AUG 25 2024 | Divine Interruption: Listening to the Voice of God

Sea Change Church · AUG 25 2024 | Divine Interruption: Listening to the Voice of God
1 Samuel 3:1-10
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

And it impacts the kids and their families forever. So let's pray for our offering today. Lord Jesus, I thank you for all your blessings. We give because you gave. We're generous because you're generous. So God, I thank you already for all the blessings and for all the work that you're going to do through our giving today. In your name we pray. Amen.

The Scripture from 1 Samuel 3, verses 1-10 The boy Samuel ministered before the Lord under Eli. In those days, the word of the Lord was rare. There were not many visions. One night Eli, whose eyes were becoming so weak that he could barely see, was lying down in his usual place. The 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.

Then the Lord called Samuel. Samuel answered, Here I am. And he ran to Eli and said, Here I am. You called me. But Eli said, I did not call. Go back and lie down. So he went and lay down. Again the Lord called Samuel. And Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, Here I am. You called me. My son Eli said, I did not call. Go back and lie down. Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord.

The word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him. A third time the Lord called Samuel. And Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, Here I am. You called me. Then Eli realized that the Lord was calling the boy. So Eli told Samuel, Go and lie down. And if he calls you, say, Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening. So Samuel went and lay down in his place.

The Lord came and stood there calling as at other times, Samuel, Samuel. Then Samuel said, Speak, for your servant is listening. This is the word of the Lord. The Lord. All right. Well, good morning, church. My name is Harry. I'm the family pastor on staff. And like Chris said, it is Youth and Family Sunday, and that is why you're getting the Sunday morning news with Chet Chetafield and Sally Applejacks.

It's why we've stepped into this First Samuel series. So we, I know as a congregation, have been studying Josiah and Second Kings, and we just finished that series. Pastor Adam is going to be coming back next week, and he's going to be starting a new series. And so for today, we're going to jump in with the middle school and high school studying the book of First Samuel with a Star Wars theme.

So if you grew up on Star Wars like I did, you're welcome. If you only know Disney Star Wars, I'm sorry. Either way, a couple things we need to know about Samuel. Samuel is a miracle child. He was the answer to his mother's prayers, to Hannah's prayers. And when God delivers that answer, Hannah, in great gratitude, dedicates her son Samuel to the Lord.

Puts him, has him take a Nazarite vow, and after he's weaned, he's dropped off at the tabernacle to be raised in the service of the Lord under the high priest Eli. And certainly we see throughout the text, Hannah comes and visits Samuel all the time. And so, you know, Samuel is literally the definition of a church kid. I mean, he truly grew up in literally in the church.

So if you are a pastor's kid here and you think you had it rough, try being living in the tabernacle, right? That was his home. That's where he grew up. And hopefully, I think for us church kids, this and his story can actually be kind of encouraging for us. Because sometimes I think if you grow up in the church and, you know, we hear other people, we can be kind of jealous of other people's testimonies who didn't grow up in the church.

And they have these amazing testimonies. They were just, they were living their own life, doing their own thing, and God rescued them in a mighty way. And now they're serving the Lord. I just heard a story, actually, just this week. I was working out with one of my friends, and he was a pro UFC fighter back in the day. I grew up watching him on TV.

And I won't, I didn't ask his permission to tell you this story, so I won't give his name. But if you're a big UFC fan, it's the Crippler, okay? I'll just give you that. Don't Google it. The Crippler, okay? That's who he was. And the Crippler was known for, he was the party animal of the UFC. That's what he was known for. He would party the night before the fight, drinking drugs, go out, and he would, he had this incredible ability to take a punch and give a punch.

And he would knock people unconscious. And then he'd go right back to partying, drinking drugs. And he's since gotten sober, and I was working out with him the other day. And what I did not know is that just in the last few years, he told me this story about how God saved him. He said he was hospitalized in 2020. And he had a one in eight chance of living.

