The Lord Speaks

Don’t you just hate it when you run out of something vital? You go to the cash machine and your card pops back out as quickly as it went in - there are not enough funds to complete this transaction. You’re driving across the Tyne Bridge when phut-phut-phut – Oh no! – You’ve run out of petrol and your car grinds to a halt in the most awkward of spots possible. Or you’re in an exam writing frantically - on a roll - when all of a sudden you realise, you’ve run out of things to say and there’s still 2 hours to go! Or don’t you find that it’s at just the point you’re expecting a crucial phone call that your mobile phone starts bleeping as it slowly and painfully runs out of battery.

And it can feel almost be as bad when we get home and head for kitchen and find there’s no milk in the fridge, there’s just one solitary 3 week old crust of bread in the bread bin and worst of all you’re all out of tea. I practically go into meltdown if I reach into the fridge and find the Irn Bru’s all gone. A Scotsman can’t function without his Irn Bru!

But it’s a terrible thing to run out of something vital. and there are much more serious things to run short of than money, petrol or tea. Because 1 Samuel chapter 3 tells us that:
“In those days the word of the LORD was rare; there were not many visions.”
That, folks, is my 1st point this evening:

(1.) The Word of the Lord was Rare (v.1)

The time is 1,000 years before Jesus. The place is Israel - God’s chosen people. And we are told that the people of God hardly ever heard the Lord. There was a scarcity of his word. He was silent.

Week after week you could go to the temple and you wouldn’t hear a thing from the Lord. You might hear a sermon - but you wouldn’t hear the Lord speak. Because the Lord’s specific, contemporary, prophetic word is not being given. His word is not being applied to the day. He is choosing not to guide his people – “In those days the word of the LORD was rare...”
And that comment should make us ask: “Why?” Why is there such a shortage of the word of the Lord? Why is his voice so seldom heard?

Well if you were here 2 weeks ago when we unpacked chapter 2 of 1 Samuel you will know exactly what was wrong. The Priests at Shiloh were running amok. They were showing complete contempt for God, his ways, and his people. Eli’s sons - chapter 2 verse 12: “...had no regard for the LORD.” As priests they were meant to receive God’s word and pass it onto the people. But instead they ignored it - and all they gave the people was grief, as they robbed them of their offerings and openly slept around.

And chapter 2 ends with the promise of judgement being passed on Eli & his sons. There is something rotten in the state of Israel and God has promised to do something about it. And the first sign of his judgement is that his word becomes a rare commodity. To borrow an expression from the prophet Amos: “There was a famine of hearing the words of the Lord.”

I wonder how serious you think it is to run out of the Word of the Lord? Amos says it’s like a disastrous famine – but if we’re honest we don’t think that sounds too catastrophic. We can see how a famine of food or water is incredibly serious – we see it on our news all the time, and we’ve felt our hearts go out to those in the grip of it, we feel helpless to change things; but a famine of God’s word? It’s inconvenient, maybe; perhaps a trifle awkward; but disastrous?

The problem with thinking this way is that we fail to see the effects that a shortage of God’s word brings. We don’t look around us and see the spiritual and moral emaciation of our nation. We don’t lament the abandonment of God’s truth by churches up and down the land. We don’t mourn the loss of Christian values in medicine, education and social work. We sometimes don’t even recognise the darkness that colleagues and family members stagger in, as they lurch from folly to folly searching for a better life, but with nothing and no-one to guide them.

And maybe that’s because we’re content to live in that darkness ourselves - Failing to see the immense goodness of God’s word, and how profoundly dependant we are on every word that comes from the mouth of Lord. You see, we need food and drink in order to exist, but God’s word is essential if we want life to be something more than mere existence.

“In those days the word of the LORD was rare...”

says 1 Samuel 3:1 - and I have to say that in many ways it seems just as rare today.

Which is an incredibly depressing start to a sermon, isn’t it? But deliberately so, ‘cos unless we see the darkness we won’t recognise the light! As in Samuel’s day, what was very scarce was about to become abundant. For not only was the Word of the Lord Rare...

(2.) The Word of the Lord was Revealed (v.2-10)

Read with me verse 2:

“2One night Eli, whose eyes were becoming so weak that he could barely see, was lying down in his usual place. 3The lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the house of the LORD, where the ark of God was. 4Then the LORD called Samuel.”

Eli has done what you & I might be tempted to do - you get the distinct impression from these verses that he’s given up! He’s a defeated man just going through the same old routines. There seems to be no expectation that God will speak. But there is still hope - “the lamp of God has not yet gone out”. The darkness of Eli’s sons’ behaviour and the moral blindness of Eli himself has not shut out hope. For God has not given up on his people - even if most of them have given up on him. That’s what we’re being told here.

