Morning everybody. It’s great to be with you for this second edition of Church@Home. And we are just very thankful that we can gather without gathering in this way. Of course last week we dealt with the Coronavirus directly. We are under no illusions – you don’t deal with a crisis of this magnitude with one sermon. But we also are of the strong conviction that all of Scripture is God breathed and useful for correcting, rebuking, training in righteousness and preparing us for salvation. And so we’ve decided for this week to return to 1 Samuel. We will, as and when the occasion requires, we will return if need be to preach directly to what is happening with regards to the Coronavirus. But for now we are comfortable that God speaks through all of His word and so we are gonna continue in our series in 1 Samuel. And this morning, as you heard from the reading, we are dealing with 1 Samuel, chapter 3.
Won’t you pray with me. I’m gonna be praying using the words of Charles Spurgeon. These are words that are just so fitting for us at this present time. So please will you bow your heads and let’s prey these words together.
“Lord Jesus we will not look outside of you for anything. For everything is in you. Our sin is pardoned, our sinful nature is subdued. We have a perfect righteousness. We have an immortal life, we have a sure hope, we have an immovable foundation. Why would we look beyond you? Why would we look within to ourselves knowing that you are the only well from which we draw living water. The only foundation upon which we will be built.” So father, as always we pray now that you will speak to us through the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the power of the Spirit for your Glory. Amen.
Sometimes we say that silence is golden. I’m not so sure… I guess it depends. Silence can be a welcome retreat from a world crowded with voices. If it lasts perhaps an hour, maybe an evening, maybe a weekend. Then yes, it can be something precious.
But silence can also scream. Silence can cut. Silence can be a sentence. Silence can let you walk into a trap. It can let an accusation go unanswered. It can let a good deed go unnoticed, or an evil go unchecked.
We all know the pain of silence in our ordinary lives. The cold war in a marriage, in a friendship, in a relationship of any sort, is often the worst kind. If you are estranged from your brother, your sister, your spouse, your parents, the measure of the distance between you and them is silence. How do you know things are not right? Silence.
In the workplace silence spells breakdown of negotiations. We are all experiencing the silence of social distancing. Silence can go even further. It can go past precaution to punishment.
Solitary confinement leaves you with nothing but your own voice – the punishment of silence. Then of course, there is death – the anguish of emptiness where once there was a voice.
This is silence in our own lives. Our ordinary, everyday silence. Ordinary, everyday silence. But there is a silence beyond silence to which all silence is traveling. It is the black hole of silence, if you like, the home of silence. The silence of God.
And that’s where our chapter begins. 1 Samuel 3:1 “Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord in the presence of Eli. And the word of the Lord was rare in those days; there was no frequent vision.” In other words God was silent. His silence was a judgement. Remember, in those there was no King. Everyone did as they saw fit. Including those who were supposed to be the mouthpiece of God. Those whom God would speak through.
We saw last time, you remember, two weeks ago Martin preached on the back end of 1 Samuel 2. We saw last time how corrupt the priesthood under Eli had become. His sons Hophni and Phineas were corrupting the system that was supposed to deal with corruption. And so verse 17: “the sin of the young men was very great in the sight of the Lord, for the men treated the offering of the Lord with contempt.” And so God was going to judge Eli and his household. And that judgement began with silence.
That’s where our story begins. Thank God, praise God, it’s not where it ends. It begins in judgement but it ends in grace. It begins in silence, it ends with the word of the LORD. It is if you like a story of breaking the silence.
We could look at it in three scenes:
- The Silence
- The Call
- The Word of God
Those three scenes. The first scene is in verses 1-3: The silence.
We’ve looked at verse 1 where silence prevails in Israel. But notice how verse 2 links the national condition with the condition of the prophet Eli. These two are bound together in verses 1 and 2. So, the back end of verse 1: “the word of the Lord was rare in those days; there was no frequent vision.” And then verse 2: “At that time Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see” and so it goes.
There was no word in Israel because Israel’s prophet had proved himself hard of hearing! And so the LORD had stopped speaking. The LORD was silent.
There was no vision in Israel because there was no vision in Israel’s prophet – his eyes were growing dim.
