Allen Jackson - Leaders and Leadership - Part 1
I really intended to have completed this in a previous session, but our Bible reading, right now, I hope you do the Bible reading with us. I hope you read your Bible on a regular basis. First and foremost, that’s of primary importance. I have discovered there’s an advantage to reading it in community. Because when you have the opportunity to interact with one another in settings outside of church, there’s a common point of faith that that’s always available for a conversation.
If you have a question, there’s hundreds and hundreds of people you worship with that might have an answer. It gives us a common journey and as I was doing the Bible reading and walking back through the portions for the last few days, I thought it fed into this discussion so well that I would carry it through for another session or two. We’ve been talking about God’s plan, God’s promises, and God’s people. And as we begin 1 Samuel, those are the historical books of God’s plan and his promises for his people. And I hope as you read it, you’ve noticed it’s kind of messy business. It’s not simple. And I make that observation because I want my faith to be simple. I wanna receive the Lord. I’ll forgive those that I need to forgive. I wanna be forgiven and then I want everything to be easy. I do.
It’s okay with me if somebody needs to walk through a shadowed valley as long as it’s you. You know, I’m okay if somebody needs to learn patience as long as it isn’t me. I think you should take up your cross daily and follow the Lord. I wanna go to the ice cream store. Now that isn’t our reality and the journey is about reconciling my preference for comfort and convenience with the reality of serving the Lord. But I couldn’t help it as I was reading through these passages these last several days to think that we would forfeit something if we didn’t bring it into our conversation. We’ve been talking about God’s promises. The Old Testament tells us about a leader by the name of Joshua that led the descendants of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob into a land that God promised them, but the New Testament tells us about a leader by the name of Jesus who leads us into the land of the promises of God.
We don’t have a promised piece of geography, but we have a life defined by the promises of God. And the stories are in no way in conflict, they inform one another. We have the Bible so we understand the character of God in the nature of being God’s people. They’re not just written down for us as obtuse lessons. So I wanna go to Samuel and I’m just gonna walk through it with you pretty casually. We’re gonna try to unpack it. It feels so raw and honest in the way it’s presented, but I think perhaps it can help us. It’s really this session is about leaders and leadership 'cause that’s what the narrative is about. God’s people require leadership. We do. It’s all through the Scripture.
Now, ultimately, God wants to be our leader. You know, we get to the New Testament we get really weird. You know, Jesus is the head of the church, no kidding, no duh, like really good for you, yes. But it hasn’t removed us from the realms of human authority. We’ve become so rebellious within the church. So contentious, so stubborn, so incalcitrant. We certainly don’t yield to the lordship of Jesus, but we don’t intend to be constrained by anything else. We don’t even wanna be identified as a part of a group. We all wanna be independent contractors 'cause after all, Jesus is our high priest and it’s true he is. But he also says we’re a body. And I assure you there’s a hierarchy in your physical body. And so I think it’s a very helpful set of passages.
1 Samuel chapter 1, we’re just gonna walk through it. God help us, we’ll get through this outline. Samuel, spoiler alert, the book of Samuel opens with figuring out how Samuel got here. Samuel’s mother was barren. She couldn’t have children and she was grieved by that. She was tormented by that. Tormented by the people around her because of that. And she prayed. And Eli, who was the priest over the nation, responsible for the tabernacle, the temple hasn’t been built yet, saw her and he thought in her grief and her weeping she had come to the tabernacle drunk. And he rebuked her. And she said… now there’s an assumption there that enough people came drunk that he thought she was one more.
If he’d never seen that, he wouldn’t have known to imagine that. I’m just saying. And he rebuked her and she said, «No, I have great grief». And he agreed with her that she would conceive and she said, «If the Lord is so good to me, I will give the child to serve the Lord». And that’s where we step into your notes. It’s 1 Samuel 1, they brought the boy to Eli. And she said to him, «As surely as you live, my lord, I’m the woman who stood here beside you, praying to the Lord. I prayed for this child, and the Lord has granted me what I ask of him. So now I give him to the Lord. For his whole life he will be given over to the Lord».
