If You Are Faithful They Will Beg You!

1 Samuel 2:35-36
(35) I will raise up for myself a faithful priest, who will do according to what is in my heart and mind. I will firmly establish his priestly house, and they will minister before my anointed one always. (36) Then everyone left in your family line will come and bow down before him for a piece of silver and a loaf of bread and plead, “Appoint me to some priestly office so I can have food to eat. ”’”

New Living Translation
(36) Then all of your surviving family will bow before him, begging for money and food. ‘Please,’ they will say, ‘give us jobs among the priests so we will have enough to eat.’”

Contemporary English Version
(36) But if anyone is left from your family, he will come to my priest and beg for money or a little bread. He may even say to my priest, “Please let me be a priest, so I will at least have something to eat.”

Good News Translation
(36) Any of your descendants who survive will have to go to that priest and ask him for money and food, and beg to be allowed to help the priests, in order to have something to eat.”

No one wants to beg. To beg is dehumanizing. To beg places you at the mercy of the one you are begging. While begging you lose your self-esteem. We must do everything possible to avoid begging.

The begging mentality enslaves the beggar particularly if one thinks it is a source of free income. Begging creates a warped mentality that now seeks narratives that will convince others to give you free handouts. Begging kills creativity and a hardworking spirit because free things are addictive. Successful begging corrupts a person. It is better to survive in want than beg and get addicted or dehumanize yourself.

There is nothing positive about begging. Begging is bad even if it becomes a source of livelihood. Begging destroys the ethos of industry. To tell someone that they will become beggars is to curse the person into the most undesirable and life of shame.

God sends a messenger to tell Eli that because he and his children are unfaithful to God, they will not hold the position God gave them anymore. God says that He will find someone else who is faithful to everything God says and wants. God says He will find someone who will do the job better than Eli. God says that He will find someone who will serve Him well, established, and forever.

To be replaced in such a manner is painful, but God says He will do it. God means that He appointed Eli, though Eli was not the best, there were other better people. Now that Eli is unfaithful, God says, He will get someone better. That means while Eli thought he was the best, God knew of someone better out there.

While we are serving God and humanity, we should not brag and think that we are the best. God has better people out there that we don’t know about. God knows there are better people out there. People better than us. We are serving because God is good and not because we are any better. We are doing what we are doing today because God has allowed it and not because we are any excellent.

God has better people out there who can take up your job or business. God has better people out there who can parent your children or be spouses to your spouse. God has better people who are more committed than you. It is by God’s grace that you are still considered relevant. We should honor and praise God for such grace. That while He has better people, He hasn’t replaced us yet.

God sends a messenger to tell Eli and his sons that they will be replaced by someone better. Someone better than all of them. While that is hurting, what God says next is even much more painful. God says that Eli’s family will come begging the new team that is better than them. They will come begging for jobs and food to survive. The faithful will not beg, but the hypocrites of Eli’s family will beg the faithful.

Are you faithful in your relationship with God and people? Be faithful and honor God. Be faithful and treat people in a humane way. If you become arrogant and feel invincible, God will visit you someday and cause you to beg those you despised. Be faithful to God and treat people well. If you are faithful, they will come begging you!

Psalms 37:25
I was young and now I am old,
yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken
or their children begging bread.

God keeps His promise that the righteous will never beg. Therefore to beg, may mean to be forsaken by God. The unrighteous Will beg but the righteous will not beg.

When you beg you become a nuisance. You bore people. You irritate people. No one enjoys your company.

God tells Eli that his family will beg the family of the righteous for jobs and food. That is the punishment of unfaithfulness. If you are unfaithful you will soon beg the underdogs you crushed.

May God save me from unfaithfulness. May God save me from begging anything anywhere, in Jesus’s name, Amen!

1. Rei Kesis YouTube Channel (subscribe, click on notification and share) –http://youtube.com/reikesis
2. Rei Kesis books on Amazon (Amazon will sell and deliver anywhere in the world. For those in Kenya you can buy from any ABC close to you. ABC is Adventist Book Center) –https://www.amazon.com/s?k=rei+kesis&ref=nb_sb_noss
3. Rei Kesis daily blog –https://reikesis.com/