And he said he actually had this out-of-body experience where he was looking down on his body and he was certain he was going to die. And he had no frame of reference for Jesus. He had only dabbled in a bit of like Hinduism. And so he began to be afraid of kind of how he would be reincarnated. Or would he be stuck in the hospital, he thought, like as a ghost, like what's going to happen to me?

And then all of a sudden, something in him said, reach out to Jesus. And so he reached out to Jesus. And he said, as soon as I did that, I knew I would live. And he lived. And he said, now since then, I've made a covenant with the Lord that I will not miss the gospel preached on Sunday. I will hear it every single Sunday. Now he goes to prisons and he speaks the gospel to prisoners.

And it's such an inspiring story. We hear that. We're like, yes, like that was the crippler. Like, yeah, dude, that's amazing. Until the crippler asks you, well, what's your testimony? You're like, whoa. Well, man, Wednesday nights, you kind of had to be there. But we had this crazy thing called Awanas. Like, whew, crippler. It was out of control. Awanas, like crazy.

Right? We could feel kind of like, man, our story just doesn't quite match up to that. But I want us to be encouraged by Samuel's story, who could not be more of a church kid growing up in the church. Learning the voice of God in the church. And he is going to be used mightily to usher Israel from the time of the judges to the time of the kings.

And so with that, let's jump into our story today. We're going to look at verses 1 through 4. It says, Let's pause there. Pastor Adam, the last few weeks has been doing a key word for you. And he challenged me this week to come up with a key word. And I cheated a little bit because it's a Hebrew word, which is three English words. But our key word today is hineni.

Hineni. And hineni means here I am. And, you know, this is a word that has been uttered throughout Israel's history as a response to God. Abraham, when he's called, says, hineni, here I am. Moses, at the burning bush, when he's called, says, hineni, here I am. The prophet Isaiah, when he's called, says, hineni, here I am. And, of course, Samuel today several times says, here I am.

And it's more than just a sharing of your geographical location. I don't know if you know this. God knows your geographical location. And so it's deeper than that. It's actually, as I put in your notes, it's a declaration of availability and readiness. It's to say before God, here I am. I'm available. I'm ready. Use me as you see fit. So that's our key word for today.

And that's going to come up throughout the passage. And then the other thing we should notice in verse 1 right away is that it says, in those days the word of the Lord was rare. Why would there be a lack of God's word in a place? Well, maybe you know that one of God's judgments, we know this from the book of Amos. We know this from Romans chapter 1.

One of his judgments on an unrepentant people is eventually he will give them over to their own desires. And he will remove his guiding hand on those people. We see that in Amos. We see it in Romans. And in this time was the time of the judges. If you've read the book of Judges, you know that it ends by saying that it was a time period in which everyone did what was right in their own eyes.

They lacked spiritual leadership. They did not follow the Lord. It was one of the darkest periods in Israel's history. And so we see that there's this lack of God's word. Even in chapter 2 of 1 Samuel, we learn that the priests, Eli's sons, have become very corrupt. They're stealing from the temple, taking the offerings from the temple. So there's just corruption.

And truly, if there's a lack of God's word in a place, the first place to look is not secular culture. The first place to look is the church. Right? Is there corruption within the people of God or the people of God, yearning for God, following God? Right? It starts with us. Now, maybe in your life you've experienced spiritually dry seasons. Times where it feels like God is distant.

His guiding hand feels far. Like, maybe you've experienced that. And that, I think, can be for multiple reasons. I think, certainly, unrepentant sin can get in the way of feeling intimacy with God. And, thankfully, you know, because of Christ, you know, he bears all our sins and burdens. We don't have the standard of perfection, for sure. But if I'm just living in unrepentant sin, I mean, Jesus still says, if you love me, you'll what?

You'll obey my commands. Right? We want to still be following God in our life. So it could, you know, that could be it. But it could have nothing to do with sin. Maybe you're just going through a hardship in your life. Maybe you're going through tragedy in your life. And it's just, God, you can't see your way out of it. You can't see how God's moving in it.

