The Story - Chapter 10
November 14, 2010
As we move into chapter 10, I want to give you a one word theme for today’s message. Isn’t it frustrating when something does not look like we thought it should? Normally, the title slide is nice and easy to read, but not today, because today our theme is the word DISTORTION. If you look up the word distortion, it is defined this way — “to twist something out of its original state.” Now I want to illustrate that for you.
I am so strong, that when I hit a baseball this is what happens to it. Isn’t that amazing? Look at the bat as well.
The same thing happens when I hit a golf ball, it gets twisted and changed.
But I thought you may want something a little more personal, so here’s what the Deutsch boys look like when we wake up in the morning. Here’s dad . . .
Here’s Joshua
Here’s Zachary
(I made distortions by morphing pictures of the family to look funny and very different)
Chapter 10 is a book about distortions. It’s about taking the perfect plan of God and distorting it. There are 3 major distortions which we will see as we move through this chapter, and I think the application will be right before our eyes.
We’re in 1 Samuel 1. The Israelites have now moved into the land God promised them. God is ruling over them as He promised. God is ruling over them in the presence in the ark of the covenant which resides in the tabernacle, which is located in a town 18 miles north of Jerusalem in a city called Shiloh.
1 Samuel 1:1 opens with these words — 1 There was a certain man from the hill country of Ephraim (in the promised land), whose name was Elkanah. 2 He had two wives; one was called Hannah and the other Peninnah. Peninnah had children, but Hannah had none.
Hannah couldn’t have children, the other wife, her rival kept rubbing it in her face and provoking her that she had children and Hannah didn’t. This went on year after year and Hannah was so provoked, so upset, that 1 Samuel 1:7 tells us she wept and would not eat.
Once a year she would make the journey with her husband to Shiloh and she would weep and pray for a child and she prayed that if God gave her a child, she would give the child back to God and the priest would raise that child.
We see that God grants Hannah’s desire and she becomes pregnant and gives birth to a son, who is named Samuel. After Samuel was weaned from Hannah, she took him to the priest, Eli, in Shiloh.
It’s a great story, but it doesn’t end there. Samuel was born during a time when there was unrest in the land. He was raised to be a good and righteous man, and he would deal with some distortions in Israel, as he calls them out by name.
The first distortion is this . . . Things are not as they appear with the priests. Particularly with the Eli’s sons, Hophni and Phineas, who were also priests. They were abusing the sacrifices which were brought to them and were taking advantage of the people who brought the sacrifices. On top of that, we read that they were engaged in immoral sexual activity in the tabernacle. God said this was blasphemy because they were distorting the sacrificial system. You see, the sacrificial system that was set up in the OT was to provide a picture of what was to come in the sacrifice of Christ. However, Eli’s sons were distorting that picture of what was to occur through the sacrifice of Christ.
So God spoke to Samuel and in 1 Samuel 3:13, God said, See I’m about to do something in Israel which will make the ears of everyone who hears about it tingle. For I told Eli I would judge his family forever, because of the sin he knew about, his sons blaspheming God, and he failed to restrain them.
The sons were doing wrong, the dad knew it, but he didn’t do anything about it. The question becomes, ‘what is God going to do that is going to cause the people of Israel and the surrounding nations ears’ tingle?’ Let me tell you.
The Israelites were at war with the Philistines. In one of the battles they were badly defeated. So they decided they were going to pull out their big gun, their top weapon. They were going to bring in the Ark of the Covenant. The ark is a box that contains the 10 commandments. It was a symbol of the presence of God. And whenever they had the ark of the covenant leading them into battle, with the priests in front of the soldiers, the Israelites would ALWAYS soundly defeat their enemies.
So the Israelites announced the ark of the covenant was going to lead them into battle on the next day. And everyone knew that this meant trouble for the enemy. In 1 Samuel 4:6, we read,
When they learned that the ark of the LORD had come into the camp, 7 the Philistines were afraid. "A god has come into the camp. We're in trouble! Nothing like this has happened before.
8 Woe to us! Who will deliver us from the hand of these mighty gods? They are the gods who struck the Egyptians with all kinds of plagues in the wilderness.”
They knew they were in serious trouble. The next morning, Hophni and Phineas lead the Israelites into battle, they were expecting to win, and the unexpected happened. They lost. They were trounced!
We also learn that Hophni and Phineas die in that battle and one of the soldiers gets away and runs back and tells their father Eli, who is sitting in a chair, and he fell back in his chair and he died. Certainly the news of this story tingles everyone’s ears. What was God trying to teach Israel? Hold on for a few minutes. Okay?!
The 1st distortion is called phoniness! Anyone like phoniness? Raise your hand.
God was no doubt getting a bad rap with the people of Israel who visited the tabernacle. His name and His plan were being distorted and that’s unacceptable.
The 2nd distortion comes with the people of Israel. They wanted their own king. You see, up to this point, the king of Israel has been God Himself. Now the people want their own king, and they come up to Samuel and in 1 Samuel 8:5, they say 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.
And Samuel takes this personally, it hurt his feelings. It’s true that Samuel’s sons aren’t following the Lord, not following in the ways of Samuel. So, God said to Samuel, 7 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 Story tells us Samuel went back to the people and he pled with them and he reasoned with them to change their mind. And we read, 19 But the people refused to listen to Samuel. "No! We want a king over us. 20 Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles."
Now from a human perspective, from a lower story perspective, we could say yes, this is a good decision. They have 12 different tribes, they are spread out and are being taken advantage of, so yes, this is a good idea. Have one king over all the land who can rally the people together, so they can be one united nation. That sounds great, doesn’t it?
