January 22, 2012
Dear friends in Christ.
In my short time on this planet, I’ve learned quite
a few lessons. “I've learned that you
cannot make someone love you. All you can do is be someone who can be loved.
The rest is up to them. I've learned
that no matter how much I care, some people just don't care back. I've learned
that it takes years to build up trust, and only seconds to destroy it… I've
learned that you can do something in an instant that will give you heartache
for life. I've learned that no matter
how thin you slice it, there are always two sides. I've learned that it's taking me a long time
to become the person I want to be…I've learned that you can keep going long
after you think you can't. I've learned
that we are responsible for what we do, no matter how we feel. I've learned that either you control your
attitude or it controls you.”[1] These are but a few of the lessons that I’ve
learned in my short time in this world, and truthfully, this is a list that
could go on and on. But if it did, we
would never have the opportunity to learn from the lessons that our God wants
to teach us this morning. For as we take
a look at our text from 1 Samuel 3, we begin to see clearly the lessons that
our God is teaching us today. So, as we
begin our lesson, so to speak, we take a look at God’s lesson for us from
Israel’s history as we read 1 Samuel 3:1, “The boy Samuel ministered before the
LORD under Eli. In those days the word of the LORD was rare; there were not
many visions,” (1 Samuel 3:1, NIV84).
Though it is an amazing thing to read about Samuel
as a young boy serving in the Lord’s temple under Eli in fulfillment of the
very promise that Samuel’s mother had made before Samuel was even born, it is
very sad to hear the religious state of affairs that was common in that day. “The word of the Lord was rare, there were
not many visions.” Though Israel had
closely followed the Word of the Lord under the leadership of Joshua, and
though they had faithfully promised him and the Lord that they would follow the
Lord their God with all their hearts rather than turn away from the Lord,
roughly 350 years had passed since the days of Joshua. Nearly 350 years had passed and the nation of
Israel had grown lax in their following of the Lord. They had grown lax in
their following of the Lord because they had failed to listen to the Lord 350
years earlier and had not completely destroyed the nations the Lord told them
to destroy. They had fallen away from
the Lord, worshiping the false gods of the nations around them, and one of the
results was that the Lord was withholding his Word from them by neither sending
prophets nor visions to his people. This
was the situation when Samuel entered into the service of the tabernacle under
Eli, the priest.
But what about us?
Are we any different than the Israelites of old? As you know, we live in a nation that is
drifting farther and farther away from the true God each day. We live in a nation where false gods abound. We may not see idols to Baal and Dagon on
every street corner. But we see the
false god of evolution everywhere we look.
We’ve seen how the worship of this false god and the belief in this
false religion can worm its way even into the heart of a Christian, grow in his
heart and finally supplant belief in the true God. We see people who do not look to the truth of
God’s Word for comfort and answers in this life, but rather look for those
answers by consulting horoscopes, tarot cards, or calling up for a free psychic
reading. Cults and Eastern religions, such
as Buddhism are growing in popularity and Americans are flocking to them to
fill their spiritual voids. Even many
churches, which claim to be Christian, have turned away from teaching what the
Bible says and have begun to preach a message, which minimizes sin to nothing
more than a bad choice. In so many ways
our world is no different than the world of Samuel. We have just as many, if not more influences,
seeking to lead us astray from the Word of our God.
This is the lesson that the Lord our God is teaching
us from the Israelites history. He is
teaching us that if we surround ourselves with the false ideas and false gods
of our society and neglect the Word of God, we could very easily fall away from
our God like many of the Israelites did; like a young boy named Andy did. You see, when Andy was in 7th grade, he began
playing with a Ouija board. At first, he
did it just for fun thinking that no harm could come of it. But by the time he was in 8th grade, he was
using it every week or so. He also
became interested in reading tarot cards and casting runes for reading
fortunes. By the time he was a freshman
in high school; Andy had surrounded himself with these things and found himself
trusting in them to give him the answers for life. Now, Andy knew better than
to get involved with these things in the first place. After all, he went to a Christian Day
School. He heard about his savior every
day. He had been learning and studying
God’s Word since he was in kindergarten.