And God feels far. Right? The psalmists speak about that all the time. Or maybe you've been distracted. You just haven't been disciplined spending time with God. Maybe, you know, I recently went to Africa. And it was such an amazing trip. And I felt really spiritually charged before I went on the trip. I was really just in a good place with God. Went on the trip.

And, man, did God move. Like, it just was amazing seeing, like, God use myself, use my team. Watching little girls get rescued. Watching Muslim men hear the gospel for the first time. And just was like, wow. It was just so spiritually charged. And one of the challenges sometimes with a trip like that is coming home. And we get back into our routines.

We get back into our distractions. Our day-to-day. My day-to-day. Like, you know, I get to do this, which is really rad. But I'm also, like, fixing the internet. And when's our fall calendar coming out? And all the, you know, the to-dos of our day. And all of a sudden, for me, it's like, oh, man, I've been hungry again for that. And God has felt distant.

And I've had to re-discipline myself, get back in my routines to pursue after God. So what do we do if we find ourselves in this place, a place of spiritual drought? What do you do? I think Samuel in this story is a really good example for us. What's he doing? Number one, he's sleeping. I love that. I could use more of that these days. We just had a, we have a one-year-old.

And, you know, it is. But look at where he's sleeping. Notice how, notice how the Bible contrasts where Samuel's sleeping and where Eli's sleeping. Eli, the Bible says, is sleeping in his usual place. Okay? He's the high priest. Samuel, it says, is sleeping in the, in the house of God, where the ark of God was, which, by the way, would have been located in the Holy of Holies, where God's spirit was supposed to most potently dwell.

And so it seems to paint this contrasting picture that for Samuel, he is resting as near to God's presence as he possibly could be. He's resting as near to God's presence as he possibly could be. If we don't find time to rest in the presence of God, don't be surprised if his voice is rare. We have to be as a people who hear, if we want to hear from God, be a people that are diligent to spend time resting in his presence, which is probably going to cause us to need to slow down.

God usually is not going to lead you into the busiest season of your life. And I can hear some of you already protesting. You're like, what do you mean? I'm busy. I got a full-time job. I got multiple kids. I totally get it. I got one. And we're like, how do you, some of you have a football team. And I'm like, how do you do it? I don't understand. I get it.

You're busy. But in the midst of busyness, God is usually not going to lead you into more busyness. Usually, if you're following the spirit of God, what God is going to do is what he says in Psalm 23. He's going to make you lie down in green pastures, lead you beside still waters, restore your soul. Why would God need to make you lie down in green pastures?

Probably because if it's up to me, I'm going to stay addicted to the busyness, to the overstimulation, to the hard work, to getting things done, and I'm going to miss resting in the presence of God. We have to slow down and let God's spirit lead us by still waters and green pastures. And I'm not saying don't work hard. I'm not saying, you know, it's bad to be busy.

I'm not saying those things. But I am saying that hard work and busyness can become self-righteous idols that we serve to our own detriment. We have to be people who present ourselves to God habitually and say, here I am. Here I am. Use me as you see fit. And so I came up with your notes, a strategy for dealing with spiritual drought in your life. And I developed a strategy just by looking at the text.

This is just what happens in our text today. And so if you're dealing with spiritual drought, here's a strategy. I call it your SOS. Come on, guys. SOS. You need help. SOS. Pretty good. Pretty clever. I'm kind of in my pastoral acronym era. You know what I'm saying? Like when I used to, you know, you hear pastors all the time growing up, and everything was an acronym.

Everything had to have alliteration. And I used to think it was so, like, lame. I'm there, guys. I'm embracing that part of myself now. And it's really, it's encouraging. In fact, GPS, you know, we talked about GPS, give, pray, serve. Some of you know. Some of you know. A few of you, yeah, you know. Okay. Look, I don't need credit, guys. I don't need credit.