And yet verse 3: “The lamp of God had not yet gone out.” Here’s the turning point. Here’s the hope. The light in Eli’s eyes may be dim and fading, but the lamp of the LORD is still burning. The hope was not in Israel’s reform or in Eli’s repentance. The hope was not even in the prophet in waiting Samuel. It’s the lamp of the LORD that had not yet gone out.
The LORD had not yet left his people.
Eli lay in his place – that’s what the text says. Samuel lay in the place of God’s presence. Samuel lay in the temple with the ark. The presence of the LORD had not yet departed from Israel, despite the silence. And then out of the silence comes the call, that’s verses 4 to 18. At last the silence breaks. Verse 4: “Then the LORD called to Samuel.” The silence breaks. “Then the LORD called to Samuel.” The LORD had been so quiet for so long that neither Samuel nor Eli recognise his voice.
And so there are two false starts, Samuel hears the call, mistakes it for Eli, and goes running through. But Eli mistakes it for a young man’s confusion and the sends him back to bed. Two false starts and then you get this extraordinary comment from the narrative in verse 7. Extraordinary comment. That verse has a kind of poetic structure. It’s as if the narrator wants us really to slow down here and take notice. And so that’s what we are gonna do.
First half of verse 7: “Samuel did not yet know the LORD.” Now that’s an astounding statement in and of itself. Because listen to what has already been said of Samuel in this book. 1 Samuel 2:11: “And the boy was ministering to the Lord in the presence of Eli the priest.” 1 Samuel 2:18: “Samuel was ministering before the Lord, a boy clothed with a linen ephod.” That’s the priestly garment. 1 Samuel 2:21: “And the boy Samuel grew in the presence of the Lord.” 1 Samuel 3:1: “Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord in the presence of Eli.”
If anyone was qualified to know the LORD it was Samuel!
He had been dedicated in the temple, you remember at the beginning of the story, he had been dedicated in the temple as a Nazarite. He ministered to the LORD from as far back as he could remember. His earliest memories were of service in the temple. He slept in the same room as the ark of the covenant. As far as religious credentials go, it doesn’t get any better than this. And yet despite a lifetime dedicated to service at the temple, what does it say? “Samuel did not yet know the LORD.”
Such a strong reminder to us that your religious CV counts for nothing to God. Being a pastor’s kid, a pastors wife, a pastor. A warden in the church, a council member, a life group leader, a Love Trust ambassador, a full time Christian worker: It counts for nothing. None of it qualifies you to know the LORD.
Well what does then? The second half of verse 7 reminds us: “Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him.” You could rephrase it and say: Samuel did not yet know the Lord, because the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him. To know the LORD is to have the LORD reveal himself to you. And He does that through his word. How do you get him to do it? Well you can’t!
Samuel spent his whole life in ministry doing spiritual things and he didn’t know the LORD. To know the LORD, the LORD himself has to reveal who he is. He has to show himself to you and that is an act of sovereign grace. It’s a gift. If’s his gift to give. You can’t prise it from his hand.
The apostle Paul shares his own experience in this area. He is writing to the Philippian church, chapter 3, and this is what he writes: “If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.”
In other words, there is no-one more religiously qualified to know God than me. If anyone is qualified to know God, it’s me says the apostle Paul. And then listen to what he writes next.
“But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss” why? “because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” The apostle knows the LORD. Where does this knowledge come from? We read on. “Not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— that I may know him.”
You see knowing God comes from God. Faith is just the instrument. It’s just the beggar’s bowl. It’s the beggar’s bowl by which the gift comes to us. By which we receive the gift. It does not cause the gift; it does not earn the gift. It is simply the instrument by which we receive the gift. Knowing God comes from God. It’s his gift to give. He must reveal himself.
And so 1 Sam 3 verse 7 is the gospel of God’s grace in seed form. Read that verse. Meditate on that verse this week. It is the gospel of God’s grace in seed form.
Back to our story. The LORD calls a third time. Samuel runs in to Eli a third time. This time Eli grasps what’s actually going on. And he instructs Samuel on how to respond. The LORD calls a fourth time. Now Samuel is now ready with the posture of faith.
