1 Samuel 3: 1-10
According to the Times newspaper (December 24, 2005), new research says that hearing voices is a relatively common experience, albeit one that many people prefer to keep to themselves. Estimates suggest that more than half the “normal” population have auditory hallucinations at some time, while about 4 per cent hear voices regularly. It should be say at the research showed that not all the voices heard are attributed to supernatural beings. Even so, if someone turned up at work and spoke about meeting an angel or hearing the voice of God there would be anxious looks. Hearing voices that no one else can is supposedly a sign of madness.
So what are we to make of Samuels experience that we read about in our first Bible reading this morning. Is it just madness, a delusion, or should we take it seriously?
Well, as Christians, we believe that all scripture is inspired by God, and is useful for us. So I think we have to examine this seriously, and see what we can learn.
The rarity of the word of God
Of course as both teachers and students will know, there is quite a lot of difference between hearing and listening. And one of the problems with our familiarity with the Bible is that very often we hear the words of the Bible reading, but we’re not really listening. We tend to miss bits out. We tend to skip over bits of it. And in this story, because it’s very familiar, it is very easy to skip over a crucial bit of background. For the first thing to note (v1) is that the word of God was a rarity. ‘In those days the word of the LORD was rare; there were not many visions.’
So what does this mean? What is it all about? I think there are two strands to this statement. The first is that God was still speaking, but the people were not hearing. That is to say they might have been listening, but they were not taking it, in they were not hearing. Sometimes when we are talking to our children, especially when we are telling them some harsh truths about their behaviour, they put their hands over their ears, because they do not want to hear. They know we are speaking to them, but they do not want to hear. And there is an element of that in this situation at the time of Samuel. The people did not want to hear what God was saying. They were very happy with their religion, and they liked the feeling that God was there if they needed him, but they didn’t want to hear what he had to say to them day by day. You get a sense of this if you read the earlier chapters, when you can see that Eli’s sons, who were also priests, had no regard for the Lord ch2:12. And one of the reasons they had no regard for the Lord was because of their wickedness. They treated the offerings of the Lord with contempt and they were sexually promiscuous. 2:22. They didn’t want to hear what God was going to say.
The second strand to this statement is that God was in fact speaking to them much less. And this is entirely understandable. You see, the Jewish people were a people who had a covenant relationship with God. They had a relationship with God. And relationships depend upon communication. And what these few words encapsulate is that the relationship with God was on the verge of breakdown. It was a situation in which the relationship between God and his people was on the verge of breakdown. If people do not want to really hear, if they are not really listening, it is difficult to really communicate. It’s difficult to have a one-sided conversation. And is difficult to sustain a relationship on one-sided conversation. So it’s difficult for God to communicate when his people don’t want to hear. So it was no surprise that the relationship with God had broken down, and the word of God to his people was rare.
I wonder how this applies to us? Do we expect God to be speaking to us? And if he is speaking to us are we listening? Do we really want to hear what God is saying to us? You see sometimes, we get very comfortable in our religion. We get comfortable with the regularity and the ritual. We get comfortable with the familiar words, and we don’t really hear them. And deep inside we probably know that it’s sometimes uncomfortable when God wants to speak to us. So we don’t like it when the sermon goes on for a few extra minutes, because it increases the possibility that God might get through. We don’t like it when someone reads from a very modern translation of the Bible because it takes away the insulation of the old words. But we too are a covenant people. We have inherited the new covenant that God has put in place through Jesus. So we have, or should have, a real relationship with God. A relationship that depends on communication. A relationship that is a two-sided conversation.
