Sermon Notes
Be Still and Know
1 Samuel 3:1-18
(Sermon notes courtesy of Kyle Idleman, Southeast Christian Church, Louisville, KY)
NOTE: This is most effective if the speaker begins the message in silence, holding up 34 different posters for the congregation to read, making the point that many are uncomfortable with silence. These posters are available as PowerPoint slides; please contact me for a copy.
Introduction:
We often see prayer as a monologue where we talk, and God listens. But we have it wrong! Prayer is a conversation. Not only do we need to talk to God, we need to learn how to listen to Him. Psalm 46:10 tells us to “Be still and know that I am God.”
Many find that genuinely listening to God is one of the most difficult things to do. It is one of the greatest mysteries of our faith. We find ourselves often times saying, “I would listen to God if he would speak out loud to me,” or “I would do a better job listening, if God would do a better job speaking.”
Perhaps the suggestion needs to be made that it is not that God is not speaking, but rather that we are not listening.
Proposition:
Does God speak to us? How can we listen to what He is saying? How can we know it is God who is talking? 1 Samuel 3 opens up great insight into the art of being still.
1. Be Where God Speaks, verses 1-6
We need to put ourselves in a place and position where we can hear God most clearly.
Samuel placed himself in the best place to hear from God he was in the Temple where God dwelt (1 Samuel 3:3).
Note verse 1: God rarely made Himself known in those days.
Does God really speak to people? Eli and his sons had wandered from God. They robbed God by putting themselves first, through their immoral and impure lives and their arrogance. Read I Sam. 3:1
God still struggles to speak to people like you and me. But, we just aren’t listening. We are either like Eli or Samuel. Not knowing how or not caring, so we miss it!
When you turn on the radio or TV, you tune into a specific station or channel. If you flip to another channel, does the program on the first channel stop? --- Just because we are listening to “another channel,” does it mean God has stopped talking? --- Does God really talk to people? --- You bet! But we must be listening to the right frequency.
2. Confirm that it’s God’s Voice, verses 7-9
God spoke to Samuel, but Samuel did not realize it was God speaking to him until Eli confirmed that God was the one calling Samuel (1 Samuel 3:8-9).
We can confirm God’s leading through His Word (Psalm 119:105).
We can confirm God’s leading through His people.
A number of years ago, Bill Cosby did a routine about how God spoke to Noah about building the ark. When Noah wanted to know who was talking to him in such a strange voice, the answer boomed from heaven, “IT’S THE LORD, NOAH!” Noah’s response? "Right! Who is this really?" How do we know when God is talking?
There are 3 tests we can use to determine if God is speaking to our hearts.
First. What does the voice we hear tell us about Christ Jesus? --- Does what the voice says direct us to the cross of Christ and resurrection, to forgiveness or to God’s promises.
Second. God will never ask us to do something he has forbidden in the scriptures. To know it is God speaking, you must know what the Bible says, so you must read and study the scriptures.
Third. Compare what you are hearing with the way Jesus lived and the things Jesus did.
--- WWJD ---- Is this something Christ Jesus would do? If so, then, it must be God speaking.
3. Avoid Constant Distraction, verses 10-15
God does not speak to Samuel in the busyness of the day, but rather in the quietness of night when Samuel was still from life’s distractions. Listening is so important in life and crucial to make relationships work.
Let me give you a little brainteaser. If you have heard this before, please don’t ruin it for everyone else and just keep your thoughts to yourself. I’ll read the question and then you some time to think.
You are driving a bus. You go east 12 miles, and turn south and go 2 miles and take on 9 passengers, and then you turn west and go 3 miles and let off 4 passengers. How old is the bus driver? (Answer: How old are you?)
There are four reasons why we are missing God’s message today and not listening.
First, I think a lot of it is because of how busy and crazy our schedules are. We are so loaded up with “things” that we don’t ever take time to just stop and listen to God. Psalm 46:10 says to “Be still, and know that I am God.” How often are we still and do we take the time to just listen to God? Notice that God doesn’t speak to Samuel in the busyness of the day but instead at night as he is lying down to go to bed. It occurred when Samuel slowed down from a hectic day. As many of you admitted, we don’t even get that. A lot of us fall asleep to noise. There is hardly any time where we are still and quite. We’ve overloading ourselves and are drowning out God’s voice.
