1 st Samuel

1. 1st Samuel “The sons of Eli were scoundrels” (1 Samuel 2:12)

2. “This is eternal life: • to know you…” (John 17:3)

3. Some principles of investigation • Jesus is the clearest revelation of who God is • “You’ve heard it said…” • Use all 66 books for building our picture of God • Consider the setting, time and culture • Ask hard questions. Be honest with God. • “What hurts me the most is this – that God is no longer powerful.” (Psalm 77:10) • Prayerfully use all of the evidence available, apply reason and logic… be willing to change our beliefs based on new evidence

4. The book of Revelation “My spirit cannot accommodate itself to this book. For me this is reason enough not to think highly of it: Christ is neither taught nor known in it.”

5. “My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself…Could we not almost say that this shattering is one of the marks of His presence? The incarnation is the supreme example. It leaves all previous ideas of the Messiah in ruins.” – C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed (4:15)

6. Five Views of the Old Testament • 1. Avoidance • 2. Idealizing (high road) • 3. Idolizing • 4. Mocking • 5. Realism (low road)

8. Creation, War in Heaven • Adam and Eve • The Flood • Tower of Babel • “Long ago your forefathers, including Terah the father of Abraham and Nahor, lived beyond the River and worshiped other gods.” (Joshua 24:2 – NIV)

9. Isaac and Rebecca • “Isaac preferred Esau, because he enjoyed eating the animals Esau killed, but Rebecca preferred Jacob.” (Genesis 25:28 – GN) • Jacob (Heal grabber, to deceive) • Esau married 2 Hittite women • “They made life miserable for Isaac and Rebecca” (Genesis 26:35 – GN)

11. “He dreamed that he saw a stairway reaching from earth to heaven, with angels going up and coming down on it. And there was the LORD standing beside him. ‘I am the LORD, the God of Abraham and Isaac,’ he said. ‘I will give to you and to your descendants this land on which you are lying.’” (Genesis 28:12-13 GNB)

12. “Then Jacob made a vow to the LORD: ‘If you will be with me and protect me on the journey I am making and give me food and clothing, and if I return safely to my father’s home, then you will be my God.’” (Genesis 28:20-23 – GN)

13. “Not until the next morning did Jacob discover that it was Leah.” (Genesis 29:25 – GN) • “Jacob had intercourse with Rachel also, and he loved her more than Leah.” (Genesis 29:30 – GN) • “Jacob deceived Laban by not letting him know that he was leaving.” (Genesis 31:20 – GN)

14. “Rachel had taken the household gods and put them in a camel’s saddlebag and was sitting on them. Laban searched through the whole tent, but did not find them. Rachel said to her father, ‘Do not be angry with me, sir, but I am not able to stand up in your presence; I am having my monthly period.’ Laban searched but did not find his household gods.” (Genesis 31:34,35 – GN)

15. The rape of Dinah • “We cannot let our sister marry a man who is not circumcised; that would be a disgrace for us. We can agree only on the condition that you become like us by circumcising all your males.” (Genesis 34:14,15 – GN) • “Three days later, when the men were still sore from their circumcision, two of Jacob's sons, Simeon and Levi, the brothers of Dinah, took their swords, went into the city without arousing suspicion, and killed all the men…” (Genesis 34:25 – GN)

16. “While Jacob was living in that land, Reuben had sexual intercourse with Bilhah, one of his father’s concubines; Jacob heard about it and was furious.” (Genesis 35:22 - GN)

17. “Jacob loved Joseph more than any of his other children because Joseph had been born to him in his old age. So one day Jacob had a special gift made for Joseph—a beautiful robe.” (Genesis 37:3 – NLT)

19. Judah marries a Canaanite woman • “When Judah saw her, he thought that she was a prostitute, because she had her face covered. He went over to her at the side of the road and said, ‘All right, how much do you charge?’ (He did not know that she was his daughter-in-law.)” (Genesis 38:15,16 – GN) • “About three months later someone told Judah, ‘Your daughter-in-law Tamar has been acting like a whore, and now she is pregnant.’ Judah ordered, ‘Take her out and burn her to death.’” (Genesis 38:24,25 – GN)

21. “He sent his brothers off and as they left, he said to them, ‘Don’t quarrel on the way.’” (Genesis 45:24 – GN)

22. Joseph cried when he received this message. Then his brothers themselves came and bowed down before him. ‘Here we are before you as your slaves,’ they said. But Joseph said to them, ‘Don’t be afraid; I can’t put myself in the place of God. You plotted evil against me, but God turned it into good, in order to preserve the lives of many people who are alive today because of what happened.” (Genesis 50:15-20 GNB)

26. “Worship no god but me. • Do not make for yourselves images…Do not bow down to any idol or worship it, because I am the LORD your God and I tolerate no rivals. • You must not misuse the name of the LORD your God. • Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. You have six days in which to do your work, but the seventh day is a day of rest dedicated to me.

