Clough Manhood Series Lesson 26

Samuel: No male role model, Curiosity and Grace-Orientation – 1 Samuel 3; 7

Some of the feedback cards we’ve been getting have been on basic doctrine and what I can say in response generally to those is that we will be on a basic series on Wednesday night in the fall, and then we’ll go through this once again, and for that basic series, which will last 15 weeks, by that time we ought to have brought everyone at least up to that level, and then from that point forward we hope to have a basic class taught by some of the men, at least some class somewhere going on in the small groups all the time.

One of these feedback cards deals with out section dealing with Ehud, two Sunday nights ago. I dealt there with the problem of legitimacy of revolution and why it was right that Christians could rebel against government and why the Colonial Christians were not Toreys, but were people who said on the basis of Romans 13 if there is a subordinate in the hierarchy of government officials, if there is a subordinate official down in the structure, who is a valid government leader, then if he follows a freedom policy and the hierarchy doesn’t, then you can break away as long as the masses follow a legitimate leader within the structure. Now this is a very conservative approach to revolution; it distinguishes America’s revolution from what is often said to be its counterpart in Europe, the French Revolution, or the Russian Revolution. Never make a mistake about it; the Russian and French Revolutions are miles and miles away from the American Revolution. And so this question:

Regarding Calvin’s interpretation of Romans 13:1-7, that only godly rulers are instituted by God, and that believers can rally behind them to revolt against an apostate government, I see the logical conclusion to this, being that today in the United States of America we could rally behind potential doctrinal governmental leaders against our human viewpoint government. If this conclusion is wrong, please show some Scripture. Also, please show the Scriptures Calvin cited when interpreting Romans 13.

I’ll answer the last one first; the best thing to do is read Calvin in his interpretation of Romans 13 because he cross-matches it with 1 Timothy 2, 4 and other passages, and it would be just a big long involved process. The second question is: is this legitimate. Well, we constantly have political adjustment in the United States. This is why we have emphasized that the first step in Christian reaction is not to moan and groan in Christian prayer meetings exclusively; the idea is to get out in the field and vote. I would just simply throw back, how many evangelicals are registered voters, who do all the fussing and lamenting. How many evangelical Christians are there who consider it beneath their dignity to join in and get in the political dirty work of political organization. It’s got to be done, somebody’s going to do it and you can bet the other side is doing if. So the answer is yes, but the system as it currently works is a workable system if the Christians would just work with the system. There’s no need for revolt at the present time in America; there’s ample, ample channels of operation.

The problem is that there just simply aren’t enough believers willing to carry the Word of God forward. We saw this recently in Texas with a bill that was just killed, the Religious Freedom Act. Do you know who the most vocal opponents against the Religious Freedom Act were? Liberal Christians, clergymen who are paid for by one of the members of the largest denominations in the state of Texas. Now isn’t this a spectacle; here is a bill designed to preserve freedom for local churches and Christians, and who speaks out against it but so-called Christian ministers. So that’s what goes on and it’s simply the fact that Christians have not got their stuff together; we live in a day of massive ignorance. So unless you want to be your own one-man revolution, my suggestion is to abide your time and pray that God would raise up a more enlightened, doctrine-centered evangelical community. One question regards something about the manhood series, but then they quote Proverbs, so all I can say is I’m not in Proverbs.

You say that the valid means of getting wealth are gifts, labor and inheritance; please define godly labor. Well, I think we’ve given numerous examples to the manhood series of godly labor. One of the most abbreviated statements of godly labor is found in 2 Thessalonians where it says if you do not work you do not eat.

Using the doctrine of the hierarchy epistles, was not the succession of the confederacy allowed under the contract of State’s rights? And I would say yes; this is precisely the point. This is why Christians, like Dr. Dabney, who was on Stonewall Jackson’s staff could argue as they did why Christians ought to be on the side of the confederacy, for the reason that it was subordinate officials. It wasn’t a mass movement rebelling against federal power; it was organized states that had legitimate sources and legitimate authority doing such.

Another question is please explain 1 Samuel 28:6 and prayer. Well, this is the business of why God doesn’t hear Saul and the answer is because Saul is sinning. We’ll get into that a little bit tonight. The principle if you want to check it out is Psalm 66:18, “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.

Many people in our culture equate subduing the universe with accumulation of material wealth. Isn’t material wealth only a part of the overall picture and to be kept in perspective? Yes, this is the whole point of the manhood series. Remember we said, how we started? We said what is the first part of subduing the earth but your own body and its control, which involves your soul. So there’s the very beginning; we made that careful distinction that material wealth is on down the line, if God please. The ultimate goal was expressed by Christ when He said lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, because, as we would paraphrase it in the 20^th century, where moth, earth and inflation doth corrupt.

In the light of Exodus 20:12 what is the biblical perspective regarding your elderly parents on placing them, particularly, in an old folks home, in order that they do not impede your lifestyle. Exodus 20:12 is “honor thy parents,” this kind of thing. Now, the Scriptures, as we pointed out in one of the manhood discussions constantly say that the family is God’s chief social unit. And therefore, it is the parents who, if they have to be cared for, must be cared for by their children. This is 1 Timothy 5:8, and it’s expressly mentioned in 1 Timothy 5:8; it’s saying there that anyone who does not do this is worse than an infidel and has denied the faith. Now some qualifications on this. Some would cite 2 Corinthians 12:14 to the contrary; 2 Corinthians 12:14 is a verse which states that children ought not to lay up for parents but parents for children. How do we reconcile the 2 Corinthians passage with the 1 Timothy 5 passage, and the answer is simple. The overall thrust of Scripture is that in the emergency the children ought to provide for their parents, but in the norm, and in God’s desire the parents ought to have provided for themselves, such that when the children arrive they don’t have to face that situation and that contingency. But the Scriptures are utterly realistic, that sometimes medical disasters occur, other things happen, and they just simply deplete the resources of the parents, in which case the child is never authorized in the Word of God to just kick their parents out, financially speaking.