But God thinks this is a bad idea. So, the 2nd distortion can be called CONFORMITY. They wanted to be like everyone else, and God wanted to be their king. What’s the big deal? The big deal is this, the best way for people to see God, to see His plan and His character, was for God to be their King, no layers of human management between God and His people. Yet, God allows them to have a king.
It’s not what God envisioned for the lower story picture. It doesn’t change the upper story, about what God is seeking to do to get everyone back. Ultimately, God is still working out the plan. He lets us make our own decisions down here, some aren’t ideal, but He can work with our decisions to keep His upper story going.
Okay, so let’s stop here for a moment and look at what we’ve seen in this story . . .
The first distortion was phoniness, the second distortion was conformity. So, let’s look at what this means for us.
We can’t just have an outward appearance of religion. It has to be genuine on the inside. Just like the priests, we can’t just wear religious robes and look real nice and handsome and pretty. We can put on our Sunday best, walk into the doors of church and look great on the outside, but on the inside we’re falling apart. You look good and appropriate according to your standard of looking good, but Christ isn’t active in your heart and spirit.
You talk a good game, but there’s a real emptiness inside which is eating away at you. You want more, but it’s not there, but at least you look good, right? You see, life, worship, it’s got to be true and real worship . . . and that comes from inside out. At the end of the day, when the Israelites went into battle, the ark of the covenant was just a box. What makes it powerful is when we relate to a holy and awesome God in our heart and soul. That’s where the power comes from. And God was teaching Israel that it’s not in the outward appearance of religion, it’s in the inward, true authentic relationship with God, that’s where the power resides.
Don’t we go through our distortions in life. We put on our phony faces? We act like we care, then we go behind the other person and speak about them with things we would never say to their face. We put expectations upon people which are totally unfair to the person, notwithstanding the fact that we don’t say what those expectations are, so they’re totally clueless. Then we become disappointed with the unrealized expectations we placed on someone.
But we distort our lives with phoniness when we aren’t the same person in public that we are in private. Sometimes it’s a show that we’re putting on. Whether we’re at church, work, school, home, in the community, or wherever we go. Christ followers often act like they have their act together, when the greatest opportunities come when we can admit we don’t have our act together, yet we have a God who is so good, so gracious, so loving, so powerful and forgiving . . . that He gives us chance after chance to make it right. And when we get there, when we realize this, now we have a story to tell the world about how God helped us.
In Matthew 23, when Jesus was talking to the Pharisees, He said, 27 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean.
28 In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.
I’m saying the same thing Jesus was saying to the people. Don’t be a phony. The world does not like nor want people to be phony. Be yourself, don’t distort who you are and who you are called to be.
And we do that in the second distortion as well. We seek to conform to the ways of the world. We want what others want, we want what others have, so we push ourselves to get what we really don’t need, but we want it so we’ll work ourselves to the bones to get it.
Just like the Israelites, just like Eli and his sons. We are representatives of God. The Bible calls us a group of Christ followers, who gather together like this, not only the church, but we’re called the body of Christ. We represent Christ! We represent Him . . . in our homes, in the workplace, in school, at the store, and even in church! Anywhere we go, we represent Jesus. For many people, you will be the only Bible they will read. Because your life, the way you live it, tells them about who Jesus Christ is in your life.
What we get from this story today, is a desire not to distort the image of Jesus like they did. We can’t come to church every Sunday, have those nice Christian bumper stickers on our cars, carry our Bibles wherever we go, proclaim ‘Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!’ If we’re known as the meanest house in the neighborhood. Or we’re known as cruel and unethical in the world. Or even in church, we hold to a legalism or standards which actually pushes people away, rather than toward Christ.
We can’t be in church on Sunday, acting all nice, then when we’re out on the road, tell people where they can go. We can’t be in church on Sunday, then pick up the phone or bump into someone and begin the gossip or slander trail. It distorts God’s image and view. It doesn’t mean we pretend we’re perfect, because we aren’t. In fact, we admit our shortcomings, we just don’t pretend we don’t have any.
You see, this is where many Christ followers get into trouble. God honors a person who continually strives to be a better person, a person who brings honor and glory to God; and a person who can look to God and admit, they have their imperfections, but in spite of them, they want to serve God to the best of their human abilities.
So, let’s not be like Eli or Hophni or Phineas, or even Saul. Let’s give up phoniness and conformity to the world. And let us wake up each day with the realization we are called to represent Jesus to others, by the way we live, by the way we treat others, by what we say and by what we don’t say, by how we prioritize our life.
The very worst thing I could ever imagine being said to me or about me, would be Michael Deutsch was a minister at a church and gave some good sermons, and then have my friends tell me, they don’t see it in me; or someone in the community say I cheated them in a deal or in some game.
I can’t imagine anything worse. Almost better for me that I never claimed the name of Christ at all, to spare people seeing a distorted Jesus, than to live a phony life before Him. I struggle, but like Paul, I can say I haven’t gotten it all yet, but one thing I do is, I forget what lies behind and with great passion I pursue forward the call God has in my life.
This year we’ve launched the Story in our church, and my hope is that when we finish with the story, we can launch our stories into the community, we can be representatives of Christ in Madison County, so that Christ’s presence is known in every part of this community. Let us make a commitment that we will trade phoniness for authenticity; trade conformity to the world for transformation by God, and we are going to do our very best through the strength and power of God not to distort Christ, but to represent the Jesus who wants to be in a relationship with all of humanity. So all the world we see Christ in us. They will see His love, His grace, His joy, His peace, His strength and power, His Spirit, in you and I.
om this ancient story. How does this apply to us?