I'm fine. But about a year or so ago, I preached a sermon on a guide on how to share the gospel, right? You share the gospel by starting with God, by moving to the problem, which is sin, and the solution, which is salvation. It was your guide to share the gospel with your GPS. I'm fine. I'm not bitter. It's good. I'm just saying that if you come to church in a month, and you see a neon sign on the doorway that says, SOS, serve, offer, sanctify.

We'll know, okay? We'll know in here. That's all I'm saying. It's fine. All right. Stupid. All right. The first S. We already covered it. Spend time resting in God's presence. Spend time resting in God's presence. This, by the way, not going to happen on accident unless he makes you, right? Rest in his presence. Spend time. Calendar it. Schedule it. Next one is obey.

Obey God's word. Again, like we already talked about, this God's word had distanced itself because of unrepentant sin, unrepentant disobedience. Find ourselves, we should find ourselves, again, not in guilt and shame because we're covered, but continually to repent, daily repent and follow Jesus. So repent if there's sin in your life. Next is seek counsel.

Seek counsel from a trusted brother or sister in Christ. Samuel gets some good counsel in this chapter from Eli. So we'll see that unfold. Let's keep reading together. Let's go to verses, let's do four through seven. It says, Then the Lord called Samuel. Samuel answered, Here I am. And he ran to Eli and said, Here I am. You called me. But Eli said, I did not call.

Go back and lie down. So he went and lay down. Again, the Lord called Samuel. And Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, Here I am. You called me. My son, Eli said, I did not call. Go back and lie down. Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord. The word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him. Notice this. Samuel is woken up in the middle of the night.

And by the way, he literally lives at the tabernacle, like in the house of God. I feel like God could have found a better, you know, like pretty available during the day. But anyway, wakes him up in the middle of the night. And notice what he does. He wakes up and goes, Here I am. And then check out this verb. He runs to Eli. He thinks it's Eli and he runs to him.

Most of us need a pretty good reason to spring out of bed in the middle of the night. You know, sometimes my wife will wake me up in the middle of the night to help with the baby. And I wish I could tell you that I sprung out of bed and said, Here I am. Right? And then he, And just was the, this, this exemplar of a husband and a father. And the reality is, it's more like a reluctant dragging of my body.

Right? To get myself to be some form of helpful in the middle of the night. In fact, the only time I've really ever sprung out of bed in the middle of the night was just this week. My wife woke me up at 3 a.m. She said, Harry, there's a man outside our house. And I sprung out of bed. Like, there was no dragging. I was like, I'm up. I sprung out of bed.

And sure enough, I get to the door. And there's a large shirtless man peering in our windows at 3 a.m. I know. I was concerned too. And I, I wish I could tell you that the rest of this story was like a Bruce Lee action scene of me just like taking care of business. You know what I'm saying? Like defending the family. Unfortunately, it's a little more anticlimactic than that.

It was just our downstairs neighbor's boyfriend who neither of us had met, but was complaining about a noise. Really good reason to wake us up. Doesn't really matter. My point is, is the only bit of urgency that we, that we often have, we need it to be like an emergency. Not Samuel. He springs out. And maybe the first time he thinks it's an emergency, because after all, Eli is an older blind man.

So maybe the first time he thinks it's an emergency. But the second time, the third time, after each time, Eli's like, I didn't call. Go back to bed. Yet, the faithfulness of Samuel, each time to show up to Eli and say, here I am, you called. No, I didn't call. Boom. Here I am, you called. No, I really didn't call. Here I am, you called. Just so eager and faithful to answer when he's called.

Can we be a people that even if the calling we receive doesn't make sense to us, it's at an inconvenient time, if we're eager to serve, eager to answer when we're called. Can we be a people like that? A lot of you are like that. A lot of you here are like that. There's, I think of, I think of Noel Hallman. We just had this, we had this Africa recap dinner on Thursday night.

And Noel just, I don't want to embarrass her wherever she is, but she just, she just shows up to the dinner and she's immediately shows up early, starts helping, moving chairs, doing stuff. I didn't ask her to do that. We have a little pizza bar going on. It's self-serve. She's behind the bar serving pizza. Like just someone, there's a lot of you like that, that are eager.

