Day 1: Don’t Mistake God’s Patience for Permission: When Mercy Becomes a Licence | God Forbid. The Sin of Presumption

Featured Bible Character: Hophni and Phinehas — 1 Samuel 2:12-17, 22-25

Scripture References: Jeremiah 7:8-10; 1 Samuel 2:12-17, 22-25

Imagine sinning in the morning and rehearsing your apology to God before lunchtime. We know that's not repentance, right? Today, we meet two priests who turned access to God into an alibi, and a prophet who called it out for exactly what it was.

Father, thank You once again for the blessings of this new day and the privilege we have to come into Your awesome presence. As we begin this new series, I pray that we will allow Your Holy Spirit to flow through us and be available to be used for Your glory. Thank You for forgiving us for the times we've taken Your patience for granted. Holy Spirit, make ua uncomfortable with sin before I commit it, not just afterward. Teach us to fear You enough to obey You first. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Eli was the high priest and judge of Israel who mentored the young prophet Samuel, but the same one who failed to restrain his sons, Hophni and Phinehas, from their persistent sin against God (1 Samuel 1–4).

Eli's sons had the kind of access most Israelites could only imagine. They were priests, standing daily in the tabernacle, handling the sacrifices, mediating between God and His people.

Scripture doesn't soften what they did with that access. In fact, the Bible says in 1 Samuel 2:17: “the sin of the young men was very great before the LORD: for men abhorred the offering of the LORD”.

What did Hophni and Phinehas do? They took the best portions of the offerings for themselves before God received His due, and they “lay with the women that assembled at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation” (1 Samuel 2:22) — turning the place of worship into the scene of their own indulgence.

And to top it off, when their father warned them, they didn't listen, “because the LORD would slay them” (1 Samuel 2:25) — meaning that their hearts were already past the point of caring. Have we ever gotten there, in the natural, with someone in our lives? Hopefully, we are not there at all and will never get there when it comes to our spiritual lives.

Centuries later, Jeremiah confronted a generation doing the same thing in principle, if not in priesthood. God's people would steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, and do all manner of evil, and then walk into His house and stand before Him, saying, “We are delivered to do all these abominations” (Jeremiah 7:8-10). What do we call that? Presumptuous sin, not so?

Notice the logic: not “we are forgiven,” but “we are delivered to do” — as if access to God's presence had become a permission slip rather than a privilege that should have humbled them.

That's the anatomy or make-up of presumption. It isn't simply sinning, because everyone sins. It's sinning with the apology already drafted. It's standing close enough to God to know exactly what He requires, and then deciding that the relationship itself will absorb the cost. They were literally counting on their relationship with God to shield them from the consequences of deliberate disobedience.

Again, what do we call that? Presumptuous sin! They were abusing the grace of God, quite frankly. And do we do that sometimes! I’d say we do, and we need to check ourselves. Amen?!

Hophni and Phinehas weren't outsiders guessing at holiness; they were the ones who taught it to everyone else. Their proximity to the sacred didn't restrain them; it desensitised them. They had become spiritually numb. It no longer troubled them that they were handling holy things while living unholy lives. What should have produced reverence had become routine.

This is worth sitting with honestly.

Position, access, and familiarity with spiritual things can quietly convince us we're exempt from the weight of our own choices. You can know all the scriptures, lead worship, teach the class, and still be living the same pattern Hophni and Phinehas lived — comfortable with sin because you're confident in mercy. That makes me sad that I can be labelled like that. What say you?

But here’s the thing, Family: grace does not exist to accommodate sin; it exists to deliver us from it. God’s grace was given to make obedience possible.

Today, let us ask God to show us where access has replaced reverence, and let conviction reach us before consequence has to. Hallelujah, glory to God.

Click here for the full Live Empowerment Session: https://www.youtube.com/live/8qzw4Z69qi8?si=1bqvPdXghOJfe-Rq