Maybe there’s someone in your office or your class – Your sports team or maybe your family who you think is beyond the Lord speaking to. They are too caught up in a sinful lifestyle. They’re too cynical. Maybe they’re too nice - you think: “What on earth would they need God to speak to them for when they seem to have it all together?” There isn’t a chance of God speaking to them - that he could reach into their life and stop them in their tracks and turn them around. No way! Well we may give up on people all the time, but God never gives up on anyone! He has not forgotten his people and he is going to give his word to them through this little boy called Samuel.

“Samuel!” he calls. And Samuel’s reaction is not surprising. The word of the Lord is rare, it’s the middle of the night, he hears this call of his name, and he immediately assumes that Eli is calling him. So he gets up, rubs the sleep out of his eyes and pads off to Eli’s bed in his jim-jams. “You called me?” “What are you talking about? Go back to bed! It’s the middle of the night!” Samuel goes back, scratching his head, wondering what the old man is up to. And then it happens again: “Samuel!”

He charges off to Eli – “You must have called me this time!” “No, I didn’t call you. Go back to bed. And lay off the toasted cheese at supper time.” And then again. Standing beside Eli’s bed, both of them a bit confused about what’s happening – can you picture the scene? Then in verse 7 we are given the explanation for why Samuel is not really catching the plot:

“Now Samuel did not yet know the LORD: The word of the LORD had not yet been revealed to him.”

If you read this story in a children’s Bible the focus is completely on Samuel and his listening. But the focus here should really be on God and his initiative. God is always the hero of history in the Bible. Samuel doesn’t know God and can’t know him unless he reveals himself to him.

Knowing God is unlike knowing anything else. Most things we know we can learn through discovery. You can find out anything these days: Over the Christmas & New Year period I pretty much memorised the scorecards and batting averages from the recent Ashes series down under. You can learn all sorts of other things on the internet too – like how to cook, how to drive a car, or how to make a bomb even! With enough time and with access to the right information you can know pretty much anything. That’s the “phone a friend” theory of life. But it doesn’t work that way with knowing God.

Samuel’s experience here shows us that it is only possible to know God when he acts to make himself known – relationship with God, knowledge of God, is only brought about when he reveals himself. The problem is captured perfectly in 2 Corinthians 4:4 where the Apostle Paul declares that:

“The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.”

Eyes blinded to the wonder of who Jesus is. If you are not a believer, that’s what you can’t see: you can’t see Jesus as magnificent, as so glorious that he puts all the power, all the money, all the applause, all the toys, all the relationships, all the sex – everything in his shadow! But when God reveals himself to you in his word it is like having the curtains of your house whipped open, and you can see Jesus for who he is.

So in my own life, I remember I used to get dragged out to church by my mum and I sat there dreaming about winning the world cup with Scotland or getting a date with Joyce Waiters. But I was utterly bored. I thought nothing of Jesus. He had little to offer me and I barely heard his name, as what was said in church or Sunday school went in one ear and out the other.

But now I love the Lord Jesus. I love the Bible. Amazingly, I’ve even learned to love the church and some of you guys. And if you and I are professing faith in Jesus and seeking to live for him then it’s a miracle. I don’t know if anyone’s ever said this to you before... But if God has spoken to you in a way that you have gone from knowing about him to knowing him then you are a walking miracle!

Now I find that incredibly encouraging. Because when I think about those friends or family members who I don’t think could ever come to believe that Jesus is Lord, I’m tempted to get discouraged. But 1 Samuel 3:7 reminds me that evangelism doesn’t depend on us - The impressiveness of our arguments or the clarity of our communication. No! You see, you may not be a great evangelist, but God is. God is the great evangelist. He can open blind eyes. God can still speak to any person, at any time, in any place.

The word of the Lord may have been rare, but now the word of the Lord was revealed. And finally...

(3.) The Word of the Lord was Received (3v.10-4v.1)

At last the penny drops for Eli. Samuel is hearing the word of the Lord! So he sends him back to bed not with a flea in his ear, but an encouragement to listen to God. And boy does God give him something to listen to. Check out verse 11:

“11And the LORD said to Samuel: “See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make the ears of everyone who hears about it tingle. 12At that time I will carry out against Eli everything I spoke against his family—from beginning to end. 13For I told him that I would judge his family forever because of the sin he knew about; his sons blasphemed God, and he failed to restrain them. 14Therefore I swore to the house of Eli, ‘The guilt of Eli’s house will never be atoned for by sacrifice or offering.’”

Samuel receives a message that would make the whole of Israel sit up and take notice. They’ll feel like they’ve had their ears boxed. And if we read it properly, it’s pretty shocking isn’t it? For this is a message of severe, irreversible judgement. Eli failed to restrain his sons from their destructive disobedience, like a man whose rottweilers attack a passerby and all he does is just tell them off. And the consequence is that there is no way back for Eli or his family.

To which we might say - “but hold on, isn’t forgiveness always available.” Well when we deliberately turn our back on the sacrifices of God, on the Lord Jesus Christ and his cross, then where can we find forgiveness? If we’re turning our back on the very place where forgiveness can be found, Hebrews 10 says:

“If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left...”

