Sermon January 15, 2012

1 Samuel 3:1-10(11-20)

Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the LORD under Eli. The word of the LORD was rare in those days; visions were not widespread.

At that time Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, was lying down in his room; the lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the LORD, where the ark of God was. Then the LORD called, "Samuel! Samuel!" and he said, "Here I am!" and ran to Eli, and said, "Here I am, for you called me." But he said, "I did not call; lie down again." So he went and lay down. The LORD called again, "Samuel!" Samuel got up and went to Eli, and said, "Here I am, for you called me." But he said, "I did not call, my son; lie down again." Now Samuel did not yet know the LORD, and the word of the LORD had not yet been revealed to him. The LORD called Samuel again, a third time. And he got up and went to Eli, and said, "Here I am, for you called me." Then Eli perceived that the LORD was calling the boy. Therefore Eli said to Samuel, "Go, lie down; and if he calls you, you shall say, `Speak, LORD, for your servant is listening.'" So Samuel went and lay down in his place.

Now the LORD came and stood there, calling as before, "Samuel! Samuel!" And Samuel said, "Speak, for your servant is listening." [Then the LORD said to Samuel, "See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make both ears of anyone who hears of it tingle. On that day I will fulfill against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house, from beginning to end. For I have told him that I am about to punish his house forever, for the iniquity that he knew, because his sons were blaspheming God, and he did not restrain them. Therefore I swear to the house of Eli that the iniquity of Eli's house shall not be expiated by sacrifice or offering forever."

Samuel lay there until morning; then he opened the doors of the house of the LORD. Samuel was afraid to tell the vision to Eli. But Eli called Samuel and said, "Samuel, my son." He said, "Here I am." Eli said, "What was it that he told you? Do not hide it from me. May God do so to you and more also, if you hide anything from me of all that he told you." So Samuel told him everything and hid nothing from him. Then he said, "It is the LORD; let him do what seems good to him."

As Samuel grew up, the LORD was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground. And all Israel from Dan to Beer-sheba knew that Samuel was a trustworthy prophet of the LORD.]

If you are like most people and I would put myself in this category as well, your understanding of the Old Testament is a little fuzzy.  We all seem to know the big things, God created the heavens and earth, there was a big flood, there were a lot of guys who had names that began with the letter “J” and one of them had a colorful coat.  Somewhere in there we probably remember David and maybe one of the prophets who generally seemed to be in a pretty bad humor.  But generally, it is a little hard to remember how exactly we got from Abraham to Jesus.  Well obviously I am not going to explain all of that in one sermon, but as we look at today’s Old Testament text, it helps a bit to understand just where we are historically. 

So here goes my attempt at the Old Testament in two minutes: Abraham was told he would be the father of many nations.  He had a son named Isaac who had a child named Jacob.  Jacob then had twelve sons the most famous of which would be Joseph who was sold into slavery by his brothers.  Joseph is taken to Egypt where he thrives and eventually his brothers and their families settle in Egypt at his request.  The offspring of Joseph and his brothers stay in Egypt for roughly 400 years and grow from around seventy people to well over a million.  The Egyptian Pharaoh decides they are a threat and begins to persecute them severely and as a result God raises up Moses to set his people free.  Moses leads the Children of Israel out of Egypt and they wander around the desert for forty years when finally Joshua leads them into the Promised Land.  In the Promised Land the twelve tribes (which are based upon the 12 sons of Jacob) settle in various areas.  After Joshua dies, Israel is ruled by a series of Judges for about 300 years.  This was not the happiest of times for the nation of Israel as it was marked by instability and moral depravity.  Many of the judges were also corrupt.  Which brings us to today, where we meet Eli, the second to last judge of Israel.  He had a career that was pretty much a disaster.  His sons were rotten and the Israelites lost a major battle with the Philistines in which the Ark of the Covenant was captured.   And also today there is the last judge of Israel, Samuel.  His mother Hannah was thought to be barren, but had promised God that if she has a son she would dedicate the son to God.  As a result, he ends up growing up  in Eli’s house.  In today’s reading Samuel is lying alone in the dark in the Temple of the Lord when he hears a voice and supposing it is Eli calling him he rushes in to Eli’s room and says, “Here I am.”  To which Eli tell him that he did not call him.  After this happens for a third time Eli perceives that it is God calling the boy and instructs Samuel to say when he hears the voice again, "Speak, for your servant is listening."  Samuel obeys and when God calls for a fourth time Samuel says that he is listening.  God then tells Samuel that he is going to punish the house of Eli, which eventually does happen and Samuel becomes the last Judge of Israel.  It will be Samuel who anoints Saul as king and then later David.  But here we have Samuel as a young boy and Eli who despite all of his family troubles gives a wonderful piece of advice and that piece of advice is to listen to God.  And this morning I would like to take a few moments to reflect on this idea of listening to God for I think it is simultaneously one of the most neglected and most abused aspects of being a Christian.  I use the term neglected because we quite frankly live in such a noisy time that it is nearly impossible to find a moment to listen.  And I say abused because I find that often people will insist that God told them something that generally appears to be something that God would never tell anyone to do.  So what does it mean to listen to God and how can we make it an integral part of our life?  How do we truly and fully listen to God?  Well let me offer three suggestions that we can learn from Samuel this morning.