Wow. You know, we’ve allowed ourselves to be enticed away from biblical ideas regarding family and parenting. They really haven’t been at the forefront of our imaginations or our behavior for decades. Haven’t renounced our faith. We’ve just allowed the voices and the influences to shape us to be driven far more from secular streams than we have from biblical perspectives. Amen, pastor is the word you’re searching for, but it’s okay we’ll just, we’ll push on. And we’ve really, we have fallen victim and pray to statements that you know like the Bible’s from another time, another setting. We’ve evolved, we’ve emerged, we’re more enlightened. We can’t be constrained by those biblical perspectives.
And I mean, I have lived through a lot of those cycles in academia and they would be credible if I thought our families were stronger, our children were safer, our communities were more stable, then they would have credibility, but that hasn’t been the case. The further we’ve walked away from those biblical models for families and biblical models for marriage and biblical models of authority, the less safe our children have become. The less effective our public education has become, the more unstable our families have become.
So I would submit to you that the Bible presents us with a template, a set of things. And as you’re reading through these historical books, I understand it’s not a one for one overlay. I get that. There’s questions and challenges, but there are some values and principles we can take note of and the idea that our children ultimately aren’t our children. That there is sacred trust from Almighty God. The Bible tells us very clearly he knows us when we’re being knit together in our mother’s womb. Before we ever see our children or hear their cry or comment upon whom we think they look like, God knows them. He’s the author and the completer of their story. And the great assignment for all adults as parents is to see those children reared in the knowledge and the fear of God. It’s more important than hitting a curveball.
I’m not saying playing ball isn’t important or what other hobbies may fill your lives, but they are secondary to helping the children know the Lord. Hannah brings Samuel as a toddler and relinquishes him to the care of Eli. I would submit to you that took tremendous courage. But I also suggest to you that it’s gonna take tremendous courage to address the deviation that we have been a part of and to walk forward in faith. Same chapter… I’m sorry, next chapter, same book. 1 Samuel chapter 2, we get a little comment on Eli. And I think this is important in two ways. It helps you understand the unfolding narrative and why Samuel is gonna be given the opportunity he has, but I would also suggest to you it would have made it even more difficult for Samuel’s parents to have relinquished him to the care of Eli. And you can read it and go, «Oh, now I know why God had prepared Samuel».
But I would argue to you, it took far greater faith to relinquish him. Look at the verse. I just put one sentence. It’s a summary, «Eli’s sons were wicked men, and they had no regard for the Lord». And that’s where they left Samuel. Not easy. Well, I understand it’s gonna create a lane of opportunity for Samuel. He’s gonna become one of the mightiest leaders in Israelite history. In the Jewish community, Samuel’s far more, holds a place of much greater significance than he typically does in the evangelical world. I think as a side note, we can safely say at this point that we don’t inherit godliness. I mean, the Bible speaks fairly well of Eli outside of his parenting and there’s gonna be much criticism about Samuel and his parenting before we’re done. In fact, it’s gonna be used as a lever to push him out of the way.
So it’s not a full indictment of Eli, but what we can determine is that we don’t inherit godliness that there’s a choice to be made for every generation. That’s why it’s so important what we teach our children, what our aspirations for them are. If we fill them with secular aspirations and ungodly aspirations and we continually coach them in those directions and we’re not coaching them to things that are distinctive from their ungodly secular friends and classmates and peers, then we are abandoning them to ungodliness. We can’t afford that. They’re too precious. They’re too valuable. These young men grew up in the shadow of the tabernacle. They have a priestly assignment based on their DNA. They’ve been trained for it from their youth and the biblical commentary is they were wicked men.
Well, they wore priestly vestments, priestly garments. They’re wicked men. They had no regard for the Lord. Too much of that in the contemporary expressions of religion and the church. Same chapter, 1 Samuel 2, verse 30. God sends a message to Eli through a prophet. «The Lord, the God of Israel, declares, 'I promise that your house and your father’s house would minister before me forever.' But now the Lord declares: 'Far be it from me! Those who honor me I will honor, but those who despise me will be disdained. The time is coming when I’ll cut short your strength and the strength of your father’s house, so that there will not be an old man in your family line and you’ll see distress in my dwelling.