What is the posture of faith? We have it so beautifully captured for us in verse 9 and verse 10. This is the posture of faith: “Speak LORD for your servant is listening.” “Speak LORD for your servant is listening.” that’s the posture of faith; that’s the beggar’s bowl. What exactly does the LORD say to Samuel? Look at verse 11 and verse 12. Ears tingling, in the language of “on that day” are phrases associated with the LORD’s prophetic judgement on Israel. This word of the LORD is a word of judgement on Eli’s house for their sin. His sons were blaspheming God. Another translation says that they were “cursing themselves”. I suppose it’s both. In blaspheming God they were cursing themselves. And Eli did nothing concrete to reign them in. So judgement is coming on the house of Eli.
Naturally Samuel is a little scared to deliver that kind of news. I mean we can sympathise with him. I’m sure none of us are in a hurry to run and tell our boss that he’s being retrenched.
But to Eli’s credit he insists that Samuel speak the truth and he binds him with the prophetic oath. Essentially, tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the Truth. And so verse 18: “Samuel told him everything and hid nothing from him.”
And as he is confronted by the word of the LORD, the word of GOD Eli can do nothing but surrender. The Word of the LORD has at last returned, but for Eli and his house it is terrible and it is irresistible.
Scene 1 was the silence. Scene 2 the call. And now we have the third scene, the final scene, that describes the return of word of the LORD to Israel. That’s verse 19 and 20. It reads as follows: “And Samuel grew, and the Lord was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground. And all Israel from Dan to Beersheba” That’s just from North to South “knew that Samuel was established as a prophet of the Lord. And the Lord appeared again at Shiloh, for the Lord revealed himself to Samuel at Shiloh by the word of the Lord.”
And so we have moved from “The word of the LORD was rare” verse 1 to “The word of the LORD had not yet been revealed to Samuel” verse 7. To “The LORD revealed himself to Samuel by the word of the LORD” verse 21. So that all Israel from North to South knew that Samuel was a prophet from the LORD.
We’ve moved from silence through the call of the prophet to the Word of the LORD.
But what is this word? What is it the LORD has to say to Israel and to us? Well if we revisit our passage we see very clearly what it is. And we see that it is a word of Terror, and a word of Wonder.
First, a word of Terror. Let’s pick it up again in verse 12: “On that day I will fulfil against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house, from beginning to end. And I declare to 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 atoned for by sacrifice or offering forever.”
There are some things we need to notice about this word of terror. First, we need to consider their crime again. It was blasphemy against God, It was cursing themselves. It was both, because they rejected and scorned the sacrifice of atonement. By corrupting the sacrificial system, by abusing it for sinful personal gain, by taking the remedy for sin and using it to sin, they were rejecting the means God had given them – the only means that God had given them – to deal with their sin. There was no other atonement; no other way of being reconciled to God.
This was their crime. And there was no way back. I mean it makes perfect sense doesn’t it. If you reject the way back, the way home. And you take another path – you follow another course – well of course then there’s no way home. And that’s why their sentence is forever.
The LORD says it three times in this little section. Verse 12: “I will fulfil my judgement from beginning to end.” Verse 13: I am about to punish this house forever.” Verse 14: “Eli’s house shall not be atoned forever.” Do you see why this is a word of Terror? Because it’s the last word. And after this word, silence. Nothing but silence. The dreadful, awful, eternal silence of God.
For Hophni and Phineas God’s word was a word of Terror.
Because they had turned their backs on his sacrifice for atonement. It’s a word of Terror for us, if we do the same. There is a strong warning for us in the book of Hebrews. Well that warning is recorded in various places in the New Testament, but it’s crystal clear in the book of Hebrews. And there it says that if you reject Jesus, there is no other sacrifice for sin. There is only the fearful expectation of judgement.
If you reject God’s sacrifice of atonement there is nothing else. There is no other way back. That is a word of Terror for us especially during the days in which we are currently living – just like it was for the House of Eli.
But for Israel at large, there was a word of Wonder because God made a way to keep speaking. He made a way through his prophet Samuel. And that opened the way to say the thing he really wanted to say centuries later.
