’s lifetime, the hand of the Lord was against the Philistines. ¹⁴The towns from Ekron to Gath that the Philistines had captured from Israel were restored to Israel, and Israel delivered the neighboring territory from the hands of the Philistines. And there was peace between Israel and the Amorites. ¹⁵Samuel continued as Israel’s leader all the days of his life. ¹⁶From year to year he went on a circuit from Bethel to Gilgal to Mizpah, judging Israel in all those places.¹⁷But he always went back to Ramah, where his home was, and there he also held court for Israel. And he built an altar there to the Lord.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, the tale of two leaders in 1 Samuel 4-7 teaches us valuable lessons about being a godly influence in our lives. Just as Eli’s leadership led to defeat and tragedy, Samuel’s leadership brought about victory and revival. We are reminded to put our faith in God alone, remove idols from our lives, fully devote our hearts to Him, serve Him only, trust in His deliverance, and celebrate His faithfulness. Ultimately, the story points us to Jesus Christ, who is our ultimate source of victory and redemption. Just as Samuel interceded for Israel, Jesus intercedes for us before God, providing the way for our salvation and deliverance. Let us follow Samuel’s example and be godly influences in our spheres of influence, leading others to a deeper relationship with God.

I want to wrap it up with some life application points:

LIFE APPLICATION POINTS

Put Your Faith In God Alone, Not The Things Of God.

We cannot fight our spiritual battles in our life by relying on the things of God like going to church, like tithing, like having a baptism certificate, like saying certain prayers or having a Jesus sticker in your car.

They are good things but if we are using them and saying: “I have done this therefore God will fight for me, that is like getting the ark and putting it in front of our battles.” So we want to put God in front of our battles.

Seek God’s Guidance Before Acting.

Just as Israel hastily brought the ark into battle without consulting God, we often rush into decisions without seeking His guidance. Take time to listen to God through His word and prayer before making important decisions in life.

Remove Idols from Your Life.

Samuel instructed Israel to rid themselves of foreign gods and commit to serving the Lord alone. Similarly, we should identify and remove anything in our lives that takes precedence over our relationship with God.

Recognize and Celebrate God’s Faithfulness.

Like Samuel setting up the stone of Ebenezer as a monument of God’s faithfulness, we should recognize and celebrate God’s work in our lives. Take time to reflect on how God has helped you and offer praise and thanksgiving to Him.

Be a Godly Influence.

Be a Samuel, don’t be an Eli. Both Eli and Samuel had their chance to influence the nation and the outcome was very different.

So our exhortation here is look at Samuel as an example and lets be a Godly influence for those around us. Let’s us be an influencer like Samuel was an influencer for the nation.

Be a Godly Influence | 1 Samuel 4-7