Word of Salvation – January 2025

 

AGEING WELL GOD’S WAY (2): A CLEAR CONSCIENCE (Samuel)

 

Sermon by Rev Steve Voorwinde on 1Samuel 8:1-5

Bible Readings:

                  1 Samuel 8:1-5

                  1 Samuel 12:1-5

Introduction

What does the Bible have to say about ageing well?  What kind of people does God want us to be as we get older? I think we all know what society around us has to say about getting older. Its messages come through loud and clear:

• Stay active. Keep moving. Do your exercises.
• Make sure you eat well. Stick to a healthy diet.
• And then, of course, get a good night’s sleep. It will do wonders.
• Oh, and one more thing. Make sure you have a healthy amount of super.

Now there’s nothing wrong with any of that advice. It makes sense to stay as fit as we can. It’s much wiser to eat healthy food than it is to eat junk food. And it’s always great when you can get a good night’s sleep and top that up with a little nap in the afternoon. When you get older it’s also sensible to have set aside money for a comfortable retirement.

These things are all well and good, but is that all there is to it? Is ageing well just a matter of eating and sleeping well, of doing your exercises and having enough money? Or could there be more to it than that? Could there be deeper things that we might easily overlook? To find answers I thought it would be a good idea to see if there are any people that the Bible describes as ‘old’ and what it says about them. Could there be anything that we could learn from their example?

Last time we considered the patriarchs – Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They all lived to a ripe old age, and they all had faith in God. That was their defining characteristic. And we discovered that faith is God’s best gift to us in our old age. By faith we know that our sins have been forgiven. By faith we know that the grave is not the end. By faith we know that we have eternal life and that the best is yet to come.

So that’s the Bible’s first lesson about ageing well, and it goes all the way back to the book of Genesis. Look at those old patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and imitate their faith. Trust God to keep his promises. Trust him for your eternal salvation.

1. The Bible’s second lesson on ageing well comes with the Bible character we are considering today, and that is Samuel. What is his standout feature and what can we learn from it?

 

1. Again, let me remind you that Samuel was old. In the verses that we read earlier, this is mentioned three times:

• First, we told in the narrative itself: “When Samuel grew old, he appointed his sons as judges for Israel” (8:1). Some Bible scholars think he was about 65 years old at the time. “A mere youth,” some of you may say. When I was 65 my mother was still alive. Some of you here may have children that age yourselves.
• But the elders in the story agree. The first thing they say to Samuel is, “You are old” (8:4). What they are really saying is, “You are old enough to retire. Who’s going to replace you?”
• Then a few chapters later Samuel admits that he is old, and he even adds to it, “I am old and grey,” he says (12:2). Samuel is not an age-denier. He wears his age as a badge of honour. Old age is nothing to be ashamed of. The book of Proverbs says that “Grey hair is a glorious crown” (16:31) and it is “the splendour of the old” (20:29).

1. So now we know that Samuel was old. But of course, there was much more to him than that. In the Bible books that bear his name he is portrayed as a very great man indeed. The book of 1 Samuel follows his story from the cradle to the grave. He lives to a ripe old age. During his active years he served as a prophet, a judge, a priest, and a national leader. He has been called the greatest leader of Israel since Moses.

Samuel led Israel during a time of transition and upheaval. Moses had led the children of Israel out of Egypt through the desert and to the edge of the Promised Land. Joshua led the people into the land, and they took possession of it. He was followed by a succession of judges. By the end of that period, “everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judg 21:23). They all did as they saw fit. They had lost their moral compass.

It was left up to Samuel to clean up the mess. He was a man who carried moral authority. Time and again he had to lead the people back to God. Time and again they would fall back into paganism and be defeated by the Philistines. Each time Samuel would exercise spiritual leadership and restore the people’s relationship with God. This went on for decades till the people finally said, “We want a king like the other nations.” Samuel took it as an insult. He knew that Israel’s problem was not political but spiritual. But God said, “Give them their king. Give them what they want. But first warn them about what the consequences will be. They have not rejected you. They have rejected me. Give them the king they want.”

So Samuel warned the people. “Once you get a king, your sons will be become his soldiers and your daughters his servants. He will take the best of your fields, your vineyards and your olive groves. He will take your best male and female servants and use them for his work. He will take a tenth of your flocks and you yourselves will become his servants.”

But the people wouldn’t listen. They took no notice. They cried, “We want a king.” (8:19). So, God gave them Saul and he was disaster. Then God gave them David who was “a man after God’s own heart.” But between the period of the judges on the one hand and the shaky start to the monarchy on the other stood the towering figure of Samuel. He was a man of God who held Israel together during one of the most turbulent times in its history. And here’s the amazing thing. In the whole Bible there is never a bad word said about him. Maybe I have missed something, but I have never read anything negative about Samuel anywhere in Scripture. Try to prove me wrong if you will, but I am sure you will be hard pressed to fault Samuel in anything he did.

1. Let me give you some evidence for this from one of the passages we read. In chapter 12 the people of Israel now have their king. They have asked Samuel for a king. Now it’s his turn to do the asking. He looks them right in the eye and he plies them with questions. He challenges them before God and their new king:

• “Whose ox have I taken?”
• “Whose donkey have I taken?”
• “Whom have I cheated?”
• “Whom have I oppressed?”
• “From whose hand have I accepted a bribe to make me shut my eyes?”
• “If I have done any of these, I will make it right” (1 Sam 12:3).

Now why could Samuel ask these questions so publicly? Why could he issue such a direct challenge? Because he knew what the people’s answer would be:

• “You have not cheated us.”
• “You have not oppressed us.”
• “You have not taken anything from anyone’s hand” (1 Sam 12:4).

