1 Samuel Lesson 5
Samuel begins as a prophet – 1 Samuel 3
The first seven chapters of Samuel deal with God’s preparation of the
national entity of
In verse 30 God says, “I said indeed that thy house, and the house of
thy father should walk before me forever,” now that part of the verse deals
with eternal security or their position.
That is guaranteed by a sovereign declaration of God. That can’t be changed, even by God
Himself. This is comparable in our own
generation to God’s sovereign declaration to justify you. If you are a believer then God has made a
solemn declaration whereby He declares you to share the righteousness of
Christ. This is made, it is once for
all, God doesn’t haul you back into court on a charge a second time. Therefore, this being the case, this would
correspond to eternal security. This can
never be change, and the first part of verse 30, as far as the house of Eli is
concerned, will never be changed either.
That is, “thy house, and the house of thy fathers should walk before me
forever,” and it is true that they will still be priests and it is true that
the house of Aaron, the Levites, will continue to minister before the
Lord.
However, “Be it far from Me; for them who honor Me will I honor, and
they who despise Me shall be lightly esteemed.”
And God is going to rebuke that nation and here we have discipline, “Be
it far from Me” is the word which means profanity, let me be profaned and what it would translate over as is: I’ll
be damned if I’m going to allow this to happen.
That is, I have made a solemn declaration for this believer but that
doesn’t mean that that believer can get away with anything and everything they
so choose. So if we have a believer who
has been given this sovereign decree by God, and goes subsequently on negative
volition and begins a pattern of rebellion against God’s revealed truth, then
he’s asking for it because God will not permit that to go on. He will deal with it graciously and graciously,
He will never, by the way, reverse His original declaration but He can make
life very, very miserable to believers who insist on rebelling against His
Word.
One of the disappointments one has in any kind of Christian ministry
always is watching the destructive effects of the teaching of the Word of God
on people’s lives. That sounds odd, you
would think you should rejoice in the constructive effects the Word of God has,
and it does, but the Word of God also has destructive effects; people who come
in an hear the Word of God and understand the Word but still have a Mickey
Mouse attitude go away changed, for the better or for the worse, and if they
persist in their Mickey Mouse attitude they will go away suffering great
pressure. I have observed this as a
minister of the gospel. Wherever you
have a clear declaration of the Word of God you’ll always have a dividing;
you’ll have people who will get with it, people who will rebel, and the people
who rebel will remain miserable and will experience an actual decrease in their
happiness because they have been exposed and rebelled against that which they
have been exposed to. So this principle
of verse 30 is very important that we bring that over and remember this applies
to us as Christians too in the sense that God can have a wonderful plan for our
lives, we’ll call that plan A and we rebel and say no, no, no, I am not going
to do what God calls me to do, I’m not going to do this and I don’t want it and
I am not going to do anything for it and I rebel. So fine, God says okay, I’ll allow that to go
on just so far and then you’re going to be scheduled for plan B and it will
mean still operating in the top circle, not losing your salvation, but you will
experience a less than satisfying type of operation compared to what you could
have experienced had you been on plan A.
So this is the downgrading of believers because of habitual
disobedience.
Eli was a believer; he evidently had two unbelieving sons; at least if
they were believers there’s not any evidence of it in this chapter. This man, who had these two unbelieving sons
was involved in religious apostasy, he had the choice to do something about it
and he rebelled. Therefore God has had
it, God said Eli, you honor your sons more than you honor Me. This refers to believers who are involved in
apostate religious organizations where they have the power to do something
about it and don’t. Do you know what that means? They honor the organization above the
Lord. That’s as simple as we can put it
but that’s what it means. We have people
all over that know they’re in the wrong organization and they know it. This doesn’t mean every religious group is
apostate but there are some that are and within those you can find believer
after believer and why are they doing this: I have my social connections here,
and Great Aunt Tilda gave three million dollars to the outfit and we just have
to kind of watch how they spend it. Well
watch, they’re spending it and watch what they’re spending it on and watch how
little effect you’re having on how they spend it.
I was talking with someone and said it is noticeable that there are so
many college students, and the rest are the older people. I asked if it was true that you get a peak
number of people attending between the ages of 17-27, somewhere in there you
get a peak, and then you get another peak in the older people, say 45 and up,
and in between there’s big gap.
Fundamentalist organizations all over the country are suffering from
this because it’s that gap that supplies the leadership in any organization as
far as age goes. And he said of the 10
or 15 churches he’d been in recently it was the same thing, where the Word of
God is being taught we’re finding young people by the score responding; so I
say this to defend myself that I just cater to college students. I just speak the Word of God and if you hear
that what it really means is that we don’t have Mickey Mouse Clubs for the
middle aged; that’s what it means. We
teach the Word of God and where the Word of God is taught without all the
Mickey Mouse and so forth you have people come because they’re interested in
the Word of God, period, and they’re not interested in anything else, and
obviously this creates this kind of situation because the generation that’s over
45 had a lot of the Word of God in their time; when they were younger they were
exposed because at that time apostasy hadn’t taken over in many of the
churches, so that generation knows what the Word of God is like and they
gravitate to where the Word of God is taught because of that. And the young people gravitate toward it
because they’ve lived through this materialistic liberalism that’s penetrated
this age group and they’ve had it with and so they’re hungry for the Word. Yet in that in-between bracket we find a
tremendous absence across Christian circles today.
It appears that we are to read these statistics as a revelation of God
and how the Holy Spirit is operating in our generation. In other words, strictly speaking as far as
generations are concerned that God the Holy Spirit is skipping over one
generation. Now this isn’t the first
time in history He’s done this; He’s skipped from one generation, skipped the
second one and moved to the third, and one generation is completely
skipped. This happened about six or
seven times in the history of the Kings.
In 1 and 2 Kings we see the same thing; you’d have a godly king and a
clod for a son, then the clod would have a godly son in turn, and you’d have it
skipped, where the Holy Spirit would skip over one entire generation. And it appears that is the case, and if that
is the case then it would mean that America could see in the next few years a
tremendous back to the Bible movement in the young people, but it will be a
dangerous type of operation because you’ll have many people accept Christ and
there’s going to be no one around to train them, and no one around with the
experience of leadership, and this is where we are going to suffer but it’s
suffering because we’ve had a generation, like Eli, who have stayed in apostate
religious organizations until it was too late and it’s as though God the Holy
Spirit has said I have worked with this generation and worked and worked and
worked with it and they insist on going back to the pig pen; all right, let them
stay in the pig pen, I’m going to move on to the next generation. It’s as though we see this decree of verse 30
operating in our own day, right before our eyes.
