When God gave Israel the Law and put the priesthood into place, he was looking to cultivate a family of priests that would serve His people well.  He chose a tribe of everyday Israelites who were to be spread throughout the land.  They were to be readily accessible to the people and very much in touch with the daily life and spiritual welfare of the people.  There was even a tight economic bond established between the tribes and the priests so that when the people of Israel were doing well the priests would prosper along with them.  In their priestly role they were to represent God to the people, teaching his law, leading the people in worship, keeping their faith rooted in the great annual feasts and to faithfully minister God’s blessings to the people.  The Israelites were to be regularly reminded of God’s great love and faithfulness as it had played out in their history.  The great God that had delivered Israel and made covenant with her was the God who desired to bless every aspect of their daily lives.  Likewise, the priests were to represent the people before God.  They were to assist the people in their desire to bring their prayers and praises before God.  One of the greatest privileges for the priests was to compassionately meet the individual who sought God and his forgiveness and to communicate God’s love and redemptive purposes to that individual in the context of prayer and sacrifice.  The Law indicates that the daily life of the priests was full of other priestly duties as well, but the heart of the priest was never to be far from God and his people.
 

As we read today’s section of I Samuel, it is easy to see why God was greatly displeased with Eli and his sons.  They had turned the role of priest from compassionate pastor into one of an aggressive predator.  Worshipers were greeted with hostility and threats.  The arrogance and the abuse of office could not continue.  As our text indicates, God was going to take decisive action and put a new priestly family in place, one that knew and represented his own heart.  As we will learn later, Samuel was to be the first one to take up that responsibility.  Ultimately, even a great priest like Samuel would face some of his own limits; after all, he was only human.  As the author of Hebrews reminds us in the New Testament, there would eventually need to be a radical change in the priestly role to match what God really had in mind.  Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, would be put in place as the perfect expression of what God had in his heart.  Jesus, having lived on earth, knew all about the hard things of daily life here and knew the devastation that sin causes.  His own sacrifice on the cross addressed the root problem of sin and death.  His victorious resurrection and ascension into heaven put him in the ideal place to represent people before God.  It is still possible to find plenty of problems with human priests, but our great high priest in heaven not only will never fail us, but he knows exactly how to minister to the needs of his people and present them to our Father in heaven.