Eli had enjoyed
much favor from God: 1) He was of the people of Israel, the nation that had
been chosen by God and delivered from the bondage of Pharaoh; 2), he was of the
line of Aaron, the ones whom God set apart to serve at the altar, to mediate
between God and God’s people; and 3) as the one serving as priest, God had
promised he would forever provide for Eli and his descendants from the
sacrifices that the people of God brought for him to administer. Eli, however,
had scorned God’s grace. By allowing his wicked sons to make a mockery of the
priesthood, he honored them more than the Lord. As a result, the Lord said he
would cut him and his family off for,
“those who honor me I will honor, and those who despise me shall be lightly
esteemed.”
What does it mean to honor
God? I offered the following quote from J. Stuart
Holden: “To honor God does not necessarily imply doing great things for Him. It
is rather the consistently maintained attitude of the heart which refers every
choice to His judgment, measures every value by His standard, and endeavors to
make every incident of life contribute towards the glorifying of His Name.”
Read through that quote again. It is wonderfully concise and enormously
helpful. This is the kind of whole-life devotion that God deserves. When we
consider that he “did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all”
and from that we can have confidence that he will “also with him graciously
give us all things” (Romans 8:32), we should honor
God by keeping his person and purposes preeminent in our lives, something Eli
had forgotten to do.