In chapter 3 we come to the second great area of the preparation of
Samuel. In 2:11-36 was how God is
turning away from the old order, and we said that this was: God reacts to the
sinful old order by announcing His coming judgment. Now from 3:1-4:1a, this whole section, the
first verse of chapter 4 is split and the first part of the verse actually
belongs with chapter 2. So this entire
section deals with God calling the first prophet of the new order. God is calling the first prophet of the new
order. Now here we see God’s love. God is going to chasten the nation, God is
going to discipline the nation for their sins, but before God disciplines He
makes “a way that you may be able to bear it,” always the same principle, 1
Corinthians
Now when a Christian, look at how blasphemous this is when you trot it
out and look at it carefully. If we say that God is going to discipline us
beyond what we can take, that is like saying you as a parent will take your
child and beat him to the point where you will kill him. Now what would you think of your neighbor or
your friend that took their kid and beat them so badly that they killed them? We have cases like that, brutality, it’s
horrible. You wouldn’t think very much
of that but isn’t that exactly the Christian says God the Father is doing when
the Christian turns around and says God is letting this happen to me and God is
going to kill me, I’m at the end of it, and so forth. That is saying that God the Father engages in
infanticide. That’s what you’re saying, you’re charging God with sin and it’s a
blasphemous charge.
So this chapter is going to be an illustration of how God prepares a
nation to go through His discipline and before the discipline hits He’s making
provision. Notice how long this takes,
2:1-10 was the time when Samuel was born and probably three years old there he
came there and started ministering before Eli.
Now in chapter 3 he’s a young man and he’s going to give his first
prophecy, and so obviously it’s been over a decade, at least, maybe two
decades, maybe it’s taken 20 years to get here but I want you to see how God
the Holy Spirit works, slowly, irresistibly, unhurriedly, never in a rush and
He’s never late. It’s always done on
time.
Now let’s watch the details of chapter 3 and watch how He calls out this
prophet. This chapter is important to
you for several reasons. First of all,
chapter 3 is going to show you what a prophet is like and how a prophet was
called, and subsequently every chapter in the Old Testament that deals with a
prophet, that man will be called the same way Samuel is. There will be certain tests, there will be
certain evidences given, certain characteristics, etc. So chapter 3 is a precedent setting chapter
and this will teach us a lot about prophets and about how these men
operated.
This chapter can be divided into three parts. The first part is 3:1-10; here God trains
Samuel through Eli. In verse 1, “And the
child Samuel ministered unto the LORD before Eli. And the word of the LORD was precious [rare]
in those days; there was no open [frequent] vision. [2] And it came to pass at
that time, when Eli was lying down in his place, and his eyes began to grow
dim, that he could not see, [3] And before the lamp of God went out in the
temple of the LORD, where the ark of God was, and Samuel was lying down to
sleep.” Now all of those clauses are
circumstantial clauses that explain what the picture is when verse 4 starts to
happen. Verse 4 is the first action
verse, but verses 1-3 prepare you for the action; they give you the setting so
you can see what’s happening here, what’s going on.
Let’s look and see what’s going on.
Verse 1, “the child Samuel was ministering,” it’s a Hebrew participle
and it is a third time this phrase occurs.
If you look in 2:11 you see it then, “the child was ministering,” Hebrew
participle, “unto the LORD before Eli, the priest.” 2:18, “Samuel was ministering,” Hebrew
participle, “before the LORD, being a child,” and now again, 3:1, “the child
Samuel was ministering unto the Lord before Eli.” Why are these verses repeated. Obviously they’re repeated for a reason. Obviously the writer intend that you
understand something about Samuel, and what he intends that you understand
about Samuel is that although Samuel was a young man and although Samuel would
be called upon to change and introduce a radical change into the nation, Samuel
right now is submitting to an institution that God will change but even though
there are apostate people in the institution, Samuel is getting out of that
institution what he can at the moment.
He has no other options, his mother has given him over by oath to this
outfit, and so you might say he’s stuck there.
But Samuel is going to get out, he’s not going to be like Eli, he’s
going to do something about it. But
while he’s growing up he submits to authority and the point is that Samuel is
submitting to the authority of the Lord by submitting to the authority of the
priest, and this constant habitual ministering, ministering, ministering,
ministering, ministering is simply the author trying to say see, see what kind
of a young man Samuel was; he was obedient.
He was in there and it must have been distasteful for him to see all
this corruption going on but he did, and lived up, so to speak, to the light
that he knew and we’ll see what’s going to happen.
The next part of verse 1 prepares us for the rest of the chapter. “The word of the LORD was precious in those
days.” Now this is a Hebrew idiom which
means it was scarce; now what does it mean “the word of the LORD?” Here’s where you have to interpret by the
context. “The word of the LORD” does not
mean the Law or the Torah. “The word of
the LORD” in this chapter means visions, it means a fresh word from God, it
means an additional revelation, that’s what it means. It doesn’t mean they didn’t have a copy of
the Torah, the priests studied the Torah all the time. This means that there was not added to the
Torah a divine word, God did not continually reveal Himself. This verse teaches us many things. Often you’ll hear some critic of the Bible
say well, these poor naïve slobs didn’t know what was happening, they’d have a
dream and they thought God spoke to them, ha-ha-ha.
But notice this verse, this verse shows you that’s utterly wrong and
won’t fit because if this verse is true, that the Word of God is scarce, it
means those naïve people knew very well when God was talking and when God
wasn’t. Now it doesn’t mean that the
people just stopped dreaming. See if the
people were very naïve in this day and confused any and every dream with the
Word of God, the only way you could interpret the rest of verse 1 is the people
stopped dreaming, were taking Sominex or something and they just didn’t have
any more dreams. But that can’t be the
solution to the problem; the only solution to verse 1 must be that these people
weren’t the ignorant naïve slobs they’re made out to be by the critics but
these people had an acute understanding when God spoke and when He wasn’t
speaking they knew it. And so here in
verse 1 is an announcement that the Word of God is precious [rare].
