It is deeply sorrowful now to discover failure in the man of God, especially when we remember the terrible object-lesson which had come before him in Eli and his sons. But where is there not failure in poor frail flesh? Only in Christ has God seen from first to last that which has given joy to His heart, and, blessed be His name, in Him will be gathered up all the broken threads of human history at the finish. All that Adam, Noah, Moses, Aaron, David, and others, should have been, and were not (although they were all types of Christ) will be realized at the end in God's Second Man and Last Adam, our Lord Jesus Christ.
Samuel, beginning to feel the weight of his years, “made his sons judges over Israel” (1 Sam. 8:1). No mention of any word from the Lord and no record of any prayer on the part of the prophet! Yet this was the man who was conspicuous in his day for his powerful intercession! But why appoint his sons? Moses did not so. When he felt that his term of service was drawing to a close, he said, “Let the Lord, the God of the spirits of all flesh, set a man over the congregation, which may go out before them, and which may go in before them, and which may lead them out, and which may bring them in, that the congregation of the Lord be not as sheep which have no shepherd” (Num. 27:15-17). This is beautiful, and it shows that a true shepherd’s heart was found in Moses. But he did not venture to appoint anyone, neither did he suggest his own sons for the service. Indeed, he willingly acquiesced in the Lord's choice of Joshua. Why did the thought of family succession enter the mind of Samuel? Had not the sovereignty of God been strikingly manifested in his own case when the successional priesthood was in utter failure? In the Book of Acts, the principle of divine sovereignty in our own era is repeatedly shown. Stephen and Philip were chosen by the assembly in Jerusalem to look after widows and were quickly called of God into the very forefront of the testimony, the one in Jerusalem and the other in Samaria; Barnabas and Saul were selected by the Holy Spirit from among a group of prophets and teachers in Antioch to go forth and evangelize the Gentile world. Apollos was abruptly brought upon the scene quite apart from all other laborers, and so on. This is the way of the Spirit of God, but how feebly has Christendom understood it! Successional order has been the established ecclesiastical principle, to the damage of God's saints and to the hindrance of the work of God.