27. Respect your father and your mother… • Do not commit murder. • Do not commit adultery. • Do not steal. • Do not accuse anyone falsely. • Do not desire another man’s house; do not desire his wife, his slaves, his cattle, his donkeys, or anything else that he owns.” (Exodus 20:3-17)

28. “Do not have sexual intercourse with any of your relatives. Do not disgrace your father by having intercourse with your mother. You must not disgrace your own mother…No man or woman is to have sexual relations with an animal; that perversion makes you ritually unclean” (Leviticus 18:7,23 - GN)

30. “How much longer will they refuse to trust me, even though I have performed so many miracles among them?” (Numbers 14:10)

31. “They answered Joshua, ‘We will do everything you have told us and will go anywhere you send us. We will obey you, just as we always obeyed Moses…’” (Joshua 1:16-18 – GN)

32. Judges

33. “The LORD’s servant Joshua son of Nun died at the age of a hundred and ten...That whole generation also died, and the next generation forgot the LORD and what he had done for Israel.” (Judges 2:8-10 – GN)

34. “Then Gideon said to God, ‘You say that you have decided to use me to rescue Israel. Well, I am putting some wool on the ground where we thresh the wheat. If in the morning there is dew only on the wool but not on the ground, then I will know that you are going to use me to rescue Israel.’

35. That is exactly what happened. When Gideon got up early the next morning, he squeezed the wool and wrung enough dew out of it to fill a bowl with water. Then Gideon said to God, ‘Don’t be angry with me; let me speak just once more. Please let me make one more test with the wool. This time let the wool be dry, and the ground be wet.’ • That night God did that very thing. The next morning the wool was dry, but the ground was wet with dew.” (Judges 6:36-40 – GN)

36. “Gideon made an idol from the gold and put it in his hometown, Ophrah. All the Israelites abandoned God and went there to worship the idol. It was a trap for Gideon and his family.” (Judges 8:27 – GN) • “He had seventy sons born to him, for he had many wives. He also had a concubine in Shechem, who gave birth to a son, whom he named Abimelech.” (Judges 8:30-31 – GN)

37. “Then Samson prayed, ‘Sovereign LORD, please remember me; please, God, give me my strength just this one time more, so that…. • …with this one blow I can get even with the Philistines for putting out my two eyes” (Judges 16:28 – GN) • Hebrews 11

38. 1st Samuel • “The sons of Eli were scoundrels. They paid no attention to the LORD or to the regulations concerning what the priests could demand from the people.” (1Samuel 2:12-13) • “This sin of the sons of Eli was extremely serious in the LORD's sight, because they treated the offerings to the LORD with such disrespect.” (1Sa 2:17)

39. “Eli was now very old. He kept hearing about everything his sons were doing to the Israelites and that they were even sleeping with the women who worked at the entrance to the Tent of the LORD's presence.” (1Samuel 2:22)

41. “Don't point your finger at someone else and try to pass the blame! My complaint, you priests, is with you...My people are being destroyed because they don't know Me.” (Hosea 4:4-6 – NLT)

43. “When I turned to it in the magazine, I got a jolt from the full-page photograph of my jaw drooping. Not a lovely sight. But then I am not a lovely sight, and in a moment I thought, well, what the hell. It’s just as well it’s out there. That’s how I look, after all.”

44. “An agonizing experience in every category I can think of and others still waiting to be invented.”

45. “The characters in this movie should be arrested for loitering with intent to moan.”

46. “If you want to save yourself the ticket price, go into the kitchen, cue up a male choir singing the music of hell, and get a kid to start banging pots and pans together. Then close your eyes and use your imagination… I find it amusing that creatures that can unfold out of a Camaro and stand four stories high do most of their fighting with...fists.”

48. “I believe religion in its many forms has been the greatest single inspiration for man’s inhumanity to man, but I would not agree it poisons everything. Those rare people who practice in their lives the underlying principles of their religions are most often good for themselves and others. Those who use religion as a means toward thought control and rigid conformity are twisted and deranged. Anyone who would use religion as their reason to cause unhappiness to another is guilty of a great sin…The extremists of both Christianity and Islam, for example, follow lives of violent repudiation of the beliefs of their own religions.”

49. “As to the larger question of whether God exists, I would agree with Hitchens that we can’t rule out the possibility of some indefinable first mover, although I'm sure he doesn't mean mover as a being but as a force. To hope we can learn how the universe came about is admirable; one might as well call that hope by any name. Whatever one calls it, it’s by definition outside the reach not only of our knowledge, but of knowledge itself.”

50. “I was asked at lunch today who or what I worshipped. The question was asked sincerely, and in the same spirit I responded that I worshipped whatever there might be outside knowledge. I worship the void. The mystery. And the ability of our human minds to perceive an unanswerable mystery.”