They could testify honestly before God and their new king. The people have spoken. They have no mud to throw at Samuel. He was a man of justice and integrity. What this whole episode shows is that Samuel was a man with a clear conscience. He was now an old man and he had been their leader from his youth. After decades and decades of leadership, he came out of it with a clear conscience. No one is suggesting that he was perfect, but he had a good conscience before God and his fellow human beings.

What a precious thing it is to grow old and still have a good conscience! Surely that has to be a condition for ageing well. You can have good health. You can have great wealth. But if you are riddled with guilt, you won’t age well, and you won’t enjoy your retirement. Few things are better for our general well-being than a clear conscience. Samuel had a clear conscience in his old age. Do you? The kind of questions that Samuel asked his people, could you ask such questions of those who have known you the best and get such a clear answer? Before God and before your loved ones and friends and the people you used to work with, do you have a clean conscience?

2. But at this point you may say, “Hang on a minute. Was Samuel really as lily white as you have made him out to be? In the first passage that was read, didn’t it say that he appointed his sons as judges over Israel? And didn’t they turn out to be bad eggs?”

 

1. Yes, in that passage it does say that Samuel’s “sons did not walk in his ways” (8:3). And all the elders of Israel were quick to remind him of it: “Your sons do not walk in your ways” (8:5), they said. In fact, they had taken his whole value system and turned it on its head:

Of Samuel the people said, “You have not cheated or oppressed us” (12:4).

Of Samuel’s sons it was said, “They turned aside after dishonest gain” (12:3).

Samuel asked, “From whose hand have I accepted a bribe to make me shut my eyes?” (12:3).

Samuel’s sons “accepted bribes and perverted justice” (8:3).

So these sons were bad eggs all right. They were dishonest, unfair and unjust. But was that Samuel’s fault? Was he responsible for it? Should he be blamed for not raising them properly? Should he have a bad conscience about it?

Well, apparently, he didn’t have bad conscience about it at all. He had no pangs of guilt in the least. Before Samuel challenged all Israel with his clean track record as a leader, he reminded them, “I am old and grey, and my sons are here with you” (12:2). His adult sons were there in the audience and even they could not fault him. Samuel had a clear conscience and so he should have. Later in the Old Testament, the prophet Ezekiel would write, “The soul who sins is the one who will die. The son will not share the guilt of the father, nor will the father share the guilt of the son” (Ezek 18:20).

1. But here we bump into a problem that is all too common today. The problem is with teenage or adult children who have had a Christian upbringing and then drifted away or rejected the faith altogether. For Christian parents that can be a very painful experience. I have seen grown men cry! Yes, seeing your own children turning their backs on Jesus, leaving the church and rejecting the faith is deeply saddening. It’s something to grieve over. It gives you a heavy heart. But let me say this: It’s worse than useless to also carry around a load of false guilt.

Parents who have done their best to teach their children and have them instructed in the Christian faith, and who have been a good example to them, who have loved them and nurtured them, can be sad and even shed tears when their kids fall away, but they should not feel guilty.

• We can teach them our faith.
• We can model our faith.
• We live out our faith.
• But we can’t force our faith.

Once our children reach maturity, they are responsible for their personal decisions and their life choices. They are not ours to make and we should never make decisions for them. That’s not the loving thing to do. It’s more loving to always have an open door, an open home and an open heart. Then, if their lives do fall apart, they will have a soft place to fall.

When it comes to changing people’s hearts, even our own children’s, we can’t do God’s work for him. Changing hearts is God’s business not ours. So if your kids turn out to be mature, loving Christian adults, you can’t take the credit. But if they turn out like Samuel’s sons – dishonest cheats and liars – you can’t take the blame. All you can do is to love them and pray for them, as only parents can. Maybe God will yet save them and change their hearts. He might even do it, when you are no longer here. We live in hope.

1. There’s another side to this as well. Parenthood is not a competition. Only on rare occasions should we dare to judge the parenting of others. Rarely do we have the whole picture. If parents have a child who turns out badly, it’s not necessarily because they have been bad parents. On the other hand, if parents have children who have turned out well, it may not be because they were such great parents. Most ‘successful’ parents will be humble enough to say, “They turned out well in spite of us, not because of us.” And Christian parents whose adult children are believers will add that it’s all because of God’s grace.

The Oxford professor John Lennox has said, “When a couple decide to become parents, they take a great risk. They never know whether that newborn child will grow up to love them or to hate them. But the risk is worth it!”

But if some parents have to bear the pain of their own children turning against them, let’s not judge them for it. Samuel had two sons who turned out to be a great disappointment. But no one judged him for it – not God, not the people of Israel, not even Samuel himself. So let’s be very careful when it comes to judging the parenting skills of others. They don’t need to be judged, and our judgments are seldom correct.

Conclusion

But let’s now in closing come back to today’s basic question. Do you have a good conscience? Now let me say that no one here has a perfect conscience. Some people’s conscience is too sensitive. Others are not sensitive enough. The Bible says that our conscience can be weak, defiled, and seared, but it can also be pure, clean, and good.

So how can you move from one group to the other? How can your conscience go from being weak, defiled or seared to being pure, clean, and good? Where do you begin to make that all important move? The apostle John, one of Jesus’ closest followers, tells us to do two things – to believe and to confess.

Firstly, we are to believe that the blood of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, purifies us from every sin (1 John 1:8).

Secondly, John goes on to say, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. But if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:8-9).

So if you want a good conscience believe and confess. And if you want to keep your conscience good, keep on believing and keep on confessing.

A good conscience – it’s one of the best things to have if we want to be ageing well.