It goes on:

“How much more severely do you think someone deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified them, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace?”

Just imagine with me someone who is an AA member. Maybe you are one? But just imagine someone who has that kind of reassuring breakdown cover. They’ve been a member for many years, but then the renewal notice comes in and they decide it’s too expensive. It is a recession you know! And after all they’ve never really needed it. And then comes the reminder letter and they tear it up and put it in the bin. And each successive invitation to renew membership gets exactly the same treatment as the months and years roll by. Straight in the bin, until... the inevitable breakdown happens. What do they do? Phone the AA. What do the AA say? I’m sorry we have no record of you.

And here are Eli and his sons who have been privileged to have been given the word of the Lord – they’ve know him speak to them – but they’ve turned against him, trampled all over His sacrifices and kept on sinning. And even though they have been warned time and time and time again and they have failed to turn back to the Lord and repent. They have hardened their hearts to the Lord and now it’s too late. It’s a terrible situation.

No wonder the Lord says this message will make folks ears tingle. It leaves a ringing sensation in mine! For this is a reminder that sometimes God’s word is extremely uncomfortable to hear. Or at least it should be - and if it doesn’t make us squirm from time to time, we’re either not really listening or we’re not really being taught it properly. Dale Ralph Davies in his excellent commentary on 1 Samuel says:

“If a preacher never places you under the criticism of God’s word, never tells you of your sin, but only smothers you with comfort, you must wonder if he is a phony.”

God’s word can be uncomfortable to hear. But boy can it also be uncomfortable to deliver. Like - do you think Samuel got much more sleep that night? Verse 15:

“15Samuel lay down until morning and then opened the doors of the house of the LORD. He was afraid to tell Eli the vision, 16but Eli called him and said, “Samuel, my son.” Samuel answered, “Here I am.” 17“What was it he said to you?” Eli asked. “Do not hide it from me. May God deal with you, be it ever so severely, if you hide from me anything he told you.”

Samuel gets up and he opens the doors to the temple. He does the dusting, and the hovering - polishes the silver and makes a start on the ironing - Anything to avoid the inevitable confrontation with his boss! This is like the tea boy telling the CEO he’s fired! No wonder he’s terrified. Wouldn’t you be?

But God’s word must not be hidden. Once it’s received it must be passed on. Even Eli realises that it is much worse to hide God’s word than to deliver it... even if it is a message of ear-splitting judgement. If Samuel doesn’t share the severe message, he will be dealt with severely himself. So - Verse 18 -

“18Samuel told him everything, hiding nothing from him. Then Eli said, “He is the LORD; let him do what is good in his eyes.” AND look what happened next! Samuel speaks God’s word and: “19The LORD was with Samuel as he grew up, and he let none of Samuel’s words fall to the ground. 20And all Israel from Dan to Beersheba recognized that Samuel was attested as a prophet of the LORD. 21The LORD continued to appear at Shiloh, and there he revealed himself to Samuel through his word. 1And Samuel’s word came to all Israel.”

I get this amazing picture here of a dam. Like the one at the start of Goldeneye if you’ve ever seen that film. It’s huge! And hidden behind the dam is a massive body of water. And it’s going to blow. Sticks of dynamite are placed in the heart of the dam, the plunger is pushed down and boom! The dam cracks open and the water floods out.

Well at the start of this chapter the Word of the Lord was rare - there was a famine - folks were thirsty for the word of the Lord. And he reveals himself to Samuel and hands him an explosive device that can crack open the dam and send his word flooding out all over Israel. Nourishing the spiritually emaciated and parched people of God.

The word of the Lord floods out over the nation - no longer hidden, but able to bring life and growth and vitality wherever it goes. Indeed the next time we will see Samuel in person in chapter 7 he will be speaking to all Israel and all Israel will be hanging on lips. Confessing their sins, longing to get right with the Lord - longing to obey his word. There is a complete transformation here! Because God has been at work. And Samuel has not hidden His word.

Don’t we just long for a day when that will be true for us? Where the Lord unleashes his word in our nation? Well who knows? Maybe that could start during this fortnight of Christianity Explored Tasters? For the Lord has spoken to us his definitive word in Jesus. In Christ he has revealed himself more fully and completely than ever before. So we don’t need a boy prophet to send God’s word flooding out into the nation. We just need to step out in faith ourselves. Trusting that God’s word is true and life transforming. Not hiding any part of it - even the bits that will always ruffle feathers. Knowing that God can open anyone’s eyes to help them see that they need Jesus more than anything else in the world.

Well, if we do that - then who knows? Maybe the famine will become a feast in our time too. Our drought will turn into a flood of God’s word going back out across our land. Let’s pray that he does just that.

Father God, we know that in many ways your word is rare in our nation, but we thank you that you are still about the business of opening blind eyes and helping them to see the Lord Jesus. Father we pray that you would give us the confidence not to hide your word, but to share it and we pray as we do you would once again flood this nation with a heartfelt turning to you. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.