And I need to be, I need to be more like that, right? There's a lot of you that like, I want to be like when I grow up and I'm 30, so I got to get on it. But, but can we be the people that when God calls, we're like, here I am. Hineni, eager to serve, ready. Here I am. You called. I put in your notes that your best ability is availability. Your best ability is availability.

Now, you might recognize that from, if you've watched any NFL football, because it's said all the time, which football season's around the corner. Go Broncos. I know. Bo Nix, Denver. Here we go. All right, whatever. It's just me. Just me. Okay. Anyway, cool. It's a sports saying from football, right? Best ability is availability. I think that's true of God. God, by the way, he doesn't need the most talented.

He doesn't need the most intelligent. He doesn't mean need the most artistic. He sends Moses to speak to Pharaoh, to lead the people into the Exodus movement. And Moses has a fear of public speaking. Samuel, in our story, at the height of Israel's sin, during the time of the judges, God calls Samuel a young boy, probably 12 years old. And it says in verse seven, he doesn't even know him yet.

And he's about to use that boy to usher in a whole new movement for Israel. So God doesn't need all our gifts and talents. That's awesome. And he will use those things. But more than that, are you available? Samuel was available. He might've been a little confused, right? About where this is coming from, but he was ready. He was available to hear God's call.

But we're not going to be those people until we spend time again, resting near the presence of God. Unless we slow down and stop living busy, distracted lives. I put in your notes that, if the devil cannot tempt you into debauchery, he's largely content to tempt you into distraction. There's the alliteration again, right? If the devil can't tempt you into debauchery, he's largely content to tempt you into distraction.

Another way I've heard it put, if he can't make you sin, he'll make you busy. There's a great story, or it's a study actually, the Good Samaritan study. I've talked about it before. It's one of my favorite studies that I think is really poignant for this. And that was, it's a, I believe a Stanford study that was done. And they took pastors who were supposed to preach a sermon on the Good Samaritan.

They were seminary students actually. And they said, okay, you have an hour, prep a sermon on the Good Samaritan. And they told each one in different groups, but they categorized them into two groups. One was hurried, one was unhurried. For the hurried group, or the unhurried group, I'm sorry, they'd show up after the hour. They'd say, hey, you're supposed to preach your sermon, head across campus, go preach your message.

For the hurried group, they walk in and said, hey, you're late. You gotta go. Like, you were supposed to already be there. You gotta get across campus right now, preach your sermon. Okay? And then for both groups, what they did was, they placed an actor on their path who posed as someone in great distress and need of help. To see if seminary students with the story of the Good Samaritan on their mind, which is of course a story Jesus tells about stopping to help someone in need, if they would stop to help someone in need while they're on their way to preach to stop to help someone in need, you know what I'm saying?

And that's, and guess what? 64% of the unhurried group stopped to help. 64. Over half. Not bad. We wish it was higher, right? If you think that number's low, 10% of the hurried group with the Good Samaritan on their mind stopped to help. 90% did not. A rushed and busy life is antithetical to an available one. We have to slow down, my friends. We have to schedule in time to just say before God, here I am.

One, I don't, we don't have time to talk about it today, but for me, the practice of Sabbath, reintroducing that into my life of a weekly 24-hour Sabbath has been amazing for me to do that. I want to encourage you guys to look into that. John Mark Comer has done a lot of work on that, so I'll just, I'll point you his direction, but it's been really, really helpful.

Let's go, let's keep reading verses 8 through 10. A third time, the Lord called to Samuel, or the Lord called Samuel, and Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, here I am, you called me. Then Eli realized that the Lord was calling the boy, so Eli told Samuel, go and lie down, and if he calls you, say, speak, Lord, for your servant is listening. So Samuel went and lay down in his place.