The first thing is silence.  When Samuel heard from God he was lying in a quiet place in the dark.  And interestingly, quietness may be the hardest thing for us to imitate in this story.  Just take a quick moment and think about your life and how many opportunities there are for noise.  In your bedroom you surely have a radio, if not a television, the same goes for your kitchen and living room.  If you are going to take a walk, you are always able to take an ipod or portable radio of some sort.  If you go to any store they are most likely piping in some sort of music.  And these are just the obvious forms of noise.  Noise does not always have to be audible – there are billboards, computers, newspapers, magazines, all of these things distract you from listening.  If you don’t believe me try reading an article in a magazine while talking on the phone – something is going to suffer.  Now of course none of these things is inherently evil, it is just that we have to be very deliberate about silence otherwise it is quite easy to never hear from God because we are never quiet enough to hear from him.  God often comes to us in the still small voice and if we are not careful we might miss him. 

The second thing we can learn from Samuel is that we need to be in a mindset to hear from God.  For it was only after Eli told Samuel that it was God speaking to him that he actually heard from God.  When he thought it was Eli he did not hear a thing.  Think about it like this:  Have you ever found yourself in a situation that requires a lot of concentration – like installing a new garbage disposal or defusing a nuclear weapon.  When you are doing these tasks what happens if someone comes up and asks you a completely unrelated question - like who did the Yankees start in game 2 of the 1977 World Series (it was Catfish Hunter if you are curious) it will take you some time to hear the question.  Not in the sense of the audible tone of someone’s voice, but in the sense of what is actually contained in the question.  This is because your mind is one place and the question is from quite a different one.  Samuel only heard from God when he was looking for God to speak.  The point is even if we are quiet and have removed all distraction if our mind is thinking about something else it will be difficult to hear from God.   I once heard someone say that if you are going to go on a silent retreat you need to go for at least a week, because the first few days you are going to be thinking about what you left behind and the last few days you are going to be thinking about what you are going back to, so it is only in the few days in the middle that you are truly silent.  And of course that is nice for those that have seven days to get away in silence, but what of us who generally do not have this kind of free time?  How do we get in the mood to listen?  I think it largely has do with getting in a mindset where we can hear the voice.  Like my earlier ridiculous example, if you had been reading the sports page when someone asked you a baseball question you probably would be in a much better place to hear.  Similarly we will probably be in a better position to hear from God if we are doing “God” things.  Things like reading Holy Scripture, praying, reading devotional, attending Church, assuming a posture of thanksgiving and so on.   You can better hear the more in tuned with the subject matter you are.  So the more you study and contemplate God the greater the possibility that you will hear from him.  

            And the final thing to do is like Samuel we need to check what we have heard from God with another person.  Samuel reluctantly tells Eli that his household will fall and Eli confirms that it is true.  When we hear from God it is always good to check with someone else to make sure it was really God speaking and not just some bad Chinese food. 

            God does and will speak to us, but like Samuel we need to be prepared to hear.  And when we do hear to be faithful to what God has told us.  Being a good listener requires some work on our part, but the reward is contact with the almighty and what could be greater than that.