But, by the time he was in high school, he had fallen away from the Lord
because he stopped studying God’s Word and surrounded himself with other
things, which took God’s place.
Though I realize that this is an extreme example,
the lesson is still the same. If we give
up meeting together in worship, if we neglect partaking the sacrament, if we
grow too lazy to read the Word of God for ourselves, all the false ideas of our
world could easily surround us and overtake us.
We, too, could begin to fall away from the Lord our God as the
Israelites did. This is the Lesson that
the Lord wants us to learn from the Israelites today. Yet, even as the Lord is teaching us this
lesson from the lives of the Israelites he is also teaching us a lesson from
the life of Samuel his servant. Take a
look back at our text for today. As we
heard, “In Samuel’s day, revelations from the Lord were quite rare.” This is why Samuel ran to Eli when the Lord
called him. As our text tells us, “One night Eli, whose eyes were becoming so
weak that he could barely see, was lying down in his usual place. 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 answered, ‘Here I am.’ And he ran to
Eli and said, ‘Here I am; you called me.’
But Eli said, ‘I did not call; go back and lie down.’ So he went and lay
down. Again the LORD called, ‘Samuel!’ And Samuel got up and went to Eli and
said, ‘Here I am; you called me.’ ‘My
son,’ Eli said, ‘I did not call; go back and lie down.’ Now Samuel did not yet know the LORD: The
word of the LORD had not yet been revealed to him. The LORD called Samuel a third time, and
Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, ‘Here I am; you called me.’ Then Eli realized that the LORD was calling
the boy. So Eli told Samuel, ‘Go and lie down, and if he calls you, say,
“Speak, LORD, for your servant is listening.”’ So Samuel went and lay down in
his place. The LORD came and stood there, calling as at the other times,
‘Samuel! Samuel!’ Then Samuel said, ‘Speak, for your servant is listening,’” (1
Samuel 3:2-10, NIV84).
It wasn’t that Samuel had not learned who the Lord
was. Samuel’s parents and Eli had
undoubtedly taught him about the Lord.
However, because visions and revelations from the Lord were so rare at
this time, Samuel had not come to know the Lord through visions, nor did he
expect to receive a vision from the Lord.
That is why when the Lord called to Samuel, he immediately ran to
Eli. Samuel was probably used to being
called by Eli at any time, and when called he undoubtedly ran to Eli in the
same way a son will run to his father.
But this time, when he got to Eli, Eli had not called him and he sent
Samuel back to bed. This happened two more
times, and each time the Lord called Samuel’s name, he obediently ran to Eli. But the fourth time the Lord called Samuel,
Samuel listened to the Lord.
Now here’s the lesson the Lord wants us to
contemplate. Do you hear the Lord
calling you? Or have you forgotten the
sound of his voice? Do you hear the Lord
speaking to your heart through his Word?
Or are you doing everything you can to ignore it and muffle his
voice? Though we live in a world where
we are surrounded by the constant clamor of sin and false teachings, it is the
still, small voice of our God that speaks to our hearts through his Word. Though the Lord may not wake us up out of a
sound sleep and stand before us to reveal his Word to us as he did with Samuel,
he does stand before us and speak to us each time we sit down to read and study
his Word. He does speak to us and
convict our hearts with his law whenever we sin against him, and he lovingly
comforts us with his gospel whenever we repent.
This is the lesson our God is teaching us from Samuel’s life. He is teaching us to treasure his Word and
not let his message fall on deaf ears.
He is teaching us to cherish his Word and do not take it for
granted. He is teaching us just how
important it is for us to remain connected to his Word, because it is only
through the Bible that we find healing for our souls in the forgiveness of
sins.
These are the lessons the Lord our God is teaching
us this morning through Israel’s history and this brief account in the life of
Samuel. Though it may come to us in the
same way that life experience comes, these lessons are far more important. These lessons are far more important, because
these are God’s lessons of life and salvation through faith in him and his
Word. Amen.
Pastor
David M. Shilling
Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church--Le Sueur, MN
[1] Janice
T Hill of Kansas City Mo: Copied from
http://www.sermonillustrations.com/a-z/l/learning.htm