The Lord came and stood there, calling at the other times. Samuel, Samuel, then Samuel said, speak, for your servant is listening. You'd think this would be a pretty humbling moment for Eli. Eli's the high priest of Israel, and according to the text, it seems like God has not spoken to him in some time. But now God's about to speak to probably a 12-year-old boy, and you think he could be disheartened, he could be discouraged, but what's he do?

He counsels the boy. He teaches the boy. He discerns, after a little bit, discerns, this is the word of the Lord. Here's what you say, and he gives him very simple advice. When God calls, make yourself available and listen. Say, speak, Lord, for your servant is listening. That is a great prayer to steal from Scripture. I want to encourage you, steal that prayer.

I stole that all week prepping for this. Steal that prayer. Before you go to your Bible study, before you go to your personal prayer time, maybe you're about to go into a hard conversation or a counseling session or whatever it is, going into work, stop, take a breath and say, speak, Lord, for your servant is listening. Build a habit of pausing and giving God your attention.

In your notes, I quoted John Mark Comer. He says, attention is the beginning of devotion. Attention is the beginning of devotion. Maybe the greatest currency we have today is our attention. It's one of the greatest currencies we have. And that's probably why there's such a battle for it. There is a battle for your attention. Right? It's not even subtle. Right?

There's billboards trying to steal your attention, television commercials trying to steal your attention. There's social media algorithms literally designed to direct and keep your attention. But often, I'll say this, where you put your attention is going to largely influence where you put your devotion. What have you been attentive to in your life? And now, one, two more things maybe as we close.

I want us to notice this. Notice the patience of God. God calls Samuel four times and three times he gets it wrong. But God doesn't stop calling the boy. He's so patient. And not only is he patient, he's persistent. By the fourth time God calls him, it says that he shows up and stands in the room. God is patient yet persistent to get the attention of his people.

He will continue to pursue you. That's the goodness and grace of God as we can keep messing it up but he will not stop his pursuit of you. He's patient, he's persistent to come after you, to wait until you finally you go, speak Lord. Here I am. Your servant is listening. And finally, as we close, I want to point out how all of this really connects to the gospel for us.

We know the gospel tells us that God is good but sin has separated us from God and so God sends his son and his son lives a perfect life, the life that I could not live. And then on the cross, his son goes to the cross and he dies a death I deserve to die and on the cross he makes a trade. He gives me his perfect life in exchange for my broken one. And he receives the wages of my broken life and the wages of sin are death.

And I receive the wages of his perfect life which is union with the father. And then check it out, then Jesus defeats death, he resurrects from the dead, he appears to many, he ascends to the father, he sends his holy spirit to seal his people, to be a guide to his people, he does all the work, accomplishes all this work in salvation and you know what the role of the people are?

Here I am. Here I am. Change me. Here I am. Save me. Here I am. Forgive me. Here I am. Make me new. Here I am. Give me a new heart. That's our role. God has done all the heavy lifting in salvation and we present ourselves available to him and say here I am. And when we do that man he is faithful to save. Amen. Amen. I'm going to invite Chris up. And we're going to close with some worship.

It's always good to respond to God's word. So let's stand. Here I am Here I am You can have it all You can have it all Here I am You can have it all You can have it all You can have it all You can have it all You can have it all You can have it all You can have it all You can have it all You can have it all You can have it all You can have it all You can have it all You can have it all You can have it all You can have it all You can have it all You can have it all You can have it all You can have it all You can have it all You can have it all You can have it all You can have it all You can have it all You can have it all You can have it all You can have it all.

Here I am. Here I am. You can have it all. You can have it all. I want to invite the prayer team up as we sing this last chorus. And if you want to respond, if you want to say, here I am, or if you want to put your trust in Jesus for the first time, we would love to pray for you. If you want some next steps on how to get more involved, next steps table in the back.

We love you, church. We'll see you next week. God bless you. I hear you call. I am available. I say, yes, Lord. I am available. I hear. I hear you call. I am available. I say, yes, Lord. I am available. I am available. I am available. All right. We love you, church. Come forward for prayer if you want it. We'll see you next week. Peace out.