But then when we come down to the matter of the old folks home, which is an agonizing decision that all children eventually must face, with their older parents, the problem is one; the problem involves many factors and it simply can be expressed in one norm: Am I taking care of my parents in a godly way? And in a way that doesn’t compromise Genesis 2:24. In Genesis 2:24 we have a passage that says that “therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother to be joined to his wife and they shall be one flesh. The principle of that passage is that though parents are to be supported and are to be honored, they are not to interfere with the running of that home. And this is often very, very difficult, and this is why often times, perhaps an old folks home is the only place, if it’s reasonable; some of them are awful places, horrible places. But oftentimes when there’s only one kitchen and it’s a small house, physically the presence of a parent is a problem in the family. It depends on the relationship of the parents and the children and so on. Always remember the Chinese symbol of trouble is two women under the same roof. So this situation is one that must be treated delicately and so you have to just provide wisdom. But don’t think that 2 Corinthians 12 contradicts 1 Timothy 5. 1 Timothy 5 is the emergency; 2 Corinthians passage is the norm.

Now we come further in the manhood series to another man tonight, and begin to study his life. We studied how men commonly make certain mistakes; we have looked at some example of the failures that men commonly make, not to get depressed about it but just simply to recognize men commonly err in these places. One of the places we mentioned was accepting human viewpoint from their wives. When a man is spiritually passive, when he shirks leadership, he becomes highly vulnerable to the silent song of human viewpoint when it is sung by his mate. And it’s very hard to respond in this situation to the woman you love when out of her mouth comes human viewpoint; it’s a very difficult [can’t understand words] type decision to make but it can be done graciously and the man who is actively seeking leadership in the home can do it graciously.

The second common failure that men make is autonomous kingdom building. We said Cain was the model of that one; here the man doesn’t shirk leadership, he shirks the guidance in how to conduct his leadership. The man who engages in autonomous kingdom building is not a lazy man; he’s an aggressive hard working man who just simply cuts himself off from the guidance of Scripture in his work.

The third kind of common mistake that we have observed through the Scriptures is a temporary slacking off before God tells us to rest. And I don’t know of one man that doesn’t constantly face this problem. If you are conscious of your male leadership and you are consciously striving to be a spiritually leader, no matter how many mistakes you make, you are constantly striving anyway, there’s always a time when you just get tired; I don’t want to make another decision, I don’t want to face another pressure, I just blank out. Now Noah faced that. He had gone through the crisis of the flood, he had gone through everything… you try living with a bunch of animals for a year in a boat; this is a problem and he was mighty glad to get out of it, and after everything settled down he was ready for a vacation. But God wasn’t ready for him yet to take an R&R, so therefore Noah found himself in trouble and Genesis 9 tells us why. So that is a common mistake men make, of shirking leadership before it’s our time for a vacation and a break.

And finally a fourth common failure that we saw last time, particularly with Samson, is the failure to develop self-control. Samson was an overgrown little boy who had never outgrown his little baby tantrums, and it was shown in numerous cases in his life; self-control, a mark of maturity. Now, what we’re going to look at tonight is to bring anybody out of a depression of viewing those failures. Many men would say well I identify with this, I identify with this, boy, you described me perfectly. Well, that’s fine, now what do I do about it. Well, we have a refreshing counter example tonight, a more positive thing, and that’s Samuel.

Samuel is a man who is going to encourage us because he was a man who came out of a semi pagan background, who had a lot of things against him, in his home and family life, and nevertheless, persevered and became a spiritual leader. But Samuel’s also another illustration of realistic sanctification. Now in some circles, even in some fundamental circles, there are people who say that what you must have after one becomes a Christian, is somewhere out here we have a super, super spiritual experience. And this second blessing type experience is what gives me sort of a quantum jump up to, if not perfection at least the ninety-nine percentile. Now this kind of theology comes out of Arminianism; it comes out of a failure to take realistically one’s sin nature and therefore it’s a false theology that has bred a false application. And largely, in our own generation has led to the charismatic movement.

Basically the charismatic movement, though tongues always comes up, that’s really not the issue, because if you said to the person who believes in tongues, well suppose, for argument’s sake I allow tongues as a legitimate gift, so what? It’s not given to every Christian. Suppose we allowed that? They still wouldn’t be satisfied; they’d still insist that there was something special about that one gift. And that desire to reinterpret the gift, even if was granted its legitimacy, and I personally don’t, but even if it were, that desire shows you that in back of that is another presupposition, this idea, this quantum jump, this post-salvation, hyper-hyper experience. Now the real picture of Christian growth, of course, isn’t that at all. The real picture of Christian growth is sort of an up and down thing. And, it never gets to the ninety-ninth percentile. And this is why we’ll see Samuel at the end of his life still far, far away from that. It’s like we said this morning, this is why we have to have the Protestant view of justification. I cannot base my relationship to the Lord on my present sanctification and you can’t either, because it’s horribly imperfect and if we’re going to go around basing our confidence, even in what the Holy Spirit has done so far, we are basing our confidence in imperfection and therefore we can’t have confidence. It’s a shaky, wobbly platform. It’s like trying to put a fourteen ton cement slab on some scaffolding that was never meant to hold it; the scaffolding is just being erected during the course of construction of the building. We don’t rest the building on the scaffolding. And so we don’t rest our salvation on the pieces of scaffolding that the Holy Spirit has erected during this interim between being born again and dying, or the rapture, whichever occurs first.

