Audio restored with Diffio. Diffio processed the original archive recording to reduce noise and produce a cleaner listening version; the original stays available.
Speech quality score (model-estimated, SCOREQ): before 2.50 → restored 4.56
Use the player's Original switch to compare.How Diffio restores old speech recordings
I thank you again for your kind and generous invitation in inviting me to come among you here and giving me these six occasions, uh, to speak to you. Greatly daring, I have suggested for our study meetings that we consider some themes from the books of First and Second Samuel. I say greatly daring because I am persuaded that for many of you, first and second sample contain stories that have long since been near your very heart.
I can see by the looks of some of you, I was going to say seventy years ago, but I mustn't say that. No, I don't say that. Definitely don't say that. But some time ago you heard of the stories in Sunday school and have loved them ever since. And you may think I'm a little bit of a Philistine by the way that I shall treat these stories. The topic tonight, as you have heard, though I think it was hidden from you for a long time, lest having read it, you would not come to the session. It is a wordy title for our session, you'll see, and it runs the two distinctives in Israel's testimony.
Manotheism on the one hand and Messianism on the other. Plus another sentence, their loss and their recovery. With that, you can forget all about that title, but we shall read now two passages from the first book of Samuel, and you may perceive from them where the argument is going. This is one Samuel chapter four and verse ten. So the Philistines fought, and Israel was defeated. And they fled, every man to his home.
There was a very great slaughter, for there fell of Israel thirty thousand foot soldiers. And the ark of God was captured. And the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phineas, died. There came a man, so we're told, to tell Eli, you'll see. And verse eighteen points out that as soon as the, uh, the man mentioned the ark of God to Eli, that is the ark of God was taken, Eli fell over backwards from his seat by the side of the gate, and his neck was broken, and he died.
The man was old and heavy. He had judged Israel for forty years. Now his daughter-in-law, the wife of Phineas, was pregnant, about to give birth. And when she heard the news that the ark of God was captured, and that her father-in-law and her husband were dead, she bowed and gave birth, for her pains came upon her. And about the time of her death, the women attending her said to her, do not be afraid, for you have borne a son. But she did not answer or pay attention. And she named the child Ekabod, saying the glory has departed from Israel because the ark of God had been captured and because of her father-in-law and her husband.
And she said, the glory has departed from Israel, for the ark of God has been captured. And then a passage from chapter twenty six of this first book of Samuel. Twenty six, and we shall read verse seventeen. Saul recognized David's voice and said, is this your voice, my son David?
And David said, it is my voice, my lord, o king. And he said, why does my lord pursue after his servant? For what have I done? What evil is on my hands? Now therefore, let my lord the king hear the words of his servant. If it is the lord who has stirred you up against me, may he accept an offering. But if it is men, may they be cursed before the lord, for they have driven me out this day, that I should have no share in the heritage of the Lord, saying, go serve other gods.
Now therefore, let not my blood fall to the earth, away from the presence of the Lord. Chapter twenty seven, verses one to four. Then David said in his heart, now I shall perish one day by the hand of Saul. There is nothing better for me than that I should escape to the land of the Philistines. Then Saul would despair of seeking me any longer within the borders of Israel, and I shall escape out of his hand. The Lord give us true understanding of his word. You will see from the passages that we've read that we have here the story of two profound losses that Israel suffered in these far off days.
The one was nothing less than the loss of the Ark of the Lord, and they lost it to the Gentiles Philistines. The other was their God-anointed Messiah. Perhaps it wouldn't be true to say they lost him, or in fact they drove him out. The God-anointed Messiah was lost to Israel, lost among the Gentiles.
These two events, of course, were highly significant in themselves. But in the light of his- Israel's long history, they have a significance that goes beyond their original occasion. The Ark of the Lord, lost. In that Ark, of course, were the tables of stone that Moses had received, written with the very finger of God. Those stones express, in the first place, the uniqueness of the one true God of heaven, creator of heaven and earth, the sea and all that is therein.
And not only the creator of heaven and earth, but the moral authority behind the moral war. Israel was given that ark and the privileged position of being a witness to God, therefore among the nations. They lost it. Lost it to the Gentiles. Similarly, Israel's concept of Messiah, a king anointed by God.
And when we reach David in their history, we come upon a king who was not only himself anointed of God, but to whom God promised a dynasty, so that through the prophets, the recurring promise is heard that God would eventually restore the dynasty of David. For the benefit not only of Israel, but for the peace and blessing of the Gentile nations at large. And when we come to the Christian gospel itself, mark how Paul describes it in the opening words of his epistle to the Romans.