Now why is this tagged with the first part of verse 1; if you can catch
the link between the first and the last part of verse 1 you’ve got the moral of
the whole story, all the rest of it is just detail. All the rest of what
happens to Samuel in this chapter is built off these two parts. Let’s look at them. In one case we have a young man who is
ministering before the Lord. Notice in
verse 3 where he’s ministering, “And ere [before] the lamp of God went out in
the temple of the LORD, where the ark of God was,” you see, we have the
tabernacle and in the tabernacle we have the holy place, and then we have the Holy
of Holies and in this Holy of Holies is the ark. The ark was the throne of Jehovah; it was at
the ark where God was supposed to visibly be, and when He gave instructions to
the nation it would be through the high priest who ministered before the ark.
To get some background on this turn to Numbers 27:21, you have to
understand the background to appreciate why this little boy, Samuel, is in
there. This is not the story that Samuel
got out his sleeping bag one night and was looking for a warm place to sleep
and it was cold outside the tabernacle so he brought his sleeping bag inside
and sacked out. Samuel isn’t in there
for camping purposes; Samuel is inside the tabernacle for a very devout reason,
and that reason is going to be the key to the passage. You see, after Moses died, Moses was a man
whom the Bible says God spoke face to face; Moses went before the Lord and God
talked to him, and so on, and so Moses filled the role of a prophet. Moses also filled the role of a priest, he
was a Levite. So Moses combined the
offices of prophet and priest in his one person. But when Moses died in 1400 or thereabouts,
he was succeeded by a man by the name of Joshua. Joshua was not a priest and he was not a
prophet, he was simply a commander of the army, that’s all. And so since he was minus priest, he
definitely wasn’t a prophet, where did Joshua get his instructions from?
Numbers 27:21 says where, “He shall stand before Eleazar, the priest,
who shall ask counsel for him, after the judgment of the Urim before the
LORD. At his word they shall go out; at
his word they shall come, both he and all the children of Israel, even all the
congregation.” Look at the line of
authority. Joshua is the commander and
where does he get his orders from? He
gets his orders from the high priest who is functioning at the tabernacle. So the tabernacle is the place where Jehovah
gives His orders. And Joshua, as the
commander, must go to that place for his orders. And this is the normal operating thing. Watch
the role of the high priest.
Now come back to Samuel and see what’s happened. In 1 Samuel 3:1 what the author is saying is
that the high priest who ministered there since the days of Joshua has not been
getting any orders recently. Orders
haven’t been coming down, the whole nation is in the dark. And so since the orders haven’t been
filtering down they don’t know what to do; there’s something wrong here. But what is Samuel doing while the orders
have not come down? While they’re
waiting for the orders what is Samuel doing?
Constantly ministering before the Lord.
What is Samuel doing, he’s going to the place, you notice he’s always
ministering “unto the Lord,” or “before the Lord.” What is Samuel doing? He is going to the place where the orders
come down and waiting; that’s why Samuel is sleeping in the tabernacle when we
pick the narrative up. He’s not in there
for camping, he’s in there because he wants to be there when the orders come
down. He’s young, he’s had a call and he
wants the Word from God to come to him and so enthusiastically he camps right
there. Now where’s the priest? He’s sacked out some place, because the Word
of God hasn’t come for maybe 20 or 30 years, Eli knows it and he says there’s
no sense staying up, no sense sleeping near the ark, the Word of God isn’t
going to come, God doesn’t talk to us any more.
So Eli, being a believer that’s out of it, has given up and the young
boy Samuel hasn’t. He is determined that
he is going to stay there, if he has to sleep there the rest of his life he is
going to be there when the order comes down.
Now that sets you up for the chapter, now you should understand why
Samuel is sleeping where he is and why Eli is sleeping where he is. Eli is a tired old man is what he is. Verse 2 “And it came to pass at that time,
that Eli was laying down in his place, and his eyes began to grow dim, that he
could not see.” It’s a very beautiful
picture of him spiritually also.
Verse 3, “And before the lamp of God went out in the temple of the
LORD,” this means this happened in the early morning, the lamp went out with
sunrise, “where the ark of God was, and Samuel was laying down to sleep,” near
the ark. Now he wasn’t in the Holy of
Holies but he was near that tent, maybe in the first part of the tent there and
he was camped there because he wanted those orders, and he was bound and
determined he was going to be there if he had to sit there the rest of his
life. That’s determination and you see a young man on positive volition at this
point, very strong positive volition, and that’s what the author wants us to
see. “He was laid down to sleep,” now
scholars have a fancy title for what’s happening here, it’s called oracle by
incubation; that sounds like you’re raising chickens or something but actually
what that means is that the people in the ancient world had the idea of going
into the temple to sleep and they thought that by sleeping in the temple of the
gods, then the god would speak to them in a dream. The difference between the oracle by
incubation in the non-Israelite cultures and oracle by incubation inside Israel
is this: is that when the oracle by incubation came, that is the people would
camp there and sleep and live there right next to that place waiting for the
orders to come down, and in the ancient world this would usually be by a dream
or omen.
For example, this is how the Assyrians did it, somebody would have a
dream or they would have some sort of an omen happen, the clouds would come
across the sun at a certain time of day and so forth, and they would interpret
that as God speaking to them. But in
Israel you have a different thing; in Israel when the man sits by the ark he is
actually listening for the verbal words of God Himself and it’s not going to be
a dream. Now this passage is so
constructed that it is impossible for you to conceive of this in a
non-Israelite way. In other words, there
are two ways in the ancient world that God spoke. First the phony way that the non-Israelites
had, by dreams and omens, and then the real way inside Israel, and this way was
a verbal way, or an actual encounter with God Himself talking. This is why you wonder in these next few
verses you’re about to see why the author struggles to give you certain little
details. The reason why the author is struggling to give you these little
details is so you won’t make the mistake that 1 Samuel 3 is oracle by
incubation in the non-Israelite sense.
Here he wants you to say no, no, no, the Word of God does not come to us
like it comes t the Assyrians and comes to the Egyptians and Samarians and so
on, it doesn’t come that way here in Israel.