So we have, then, the problem of incomplete sanctification, and Samuel is one of these people. We’ll see that further. But what we have to do before we study Samuel is put his setting in history to show you the stress this man faced. As you go deeper into the Old Testament you’ll find there is a certain common theme that works. You’ll find there’s a certain theology of the Old Testament that has to be understood if you really want to place these stories in the right framework. In the framework pamphlets which we’ve written, we don’t go into all the details of biblical theology. This summer we’re having a seminar on systematic theology, maybe in the summer after or something, with some of the men we can get together and study a little bit what we’ll call biblical theology, just to give some of you an idea of some of the structures that operate here, particularly those of you interested in teaching.

Now, Samuel is the first of a line of prophets, and we have to see his place in the Old Testament. Something new was done in Samuel’s day. Let’s look at a timeline from the time of the Exodus on down to the time of 586 when the Old Testament records the failure of the nation Israel. During that time period we can divide the nation’s history up many different ways. But the first section of that history is what we will call the pure theocracy. During this pure theocracy God appeared at the tabernacle. God appeared in a direct miraculous way. God spoke to Moses face to face; there was no intermediary; Moses was it. Moses was the basic prophet.

And then we come to Joshua and his time, and immediately in Joshua and his time we have a decline. Just after Joshua’s day God says holy war will never succeed. And in Judges 2 we have that kind of almost a funeral dirge, when God announces that I am not going to drive out the enemies from the land like I promised, because you people aren’t in spiritual shape for it, and so therefore they’re going to be pressing against you, and you’re constantly going to have to be resisting them. And when you weaken, they’re going to push you back and when you strengthen yourselves you will push them back, but no time in your life will there ever be freedom from this constant tug of war, this constant resistance. It will always be there. And so we have a decline from the expectations of the pure theocracy.

And after that period, in the period of the Judges things got worse, and the visions began to dry up and at this point, we have the rise of the prophet Samuel who is getting ready for another decline in the nation. This time it will go from the judges system to the system of monarchy and under the monarchy God will no longer speak with the nation face to face. Under the monarchy God will choose an intermediary, a man to stand between him and his name shall be called the prophet. The office of the prophet now arises. Before this the office of the priest was the key, but now the office of the prophet. The prophet must arise before the king arises in preparation for the king. Why?

Turn to Deuteronomy 17, this is also a very pertinent section for Christians trying to think their way through politically in our own country at this juncture because there’s a lot of political theory in Deuteronomy 17 and 1 Samuel 8. As I’ve said before, if you want one passage of the Bible, just one passage, if that’s all that you’ve got to go to, or all you’ve got time to go to or you’re limited in some way, and you want to deal with the political question, the 1 Samuel 8 passage, because that is the classic argument for limited government; it is the argument that has never been improved upon; it is the argument that Samuel Rutherford used when he wrote Rex Lex, and it was the argument therefore that came in, in disguised form, with John Locke in the American Constitution.

The argument is very simple; the argument is that the prophet must stand over the king; the king can never stand over the prophet. The answer, Deuteronomy 17:14, “When you are come to the land which the LORD thy God gives you, and you shall possess it, and shall dwell therein, and shall say, I will set a king over me, like all the other nations,” that’s the cry for centralized government. When that cry comes to pass, [15] “You will in no wise set him king over thee whom the LORD thy God shall choose,” so God immediately puts constraints on who shall occupy the throne. Verse 16 tells them certain limitations, but most of all, verse 18, “And it shall be, when he sits upon the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write him a copy of this law in a book out of that which is before the priests, the Levites; [19] And it shall be, when with him, and he shall read therein all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the LORD his God, and to keep all the words [of this law and these statutes, to do them].”

Now you may not realize it but verses 18-19 form the basis for the American revolution. These two verses were used time and again in English history; the Scots used these verses. They said look, the idea of the divine monarch is wrong; the king does not have absolute authority to do as he pleases; above the king stands God’s absolutes. Now that same argument that the Scots used and developed out of this passage is the same argument we are face to face with in every major western country today. Is the Word of God over and above human authorities of government. And that’s what Israel is arguing; you can read it. Read a historian, anybody that is a student of ancient history and they will tell you this, that if you look at Pharaoh and you look at the king of Israel you can’t even compare them. You can’t even compare them! Pharaoh could go and say I am the State, like Louis XIV, and literally mean it, because the people worshiped Pharaoh. Pharaoh’s word was Pharaoh’s word and there was no higher court of appeal; there was no supreme court above Pharaoh, or no law above the supreme court. Nothing. But they say, say these historians, look at the chains of Israel, it’s so strange the men claim to be kings but they’re limited in their power, they don’t have absolute authority.

In our own time, the recent revelations of former President Nixon show that he has a monarchial view of the Presidency, that a President can sit above law, and this defies verses 18-19; the law sits above the king. The king must meditate upon the Law. So therefore, if the king is going to be under the Word of God, the prophet is going to be the man who brings the Word of God to the king. Do you know how this comes out? A very interesting way that maybe it’s been a long time since you’ve been through Deuteronomy, but have you ever noticed that this passage we’re looking at right now at the end of chapter 17 deals with the whole promised kingship and centralized power. Do you ever notice what chapter 18 is about? Deuteronomy 18:9, look what it says: you will not go to the diviners, you will not go to the spiritists. [When thou are come into the land with the LORD thy God gives thee, you shalt not learn to do after the abominations of those nations. [10] There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, or uses divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, [11] Or a charmer, or a consulter of mediums, or a wizard, or a necromancer. [12] For all those things are an abomination unto the LORD….”]