The Receptiveness to the word of God
And you see that is the kind of conversation that Samuel and God had. For despite the difficult situation with a people that by and large did not want to hear God, God did not let go. God didn’t walk away from his people. God didn’t stop trying to communicate. For although large parts of the nation did not want to hear the word of God, there were still people who were receptive to him. That’s what we see in Samuel. We note the receptiveness of Samuel. He heard. Although Samuel was spiritually immature (v7 Samuel did not yet know the Lord), and did not know what he was hearing, he was receptive. It isn’t always easy to hear God’s call. God’s call to Samuel had to be repeated. But that was only because Samuel was spiritually immature. He wasn’t used to hearing God’s word. But he was receptive to God’s word. He heard God’s call but didn’t quite understand it. But he did hear. He was really listening. And because Samuel was really listening, was truly receptive to God, he was able to respond to him fully. He was able to continue the conversation. He was able to make it a two sided conversation and respond to God. Samuel responded to Gods call – ‘speak Lord, for your servant hears’. Samuel, for all his physical and spiritual immaturity, was receptive to God and open to the idea that God might want to speak to him.
I wonder how receptive we are to Gods word? I wonder how much we really expect God to speak to us. Sometimes we are so grown-up about things that we dismiss the idea that God could really be speaking to us. But the innocence and childishness of Samuel is what we really need. We need to be expecting God to speak to us. We need to have our ears and our hearts wide open when the Bible is read in church. That’s one of the reasons that we are keen to have Bibles in the pew so that you can follow God’s word when it is read. We need to be expecting God to speak to us in the sermons. And as preachers we need to be open to the fact that God will speak through the words that we say. So we need to be receptive to God speaking to us. If he spoke to us now, would we dismiss it? If he spoke to a child in our church, would we dismiss it? But if we do not expect God to speak, we will be not be ready to receive, we will not be receptive. And yet God wants to communicate with us. God want to be in relationship with us. Relationships depend on communication. So we need to be receptive to God, we need to be asking and expecting him to speak to us.
The result of the word of God
Later on in the verses after the section we had for our Bible reading, we see that this receptive response to God’s word is fundamental to Samuel’s development and the restoration of God’s relationship with the nation. There is a result. It is contained in just three verses. Vv19-21.
19And Samuel grew, and the LORD was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground (Samuels prophetic record was faultless) 20And all Israel from Dan to Beersheba knew that Samuel was established as a prophet of the LORD. (truly the Lords prophet - the real thing) 21And the LORD appeared again at Shiloh, for the LORD revealed himself to Samuel at Shiloh by the word of the LORD. RSV
Samuel’s receptiveness to the Lord had a result. It had a result for him, and it had a result for the nation. The first thing we see is that Samuel grew up. Of course he was going to do that; he was a boy and he was growing into a man. But I think he must have also grown spiritually. He grew in his relationship with God. For it says that the Lord was with him. And it is clear that Samuel’s relationship with God as a two-way conversation grew and developed too. Samuel became a prophet and was able to give God’s word to the people. So Samuel’s relationship with God grew as a result of his receptiveness to God and his word. But also Samuels receptiveness to God had an impact on the nation. The nation realised that Samuel was the real deal. They would have seen that God was with him. They would have seen his relationship with God expressed in his everyday living. And as his prophetic ministry developed they realised that Samuel was truly Gods prophet. They realised that Samuels’s words were truly Gods words. The Lord appeared regularly to Samuel. No longer was the word of God are a rarity in the nation. No longer was the word of God ignored. But at last hearing the word of God was a regular occurrence, and the word of God was central to the life of the nation. And so the result of Samuel’s receptiveness to the word of God was the restoration of the relationship between God and his people.
And if we are receptive to God and his word, there is a result. There is a result in our own lives because as we begin to communicate with God to truly listen and truly respond, we grow. We grow in our relationship with him. We developed spiritually. We become more like Christ. And our spiritual gifts are developed. That in itself is a wonderful result.
But it doesn’t stop there. Because the result of our receptiveness to God and his word makes a difference to our world. I believe quite strongly that one of the reasons that the church has been ineffective in the recent past is because it has ignored Gods word. It has been uncomfortable with the message that God wants to give. It has not allowed Gods word to speak. And as a result, people’s lives have not been changed. And the world has not been changed by the church.
But we live in a world which is in desperate need of God. We live in a world which needs a relationship with him. It’s not about religion. It’s not about ritual. It is about relationship. So as God’s people here, we need to be receptive to his word, so that we can have a life changing relationship with him, which changes the world around us.
