Are You Listening?

By Rev. Heidi L. Barham |  January 14, 2024

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Read 1 Samuel 3:1 – 10
 
Our second reading this morning comes from the Old Testament book of 1 Samuel.  Now, perhaps the story of Samuel is one that most of us are familiar with… but I still think it would be helpful to have a little background about him. 
 
It started with a man named Elkanah who had two wives.  One named Hannah and one named Penninah.  Now, according to the Scriptures, Hannah was Elkanah’s favorite wife, but she was barren. 
 
And while it sounds more like something from an episode of a bad reality TV show rather than something we read in the Bible… the Scriptures tell us that every year, when Elkanah would take his family to the Temple to worship and offer a sacrifice…  Penninah would taunt and torment Hannah… literally flaunting her fertility in Hannah’s face. 
 
I can almost see Penninah flinging her arms wide… forcing Hannah to look at the children she had been able to give to their husband, Elkanah… reminding Hannah of her own inability to bear children.
 
Then at one point, it became too much… and Hannah could not take it any longer.  So, she cried out to the Lord… pleading with Him to grant her the privilege of giving birth to a son.  She even went so far as to promise God that if He would give her a son, she would dedicate him to the service of the Lord for the rest of his life… and promising that no razor would ever be used on his head as a sign of his consecration to the Lord.
 
Can you relate to Hannah’s plight?  Can you put yourself in her shoes?
 
If we’re being honest, I would have to imagine that most, if not all of us, have found ourselves… like Hannah… begging and bargaining with the Lord in our prayers.
 
Making promises to God… “Lord, if will just do this one thing… I promise I will do a, b, or c, for the rest of my life…” Or perhaps our prayer is that we will never do x, y, or z again… or better yet that we will never ask God for anything else… ever again… and I think we all know how well that one works.
 
Now the Scriptures tell us that Hannah’s prayers were so fervent, that the priest, Eli, who saw her that day thought she must have been drunk.  However, after Hannah explained her story to him, the priest was moved to offer words of encouragement to Hannah in place of his earlier reprimand… and he sent her home with his blessing. 
 
And, in very short order, Hannah was indeed blessed with a son…  A son that she named Samuel, explaining it was because she had asked God for him. 
 
As the story goes, once Samuel had been weaned, Hannah honored the promise she had made to God and she took her son… [the answer to her fervent prayers] back to the Temple.  And she left him there to live with the priests and to serve the Lord for the rest of his life. 
 
Now, Hannah and Elkanah would go back and visit young Samuel every year when they went to make the annual sacrifice. And while they were there, Eli, the priest, would offer a blessing that the two of them would have other children to take the place of the son they had dedicated to the Lord.  And they were indeed blessed again, several times over in fact... because they had three more sons and two daughters.  However, Samuel stayed there at the Temple… where he grew up serving God.
 
So, as we turn our attention to our text for the morning, we encounter Samuel when he was still a young boy.  According to the text… Samuel was lying in his bed… in the area where the priests rested… near where the Ark of the Covenant was kept… when he heard a voice calling to him, “Samuel, Samuel.”
 
To which he responded right away and said, “Here I am,” and then ran to Eli and said, “Here I am; you called me.”  [Obviously he was not a typical kid… because he actually responded and got up the first time he was called.]
 
But the priest told the young boy, “No, I did not call you, go back to bed.”  So, Samuel went back to bed. 
 
But once again, God called to him, “Samuel.”
 
And as he had done before, Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, “Here I am, you called me.”   And again, Eli sent the boy back to bed, assuring Samuel that he had not called him.
 
Now the Scriptures tell us that all this had taken place before Samuel knew God for himself… and before God’s word had been revealed to him.  So, it is really not all that surprising that Samuel did not realize who was speaking to him.
 
So, when it happened again, and God called to Samuel a third time… he went right back in to Eli and said, “Here I am, you called me.”  And let’s just say the third time was apparently the charm… because it finally dawned on Eli that it must have been God calling to Samuel. 
 
So, this time, unlike before, Eli told Samuel to go back and lie down and told him that if he heard the voice again, he should respond, “Speak Lord, for your servant is listening.” 
 
And sure enough, the Lord did call to Samuel again and he responded in the way Eli had told him to, saying, “Speak, for your servant is listening.”
 
But can you imagine being Samuel? 
 
A young boy who had been pledged to serve God before he was even born… a young boy who only saw his mother and father once a year when they came for the annual sacrifice… A young boy whose constant companions were not his peers, but priests…  And now he’s hearing voices in the middle of the night…
 
Nevertheless, Samuel seemed to take it all in stride.  He did not second guess or question Eli.  He simply took the priest at his word… and when God spoke to him again… Samuel listened.
 
Perhaps we could learn a thing or two from Samuel… about commitment and dedication… not to mention, faith.
 
Now, according to Webster’s dictionary, commitment is defined as an agreement or pledge to do something in the future… while dedication is defined as a devoting or setting [something] aside for a particular purpose.
 
Samuel’s mother, Hannah, made a commitment to God… she made a vow that if God would give her a son, she would in turn dedicate him to the Lord… to serve God for the rest of his life. 
 
She made a pledge even before the child was born… that her son… the anticipated answer to her prayers… would live a life dedicated and set aside for a very particular purpose…serving God. 
 