It is the gospel of God's dear Son, of the seed of David, according to the flesh. It is an integral part of our Christian gospel that our Lord is of the seed of David. And writing towards the end of his life, as he now was imprisoned in a Roman jail, writing to his younger companion and fellow worker Timothy. Paul says, remember Tim, remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, of the seed of David, according to my gospel.
I'm going to suggest, therefore, that these two things in the course of the long history of Israel have marked Israel. First of all, their testimony to the one true God of heaven. And then their testimony to the promises of God to raise them up a king who should not only be Israel's king, but a savior of the nations. Let's ponder those two things. And first of all, Israel's testimony to the one true God, the creator of heaven and earth.
Of course, that goes back to the beginnings of Genesis, doesn't it? But as far as Israel is concerned, they think of Abraham as the forefather of that nation, who began his life between the rivers as a sheer old pagan idol. When the God of heaven appeared to him, the God of glory, and brought him out of that pagan ambiance, and brought him eventually into the promised land.
And God did it as a protest against the almost universal idolatry of those ancient nations. Brought out Abram with that special commission to be a witness to the one true God of heaven. And as I say, that witness, that witness was verbalized upon the two tables of stone in the ark, and Israel were to keep it. Talking of the ark allows me to digress.
I'm warning you now, I'm an old man, you see. And like a lot of old men, not present company, of course, but, uh, like a lot of other old men, not here tonight, um, old men can wander from the point, you see. Mention of the ark and what was inside it reminds me vividly of when John Lennox and I, uh, took a model of the tabernacle, if you please, to Novosibirsk in Russia. This was not long after the walls had come down, and our audience was largely hard-boiled atheists and scientists in addition.
But we took a model of a tabernacle. And our friends who heard of it, think I came to the conclusion, I think, that the rumors about our incipient insanity were now positively confirmed. Well, people used to say in my hearing, tabernacle? That's old fashioned truth. That's not relevant to Christians today, and certainly not to unbelievers. And we took it to atheists in the University of Russia, Monsabiers. We did indeed. Marvelous topic to raise with, um, atheists.
Yeah. Of course, we didn't exactly start with it. Do they? We, first of all, dealt with the manuscripts of the New Testament, because Russians had been taught that Christianity is a fourth century invention, much like the Da Vinci Code, that absolute, uh, expensive bit of nonsense. Eh, do see, has taught the world more recently, and the Russians had been taught it seriously, you'll see. And so we pointed to the Christian, the manuscripts of the New Testament in their early days. It shows, of course, Christianity was not a fourth century invention, but the manuscript evidence, uh, you'll see, is authentic and bespeaks the origin of Christianity in the first century AD.
We then ask, well, granted the manuscripts are authentic, um, is the story true? Did Jesus Christ claim these things? Is that story true? Or was it made up by the early apostles? And we argued, of course, that the apostles didn't make it up. There is one among many evidences that the apostles didn't make it up. And that they themselves tell us. That when our Lord first mentioned that he was going to Jerusalem and would be rejected and crucified, the apostles warmly disagreed and tried to dissuade him.
And when he made no attempt to defend himself in the Garden of Gethsemane, the whole bang shoot ran off. Paul was converted from being Saul of Tarsus and became a missionary. He tells us from his own experience that the gospel he preached, he readily perceived it was foolishness to the intellectual Greeks. Why did he preach it, therefore? He certainly didn't make it up. What man deliberately invents a foolish message?
Preach it? Because it was true. Goes back to Christ, who said the purpose of his coming was that he should not, uh, not to serve, to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many. Folly to the world, it is in fact the power of God to salvation. So then we ran into the trouble with the, with the academics, of course, the atheists. But believing the New Testament demands believing the resurrection of Jesus. Is- isn't that unscientific? Remember that terrible Scotsman.
It's about only one terrible Scotsman there's ever been, but, uh, Hume his name was. Convinced academics right down to this present day that it's impossible to believe in miracles. Well, we dispense with the argument fairly quickly. That left us with the question. If Jesus is the Son of God, then, is it likely that God would have sent him into the world, so to speak, out of the blue, no pun intended, without being announced, nor anybody being prepared for his coming? Most unlikely. The Bible account is that God spent centuries preparing the way for the coming of the Son of God.