Now why would they be going to the spiritists? It’s simple, the king wants to have inside scoop on what kind of policy to make. Where’s he going to go? He’s going to go to some place where he can get some hot line on where history is going. And so that’s why Deuteronomy 18:15, lo and behold, what does it say? “The LORD thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet … like unto me, [unto him shall ye hearken].” See, from verses 15-22 it’s all about the prophet. So you see it’s all logically connected. The office of the prophet precedes the office of the king. That is the office that keeps the king in line. Have you ever read any man that dared to walk into Pharaoh, like Nathan walked into David and said “David, you are the man.” That didn’t happen; that didn’t happen in the pagan world. There’s only one country in history where that happened; it was in Israel. And it’s because the office of the prophet takes precedence over the office of the king.

Now careful in our understanding of a prophet. A prophet in Israel did not mean somebody connected with what we call the religious outfit; it didn’t mean the minister, what would be equivalent to our day, the minister of a local church was over the government. That’s not what it’s saying; it’s not arguing church over state because the priest would correspond to the minister today. The priest was the man who was in the religious outfit. The king was in the political outfit. The prophet stood over both of them; he was a man who could circulate in the religious circles and circulate in the political circles. He was a free agent. The prophet was under no genealogy; the prophet was under no constrictions this way. This is why, as far as we know, Isaiah was a member of what we would call in our own country, the National Security Council of his nation. He held a political office, but he also apparently held religious offices; they are just free-wheeling men, spontaneously raised up by God to give the Word of God into the society.

We don’t have prophets today. What we have that corresponds to a prophet is this [Word of God]. This stands above this church; the church doesn’t stand above this; this book judges Lubbock Bible Church. And this book also, in a Christian’s mind ought to judge civil government. It is this book over every area of life, not just over the religious area… over every area.

Now the prophets, this line of prophets predicted in Deuteronomy 18:15 came into being with Samuel. Now some may challenge this, but let me show you why we say that. Turn to 2 Chronicles 35:18. Later in Israel’s history they looked backward. And they always looked back with fondness to the era of Samuel. And here’s one of those examples. “There was no Passover like to that kept in Israel from the days of Samuel, the prophet,” you see, it’s looking back to something special in Samuel’s day. Samuel did something spiritually for the nation; he brought it once again under the authority of the Word of God.

Psalm 99:6, I tried to organize these verses so that you don’t have to flip back and forth. Notice in this psalm, which is one of the 90s, if you want a kind of hook to think your way through parts of the Bible, always remember that psalms that begin with 90 are generally what we call enthronement psalms, that is, they are psalms that depict God in the final state as reigning on His throne. And in Psalm 99:1 “The LORD reigns, let the people tremble….” Verse 6, “Moses and Aaron among his priests, and Samuel among those who call upon His name, [they called upon the LORD, and he answered them.]” Now that’s a big long set of words in the English, in the Hebrew it’s not that at all, it’s just a short name, the navi’, the people who are the prophets. So Samuel is depicted as different from Moses, in that what Moses gave he founded the nation but Samuel basically gave it’s prophetic line, a line that continued on down to the time of Jesus Christ.

Now let’s see if we can put into perspective, for our own generation, our own day, the church age, some of these truths. Let’s look at the chart of the divine institutions once again and look how now they are constructed. All of these divine institutions fall under the control of the Word of God in so far as I am concerned as an individual Christian and you are concerned. The way this chart is drawn, with these divisions, can also be seen as the bottom circle of the Christian life, and that is a circle that depicts God’s will for you at any given time. Now when we first become Christians we know very little of the will of God; usually what happens when we become Christians is that we know a little bit about the will of God in this sector of the church, because that’s the area we kind of bump around with first; we know a little bit, maybe, of the will of God here.

If you diagramed the known will of God at any given point for the Christian it’s not going to come out with a nice Euclidian circle; it’s going to come out with sort of a glob because it’s distorted in certain areas. Some areas may be very weak; for example, most Christians know nothing about history and government, very weak there; know something about family and marriage. And so this is how the new Christian knowledge or the known area of the will of God. Now at any given point I am either in fellowship with God or I’m out of fellowship and if I’m out of fellowship it can be expressed as being out of that circle. All right, but the circle changes; hopefully as we grow as Christians this perimeter moves outward because we are increasing our awareness of what God wants for us, as we take in more and more doctrine. And so the circle maybe comes out in this area, out here, out here, we begin to pick up some more maybe over in that area. And so the circle is one of an expanding area.

Now let’s generalize and make some principles to get these concepts in mind. Spiritual growth is proportional to the area of that circle; being in fellowship or out of fellowship at any given point is simply an either/or function. It depends whether you’re in the circle or out of the circle, and so we can distinguish two components to Christian living. At any given time I can be out of God’s will or in God’s will for me. And, at any given time this circle has a certain area to it. This is why the longer you grow as a Christian, the more you study the Word of God, see, you can’t get fat on the Word of God studying it because what’s always happening is you’ve got a greater area to cover; you’ve got to run around more to cover the greater area. So you’re not going to sit and gain weight because you know so much doctrine. See, that argument is the product of people who are too lazy to study the Scriptures. I might confess that usually it is the product of clergymen who are too lazy to study the Scriptures.

But nevertheless, this circle, this area does increase with time. Now every part of that circle is under the will of God. Now be careful; Samuel is not just talking about this area; the Word of God doesn’t just apply to the Christian church. The Word of God applies to those other areas. Samuel is faced with a situation in his day where he’s got to speak to all of them. That’s the role of the prophet here; he’s speaking to all areas; he is not usurping the minister’s job. He is not usurping the politician’s job, because he’s not in competition with either one. He’s not a D.I. 4 man; he’s not a sphere of grace man; he’s a man who encompasses the whole area and that’s the role of the prophet. Okay, now that’s his role and shows you where God wants him to be.