Hebrews chapter 1, verse 1: “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets” prophets like Samuel. “But in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son.” John chapter 1 verse 1: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” John chapter 6 verse 66: “After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. So Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?” Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”
You see God speaks fully and finally through his Son. God says all he wants to say to us in Jesus. And Jesus is a word of Wonder. He’s a word of Wonder. And he’s a word of Wonder in the first place, because he’s a word of Truth
In a world increasingly devoted to no such thing as truth, Jesus says, “I am the Truth!” He doesn’t say I am the truth for me. He doesn’t say I am the truth for some who may want to follow me in your own private lives. He says “I am the Truth!” It’s an absolute claim and it stands in total defiance to the spirit of our age. The spirit of our age was captured nicely by Irish poet William Butler Yeats. He wrote this:
“Dream; there is no truth,
only the truth in your own heart.”
You see it? Its whatever works for you. The truth is whatever you decide it to be. The only limit on your truth is that you can’t claim that it applies to anyone else. So Jesus’ claim “I am the Truth” is out of bounds. Way out of bounds. And in fact it’s the only thing out of bounds. You can believe in aliens, the Tokoloshe, crystals, the secret, the universe, energy fields, you name it. Whatever works for you but don’t come with Jesus and “I am the Truth.”
We had a young Christian from the UK who stayed with us and he was describing to us what the climate is like over there at the moment. He was saying that it is more socially acceptable for a 60-year British man to claim that he is a 6 year old Chinese girl than it is for anyone to publicly identify as a follower of Jesus. The Jesus who declares “I am the Truth.” It raises more eyebrows to say I’m a follower of Jesus, that Jesus, than it does to identify as a family of sisters from Thailand.
I mean it’s crazy. And thankfully Christians have been pointing out how crazy it is for a very long time.
K. Chesterton, who lived around the same time as Yeats. And this is what he says of Yeats and those like him. It’s a long paraphrase and you need to know that he’s talking about an ordinary garden fence post. So there is the fencing, and then there is the post – the posts – that keep the fencing erect. So that’s what he is writing about, just so that you know. And this is what he writes:
“The modern [man] looks for the [fence] post, not outside in the garden, but inside, in the mirror of his mind. But the mind of the modern [man], is like a dressing-room, its entirely made of mirrors. Thus glass repeats glass like doors opening inwards forever; till one can hardly see that inmost chamber of unreality where the post makes its last appearance. And as the mirrors of the modern mind are most of them curved and many of them cracked, the post in its ultimate reflection looks like all sorts of things; a waterspout, the tree of knowledge, a sea-serpent standing upright, … and so on…
But I am not interested in mirrors; … I am not interested in my own reflection… I am interested in the fence post that stands waiting outside my door … All my mental doors open outwards into a world I have not made. My last door of liberty opens out upon a world of sun and solid things, of objective adventures.
The post in the garden; the thing I could neither create nor expect: strong plain daylight on stiff upstanding wood: it is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes.” Now that’s a little philosophical. But I can’t apologise because we have to understand what our culture takes for granted and why we must reject it.
Our culture takes for granted that truth exists in your mind.
There is no Truth with a capital T. There’s only your truth and my truth – whatever works for you. Be a Christian, fine. Just do it in your bedroom. Don’t bring it out to the marketplace. But that’s just not right, and we don’t have to play by those rules. We cant. It’s not loving – they need to know the Truth, now more than ever, because the Truth will set them free.
And let’s face it, right now this whole edifice of subjective truth is being rocked to the core by a very real objective threat called the Coronavirus. It really doesn’t matter if I identify as the family of sisters from Thailand, or whatever subjective truth I’ve constructed for myself. It is going to fall in a heap when the objective truth of my mortality comes crashing through the front door like a wrecking ball.
Now is the time for us to be talking about Jesus – who is the Truth. The Truth.
Chesterton believed in objective truth, because he believed in the God who speaks. In the quote I read he was focusing on God speaking through His creation. But of course, God also speaks through His word, the Bible. Dietrich Bonhoeffer who was a modern martyr, he lived through the second world war and was executed by the Nazis right at the end of the second world war. He said it like this: “I do not want to give up the Bible as the Word of God at any point, [and] I intend with all my powers to ask what does God want to say to us here? Any other place outside the Bible has become too uncertain for me. I fear that I will only encounter some divine double of myself.” You see, subjective truth is just a mirror. It’s our own reflection. It’s a divine double of myself.