And in particular, it involved the raising up of the nation of Israel to witness to the one true God. God spent centuries on that topic before he sent his son. Why is that? Well, what would have been the good of God sending his son into the world? And here go the Christian apostles, and they tell their Greek friends, do you know what? Jesus is the son of God. And the Greeks would smile and say, yeah, they say he is, possibly yes. Uh, now which God is this? Um, uh, we've got plenty of sons of God in our religion, you'll see. We've got some daughters as well, like uh, uh, uh, Astarte, you know, uh, and the Queen of Heaven and things like that, uh, you'll say.
So, uh, uh, yeah, well, uh, quite possibly, if your Jesus is son of one of these gods. Would have been out of confusion, wouldn't it? Well, before God sent his dear son into our world, he spent centuries establishing the point there is one true God. And of course, we pointed to a model and said to him, uh, this is an ancient kind of a temple thing, shrine. But there have been thousands of shrines about the place.
Why should we study this one? He said, because in its context, in the Middle East, it was utterly unique. The other nations were far gone into idolatry. They lost their hold upon the fact that there is one true God. They had suppressed the knowledge of it. This is Romans one. But when people suppress the knowledge of the true God, they don't come to believe in nothing at all, do they? I expect you've noticed that. It's very difficult not to believe in anything. So what do they do then?
They have to face the fact that they didn't make the universe. So what made it then? And the ancients then held to deifying the forces of nature. The sun god, the moon god, the god of fertility, and uh, uh, so forth and so on. Deifying the forces of nature and made statues to them and temples. And then, of course, very politely, we said to the gathered scientists, about almost I think it was two hundred and fifty of them, of course, if you ask the modern atheist what are the forces that control us, he will say virtually the same thing as those ancient idolaters.
We said very politely, you understand. You'll say, of course they don't keep gods in their drawing room. But if you ask them what are the forces that, uh, control us, what made us, and so on, they will say, why the weak atomic power and the strong atomic power and electromagnetism and gravity, anti-gravity if there is any, and the laws of biology and such like things. They are but forces of nature. But the atheist is obliged to take them as the ultimates. They are saying and doing the same thing as the ancient idolaters who, in their simple, crude way, defied the sun god and the moon god and the storm god and the god of fertility and such like things.
And he said, that's why we bring to you this, uh, this tabernacle thing, because here in this ark were the two tables of stone given by God to Israel. The Lord God made heaven and earth, thou shalt have no other god but me. And he, the force and the authority behind the moral law. We ask the question, well now, perhaps after all, Israel got this idea from evolution. You know, that's a popular thing with many scientists and moderns. I will hold the evolutionary view of religion, you'll say.
So religion began, according to them, by animism, seeing spirits in everything, trees and stones and rivers and anything else like that, like a child will personify a lamppost when he walks into it and say, naughty lamppost for hitting me so hard, you'll see. That kind of tendency to personalize. And then people advanced may evolve a little bit more, and they gave up animism and went to polytheism. Lots of gods, storm god and all the rest of them. And then they evolved a bit further and went to, uh, polytheism, you'll say.
And from that to pantheism, that's one god per tribe. And then they evolved some further and went to monotheism. And then, according to the atheist, if they had any sense, they'd evolve a bit further and came- come to atheism, you see. Nice little neat theory, isn't it? Absolutely false, of course, but nice neat theory. So what evidence is there that Israel came by this view through evolution? Well, none whatsoever, of course. The evidence is the other way around. So far from gradually coming towards, uh, uh, monotheism, they had monotheism from the very start, from Abraham, of course, and were forever going back and compromising with the old idolatry and the paganism of the nations around.
Now, weren't they now? And having to be pulled back by the roots of their hair, back to monotheism by the prophets. You know how the prophets did it. Moses and Deuteronomy and Isaiah, Ezekiel and Jeremiah, and all the rest of them. They did, they did not evolve. Starting with the, a knowledge of the one true God, alas, they so often apostatized. And went to syncretism and intermarriage and interreligion with other groups, and having to be brought back.
The wonderful fact was, and God achieved it at length after centuries, for after the return from the exile and the coming of the Lord Jesus, when the Lord Jesus came, there was no idol in the temple at Jerusalem. There were no temple prostitutes in the temple at Jerusalem like there had been earlier. God had won the battle. And when he won that battle, he sent forth his son in the fullness of time, did he not? And had him preached as the son of the one true God of heaven.
May sound like an arbitrary thing to say, we who preach the gospel rightly concentrate on our Lord and his sacrifice at Calvary, his resurrection. When you are preaching to a modern world of atheism, you may need to follow the order of the Old Testament and establish what you mean by God and stand for the truth of the one true God, creator of heaven and earth, against all the syncretism of the BBC and many others who want to tell the people that Christianity and Judaism are only one version, and Hinduism is equally acceptable with its uncountable thousands of gods and goddesses.