In Israel when the Word of God comes God comes, He stands there and He
talks to us. In the other countries it’s
just some sort of an omen, it’s some sort of a dream or something else. But in Israel it’s absolutely not the case
that God works that way; it’s an utterly radically different thing. So when we begin to read through here you
watch the details; they’re deliberately put into the text to say see, see, see,
see, this is utterly different than all the other civilizations of the world,
something tremendous is happening here.
Let’s read verses 4-6. Verse 4,
“That the LORD called Samuel. And he
answered, Here am I. [5] And he ran unto
Eli, and said, Here am I; for you called me.
And he said, I called not; lie down again. And he went and lay down. [6]
And the LORD called yet again, Samuel. And Samuel arose and went to Eli, and
said, Here am I; for thou didst call me.
And he answered, I called not, my son; lie down again. [7] Now Samuel
did not yet know the LORD, neither was the word of the LORD yet revealed unto
him. [8] And the LORD called Samuel again the third time. And he arose and went
to Eli, and said, Here am I; for thou didst call me. And Eli perceived that the LORD had called
the child.”
Now this text is put in there to distinguish what’s happening here from
the ancient Near Eastern form. Here’s
Israel and here’s the rest of the countries.
The Lord calls to Samuel and when the Lord calls to Samuel the author
intends us to notice in verse 5 that it sounds just like a normal human
voice. It’s not some spooky little
thing, he would have been scared, he wouldn’t have gone to Eli if it had been
some spooky thing; it was a normal conversational voice, Samuel, Samuel. So the way the boy heard it when he was lying
down there was the way you would hear anybody talking to you. Now I don’t know if that turns you on or not,
but if you think about it, it should.
That the God of the universe comes and talks. This should amaze you, if you struggle at all
thinking about what this involves, this should thoroughly and totally amaze you
in terms of the 20th century and how far distant God is, He’s some
sort of a super IBM machine that runs the galaxy. It’s not that at all, the Bible says He’s a
person when He speaks He speaks as though anybody else would speak.
Now it’s true God is infinite but don’t ever let the infinity of God
draw your attention away from the personality of God. God is a person and He has spoken words into
history, and He reacts, he gets angry, just like a person does. This is why, you see, we’re made in His
image. This is why it’s right to say God
is like man in one way, obviously because man is made in God’s image. It shouldn’t surprise you that when God speaks
He speaks like a man. That’s why we were
made in His image; we were made in His image so the way we speak is the way God
speaks.
All right, so He says, “Samuel.”
Verse 5, “And he ran unto Eli,” so it apparently sounded just like a
normal voice. Verse 6, “And the LORD
called again, Samuel.” It sounds like
the Lord’s playing games here with Samuel but He’s not, there’s a very definite
reason for it. I want you to notice in
verse 4 and in verse 6, and in verse 8 what God says to Samuel. Did He give him an extended message? No, just one word, his name. What would you do if you knew God was calling
you by your name? Just think of that for
a moment, if suddenly you heard a voice and you knew that voice was God
Himself, and He called you by your name.
If I think of it, it seems to me how personal, God knows me on a first
name basis, how personal. You see,
because of our lack of real personal relationships in our own generation, this
extreme personality of God in the Bible is something utterly foreign and very
hard to conceive of; very hard! In fact
we just have to read this text and read it and think about it, read it some
more, think about and read it some more, until you get all that human viewpoint
purged out of your head about the impersonality of God. But for God to walk up to you and say your
name, John, Joe, Barbara, and talk to you on that basis, extremely
personal.
Now the fascinating thing about this is that as we are going to see, God
does this because He wants Samuel, not what He wants Samuel to do, and that’s a
principle of the Christian life. God
wants primarily you first, then He’ll deal with the specifics. But He won’t deal with the specifics until He
has your attention, wholly and totally.
And this is always the rule, it is always the practice in Christian
growth. God wants you personally, not over a specific but just you; He’s not
dealing with you as an IBM machine; He’s not saying well let’s see, there’s
number 000126, I want them to do job #83.
That’s not the way God works but this is the way honestly some
Christians must conceive of God this way because they will come to me over a
specific issue of divine guidance and say should I marry this person or that
person. I don’t know, flip a coin. The point is that why wait until you’re
involved in a decision on who to marry before you think about what God’s will
for your life is. That’s a heck of a
time to wake up to what God’s will is. You ought to have decided that a long,
long time ago. The chances are that
probably He doesn’t want you to marry either of them because He hasn’t gotten
your attention yet.
So here when we hear the call of Samuel it’s just one name, no
details. God is not interested in
telling Samuel anything yet, He just wants his attention: Samuel, Samuel,
Samuel, and this is like you would call somebody. You don’t start conversing with a person
until you’re sure you’ve got their attention, right. So why should God operate any differently
when He operates with us. Do you expect
Him to carry on a conversation when He hasn’t got your attention. That’s foolish.
Now look at verse 7, we want to explain verse 7. “Now Samuel did not yet know the LORD,
neither was the word of the LORD yet revealed unto him.” Now does that mean Samuel wasn’t a
believer? No, not knowing the Lord in
the Old Testament is a phrase that must be interpreted in the context;
sometimes it refers to not being a believer… sometimes. I think that’s the way it refers to in 1
Samuel 2 about Eli’s sons, but in this context it’s defined for us in the last
part of the verse. There are two phrases here used in apposition. “Samuel did not yet know the LORD, neither
was the word of the LORD yet revealed unto him.” Now what that means is that Samuel had never
had an encounter with an oracle of God.
That’s what it means; Eli had, this is going to be another thing that’s
going to feed his condemnation. Eli knew
and had apparently years and years and years ago he must have had an experience
like this, where, when God was regularly sending down orders through the high
priest Eli was functioning in a normal manner, but it’s been years since that
happened, obviously because of the apostasy.
But Eli remembers, Eli has had this experience. Samuel, has not; probably by now he’s a
teenager, a young man, and as a young man he has never experienced this oracle
of God before. This is why he makes the
wrong interpretation, he hears a voice and he’s not even prepared.
