God Can Lead us if we listen

God Can Lead us If We Listen I Samuel 3:1-10

Introduction Back when the telegraph was the fastest method of long-distance communication, a young man applied for a job as a Morse Code operator. Answering an ad in the newspaper, he went to the office address that was listed. When he arrived, he entered a large, busy office filled with noise and clatter, including the sound of the telegraph in the background. A sign on the receptionist’s counter instructed job applicants to fill out a form and wait until they were summoned to enter the inner office. The young man filled out his form and sat down with the seven other applicants in the waiting area. After a few minutes, the young man stood up, crossed the room to the door of the inner office, and walked right in. Naturally, the other applicants perked up, wondering what was going on. They muttered among themselves that they hadn’t heard any summons yet. They assumed that the young man who went into the office made a mistake and would be disqualified. Within a few minutes, however, the employer escorted the young man out of the office and said to the other applicants, “Gentlemen, thank you very much for coming, but the job has just been filled.” The other applicants began grumbling at each other, and one spoke up saying, “Wait a minute, I don’t understand. He was the last to come in, and we never even got a chance to be interviewed. Yet he got the job. That’s not fair!” The employer said, “I’m sorry, but all the time you’ve been sitting here, the telegraph has been ticking out the following message in Morse Code: ‘If you understand this message, then come right in. The job is yours.’ None of you heard it or understood it. This young man did. The job is his.” We live in a world that is full of busyness and clatter, like that office. People are distracted and unable to hear the still, small voice of God as he speaks to them. What about you? Are you tuned in to God’s voice? Do you hear him when he speaks to you? Are you listening? Today, we’re studying the subject of “God can lead us if we listen”: How to Hear God’s Voice” and I want you to see exactly how God speaks to us so that you can hear Him when He speaks to you. And discern from that which is God and not man. Chapter 3 begins with an interesting statement: “The word of the Lord was rare in those days.” The statement is made as a backdrop to the story of the word of the Lord coming to Samuel, but it also bears witness to the low religious ebb ( point of decline) of the day. The Scripture did not say that “there was no religious activity in those days” because people still went about with their daily religious practices. Many people today are confused by the fact that there is a religious revival in the land with some of the worst moral and ethical problems at the same time. Nonetheless, the “Word of the Lord is rare.” The lack of the word was not so much connected with God’s reluctance to communicate with the people as with the lack of a human instrument willing to receive and speak the word of the Lord. If we listen we can hear God and He will lead us. There’s more to the words “the Lord called Samuel” (v. 4) than is obvious at first reading. His mother had lent him to God for his entire life, but only the Lord could call him to prophesy. Most people don’t think of Samuel as a prophet because they associate the word “prophet” with predicting future events. While there is that aspect, the main business of the prophets was to speak God’s word to their contemporary situation. A professor reminded his class that while we are so fascinated with the “fore-telling” aspect we forget the importance of the “telling-forth.” When we read the accounts of the calls of the different prophets it helps us to understand their lives and ministries. The clues to the rest of Samuel’s life are found in the text.

In ver. 7 the reason is given why Samuel was thus thrice mistaken. Samuel did not yet know Jehovah, neither was the word of Jehovah yet revealed unto him. Doubtless, he knew Jehovah in the way in which the sons of Eli did not know him (Ch. 2:12), i. e. in his conscience and spiritual life, but he did not know him as one who reveals his will unto men. The prophecy had long been a rare thing, and though Samuel had often heard God’s voice in the recesses of his heart, speaking to him of right and wrong, he knew nothing of God as a living Person, giving commands for men to obey, and bestowing knowledge to guide them in doing his will.

Ver. 8.—But Eli was neither so inexperienced nor so lost to all sense of Jehovah being the immediate ruler of Israel, as not to perceive, when Samuel came to him the third time, that the matter was Divine. Possibly he recalled to mind the visit of the man of God and had some presage of what the message might be. At all events, he bade Samuel lie calmly down again because the best preparation for hearing God’s voice is obedience and trustful submission

When the call came to Samuel, he thought it was his master, Eli, calling. How easy it still is not to be able to discern God’s voice from other voices. It would be so much easier if all of God’s messages to us came with a clearly printed label: “From God.”

I was meeting with a young lady that I mentor the other day and she had to make a very difficult decision her response was she wanted to go to sleep and wake up and have the problem fixed. A lot of us are faced with hard decisions, but really God has already fixed the decision we just need to wake up and listen. While there is a tendency to think of the more dramatic revelations of God as normative, most people experience God’s guidance in quite ordinary ways: through experiences good and bad, while reading the Scripture, through the counsel of another, or out of a growing interest. Maybe you can remember your calling experience and If you haven’t why are you not listening?

A marvelous aspect of Samuel’s call was the provision of Eli to help him interpret the call. There is an interesting set of contrasts involved. First, Eli is much more tuned into Samuel’s spiritual experience than he was to Samuel’s mother whom he thought at first was drunk. But the most interesting contrast is between Eli’s physical and spiritual vision. Verse 2 says that his eyes “had begun to grow so dim that he could not see.” Fortunately, his spiritual vision was better than his eyesight because he “perceived that the Lord had called the boy” (v. 8). And it was Eli who worded for Samuel the response, “Speak, Lord, for Your servant hears” (v. 9). Servants listen to the master differently than others. Eli’s wise counsel is a good reminder that God can often use us to give better counsel to the children of others than we have been able to give to our own.

Most people, if they reflect a while, will realize that God is always supplying people like Eli at different times when we are finding it difficult to discern God’s direction for our lives at some critical juncture. Questions like what to do about a relationship, which job to take, how to deal with a problem, or what to do with our lives are often made clearer by someone with spiritual wisdom who helps us to hear God’s voice in the familiar and encourages obedience as the best way. These people have come to me in the form of professors, pastors, aunts and uncles, parents, classmates, my wife, and even my children. And in recent years I’ve begun to find a way of paying back all those who played the role of “Eli” to me. I’ve done it by trying to give wise counsel to others who needed a little help in interpreting the voices they heard.

Closing

When fear comes knocking let your faith answers the door. When you think God is not talking it’s because you haven’t stopped complaining. The Old Testament passage above shows us how Samuel learned to recognize God’s voice and to listen for it. Our fast-paced world makes it easy to become caught up in our commitments. Perhaps all we hear are the calls of our jobs, our families, and our finances. Where is God’s voice among all these? When we take the time to slow down and still ourselves, to listen to God in prayer and through scripture, we learn to recognize the voice of God, who has been with us all along. We just need to listen