Although good will be done in Israel, in your family there will never be an old man. But I’ll raise up for myself a faithful priest, who will do according to what is in my heart and mind. I’ll firmly establish his house, and he will minister before my anointed one always. Then everyone left in your family line will come and bow down before him for a piece of silver and a crust of bread and plead, 'Appoint me to some priestly office so I can have food to eat.'» The priesthood was generational, genetically determined. It’s about ancestry. And he said, your family may be priests and that’s irrevocable, but they’re gonna serve in a very insignificant role.
It’s very sobering announcements. You can see, and it has relevance for this study we’re doing about the promises of God. The promises of God are conditional. I know we don’t like that. It’s uncomfortable, we chafe a bit under it sometimes. But the decision to honor God is not a casual decision. It’s a life of commitment. I don’t want you to live in fear of your salvation, but I don’t want you to live presumptively. Folks, you can’t peel a couple of verses out of context in the New Testament, ignore the rest of the Bible and imagine that your faith is unassailable. It terrifies me to teach people that.
When we pray for healing, we’re not asking for God to do something remarkable. He built you to heal. If you cut your finger, you don’t lose your mind. «Dear God, I’m gonna die. It’s a paper cut». I mean, it may feel like it. But man up, put a Band-Aid on it, you’ll survive. Forty-eight hours, it’ll seal over. Then a week you won’t know it was there. You’re designed to heal. Your iPhone’s not designed that way. If you break the screen, you can’t put it in the dark for a week and it’ll get better. God designed us physically in a way that we can recover from an enormous amount of abuse and punishment. But it’s possible to abuse your body to the point that you override its recovery systems. True? And you can destroy your health.
Well it seems to me that the lesson of Scripture is that you have to choose to honor God. You may not do it perfectly every day, but you have to have the intent. Absent the intent, no matter what your DNA is, no matter what your life assignment is, no matter the group to whom you belong and the covenant they have, if you choose to be wicked, God will acknowledge that and say, «You have no regard for me. I’m stepping away from you». I don’t want you to live presumptively. God is continually looking for faithful people. He said that. He said, «I’ll raise up for myself a faithful priest that makes me smile. I will raise up for myself».
It’s a divine initiative. Do you know you and I are part of a divine initiative? So that no one may boast. That’s the New Testament commentary. That God chooses us from the most unlikely places, from the darkest pits, the most immoral behaviors, from the worst set of choices. He chooses us to bring consternation to his adversaries 'cause they’ll look at us and they’ll go, there’s no way. It’s impossible. And he also says it’s a way for us to maintain some humility 'cause he said, «No one can boast before me 'cause I’ve done it». And what’s being described here in 1 Samuel chapter 2 is a theme throughout Scripture. We can go to the New Testament.
If you remember with me, God initiated the story of John the Baptist. Zachariah and Elizabeth had long stopped praying for a child or else Zechariah wouldn’t have been so surprised when Gabriel showed up and said, «You’re gonna be a dad». If you remember the story, Zachariah said, «Excuse me, I’m old, and my wife». And Gabriel said, «Because you’ve questioned me,» he said, «I stand in the presence of God. Because you questioned me, you just be quiet for a while». God initiated that. God initiated the Jesus narrative. Mary, you found favor with God. I mean, it’s a theme that runs all through that Jesus recruited his disciples. They didn’t seek him out. «Follow me,» he said, «I’ll teach you to fish for something better». He initiated that.
Jesus recruited Saul of Tarsus on the Damascus road. Saul wasn’t interested in serving Jesus. He hated him. Jesus rearranged his priorities a bit. I would submit to you that God is still raising up leaders. I would submit to you that we should be praying on a daily basis that God would raise up men and women to lead with faith in our homes, our churches, our communities, our schools, our states, our nation, in the church throughout the earth. If you grumble and complain more than you pray, you have missed the will of God. It doesn’t take, it does not take great brilliance to be a skeptic and a critic. We all understand this fundamentally.