Now this shows you something else about Eli’s training; it wasn’t very
good was it. Somewhere Samuel had heard
that you ought to get near the ark because somewhere near the ark God’s order
is going to come down. He probably heard
that somewhere but he himself had never heard it Eli, apparently, had never
told him. He had just deduced that for
himself. Here’s a picture of positive
volition, he was ahead of his leaders spiritually. Eli had never bothered to share with Samuel
how the orders come down when they do.
All Samuel knew is the orders were going to come down and they were
going to come down around the tabernacle and he was going to be there when they
did, but he didn’t know anything, and this whole phrase, verses 4, 5, 7 and 8
simply tell us that here’s a guy that wanted to know God’s will so badly that
he sat out, probably night after night after night after night after night to
be there when it happened. But when it
did happen he missed it because he wasn’t trained for it. All he knew was that’s where it happened but
he didn’t know how. That’s what verse 7
means.
So finally in verse 8 Eli catches on.
Now how could Eli caught on if Eli hadn’t had the experience. Obviously this shows you Eli had the
experience of hearing the oracle of God, of acting in his capacity as the high
priest. He must have had this because he
recognizes it now. The word “perceived”
means to understand clearly, and Eli didn’t make the mistake Samuel has
made. Because after all, if Eli had not
yet had this experience wouldn’t it have been normal for Eli to say hey,
somebody else in this tent besides you and me Samuel. That would have been the normal thing, look
around, who else is around here. But Eli
doesn’t, oh no, when you hear a voice like that and it’s in the night, and
you’ve slept in the tabernacle, that’s the voice of God. So Eli says come here, I’ve got to share with
you. So Eli starts to now train Samuel
on what to do when the oracle of God comes down.
Verse 9, “Therefore Eli said unto Samuel, Go, lie down: and shall be, if
He calls you, that you shall say, Speak, LORD; for thy servant hears. So Samuel went and lay down in his
place.” You can just see a picture of
obedience here, he just wants to get the instructions. Now watch what Samuel says. It’s not translated correctly in the King
James. Verse 10, “And the LORD came, and
stood, and called as at other times, Samuel, Samuel. Then Samuel answered, Speak LORD; for thy
servant is hearing,” it is a participle, continuous action and it means that he
is the position of being ready to receive the oracle. Now this is a position; this is a formula
that the priest would have to repeat back to God.
Now this is most interesting; you say why all this formality: principles
involved. God comes down with the order,
the first thing He says is the person’s name, with nothing else; nothing else
here, just the name. He gets their
attention. Now he’s not going to say
anything else, and this drama of these verses simply shows that God isn’t going
to tell Samuel another thing until Samuel responds to Him correctly. Samuel doesn’t know how to respond, but
still, whether Samuel knows how to respond or doesn’t know how to respond, God
is not going to tell him anything more until Samuel is trained on how to
respond. So God keeps on saying,
“Samuel, Samuel.” And now Samuel is to
respond, and the formula of response is: “Speak LORD; for your servant is now
in the position of hearing.” And this
tells God… this is a formal declaration of positive volition toward the
will. It would be analogous in our own
generation, when God calls us and you feel that God is leading you some way,
this would simply be speak, Lord, whatever your will is I am ready to do it,
whatever it is, no strings. That’s
divine guidance, and it is only available, unfortunately, on those terms. So God in another way can be calling you
personally by your name, over and over and over, and you wonder, why doesn’t he
show somehow, through circumstances, through the Word what His plan for my
life is. Because you haven’t done what
Samuel is doing, you haven’t stopped and said all right, speak Lord, for your
servant is now hearing.
So this “speak” is a declaration of positive volition with no strings
attached, that’s what the formula means.
“Speak Lord, for thy servant hears.”
Now verse 10, if you look at it carefully is very startling, because it
tells you how the Lord appears. Now up
to this time you might have thought that here’s Samuel in a sleeping bag and
he’s sacked out and he hears a voice in the night, and that’s all you would
have thought. But when you get to verse
10 you begin to get the creeps, because here the Lord actually is standing
there. Let’s look at verse 10 carefully.
“And the LORD came, and stood, and called as at other times,” this
implies that all the other times the Lord was standing there and Samuel didn’t
even see Him, because he wasn’t prepared to see Him. You know how it must be at night, it’s bad
enough to hear a voice at night, leave alone see somebody. And Samuel wasn’t looking for the Lord, but
now he comes back and now he knows it’s the Lord, so he’d better start looking
around, and sure enough, when he hears the voice, he can just barely make out
this figure that’s standing there. So
not only is God speaking to Him but God is actually there.
Let me show you a corollary reference where this occurs, the same kind
of [can’t understand word] occurs in Job 4:12, in the speech of Eliphaz, the
Temanite, he speaks of an encounter that he had with God, and it was a genuine
encounter with God, and here’s how it felt.
And this would add a few details to how Samuel must have felt. “Now a thing was secretly brought to me, and
mine ear received a little thereof, [13] In thoughts from the visions of the
night, when deep sleep falls on men, [14] Fear came upon me, and trembling,
which made all my bones to shake. [15] Then a spirit passed before my face; the
hair of my flesh stood up. [16] It stood still, but I could not discern its
form; an image was before mine eyes, there was silence, and I heard a voice,
saying, [17] Shall mortal man be more just than God? Shall a man be more pure than his maker? [18]
Behold, he put no trust in his servants, and his angels he charged with
folly.” And it’s a description of a
Theophany or an appearance of God.
So this is what Samuel sees, he’s seeing not a ghost, he is seeing
actually Jesus Christ in His preincarnate form.
When Jesus Christ appears in the Old Testament He appears as the angel
of the Lord, you’ll always see it in that form; “angel of the Lord,” that is
Jesus Christ before He was incarnated, and it’s the Second Person of the
Trinity that is always revealed; the First is always revealed through the
Second, but the person of the Trinity that’s always the center of revelation is
the Second Person.
So here God stands, and the word “stands” is a word that literally means
He takes his position and there’s an air of formality about this verb; it’s
apparent from this verb that there was a place where God stood, that when
Samuel looked out into the night and he heard the voice, there was a place
there by the tabernacle where the voice always seemed to come from that one
place. And when he looked carefully he
could see God was standing there. And so
He said, “Samuel, Samuel. Then Samuel answered, Speak; for thy servant hears.”
