John H. Paterson
The Lord is a God of knowledge... (1 Samuel 2:3)
IN a previous article about the Christian's knowledge of God, I suggested that this knowledge, when we gain it -- gradually and, perhaps, painfully -- is not for our personal benefit alone, but can be and should be used for the good of others. We do not acquire the knowledge of God simply to become knowledgeable, but to use our knowledge to affect events in the lives of others.
This we can evidently do, moreover, without either the awareness or the consent of the other person or people concerned. They may lack the knowledge of God themselves; yet their own ignorance is transcended by the power of God invoked on their behalf by a knowing and believing friend.
In evidence of this I cited in the last article the cases of Lot, who was delivered from Sodom as a result of the knowledgeable prayer of Abraham (Genesis 18); of Moses, who was able to "beg off" Israel, not once but several times, when they had sinned as a nation; and Job, who acted on behalf of his family repeatedly at times when he feared that they might have forgotten themselves and their reverence for God (Job 1:4-5).
There is, however, one other case study in the Old Testament which clearly illustrates the use, or usefulness, of the knowledge of God on behalf of others. It is the case of Samuel: to be more exact, it is the theme of the whole of what we call the First Book of Samuel.
This book occupies a key position in the Old Testament record of God's dealings with His people. It is a bridging book; that is, a book that straddles an enormous gap. It starts where the Book of Judges ends, and it finishes with the way clear for David to ascend the throne of Israel. But put that in another way and you will see how enormous is the gap to be bridged. It starts with that appalling last verse of Judges (21:25): "In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes." If you have read through the later chapters of Judges, you will have to agree that that statement of social and moral anarchy is not overdrawn. At the other end of the book, however, comes the reign of David: the high point of Hebrew history; the Golden Age to which, even today, the Jewish people look back with longing.
For Israel, it represented a move from anarchy to world power in one short period -- little more single lifetime. And spiritually it was a move from the deepest ignorance of God's law to the rule of a king of whom it was later to be said, "I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after mine own heart, which shall fulfil all my will" (Acts 13:22).
What a transformation -- not only in the fortunes of the nation but also in the spread of the knowledge of God! And at once we find ourselves asking: how did it come about? What was the secret? Confronted with total ignorance of Himself among His chosen people, how would God react to restore the knowledge of Himself?
The answer to those questions was this; He would find a man -- and one man would be enough -- to whom He could reveal the knowledge of Himself, and through that one man He would eventually restore the vision and the understanding of the whole nation.
That is the solution as the First Book of Samuel reveals it to us. And it certainly fits in with a number of small and apparently random clues in the book itself. Knowledge generally comes to us through the faculties of seeing or hearing and, if [3/4] you step to think about it, there is quite a scattering of references in this book to both. There is Eli whose eyes were dim so that he could not see (4:15) -- in more senses than one. There is Samuel who said, "Speak, for thy servant heareth" (3:10). These were times when (3:1) "the word of the Lord was precious in those days; there was no open vision" (R. V. margin, no widely-spread vision). And when the Lord wanted to warn Samuel of Saul's impending arrival, He "uncovered his ear" (9:11 R. V. margin).
So knowledge -- of God and His will -- was going to be the central issue for Israel and her leaders and, as time went on, they found themselves grouped into two: the "knows" and the "don't knows"! In the first group were Samuel and David, together with those two remarkable women in our story, Hannah and Abigail. In the second group, tragically for Israel, were Eli and Saul. And stuck rather miserably between the two groups was Jonathan, Saul's son. He knew all too well (23:17) that David, and not he, would be the next king, but he stood by his father and, in the end, died with him.
So who was this one man whom God used as a channel for bringing the nation back to Himself? The man it should have been was, of course, Eli. The high priest of Israel was the very person who should have possessed the knowledge of God. It was his business to possess it. He was there to mediate between God and man, and to interpret God's wishes to man. He, and he alone, had the privilege of going, once a year, into the Holy of Holies -- into the very presence of God. But Eli's eyes were dim, and he did not even see the gross misbehaviour of his priest-sons ("they knew not the Lord", as it says in 2:12); he only heard about it from others (2:22-23).