It is interesting to note that the initial act of commitment and dedication of Samuel’s life was actually not made by Samuel, himself… but by his mother… and yet, Samuel was still willing to honor the commitment that his mother had made to the Lord on his behalf… to dedicate his life in service to God.
 
Samuel seemingly just accepted the responsibility he had been given to serve in the house of the Lord… and to minister alongside the priest, Eli.
 
And while at the time that the story in our text takes place, Samuel was still a young boy and may not have had the same degree of wisdom and knowledge that Eli had… Samuel had something even greater… he had faith.
 
How can we know that for sure?
 
Well, if we look back at the text, the first time Samuel heard the voice calling to him… before he took the first step… Samuel simply responded, “Here I am.” 
 
As far as we can tell, he did not pause to ask, “Hey, who’s calling me?”   Nor did he cower in fear or crawl under the bed or hide beneath the covers.
 
On the contrary, Samuel must have had some degree of faith… believing it was the voice of someone he knew and trusted that was calling to him.  And so, he went to Eli, believing that was who had called him.
 
And even after going through the same drill three different times… when Eli told Samuel what he should do if he heard the voice again… Samuel trusted Eli… and had enough faith in what he had been told so that when he heard the voice of the Lord calling, he said without hesitation, “Speak, for your servant is listening.”
 
He does not appear to have had any idea what the Lord was going to say to him, but he responded in faith, anyhow. 
 
He probably had no clue what he could be getting himself into, but Samuel said, “Here I am…” anyhow. 
 
Samuel was listening when the Lord spoke to him…
 
Now, if we were to keep reading beyond our text for the morning, we would find that when God spoke… He gave Samuel a vision that he was afraid to tell Eli… because it was not an easy message that God had given him to deliver…
 
Nevertheless, Samuel did what he had been commanded to do… and the Scriptures say that the Lord was with Samuel as he grew up and that all of Israel recognized him as being a true prophet of God… He continued to listen to God and he was blessed.
 
Perhaps we could take a lesson from Samuel and start by taking a look in the mirror and asking ourselves, “Are YOU listening?”
 
Self… are you listening?  God has been speaking to you through His word … reminding you of what you have been commanded to do… to love God and the people of God.
 
Hey Self… are you listening?   God has been speaking through other people and encouraging you to give of your time, talent, and treasure to be a blessing to someone else… even as you have been blessed.
 
Excuse me, Self… are you listening?  God is speaking into your spirit and urging you to move beyond your comfort zone… to say yes to going where He wants you to go… even before you have all the details.
 
It reminds me of a quote that is attributed to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Faith is taking the first step, even when you don’t see the whole staircase.”
 
Are we as willing as Samuel to step out in faith, even when we don’t see the whole staircase and we are not sure of where the Lord is calling us to go or what He is calling us to do?
 
Well, if we are not, we should be… because the fact of the matter is that the Lord will not call us to go anywhere that He is not… and He will not call us to do anything that He will not equip us to do.
 
We can step out in faith… because we can take God at His word. 
 
We find words of encouragement back in Deuteronomy 31 (6) and Joshua 1 (5-9) to, “Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the Lord your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.”  
 
This same promise that God will not leave us nor forsake us is echoed in the New Testament in Hebrews 13… and also in Jesus’ promise to be with us “always, even to the very end of the age” (Matthew 28:20).
 
Now, there will be times when we will be called to step out in faith and trust God to lead us where He would have us to go.  And it is quite possible that we will not have the first clue where that is… but that is what trust and faith are all about… knowing that no matter where we go, God is already there and… no matter what happens, God has promised to never leave us nor forsake us…
 
But not only has the Lord promised to be with us always… God’s Word offers us the assurance that He will equip us with everything we need to do whatever it is that He is calling us to do.
 
In Ephesians 4 (11-13) we read:

So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

In 2 Timothy 3 (16-17) we read, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”
 
And in the closing words of the book of Hebrews (13:20-21) we read:

Now may the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever.

We do not need to be afraid because God will be with us and will equip us with everything that we need in order to do what He is calling us to do.
 
As most of you have probably heard me share before, back in the late fall of 2013, when I got that call from Dr. Edwards about coming to a church called Ledgewood, in a place called Novelty… I had never heard of the church and did not have a clue where Novelty was.  
 
But despite not having any real success in the Search and Call process and being at the point where I had literally said the day before, “I give up…” I was listening… and I felt God calling me to step out in faith. 
 
So, I did… and here we are…
 
Now, I did not know then where I was going and I was not exactly sure what God would have me to do… and if the truth be told, I cannot say for sure just where God is calling us to go and what God is calling us to do in the days, weeks, months, and years to come…
 
But what I can say with all certainty is that just as God was with us and equipped us back then… God is still with us now and will provide all that we need for the work ahead.
 
And so, as we look ahead into the New Year before us… as we sense God calling us… urging us to step out on faith… my prayer is that we will be ready and willing to respond like Samuel and say, “Speak Lord, for your servant[s are] listening.”
 
And hopefully, as we listen, we will hear God speaking wonderful words of life into our spirits… encouraging us and equipping us for the best that is yet to come.
 
Amen.
 
Hymn of Discipleship: Wonderful Words of Life #323.

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