Second, just as the brainteaser demonstrated, we are all too often focused on all the wrong things. A lot of the times, when we think about God speaking to us we tend to think of everything in grand terms: Flashes of lighting and booms of thunder and clouds and smoke. There would be angels singing and trumpets blasting and all these other things that would make us sit up and take notice going, “Ok, God. You have my attention.”
Notice again, that this is not the way God speaks to Samuel. Instead, he calls out to him quietly in the night. Sometimes God does use dramatic things to get our attention – he speaks to Moses from a burning bush, he speaks to a guy named Balaam through is donkey and he speaks to Mary through angels. But, more often than not, they are the exceptions and instead, God speaks to us in quiet and simple ways.
Third, we miss God’s message so often because we have forgotten what God sounds like. In the midst of all the voices and message that we take in every day it is hard to pick God’s voice out of it all. This is especially hard if we are not spending any time with Him. Samuel didn’t recognize God’s voice because he had never heard it. It took God calling three times for him to finally realize, thanks to Eli, what was going on.
Think of it this way, the best way to learn a foreign language like Spanish is repetition and spending time listening to it and repeating what you hear. If you do that for a time and then take a break for a while, coming back to it can be difficult because you don’t remember everything. I think it works the same way with us listening to God. If we are not spending the time reading His words and spending time with Him, His words and language will become foreign to us and we will miss things because we don’t understand anymore.
Fourth, the last thing that prevents some people from listening to God is because we simply don’t want to. God calls out to Samuel, he doesn’t just start speaking. He waits for Samuel to listen. “Speak, your servant is listening.” Samuel could have chosen – out of fear, out of not wanting to know what God had to say, or any other reason – to just ignore God but instead he choose to respond and purposefully listen to what God had to say.
4. Respond with Obedience, verses 16-18
God asks Samuel to confront his spiritual mentor Eli about the condition of his home and Samuel responds with obedience (1 Samuel 3:17-18).
Sometimes we hear God just fine, but we do not want to respond to what He is saying to us.
When we do not respond with obedience to what God is calling of us then it becomes more and more difficult to hear what He is saying.
Trust and Obey, there is no other way.
Trust
Illustration: A pilot was having difficulty landing his small plane since fog hid the runway, so the airport decided to land him by radar. As he received instructions he remembered a tall pole in his flight path. Overcome with panic he radioed to the control tower. A blunt reply came back, “You obey instructions; we’ll take care of the obstructions.”
The most natural response to the call of God is that of Samuel, “Here I Am.”
Obey
Obedience does not mean sinless perfection but that we obey from a pure heart for the right reasons. 1 John 1:8–10
Illustration: Once a superintendent of education had three applicants to fill one vacancy for school bus driver. He had an idea how to select the best driver. He took all three applicants to a stretch of road with a sharp curve on a steep hill and asked, “How close to the cliff can you drive to the edge without going over the cliff?” The first driver said, “I believe I can get within two inches of the cliff.” Not to be outdone the second driver replied, “I believe I can get within one inch!” When the superintendent looked at the third driver he said, “Do you think I’m crazy? I’m not interested in how close I can get to the edge with a bus full of children. I’ll try to stay as far away from the danger as I can get.” - Guess who received the job?
Conclusion:
To hear God speaking and to discern the message He has for us is at times very difficult to do. However, when we put ourselves in places where God speaks, we confirm that He speaking to us, we avoid the distractions of life, and we respond with obedience, it is then that God’s voice becomes clearer than ever.
Jesus said, “He who belongs to God hears what God says” (John 8:47). Maybe God is just waiting for us to tell Him we are ready to listen. He has a message for us and for His Church. It’s time to cry out to our Father and say, “Speak Lord, for your servant is listening!” The closer we get to the Shepherd, the louder His voice.