But God speaks His objective Truth through his world, through his created world. And through his word, the Bible. And finally, fully, through his Son – the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus says, “I am the Truth”. Jesus was the Truth in his person. Jesus spoke the truth in his words. Jesus lived the truth in his deeds. Jesus died as a proclamation of the truth. And the Bible says that his death speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. The blood of the righteous Abel cried out from the ground for the judgement of cursing and vengeance.
But the blood of the perfectly righteous Jesus declares the precious truth of forgiveness and atonement. Do you see why it’s a better word?
On the cross Jesus chose to take the word of Terror directed at the sinner. To take the deafening silence of God due to all of us – to take it all on himself. And so we hear him crying out in anguish: “My God, My God why have you forsaken me?” “My God, My God why don’t you speak?” “My God, My God why are you so deathly silent?” He bore the Terror of God-forsaken silence in our place.
Jesus is the Word of God, and he’s a word of Wonder because he’s a word of Truth. He calls sin what it is, and he makes known the only way of salvation.
If truth is light, then Jesus is the blazing sun at the centre of the universe. In the light that radiates out from him, we begin to see all things as they truly are. C. S. Lewis said “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” John Flavell said “The Scriptures teach us the best way of living, the noblest way of suffering, and the most comfortable way of dying.”
Jesus is the word of Truth that radiates out all other truth. And what a wonderful word of Truth he is. He’s a word of comfort to those who mourn. He’s a word of peace to those who are deeply anxious. He’s a word of friendship to the unworthy sinner. He’s a word of forgiveness to those wracked with guilt. He’s a word of wisdom to the fool. A spur to the lazy, a challenge to the proud, a lift to the low in spirit. Jesus is a word of hope to those facing death. He is a word of love to a lost and loveless humanity. He is a word of Wonder. A word of Wonder.
The question for us is do we hear him as he truly is? Do we see him as he is? Do we treasure him as we ought to? Do we take every opportunity we can to hear him speak to us through his written word? I am going to say what every preacher you’ve ever encountered has said if he’s worth his salt. “Read your Bible!”
Now why? Why do pastors just keep beating the same drum? Why do we keep on banging on about the same thing about reading our Bibles? Well Psalm 119 is devoted to telling us why. So let’s hear from the Bible itself. It says the Bible is worth reading because God’s word is righteous; It is pure; it will guard your heart. We should meditate on it. We should fix our eyes on it; delight in it more than any other treasure.
It is life to us. Our souls should be consumed with longing for it; it is our counsellor, our teacher, our strength. I could go on all day. That it just a very small sample. That’s 25 verses out of 176 in Psalm 119. All of them dedicated to the beauty of this gift that God speaks to us in His word. The question is does that description in Psalm 119, does it describe you and your attitude to the God’s word? Do you hunger and thirst for God’s word?
We’ve all of us heard of TED talks. Maybe you’ve been re-watching Bill Gates’ TED talk from 5 years ago – somewhat prophetic, predicting everything that’s unfolding around us. Perhaps you’ve been watching TED talks just to kill time in quarantine. Do you know that people pay upwards of $10 000 to go and watch one of those talks live? $10 000 – I mean this is a moving target – but at last count that’s R170 000 to hear a 12-year-old talk about the latest Justin Bieber gaming app that he’s just developed.
All that, or you can hear God Almighty answer the most important, most basic, most fundamental questions of human life, for free! That’s what the Bible is. God speaking to you. God revealing himself to you. And He has so much to say. On every single page he is telling you in a 1000 different ways just how much he loves you in Jesus Christ.
Every page is a witness to the word of Wonder. The word incarnate. The word who took on flesh. Why don’t you read it? Just read it. Why would you not read it? Why would you not hear God speak – especially at a time like this? The alternative is the noise pollution of the world. Or, under that, beside it, beyond it… the terror of a silent God. Let’s pray
Father, We thank you so very much for speaking through your Son. What a word of Wonder he is. Thank you for speaking through the Bible. Thank you for speaking through creation; through our consciences. Father we thank you for speaking. Thank you for speaking to us. It’s such a gift to us Lord at any time – but it’s such a gift to us right now. It’s such a comfort to us to hear you speak to us right now. And so Father we pray that you will help us to hear. Give us ears to hear, in the power of your Spirit. Amen.