No; when the knowledge of God came to Eli, it came by way of the one God had chosen to be its bearer -- Samuel, the little boy in the Temple. What an unlikely choice! But that was the channel, and that was to be the method: "The Lord revealed himself to Samuel in Shiloh by the word of the Lord. And the word of Samuel came to all Israel" (3:21 - 4:1).
If Eli fared badly as a "don't know", Saul's case was immeasurably worse. Somehow, the fact that when he first came on the scene he was hunting -- unsuccessfully -- for his father's asses seems to epitomise his whole career! Here was a man who had not only been chosen out of all Israel to be their leader, but who actually looked like a leader, head and shoulders above the rest of the nation (10:23). Yet he blundered from decision to decision, always uncertain; constantly swayed by outside forces ("I feared the people, and obeyed their voice" -- 15:24). After hunting for the asses he was no more successful in hunting down David and we find him in the end in a most pitiable state of ignorance, having to resort for "knowledge" to one of the witches he himself had outlawed (28:6-9).
What lesson can we learn from God's choice of Samuel? Apart from His oft-repeated preference for the obscure rather than the obvious there are, in the account we have, just two things about him which marked him out, but these two were apparently enough. One was that he was wholly dedicated to God's service. It was, of course, Hannah who had committed him to this, even before he was born (1:11). His was a dedicated life. In a sense, this was Hannah doing what her son was later himself to do -- using her knowledge of God to act for the future good of God's people. The other thing about Samuel -- and for this let us give what credit we can to old Eli, who instructed him -- was that he had a listening ear. When the word came, he was ready ,to hear it.
When God calls such a man, what can he do? He can interpret God to man or, as Samuel himself put it (12:23), "I will instruct you in the good and right way." Samuel was unsparing in his criticism when Israel chose what he knew to be thewrong way, including the rejection of him and his advice in favour of electing a king. He never sought to win them over or to curry favour with them by changing his message.
But most particularly he could pray. As with Abraham, Moses and Job, whom I have already mentioned, it was Samuel's use of prayer to affect the lives of ignorant or wayward people which marked him out as a man with a knowledge of God. In this respect, Samuel evidently stood in the first rank, alongside Moses, as the rescuer -- the lifeguard, if you like -- of the people of God. I know this is so because years later, through the prophet Jeremiah, God accorded these two a supreme tribute: if anybody could make Him [4/5] change His mind, they could! "Then the Lord said unto me, Though Moses and Samuel stood before me, yet my mind could not be towards this people" (Jeremiah 15:1).
When he was saying farewell to the nation, Samuel made them a promise which has always impressed me. This nation, after all, had just rejected Samuel and his descendants, even though he was able to claim without challenge that he had never oppressed or stolen from them (12:3-4). We must all be moved by the loyalty of the old man as he said to them, "as for me, God forbid that I should sin against the Lord in ceasing to pray for you" (12:23). This was generosity indeed! But I think it was more than that. To cease to pray for them would not merely be to forget old friendships; it would be to "sin against the Lord". I think he realised that, by prayer, he could go on, even in retirement, securing God's purposes in His people. He actually expected, by prayer, to be able to counteract the destructive consequences of Saul's ignorance, and to bring the purpose of God to its fulfilment in the survival and crowning of David as king.
Samuel's knowledge of God thus carried over, as the later chapters of 1 Samuel show, into the life of David. David's first great exploit, the killing of Goliath was, surely nothing but applied knowledge. Here was the whole army of Israel under Saul's hesitant leadership, frozen by fear and unable to act. And David came forward to deal with Goliath on this simple basis: "This giant has insulted and defied the living God. My knowledge of that God may not yet be very great, but I do know Him well enough to be sure that He will never allow Himself to be insulted in this way. The man who takes his stand on that assumption need have no fear of the consequences, no matter how big the giant is!" And he was right!
How many people does God need to turn around the course of a nation's history? One is evidently enough, if that one person is dedicated to His service and always listening for His voice. And what God could do through the young Samuel, he can do through anyone of us, in these days when the knowledge of Himself is so meagre, if we, too, are dedicated and listening.
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