Microsoft has the Guinness World Record for the quietest room. It is located at their headquarters in Redmond, Washington. It is so quiet that people are said to only be able to stand a few hours in it. They first hear their heart beating. Eventually they can hear their blood flowing and bones moving. Eerie.
Microsoft’s quiet room proves that there is no such thing as absolute quiet. When we get to a place of total quiet, our own bodies make noise to shatter the quiet.
It raises a question, though. Are our lives so noisy that we cannot hear the voice of God? We wake up to a noisy alarm. Often the first thing we do is look at our phone. Maybe we turn on the news. Perhaps we listen to music while in the shower. Next we get in the car and turn on a podcast. In the office we say “Okay Google, play Spotify.” All day long Spotify is playing our favorites. Back in the car, we continue the podcast. At home we watch the evening news, then our TV shows. Or maybe we’re scrolling through social media feeds, watching short videos, or playing video games and sometimes we’ve got multiple screens going at the same time.
Even if your life is only partially filled with that noise, I ask again, are our lives so noisy that we cannot hear the voice of God? What do we do if we want to hear God’s voice? We learn how to hear God’s voice this week on the blog from Samuel.
Last week we met Elkanah and his wife, Hannah…and his other wife, Penninah. Elkanah loved Hannah, but she was childless. Penninah, however, had many children. Hannah cried out to God, and said that if God would give her a child, she would devote him to serve the Lord. God blessed her with a child, Samuel, and after he was weaned, he went to serve at the tabernacle with Eli, the priest.
Eli was an old man, well past retirement. He had two sons, Hophni and Phineas, who were already serving as priests. They were the active priests, while Eli was in retirement. But Hophni and Phineas had a unique approach to the priesthood, to say the least. Let’s start reading in 1 Samuel 2, verse 12,
“Eli’s sons were scoundrels; they had no regard for the Lord. Now it was the practice of the priests that, whenever any of the people offered a sacrifice, the priest’s servant would come with a three-pronged fork in his hand while the meat was being boiled and would plunge the fork into the pan or kettle or caldron or pot. Whatever the fork brought up the priest would take for himself. This is how they treated all the Israelites who came to Shiloh. But even before the fat was burned, the priest’s servant would come and say to the person who was sacrificing, ‘Give the priest some meat to roast; he won’t accept boiled meat from you, but only raw.’ If the person said to him, ‘Let the fat be burned first, and then take whatever you want,’ the servant would answer, ‘No, hand it over now; if you don’t, I’ll take it by force.’ This sin of the young men was very great in the Lord’s sight, for they were treating the Lord’s offering with contempt.”
Hophni and Phineas remind me of the pastors with multi-million dollar personal jets and $800 shoes. How’d they get all that money? Often by constantly asking their TV audiences to donate money. Ripping people off with religion. Enriching themselves.
The words here in 1st Samuel chapter 2 are serious, “They have no regard for the Lord. They treat the Lord’s offering with contempt.” Priests are people who are supposed to lead people in worshiping the Lord, and yet they are using worship for selfish gain.
Those are serious sentences, accusations. We wonder how their father Eli can allow this. I also wonder if Hannah knows this is going on. Think about Hannah who dedicated her son, Samuel, to minister at the temple. Hannah seems like a faithful woman who wouldn’t want her little son being exposed to such selfish, deceitful men.
It can be incredibly confusing when the leaders, especially spiritual and religious leaders, are the ones behaving badly. We might to ourselves, “It can’t possibly be that bad, can it? The people who are claiming to have seen the leaders’ bad behavior are probably exaggerating or misunderstanding.”
But no, people can behave that badly. Leaders, and non-leaders alike. Leaders need accountability, as much as anyone else. We need people who speak the truth in love to us, especially when, like Hophni and Phineas, we are not actively seeking to hear from God.
But there Samuel is, serving in the temple where wicked Hophni and Phineas are sinning. So how is this affecting Samuel? Are the wicked priests shielding him from their bad behavior? Does Samuel notice? In the next post we find out.
Engaging Scripture 
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