Now let’s look at Samuel’s background and see where he came from. 1 Samuel 1; you think of the weight of responsibility that was placed on Samuel’s shoulders; tremendous weight… tremendous weight! This man had to supervise a very critical time in his nation’s history. Everyone in every one of those areas, had to look to Samuel; he had to bear the weight of decisions with regard to military warfare, whether we should use this tactic or that tactic. He had to bear the weight of developing a school for prophets, so that he could train young men who would then go on and teach the Word of God. He had the educational burden, which grew out of the family burden. He had many, many different burdens that were thrown upon his shoulders. Samuel was a sinner, like all of us; he had fantastic weaknesses. Many of those weaknesses Samuel never dealt with in his life. We’ll see them.

But just to see that he didn’t come from a charming background, let’s look at 1 Samuel 1:1-2, maybe in terms of our welfare workers today one would even say that he comes from a disadvantaged background. “Now there was a certain man of Ramathaim-zophim, of Mount Ephraim, and his name was Elkanah…. [2] And he had two wives: the name of one was Hannah, and the name of the other Peninnah. And Peninnah had children, but Hannah had no children.” And that spelled trouble. So in his home life, and we can see in verse 6, “And her adversary, [also provoked her relentlessly, to make her fret, because the LORD had shut up her womb.]” Hannah’s adversary, Peninnah, this woman was… you fill in the word. Anyway, she was that kind of a woman and it was hell in the home. And this constantly went on, because the Hebrew indicates this wasn’t a one-shot deal, this irritation, competition, between one wife and the other wife, hassle, hassle, hassle, hassle, and Samuel grew up in the middle of such a home. He came out of a very, very bad home situation.

Evidently it left marks on Samuel because he was unable to do things in his own family, because… maybe he just didn’t think of this, the Bible doesn’t say but it is interesting that many of Samuel’s faults that are mentioned in Scripture are in connection with organizing his own family. Possibly he never had a model of what a home ought to be like. This is the tragic situation of many of you who have become Christians early in your life; you came out of non-Christian homes and you have no model whatsoever. Now fifty years ago, a hundred years ago, at least there would have been other Christian homes around that you would have known of, and you could have used those homes as models. What does a Christian parent do in this situation? And so young Christian parents today have their back against the wall because it’s like they’re starting out with zero experience and they’re not getting any of that accumulated wisdom from their older parents. And so they have to kind of make do as they go, and it makes for a very wobbly, very slow progressing of Christian strength in our country.

Our homes are weak, but that’s because we’re all learning from zero. We’ve lost… it’s amazing what happened in this country. Since 1900 we have lost vast amounts… vast amounts of accumulated wisdom; it just died with that generation that lived before 1900, the wisdom died. Many of you, if you had enough genealogical material about your home, I’ll bet you could go back to your grandparents or their parents and by the time you got back that far in your family, you would find vibrant fundamental believers. And you would find a repository of wisdom existed in your family at one time and now it’s dead, because the generation that lived during World War II and the late 30s was a generation that, by and large, just simply followed the lead of their liberal mentors, the modernists who won the battles in the 20s and 30s, and with all the accumulated wisdom of that early generation was simply ignored and dismissed as a throwback to the past; we go on to bigger and better things; we make atomic bombs now instead of hand grenades.

So Samuel had a problem with his home. Now we emphasize this because some people still think these guys had all the breaks in the Bible. No they didn’t! Let’s identify with them. In 1 Samuel 2:22, let’s look at the problem there he faced. Samuel had been given a stewardship under the priest, Eli. This stewardship under Eli was a stewardship that went back to the Old Testament. Samuel was not asked to create his ministry out of thin air. So God had him train under a representative of the old order, the priesthood. And so this was the example he had there. “Eli was very old, and he heard all that his sons did unto all Israel, and how they lay with the women who assembled at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. [23] And he said unto them, Why do you do such things? For I hear of your evil dealings by all this people. [24] Nay, my sons;” look at this profound way of dealing with the problem, “Nay, may sons, for it is no good report that I hear, [ye make the LORD’s people to transgress].” Verse 25, “If one man sin against another, the judge shall judge him; but if a man sin against the LORD, who shall intreat for him? Nevertheless, they hearkened not to the voice of their father, because the LORD would slay them. [26] And the child, Samuel grew on [and was in favor both with the LORD, and also with men].”

That last enigmatic section in verse 25 is talking about the fact that God is not coercing volition here, but what’s happening is that he’s letting these sons just crater out. They’re just going down on negative volition and rebellion against the Word of God, and God says okay, I’ll just grease your slide, and that’s what He’s doing. But the thing that we want to notice is, where does Samuel get his model for a home? Where does he get his model of a male who was a spiritual leader? He’s not getting it from his father; his father couldn’t control his own household. Where does he get his male model from? Every boy ought to have somewhere in his life a male model. This is why I have said time and time again to kids that go off to Dallas Seminary, if you will go, get out of college and take 2 or 3 years out and go to the military, some parts of it, there are still some men left, that is until they get fired and reassigned… but there are men left and they can serve as a model. And this is the only place some guys are ever going to get a model, outside of a redeemed situation in a fully integrated Christian society. So evidently we still have seminary students that know so much more and can ignore that vital phase and just trip right on down to Dallas. And what they’re doing is tripping all over themselves theologically because they don’t know how to handle themselves in various situations. They don’t know what leadership means, they have no allegiance to the local church and so on. I told them that in the beginning but they won’t listen.

