1 Samuel 7:3-11 And Samuel spoke to all the house of Israel, saying, If you do return to the LORD with all your hearts… There are two great services for God and for Israel in which we find Samuel engaged in the first nine verses of this chapter. 1. In exhorting and directing them with a view to bring them into a right state before God. 2. This being accomplished, in praying for them in their time of trouble, and obtaining Divine help when the Philistines drew near in battle. 1. In the course of time the people appear to have come to feel how sad and desolate their national life was without any tokens of God's presence and grace "All the house of Israel lamented after the Lord." These symptoms of repentance, however, had not shown themselves in a very definite or practical form. Now the putting away of the strange gods and Ashtaroth was a harder condition than we at first should suppose. Some are inclined to fancy that it was a mere senseless and ridiculous obstinacy that drew the Israelites so much to the worship of the idolatrous gods of their neighbours. In reality the temptation wan of a much more subtle kind. Their religious worship as prescribed by Moses had little to attract the natural feelings of the human heart. It was simple, it was severe, it was self-denying. The worship of the pagan nations was more lively and attractive. Fashionable entertainments and free-and-easy revelries were superadded to please the carnal mind. To put away Baalim and Ashtaroth was to abjure what was fashionable and agreeable, and fall back on what was unattractive and sombre. Was it not, too, an illiberal demand? No. If the people were in earnest now, they must show it by putting away every image and every object and ornament that was connected with the worship of other gods. But the people were in earnest; and this first demand of Samuel was complied with. Then the first steps towards revival and communion must be the forsaking of these sins, and of ways of life that prepare the way for them. It is not enough that in church, or at some meeting, or in our closet, we experience a painful conviction how much we have offended God, and a desire not to offend Him in like manner any more. We must "prepare our hearts" for this end. We must remember that in the world with which we mingle we are exposed to many influences that remove God from our thoughts, that stimulate our infirmities, that give force to temptation, that lessen our power of resistance, that tend to draw us back into our old sine. Having found the people so far obedient to his requirements, Samuel's next step was to call an assembly of all Israel to Mizpeh. It is important to mark the stress which is laid here on the public assembly of the people. When Samuel convened the people to a public assembly, he evidently did it on the principle on which in the New Testament we are required not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together. It is in order that the presence of people like-minded, and with the same earnest feelings and purposes, may have a rousing and warming influence upon us. The next scene in the panorama of the text is — the Philistines invading Israel. Here Samuel's service is that of an intercessor, praying for his people, and obtaining God's blessing. The Israelites knew where their help was to be found, and recognising Samuel as their mediator, they said to him, "Cease not to cry unto the Lord our God for us, that He will save us out of the hand of the Philistines." With this request Samuel most readily complies. But first he offers a sucking lamb as a whole burnt offering to the Lord, and only after this are we told that "Samuel cried unto the Lord, and the Lord heard him." The lesson is supremely important. When sinners approach God to entreat His favour, it must be by the new and living way, sprinkled with atoning blood. All other ways of access will fail. Luther humbles himself in the dust and implores God's favour, and struggles with might and main to reform his heart; but Luther cannot find peace until he sees how it is in the righteousness of another he is to draw nigh and find the blessing — in the righteousness of the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world. (W. G. Blaikie, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: And Samuel spake unto all the house of Israel, saying, If ye do return unto the LORD with all your hearts, then put away the strange gods and Ashtaroth from among you, and prepare your hearts unto the LORD, and serve him only: and he will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines. |
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