Testimony, therefore, of Israel among the nations. And of course, there was the other bit, the messianism. Israel lost that as well. Under David, their wonderful king. But before they could he be enthroned in Jerusalem, they drove him out, and the Messiah was lost to the Gentiles. That has been true now for centuries, hasn't it?
Among the Jewish people. All the great prophecies of the coming Messiah on the seat of David in the Old Testament. Some Jews look forward to it still. Others say it has all been fulfilled, and there's nothing now to be expected. I had a fellow student in my student days when I was trying to learn a little Hebrew. He was a Jew who came from Austria. His parents had perished under Hitler. I remember his saying to me one day, David, your Jesus cannot be the Christ.
I said, how's that? He said, because the Old Testament prophesied that when the Christ came, he would put down evil everywhere, and your Jesus didn't do it. No good you're saying, ah, but he set up a spiritual kingdom. The Old Testament doesn't know anything about that, he said. Well, Jesus didn't just, just didn't fulfill the prophecies. I wish I'd have known enough then to show him that the Old Testament had something to say on this very topic. Curious what we need to know, don't we, if we're going to witness effectively to folks in this world. But leaving the question of the Messiahship and how Israel rejected it and have for centuries rejected God's true Messiah, whereas he's been received by millions among the Gentiles.
We come back to the fact that in the earlier days, Israel lost the ark, which encapsulated Israel's special relationship with Jehovah. Lost it to the Gentiles. However did they manage to do that? Well, the simple answer is this. The immediate cause was the dire corruption of the priesthood in the tabernacle of the Lord in those days.
Eli's sons, Hophni My Anfinias. and Phineas. Instead of performing their service in the fear of a holy God, gave themselves to self-indulgence of every type. They were in religion for what they got out of it. When a person brought the sacrifice to the Lord, along would come the servant of the priest, and he'd say, give me certain parts of the offering, uh, for the priest. And the offerer would say, but no, first the bit that belongs to the Lord, and then you can have it.
Oh, get out of the way, they said. And they had a three-pronged, uh, uh, fork thing and stuck it in. The point being that what one prong didn't bring up, the other two did, of course. In it, for their self-gratification. Let alone their immoralities with the women that assembled at the door of the tent. Luring. Unholy misrepresentation of the service of God.
We need to be warned, don't we? Who perhaps will go to that extreme, though professing Christianity, some will, Still. And Christianity be used to justify homosexuality. And the law demanding that you shall not protest against homosexuality. It's easy for us, if we're not careful, to indulge in what a friend of mine called in New Zealand at one stage, me-ism.
I come to meetings for what I get out of them. And if I don't get anything out of them, I ditch God. Instead of coming to wait upon a wise, holy God and to do his service. The result was that when the Philistines came up against them, at first the Philistines were victorious, and the people said, what should we do?
And they came up with the idea, let's bring the Ark of God. Now listen to what they said. Eh, so that it may save us from the Philistines. But my dear beloved, it never saved anybody. Whatever the it is, it can be the hall or the singing or the preacher or what you like. It never saved anyone. It has to be the person, the divine person who do the same.
And if Phineas and Hophni thought that they could behave like they'd been behaving in the temple, and then when they got in trouble, bring out the ark, and the ark, like a magic box, would save them. God let them learn in a very costly experience that merely carting out an ark wouldn't save them. That day, the ark of God was taken. And Eli died as he heard the news that his sons Hophni and Phineas had perished.
God's disciplines can be severe sometimes, can't they? But we wake up to the reality of God and his holiness. Of course, when it got down into the Philistine country, that was another story. When the Philistines heard that the ark was coming into the camp of the Israelites, they nearly panicked. These are gods, they said, coming in. We've heard what these gods did in Egypt, and they really panicked. And then they said, typically, but let's behave like men, stand up and be counted.
And on the whole, they found these gods weren't all that powerful anyway. Well, not the gods that Phineas, uh, worshiped. He was a make-believe. God let the Philistines take the ark. What happened to it when he got into Philistine country was another thing, as God put forth his power and humiliated the pagan god of the Philistines, David. I mustn't go into that tonight. Mustn't reduce my time limit the first night. I might do it the last night, but not the first.