So here we have a situation where Samuel has no male model and it takes a toll on him. Turn to 1 Samuel 8:3, at the first of that famous chapter. [8:1, “And it came to pass, when Samuel was old, that he made his sons judges over Israel.” After Samuel reigns as prophet “his sons walked not in his ways, but turned aside after money, and took bribes and they perverted judgment.” What a horrible thing. Here’s a guy who personally bore the weight of the entire nation on his shoulders and look what he’s got to show for it as far as his succeeding generations. He delivers his country, turns it over to his sons and look at the mess they make; it must have been very disheartening for him. It should be encouraging to you; it should be encouraging to me because here’s Samuel’s predicament and it’s a predicament that we all have as Christians. Now we’re not going to rejoice in a man’s mistakes but at least we can encourage ourselves that other people besides us make mistakes.

When we start out life we have to form learned behavior patterns; we’ve got to. After all, when you sit down at a table you don’t say, now let’s see, I will put the fork in the right hand, I will lower the fork until the fork slides under the food and you don’t consciously go through this Mickey Mouse all the time, it’s a learned behavior pattern, you’d go nuts if you had to think through everything you do. All right; so what happens? We acquire learned behavior patterns and they become more and more sophisticated; so we walk into a situation and we respond to it like that; without thinking. Why? Because one time we had to think through our response; one time when we walked into a situation… again, let’s take a simpler one, let’s take a case of driving the car. Driving one in Lubbock is always an interesting experience and so you drive along and you see some guy that signals right which means he’s going to turn left, so then you’re prepared to have your foot on the brake. So you think through that the first couple of times, and the first time, maybe that car goes 10, 15 or 20 feet while you’re thinking, let’s see, what do I do in this situation. Oh, I’m in Lubbock, okay, I’d better put my foot on the brake. Now after a while of driving around you go oh, I’m in Lubbock so I’d better put the brake on quick, and you don’t think. You see, it’s automatic; you have devised what took many, many seconds to think through because it was a conscious response, now your brain collapses that down into a fraction of a second response; that is a learned behavior pattern.

Now graduating upward from eating and driving cars it works with relationships with people; a certain kind of people in the past have hit you the wrong way and you have certain profiles; we all develop this, profiles in our mind how you’re going to handle that kind of a person, because in the past you had an example of that kind of a person and it worked out thusly, and so therefore you pattern, you key off this past thing and finally, every time you meet that kind of a person you react immediately; you don’t even think it through, you just react, it becomes a conditioned behavior pattern. Now the Scripture says that behavior patterns are fine, the word behavior pattern, or habit, is used, it’s used oftentimes in the book of Hebrews. It is not wrong to have these learned behavior patterns or habits. What happens is they can be either righteous or unrighteous.

Now during the process of forming these habits is obviously the best time for their correction, but once that habit pattern is fixed, and it’s a –R learned behavior pattern we’ve got problems because it is not easy to correct a –R learned behavior pattern, and that is the central problem of sanctification if you’ll think it through. Where do we have most of our problems in the Christian growth? When we’re climbing up here, maturing, we hit some area like this and bang, it may be some part in life where we have just got a certain reflex action that has been developed years in the past. Now what happened? When we first became a Christian, God’s gracious, He doesn’t dump it all over us at first, so He takes the little elementary lessons first; he says I want you to deal with this, I want you to deal with this, I want you to deal with this, I want you to deal with this, but finally the day has come when it’s time to deal with this.

No this is why it seems like you can go cruising through the Christian life and all of a sudden crash and burn and you get very discouraged; why you were cruising so well, thinking boy, I’ve finally got the case down here now, and then all of a sudden everything crashes. Now don’t be discouraged when that happens; that’s not a sign that you’ve suddenly reverted spiritually. That’s just a sign that God has considered you available and ready and capable by the 1 Corinthians 10:13 problem to correct that. Now he says before I didn’t make it an issue, now I’m going to make it an issue. And if you think of your Christian life like this, you’ll see it’s tremendously individual. A husband’s sanctification isn’t like his wife’s; the wife’s not like her husbands; parent’s aren’t like their children, children’s aren’t like their parents. The Holy Spirit tailor makes you sanctification to your particular set of patterns.

Do you know how we know this? Romans 8 tells us, the Holy Spirit makes intercession for us with groanings that cannot be uttered. Now that’s not talking about learning how to pray; now that’s true, the Holy Spirit teaches us how to pray but that passage emphasizes not prayer but the fact that the Holy Spirit is praying certain things about all this crud that we have, and He’s saying okay Father, now there’s a load here and we’ve got to deal with it and it’s time we dealt with it, so let’s take #1031 and start working with that one on Tuesday. So Tuesday you wake up and it’s a new ball game, something, the roof caved in, you have a flat tired going to the office and you ran out of gas, one of those days, and because Tuesday was the day the Holy Spirit set up to teach a little bit about #1031 in the catalogue of –R learned behavior patterns. And so there the battle begins.

And then the Christian gets discouraged, he thinks good night, I made progress, what’s going on and why am I getting hit like this today? Because it’s time to deal with that particular issue. And you can trace this. One of the interesting things to do is, not getting to introspective at the moment, but one of the interesting things you can do to help yourself is think back from now until the time you became a Christian; all the way back, no matter how long it is, and write yourself just a brief synopsis of where you think and the patterns you think the Holy Spirit has begun to work with and correct, and just look at that, particularly if you’re a parent ought you to do this. The reason being that your sin nature is transmitted to your children, and they’re going to pick up and key off you, so if you watch how the Lord has dealt with you, where He hits things the hardest and where He seems to be lenient, that may tip you off on how to handle your own children. You’ve got a perfect teacher, the Holy Spirit. Who could be better? And by simply watching how He deals with us.

Well, Samuel had some of these problems and apparently one of the problems was that he never got a sufficient male model of a father and he never really knew how to handle his sons. Now no father really knows how to handle his sons but at least we can guess at it and Samuel guessed less than most people, and the result was the tragedy of verse 3, and I say that’s interesting that the Holy Spirit comments this way on Samuel, when the Holy Spirit loaded the 1^st and 2^nd chapters up with those family notices. It’s not disjointed observation here that’s going on; there’s something consistently skewed in Samuel’s behavior.