Do you ever watch athletics? If you don’t watch athletics, do you watch a home improvement program or a cooking program? I hate 'em. They build them in little thirty-minute blocks. In 30 minutes, we’re going to remodel this house. It takes me long enough to drive to Home Depot. In 30 minutes, they can open a basket of weird things and prepare a gourmet meal. It takes me that long to start the grill and cook a hotdog. And the athletic events that we like, I feel no inconsistency whatsoever to sit in my recliner with Dr. Pepper and Cheese Doodles and call the athletes that train 24/7 lazy. What? «They’re not hustling. They don’t have a good motor, no heart. Honey, could you bring me some more Cheez Doodles»?
And we bring that same perspective right into the church. We’re really unhappy with the kind of leaders we have in Washington or in the state capitol or in our churches or wherever, schools, you name it, we grumble. Stop. Spend more time praying. God raised up people who fear your name. It’ll change the entire equation. God said to Eli, you have forfeited something because you’ve overlooked the wickedness of your children. May I ask you a question? I know it’s personal. What if you forfeited because you overlooked wickedness? You don’t wanna bring disruption.
So you wink and nod. We have excuses, we justify, we try to eliminate consequences. And I’m for grace and mercy, if you look it up, my picture is there. But if someone chooses to practice wickedness, you better not call it godliness. There’s a forfeiture that comes with that. But then there’s this resounding note of hope. God said, «I’ll raise up for myself. I still initiate this. I’m still searching the earth for men and women who’ll serve me».
So we want to do everything we can in our physical power with our abilities that God has given us, the resources entrusted to us to be engaged in things that nominate us for what God would do in the earth. To teach our children to be excited, to be filled with anticipation, to imagine that as an opportunity and not something that’s burdensome or intrusive or loathsome. They’ll catch that from us more than it’ll be taught by us. They will and the reality is like reading your Bible when you start, you’re going, «Oh jeez, what’s the preacher gonna ask for next? Sixty-six books. I read it once. He’s doing it all over. Will he ever shut up? Could he just stop»?
But, you know, I have found that if you’ll persist in that somewhere along the way, there’s a dynamic that takes place. It actually becomes engaging. You know that’s true with serving the Lord in general. If it still feels like something that’s not particularly desirable to you, it’s because the pattern hasn’t been built yet. There hasn’t been enough diminishment yet of our old carnal self that we’re still driven far more by our carnal selfish desires. But as we say no to them and say yes to godliness, godliness begins to emerge in new ways and you will find that there’s a joy that comes in that. I’ve lived that out to a degree. I don’t always get it right, but I get it right more than I once did.
And the best way to impact your children and your grandchildren is by letting them feel that joy you have for the things of God. And let them see it and feel it that it truly exceeds the joy and the anticipation you carry for a whole host of other things that are no different than what ungodly people do. I’m not saying the only thing you have to do is sing hymns and read the Bible, but it needs to be authentic enough that those that are watching you and patterning their lives from your behavior feel it from you.
If something that you look forward to is interrupted, the emotion connected to that, how does it compare to the emotion that’s interrupted if you might miss a service? «I mean, that’s not fair, pastor». I don’t know if it’s fair or not, but I think it’s in the neighborhood of true. You see, we model something far more than we lecture. It’s far more impactful. Eli’s been delivered a message in 1 Samuel 3, the very next chapter, Samuel’s gonna go to listening school. «The boy Samuel ministered before the Lord under Eli. In those days, the word of the Lord was rare; there weren’t many visions». Every generation is different. «One night Eli, whose eyes were becoming so weak that he could barely see, was lying down in his usual place. And the lamp of God had not yet gone out».
Hadn’t turn the lights out yet. «And Samuel was lying down on the temple of the Lord where the Ark of God was». Can you imagine growing up sleeping in the shadow of the ark? «Then the Lord called Samuel. And Samuel answered, 'Here I am, ' and he ran to Eli and said, 'Here I am; you called me.' But Eli said, 'I didn’t call you.'» And no, you can’t have a drink and if you don’t get back in that bed. «Go back and lie down. So he went and laid down». Now this is repeated three times. It’s not till the third time that Eli understands. And he said, «Samuel, I’m not calling you, but the Lord is. If it were to happen again, say, 'I’m listening.'»