Let's concentrate on the story of how Israel got it back. The recovery. And it involves me talking on three groups of females. Now, do forgive me the term, you see, not meant to be rude, you see. I would say, uh, three groups of, uh, ladies, women, you see, because the first one is Hannah, and the second one is Phineas's wife. But the third group are two milk cows, you see, sorry. Bit of a bother. I can't describe them as women, can I? That one do, you see.
But, uh, they were females, that you must agree. And used of God, actually bringing the ark of God back. So one of the trouble we s- had noticed was Eli and his sons. And Eli's false attitude to his son. Now we're going to listen to the Spirit of God as he sings the praises of these three groups of females and their sons. For Hannah prayed for and was granted a son.
And the remarkable thing about her is this, that when God gave her a son, she fulfilled her promise and eventually took the lad when he was weak and gave him to the Lord in Shiloh and left her son and went back home. Firstborn son, if you please. And it was Phineas's wife. She was in process of giving birth when the news came in of her husband's death and the fact that the ark of the Lord was taken. And she was distraught.
And the women said, but don't worry too much, my dear, you, you've given birth to a son, cheer up, it's a son you got. He said, ha. He come. The ark is taken. The glory of the Lord has departed. No son to compensate for it. As he went home, I hope to glory. She left her son. And then there were those two milk cows.
Well, the Philistines knew a thing or two, didn't they? They wanted an experiment to prove whether the harm that had come to their god Dagon, when the ark was introduced into his temple and Master Dagon had fallen off his perch and on one occasion lost his head and his hands, you see, uh, they wanted to be sure that this was supernatural power and not a curious coincidence, you see. And then, lo and behold, they suffered with, well, an illness that is not normally mentioned in polite circles, you see, so I won't mention it. It's pretty uncomfortable when you sit down.
Uh, do you see? And these proud, big, strong Philistines were frightedly humiliated, you see. Never mind, uh, do you see? But they wanted to prove it finally, whether it was because the God of Israel was real, or whether was this all just a coincidence. And their experiment was this. They took two milk cows, you see, who'd just recently given birth to their calves. The Hebrew calls them sons, you know, so would any cow if it knew Hebrew. Sons meant to them just what a human son meant to the woman, you see. And the Philistines took their sons and tied them up at home, harnessed the two milk kind to a cart, nice new cart, and put the ark on it.
And the experiment was this, to see whether the God of Israel was real enough to overpower nature in those brute beasts. And in spite of all they would see, those cows, they would go back and take the Ark of God back to Israel. Simple but ingenious experiment, wasn't it, Uzay? And we're told that when they put the milk cow in in the harness to the cart and put the ark on the cart, the milk cow went, lowing as they went.
Dear old cows. They felt the tug, didn't they? And the sacrifice. They left their sons. Because they experienced a bigger power than that of mere nature. They took the ark back. And when they got back, the Israelites took the ark down. They cut the old cart in pieces for wood. To build a fire upon the altar, they killed the two cows, cut them up, and offered them in sacrifice to God. Now, I don't know if they're going to be cows in heaven, I'd rather think not.
But I could wish they got a reward, I know, don't you? What example of self-denying devotion to the Creator. It needed, of course, more than mere animal instinct to do it, didn't it? Such devotion in us will cost more and require more motivation than mere human enthusiasm. Hannah lived in a household where there were two wives, and the unholy competition to see which wife could produce the more children.
There'd too much bitterness for Hannah. For in those days, to be childless, women felt it was a shame, and the other wife taunted her and ridiculed her and put her down in front of all the visitors and so forth. It was a bitter time. And when nature demands of somebody, the force of nature, then to find that nature frustrated. That is a very trying time, isn't it? It made Hannah think the thing through. It opened enough.
Hannah saw much more to it than that. She said, Lord, if you give me a son, I will give him over to you. Would we know God as real in our witness to a largely atheistic world? Then if we would know him as real, then life's ambitions should not merely be provoked by natural desires, though there's nothing wrong in natural desires, of course not.
God implanted them in us, didn't he? There's nothing wrong in them and in their fulfillment. There's something beyond the fulfillment of natural desires, and that is in the processes of life. That God would so deign to use us in the accomplishment of natural life, yet for the higher purpose of his glory. Seeking my career not merely for my career's sake, but for what it might do to help on the purposes of God in this world.
Seeking a home, not just to have a comfortable home, for why shouldn't we have comfortable homes, but that it might be used to further the purposes of God. How shall I convince anybody of the reality of God? If, in that sense, God is not my supreme object in what I do in life, it will be costly. My dear good friends, don't be outdone by a couple of milk cows, will you?
So may God bless his word and our study of it together this week.