Now Samuel was a great man; thanks to Samuel the monarchy did get established and issues were clarified in his generation and he was an all-time great in the book of Psalms, we it in Acts, we see him in other passages but please notice this verse lest you get too discouraged about yourself and think that boy, I’m not great like Samuel. Well, Samuel wasn’t great in a lot of areas. So don’t be discouraged when you see your own failings; instead of getting discouraged and dropping the ball and just peeling out and going to crybaby or something, oh, everything’s happened, I’ve ruined my Christian life now, it’s all over, going go hide the rest of my life. Or worse yet, when that feeling gets worse, I’m going to kill myself, which isn’t going to solve your problem either. Don’t think Christians don’t think of suicide, it’s a very common thing and it’s a satanic thing because what Satan wants to do is get you right off the stage; he doesn’t want you around, at least when you’re screwing up you’re a trophy to grace. So he has vested interests in getting you off the stage. Suicide, then, is a satanic way of breaking God’s plan of sanctification.

Now, the point that the Scriptures make is instead of peeling out and crying about it is you just pick yourself up and charge forward, and you do this by confessing your sin at that point; all right, I blew it Lord, I take responsibility for that and you confess, you get back in fellowship, and then often times there’ll be a residual guilt. Well, I’ve confessed my sin, I still feel guilty. I confess it again, still feel guilty; confess it again, still feel guilty; confess it again, still feel guilty; confess it again, still feel guilty. Why is that? For the reason that the Holy Spirit’s saying to you that this 1031 type learned behavior pattern, every once in a while will pop up, maybe it’ll pop up as an overt sin, maybe it’ll pop up as a mental attitude sin, and maybe you’ll go for two weeks and it’ll pop up again, and so you confess this, that’s taken care of, you confess this, that’s taken care of, you confess this, that’s taken care of, but what isn’t taken care of the underlying behavior pattern that leads to it.

And so that’s why we have this residual guilt that we feel. It’s a message; it’s a message from the Spirit saying wait a minute, yes, you confessed and you’re in fellowship but I want to let you know that there’s something here that’s going to break out again if we don’t deal with it, so let’s get dealing with it. And that’s the cause of a lot of residual guilt and why people will often come and say well, I tried 1 John 1:9, it doesn’t work. It worked perfectly… it worked perfectly! It’s just that you’re not reading your signals right. That residual guilt isn’t there to smash you down, to crush you, it’s there to just, as an indicator device to say wait a minute, we’ve got a decayed area here, and we want to deal with it.

All right, so Samuel is a man who may confess his sin, he had a grace attitude, we’ll see that in a moment, but nevertheless he never made it on up beyond these areas. So remember Samuel, a great man, but not a perfect man.

Let’s look at 1 Samuel 3 for some features of his training. God had to train him out of that chaotic home environment, where this little boy, and he was only a little boy when he was given by his mother to the priest, where this little boy had to get somewhere a model of leadership. It’s a very, very touching scene in here and it shows you some of the neat things about Samuel. Samuel, as well as Joshua, were men characterized by… to me it’s a fascinating feature, curiosity. You see this oftentimes in men who become engineers in life, they’re always curious about how something works, always taking some part, sometimes not able to put it back together again but always trying to see what makes something work. Now that kind of a desire, they’re just intrigued, the man who’s very observant, looks at the fluorescent light and says I wonder why we get light energy out of that thing without the heat energy that we get out of an incandescent light. And he looks around and he sees different things and he wonders about it; that’s curiosity and ultimately it’s from God. I suspect that Adam had the greatest curiosity of any human being that ever walked the face of the earth. Think of what his curiosity was as one second after he was created he blinked his eyes and looked around, in a completely strange creation; looked at all the animals and wondered what makes them work, what’s this soil, why do plants grow. Adam had inbred created curiosity.

Now Samuel had the ultimate kind of curiosity, the curiosity about God Himself. Samuel, it says in 1 Samuel 3:1, “And the child Samuel ministered unto the LORD before Eli. And the word of the LORD was precious in those days; there was no open vision.” That means that there was no regular revelation occurring. And by the way, if somebody ever… you get into a discussion with someone about this business of verbal revelation, because most modern men don’t believe that God talks, such that if you had a cassette recorder you could hear Him speak. They think that God just talks inside these guys heads, that’s all. That’s why when you saw the movie David and you saw the movie that Zepharelli put on you saw this inclination on the part of the cinematographer to mask over verbal revelation. Now this passage shows you that the people in that day did not take dreams, intuitions and hallucinations to be the Word of God, or else you could never explain the [can’t understand word] of verse 1. Those people had dreams and hallucinations and visions, all the time, just like we do. But they noticed that the Word of God was not coming. So the fact that they could have their dreams and their visions and yet recognize that something was missing shows you they did know the difference between this special, special situation of God speaking, whether by dreams, whether by direct audio sound or something; they knew the difference between that and normal dreams and behavior.

All right, 1 Samuel 3:2, “And it came to pass at that time, when Eli laid down in his place, and his eyes began to grow dim, that he could not see,” pathetic example of where it’s just exactly where the nation was. [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, [4] That the LORD called Samuel. And he answered, Here am I. [5] And he ran to Eli, and said, Here am I; for you called me. That is another precious verse to always remember; when God’s voice spoke to this little boy, the boy didn’t think oh, some flying saucer sitting there with pulsating lights above the tabernacle and this metallic voice, spooky voice comes down. None of that; the voice sounded like an ordinary person speaking in the Hebrew language of 1000 BC, so much so that he actually confused the voice with Eli’s. Remember this; the voice of God, if we heard Him speak, will be speaking, even in Texas English.

