Rēad to Read …Again
Daily Reading: I Samuel 1-3
I Samuel 3:18
And Samuel told him every whit, and hid nothing from him. And he said, It is the Lord: let him do what seemeth him good.
The aged Eli received a message of doom and despair from Samuel, the lad he raised in the Temple. For Eli, this was a difficult message to receive. For Samuel it was the first of many difficult messages he was to deliver. But both knew the message was from the Lord. With grace, repentance and full surrender, Eli received the message well and spoke some immortal words that live on still. …It is the Lord: let him do what seemeth him good.
Fighting against God is pointless. He always wins. But contritely receiving His just chastisements are good and wholesome, always yielding peace and good to the soul. After all, even unto the last book of the Bible it is testified in Revelation 16:7, Even so, Lord God Almighty, true and righteous are thy judgments.
The legendary Marine General James Mattis once said, "No war is over until the enemy says it's over. We may think it over, we may declare it over, but in fact, the enemy gets a vote." This being true with humankind, it is also true with the Lord God. Victory with God always involves the last step of an individual agreeing with Him and submitting themselves to His righteous judgments. Eli did this. David did in Psalm 51. Paul, known then as Saul, did on that road to Damascus. Even Jesus did during that time of prayer in the garden of Gethsemane saying …nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt. Mark 14:36
Eli said it like this: ...let him do what seemeth him good. Not “let him do what I think is good.” Or “let him do that which we agree on.” Or even “let him do that which all men will seem to be good.” No, he said, from the heart: what seemeth him good. This was a prayer of faith. No doubt the news Eli received from Samuel was difficult to hear, but a thousand years after the details of God’s judgment had been carried out, Eli can stand tall with the knowledge that the Lord did to him that which the Lord thought good. Perhaps you have been in a meeting or a church where a leader will say, “God is good all the time” wherein the others reply, “and all the time God is good.” The first time I heard this was while preaching in a prison. Those incarcerated souls agreeing together that all the time God is good. When you think about it, for most of those souls God was all they had. For Eli, having received such horrible news about his family, God was all he had. He yielded to him nobly. This high priest’s fall was catastrophic, but he received God’s pronouncement justly.
Some may think Eli just gave up and quit fighting. That is exactly what he did. He knew enough about the Lord to know that no one wins that war.
Dr. William T. Howe
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