Now beginning in verses 11-18 we have the prophet Samuel start his
ministry. This is the first prophecy of
the young man Samuel. And here’s his
calling and his prophecy wrapped up together in one package. The theme of verses 11-18 is Samuel makes his
first prophecy. To understand what is
happening in verses 11-18 it’s necessary that we get a little background. So we have to go back to Deuteronomy 13 and
18. There’s two test for a prophet. See,
when Moses died he left two tests. And
these two test were to be applied and every prophet had to authenticate himself
before the word of Moses. And the reason
I take you to these two tests is because if I left you with just 1 Samuel 3
you’d walk out of here thinking in terms of well, wouldn’t it be great to have
a supernatural experience like that and Satan is well able to give
believers…[tape turns]
…just out hanging in thin air, it was connected with the Word. Watch, Deuteronomy 13:1, “If there arise
among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams and gives you a sign or a wonder,
[2] And the sign or the wonder come to pass whereof he spoke unto thee, saying,
Let us go after other gods which thou hast not known, and let us serve them.
[3] Thou shalt not hearken to the words of that prophet, or the dreamer of
dreams, for the LORD your God proves you, to know whether you love the LORD
your God with all your heart and with all your soul. [4] “Ye shall walk after
the LORD your God, and fear Him, and keep His commandments, and obey His voice,
and ye shall serve Him, and cleave unto Him.”
Now isn’t it interesting in verse 2 that he will give even a prophecy,
the prophecy comes to pass; what does this tell you? Don’t buy it.
Now how man times have we heard this argument in our generation, so and
so is a great healer, so and so does miracles, so and so does all these things,
so and so must be a great person of God just because they have miracles. What do you do with this text that says they
can have miracles and you’re not supposed to go after them. How do you tell? When their teachings fit with the Word, that’s
how you tell. If you have somebody out
here and usually they’ll be charging a healthy for you to come to their little
campaign and when you drop by and you see great miracles done, oh, it must be
of God because they’re doing great miracles.
But you never hear them mention the Lord Jesus Christ, there’s a lot of
Holy Ghost this and Holy Spirit that, but never the finished work of the Lord
Jesus Christ; you never hear that made the center of attention. Your ears should perk up, you say wait a
minute, the test of Deut. 13 is working here, where’s the Word. I don’t care about the miracles, where’s the
Word of God. So there’s one test, the
test of Deuteronomy 13:1-4.
So even if Samuel had done miracles, and even if Samuel had made
prophecies, if these prophecies failed then he still would not have been
accepted in his generation. Deuteronomy
18, the second test of a prophet, verses 21-22. “And if you say in your heart,
How shall we know the word which the LORD has not spoken? [22] When a prophet
speaks in the name of the LORD, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that
is the thing which the LORD has not spoken, but the prophet has spoken it
presumptuously; thou shalt not be afraid of him.” So the second test, Deuteronomy 18:21-11 is
what I call the empirical test, that is, that the Word of God supposedly what
he says fit actual history; does it fit the historic facts. The first test is the logical test; does it
all hang together with the Scripture. So
every prophet has to pass these two tests.
So don’t you see, the people weren’t stupid, naïve, superstitious people
that just reacted emotionally to any miracle that was dropped in their
lap. Not at all, they had two carefully
contrived tests and they always applied them.
Now let’s turn back to Samuel and watch how Samuel agrees with these two
tests for if Samuel is to be accepted as a prophet, Samuel must pass these two
exams. Beginning in verse 11 the Lord
comes and He gives Samuel a repeat of the prophecy we saw in chapter 2:27
following, the man of God comes to Eli, prophecies damnation upon his
house. So now this same prophecy is
going to be updated. Beginning in verse
11 of chapter 3 God says now Samuel, remember that prophecy I gave him, you are
going to be the man that announces right now that prophecy is going to start to
be fulfilled. So God is not giving Samuel an utterly new prophecy for his first
one. What God is doing with Samuel is
giving him the old prophecy but saying now is the hour, in that this prophecy
which you have heard from the man of God, Samuel, go out and announce it to
Eli, go out and announce it to Israel, now is the time come for the
fulfillment.
We know this by the verb of verse 11, “And the LORD said to Samuel,
Behold, I will do a thing in Israel, at which both the ears of everyone that
hears it shall tingle. “Will do” is a Hebrew participle, there are a lot of
participles in this section. This is a
participle “will” or it means “I am now doing,” participle, not I’m going to,
the days of “I’m going to” are all over, right now Samuel get going because I
am beginning to set in motion the wheels of history to bring this prophecy to
pass. Go ahead and say it’s ready now. “…at which both the ears of everyone hears it
shall tingle,” now that’s an odd translation.
What it means is it’s an idiom of fear, in other words, there’s going to
be something so profound come upon the nation they’re going to be afraid,
they’re going to shake.
Verse 12, “In that day I will perform against Eli all things which I
have spoken” that was in chapter 2, “concerning his house; when I begin, I will
also make an end.” Now that’s a
translation meaning “the beginning and the ending of it.” In other words God is saying I’m going to start
the wheels in motion and those wheels are going to be kept in motion until that
prophecy of chapter 2 is utterly fulfilled.
Verse 13, “For I have told him that I will judge his house forever for
the iniquity which he knows, because his sons made themselves vile, and he
restrained them not. [14] And therefore I have sworn unto the house of Eli,
that the iniquity of Eli’s house shall not be purged with sacrifice nor
offering forever.” In verses 13-14 we
have again the great theological problem.
Apparently we have here an unpardonable sin and apparently this
unpardonable sin is done by a believer.
Let’s straighten it out. “For I
have told him that I am judging,” another participle, “I am now in the process
of judging his house forever for the iniquity.”
Notice the word “house” this explains the liberal objection in chapter
2, they say Eli couldn’t have witnessed all of these things. Well the prophecy
wasn’t just to Eli, it was to Eli and his descendants. Just read chapter 3, it’s explained there. “I have told him that I am judging his house
forever for the iniquity which he knows,” now the Hebrew has many words for
iniquity. The particular word here is havah, and this particular word means
crooked, and it came finally to mean the defamation caused by sin. And what God is saying is that the damage
that Eli has done to the priesthood, the damage that Eli has done to the
sanctuary will never be removed, forever and ever and ever. It has done irreparable damage and that’s
what it means, it doesn’t mean that Eli is never going to be forgiven. It means the effect of his sin will never be
erased from history. That’s very
embarrassing and humiliating.
Do you know another man that faced that same problem? David, it’s as though David has the stand,
and I always visualize David as standing in the middle of the river with the
water flowing around, and watching him just drop a big blob of ink and letting
the water just take it out and David has to stand her and watch the ink spread
out and go downstream and pollute the water.
And David has to watch this and be humiliated that he did it and there’s
nothing he can do to erase it; all he can say is I did it Lord, now I’m going
to have to trust You to work with it.
And this is the same position here with Eli, he’s going to have to stand
there and watch the ink spread out because the effect of that sin will never be
erased from history. This is serious
business. It should show you that in your Christian life you can be capable as
a believer of introducing [can’t understand word] elements into history that
will never be erased, they’ll go down on a permanent record, and it doesn’t
mean that God can’t use them. God will
use them but you’ll always have that kind of oouchy feeling that I was the one
that set that thing up.
Let’s continue, verse 13, “For I have told him that I will judge his
house forever for the iniquity,” and it’s now defined, “the iniquity which he
has known,” it’s perfect, it means that there never was a time when Eli didn’t
know this. Eli did all this
deliberately, he knew his sons were out of it and he didn’t do anything about
it. He knew the oracles of God and what
it sounded like and it apparently didn’t bother Eli in the least that the
oracles weren’t coming regularly any more through the high priest; it didn’t
bother Eli, he just sacked out. Let the
kid go, he’d like it, so let him go up there and sack out. That was Eli’s attitude. So God says he knew that iniquity “because
his sons made themselves vile,” this is a very interesting point in the Hebrew
text here. I’m just going to throw out
one illustration of textual criticism.
This shows you a case where an error occurs not in the original text but
in the versions and manuscripts we have of the original text. Mark my words, we are not saying an error in
the original text, we’re saying that today we have problems with some of the
manuscripts.
In the Hebrew the word that you see translated in the Kings James, “made
themselves vile” looks like this: this is “to themselves,” and this means “make
vile” or “curse,” and it means curse to themselves. But this can’t be the reading of the original
manuscript simply because this is a verb that is a transitive verb and it is
never connected like this to indirect objects.
So that means he can’t “curse to themselves,” something’s wrong. Other manuscripts have the correct reading
and it looks like this: this will show you what errors supposedly, here you see
the word is the same; some manuscripts have this, some have this. Here we have the “L,” that’s the Hebrew L,
there you have the Hebrew “L.” Here you
have the Hebrew “h”, there you have the Hebrew “h”. Here you have the “m”, there you have the
“m.” Two little marks have dropped
out. And that word is God, they cursed
God. And so the original reading is that
“he knows because his sons cursed God, and he restrained them not.” Now what does it mean, cursing God? You know what it means, we dealt with it last
week in chapter 2. You say well in
chapter 2 I never read where they cursed God.
That’s right, because the acts you read about are cursing God; that’s
what it means to curse God, to take what God says is holy and defile it.
Verse 15, this is the morning, the sun rises, and God has stopped
speaking, Samuel knows the prophecy, and now we meet a very interesting and
very touching end to this story for here we have this young man Samuel, still in training, he’s not
been released from his training yet, and this little event is about to show you
why God has insisted, even though Eli is apostate, Samuel must stick it out for
one more lesson. A prophet has to
receive a message from God but then he also has to give it out. Two things are required of a prophet. Samuel has just learned how to receive the
message and he was trained by Eli how to do that. By the way, do you know why God used Eli to
train Samuel, not somebody else? Because
of His promise, remember the Aaronic priesthood, they were to serve God and
even though God can’t stand Eli, God can’t stand him, we know that from chapter
2, God uses Eli anyway, because He promised that the priests would be the
teachers, even the apostate ones. So Eli
is the man who trains Samuel in the second lesson that we’re to see tonight.
Verse 15, “And Samuel lay until the morning, and opened the doors of the
house of the LORD. And Samuel feared to
tell Eli the vision. [16] Then Eli called Samuel, and said, Samuel, my
son. And he answered, Here am I. [17]
And he said, What is the thing that the LORD has said unto thee? I pray thee, hide it not from me; God do so
to thee, and more also, if thou hide anything from me of all the things that he
said unto thee.” And here you have the
other part of the prophet; Samuel must learn the lesson that when the oracle of
God comes down, no matter how close your personal friends may be, no matter how
many friendships may be broken, no matter how much the cost is in disseminating
the message, to be a prophet you have to do it anyway regardless of the
personal cost to yourself. This is the
second lesson a prophet has to learn.
And so Samuel, and in the Hebrew it’s very, very poignant here in verse
15, it just goes on in a narrative form, “Samuel lay until morning, opened the
doors of the house of the LORD” and then the Hebrew grammar has a little parenthesis
here, “and Samuel was afraid of showing Eli the vision,” just a little
parenthesis and then it goes on with the text.
It explains to you this kid was shook, he had a message, apparently he
loved Eli on a personal basis, he didn’t hate Eli, he probably hated what he
stood for, but he admired Eli and he had learned much from Eli. It was hard to take this message from God
that he had heard and turn around and say you are damned. Imagine if that’s the prophecy that Samuel
had to make, is to damn his best friend.
But that’s what God told him to do.
Verse 18, “And Samuel told him everything, and hid nothing from him. And
he said, It is the LORD; let him do what seems to Him good.” At the end of verse 18 you have preserved in
that last text one of the greatest statements that a believer can ever
make. This is made from the lips of an
apostate disobedient believer, but in the hour when the discipline is about to
strike, Eli submits to it with positive volition. And this is a lesson that Samuel will never
forget, that you give your message out, regardless of the cost, because God’s
Word will never return void, it will always accomplish that which it was
ordained to accomplish and here we have it.
The very prophecy that Samuel was afraid to give to Eli is the very
prophecy that causes Eli to come back and become on positive volition. And this expression is given, “let God do
what seems to Him good.” Wrapped up in
that phrase, for those of you who want to study ethics and philosophy, right
there you have the key to the problem; the good is what God wishes in His
sight. It is not an absolute standard
and God keeps looking up here, am I good today; no, it’s not that at all. It’s not that we have an absolute standard
over and above God. God IS the standard. And what is good in God’s eyes is good
period. There’s your standard; it is the
very character of God Himself. Eli comes to see this and he says I have no case
of appeal; have no neutral court, I have
no absolute I can go to and say God would you please, on the basis of this
absolute, do thus and such; I have no recourse, no court of appeals. When God speaks I finally have to say “let
God do what is good in His sight.”
Now verses 19-4:1a, we have the authentication of Samuel. This must be included because even up to this
point Samuel has not been proven by the tests of Deuteronomy 13 and 18 to be an
official prophet. We must have this rational continuity of the Word of God, it
must logically fit together or we don’t have what has come from the lips of our
God. “Samuel grew, and the LORD was with
him, and did let none of his words fall to the ground.” In verse 19 we have one of those Hebrew
generalizations. Verse 19 takes us in
time far, far ahead, to the time of the whole of Samuel’s life. So verse 19 is a capsule summary of this man
for the rest of his life. “Samuel grew,
and the LORD was with him.” Let’s stop
there, let’s look at this phrase. “The
Lord was with him,” that’s a phrase that is a spiritual claim, is it not? Isn’t that a spiritual claim. How do you catch whether that claim is valid
or not? Show me one test that you can
run to check that our or not. Now the
Jews were not mystics in the bad sense of the word; they didn’t have a phrase
like that, oh gee, that sounds so pious and religious, and hypnotize them and
say “God’s with him.” And maybe because
somebody walks around and says Jesus, Jesus, Jesus five or six times, oh God
must be with him, hear him say the word “Jesus.” Now what does that mean? It doesn’t mean a thing. This is a spiritual claim and spiritual
claims have to be checked somehow.
How do you check them. Watch the
verse. This is how. “And God,” the subject of the verb “did let”
is Jehovah, now watch it because you’ve got a “he” and a “his” in here. “He did” this first “He” is God, or
Yahweh. “Yahweh let none of his,” “his”
is Samuel’s, so the second “his” this pronoun refers to Samuel. So “Jehovah let none of Samuel’s words fall
to the ground.” And thus Samuel is
authenticated. That is how Samuel was authenticated
and that is how you could deduce the spiritual claim that God is was with
him. You check it in the realm of
empirical history and you check whether this man’s prophecies were coming true. The reason for verse 19 is because the next
chapter, chapter 4 is going to show you where Samuel’s first prophecy does come
true, detail for detail.
Verse 20, “And all Israel, from Dan even to Beer-sheba, knew that Samuel
was established to be a prophet of the LORD.”
The word “established” means to be verified or authenticated. Notice how these people did not operate on
emotions; they did not operate simply because a guy did a miracle, they coolly
stepped back and checked history and checked, does this man’s words come true
or do they falsify. The test was for the
thinking person of that generation, not for the “emote-er” of that
generation. From Dan to Beer-sheba, all
of Israel knew, that was a reputation greater than any of the great judges of
the book of Judges.
Verse 21, “And the LORD appeared again in Shiloh; for the LORD revealed
Himself to Samuel in Shiloh by the word of the LORD.” That sounds repetitious but this last verse
has a powerful conclusion to this story.
“The LORD appeared again in Shiloh” means that Shiloh, which was the
place of the tabernacle, which therefore should be the location of the oracles
of God, which were scarce, remember the first verse of this chapter, how did
this chapter start out? The word of the
Lord was scarce in those days. Scarce
where? At Shiloh. Why at Shiloh? Because Shiloh was the place
where the Word of God was supposed to come, that’s where the ark was. And so when it says “the LORD appeared again”
it means the oracles began to flow, and God’s orders began to come down again
like they hadn’t come down in a whole generation. But there’s a careful notice here, “The LORD
appeared again in Shiloh, because the LORD revealed Himself to Samuel,” don’t
you see the change, no longer is it doing what Numbers 27 says, no longer are
the orders coming down through the high priest any more; those days are
over.
The high priest is not the main channel any longer in the history of
Israel, from the orders of God. From now
on the orders will be passed down through another chain, down through the
prophets. Samuel is the first one and
here you have the founding of the order of the prophets. And it is this order, the order of the
prophets, that must exist before you can have the king. The king always must be secondary to the
prophet. The prophet is the
king-maker. And you have to have a clear
channel for the oracles of God, it can’t come through some corrupt priesthood;
it can’t be marred. If you’re going to
have a king in centralized power and you’re going to have all this power
amassed in a man, that man must be controlled by a clear chain of command
through a living prophet. And notice
how: “The LORD revealed Himself in Shiloh by the word of the LORD.” Remember I told you when we started this off
that the word of the Lord in this chapter was a technical term. That’s why I said back in verse 7 Samuel did
not yet know the Lord because the Word had not been revealed. Now let’s tie this up for a little
surprise.
We said that God appeared to Samuel and this is a technical phase, “the
Word of God.” But then I said in verse
10 that the Lord was standing there. Do
you make the identification? The One who
was standing there is called the Word of God.
Here in this verse you have the Trinity.
“The LORD reveals Himself to Samuel at Shiloh,” notice the historic time
and place, not some mystical never-never fairy story land, it is at one place
where you can go today and walk with your feet on that place at Shiloh and
where your feet touch the ground, that is where God spoke to Samuel. And who was it? The Second Person of the Trinity. God the Father, the Lord, revealed Himself,
and then you skip to Samuel. Just read
the sentence this way, “The LORD,” that’s the Father, “revealed Himself by the
Word of the Lord,” that is, the Father revealed Himself by the Son. And here you have the Trinity already
functioning in the Old Testament.
Now one final conclusion in 4:1, “And the word of Samuel came to all
Israel.” This actually should be part of
the last verse, obviously if you stop with a period at the end of verse 21 the
prophet doesn’t complete his ministry.
The word of Samuel must get out to the people, the prophet must receive
and the prophet must give. Samuel does both, the order of the prophets has been
established. Next week we’ll see how
this young prophet’s first prophecy came to pass, in a very horrifying and
catastrophic way. But the order had gone out, Eli must be destroyed. With our heads bowed…