“…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.” Now here’s a name, in the Hebrew it sounds Shah-mu-el. “And Samuel arose and went to Eli, and said, Here am I; for you did 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,” that doesn’t mean he wasn’t a Christian or believer, wasn’t born again; that’s talking more about the fact the he never had an experience of direct revelation. But the interesting thing about Samuel was he knew that this would occur. Where’s this little boy sleeping? He’s sleeping right next to the tent. Here’s the picture of spiritual curiosity; there’s the tabernacle and the little boy is sleeping right next to it. Do you know why he’s doing this? Because he knows that that’s the place where God speaks. And there’s something intuitive in this little boy; he knows his father isn’t his right model; he knows that Eli isn’t his right model; these are too imperfect, so he knows that he’s got to get his modeling off of God Himself and so he goes to the tabernacle to get his model, to get what he’s supposed to do, and he’s going to sleep out there, and the little boy’s determined, if God’s going to speak I’m going to be the first one that’s going to hear him, I’ve got my little cassette, I’m going to sit it right down here, it’s going to play all night, just in case. That’s the picture of Samuel.

1 Samuel 3:8, “And the LORD called Samuel again the third time. And he arose, and went to Eli, and said, Here am I; for you did call me.” By this time “Eli perceived that the LORD had called the child.” Now Eli ought to have perceived that the first time, but you know, what can you do with Eli. [9] Therefore Eli said unto Samuel, Go, lie down: and it shall be if He call thee, that you shall say, Speak, LORD; for thy servant hears. [So Samuel went and lay down in his place].” You’ll notice he gives him a formula of response. Now you say, well why is God looking for the formula of response? Respect for His authority. It doesn’t mean that God isn’t going to speak to him; it’s just what Eli’s talking about… when you approach God if He talks to you this is what you say back to Him, and then that gets the conversation going and take it from there.

1 Samuel 3:10, “And the LORD came, and stood,” now that’s an interesting verse, do you know who that is? That’s Jesus Christ before He was incarnate, that’s the angel of Jehovah showing up, the Second Person of the Trinity, and He shows up and He stands there; evidently He must have been standing there before and Samuel couldn’t audio, he couldn’t see God, he just heard this voice. Well, now the Lord comes and He stands, “ and called as at other times, Samuel, Samuel. Then Samuel answered, Speak; for thy servant hears.” You can just see, if you would ever depict this, some of you want to depict this in a play of depict it in a book of something, just see this wild eye, saucer-like eyes of this little boy looking up at this voice; that must have been what happened.

1 Samuel 3:11, “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. [12] In that day I will perform against Eli all things which I have spoken concerning his house; when I begin, I will also make and end. [12] For I have told him that I will judge his house forever for the iniquity that he knows, because his sons made cursed Me” literally in the Hebrew, “and he restrained them not. [14] Therefore I have sworn unto the house of Eli, that the iniquity of Eli’s house shall not be purged without sacrifice nor offering forever.”

Now if you were that little boy, wasn’t that a nice sweet message to get? Go back to the only guy that’s your mentor and have to tell him, and you know that Eli’s going to ask him what did He say, he’s probably outside listening, what’s He say, and the little boy has to go back and tell Eli that God’s going to get you. So this was a test of the message that Samuel had to have for the rest of his life, that God is going to get you, because the entire old order, what was left of it, of the theocracy, is going to crash and burn in Samuel’s time.

So Samuel learned the message of condemnation; in 1 Samuel 3:19-21 he becomes a mature young man. “And Samuel grew, and the LORD was with him, and he did let none of His words fall to the ground.” He fulfilled all His prophecies. [20] “And all Israel, from Dan even to Beer-sheba, knew that Samuel was established to be a prophet of the LORD.” You’ll notice the empirical verification of the Word of God there, or confirmation. The word of Samuel came to all Israel.

Now there’s a gap from that sentence in 1 Samuel 4:1, all the way to 1 Samuel 7:3, and this tells us something about the principles of Samuel’s career. Samuel faced a problem; he knew the nation was in for judgment. Like Eli, they had passed the point when changes could be made without something drastic happening. Something drastic did happen, but it wasn’t spawned by Samuel’s own efforts. Rather, the mark of Samuel’s greatness here as a Christian man is he knew when to faith-rest. That’s the whole gap from chapter 4, chapter 5, and chapter 6, he couldn’t pull it off by himself, because the nation was still in sin; he couldn’t twist their volition, he couldn’t attack it in any way; he couldn’t be the Holy Spirit convicting and turning the heart of man; only God can do that, and so Samuel’s name disappears from the text. Samuel retreats; great battles are gone, they come and they go, and Samuel is never there. Why? Has he deserted his country? Not at all, he just simply said Lord, I know the message, I will carry the message but I cannot make the people believe it, so I turn them over to you and I faith-rest whatever You will do with them. That is faith-resting, the mark of a great man.

Now in 1 Samuel 7:3 Samuel speaks up, notice why, verse 2. “And it came to pass, while the ark abode in Kiriath-jearim, that the time was long; for it was twenty years: and all the house of Israel lamented after the LORD.” So now they’re ready to confess their sin. [3] “And Samuel spoke unto all the house of Israel, saying, If ye do return unto the LORD with all your hearts, then put away strange gods [and Ashtaroth from among you, and prepare your hearts unto the LORD, and serve Him only; and He will deliver you out of the hands of the Philistines].” Verse 4, the children did that, [“Then the children of Israel put away Baalim and Ashtaroth, and served the LORD only.”] Now verse 5, “And Samuel said, Gather all Israel to Mizpah, and I will pray for you unto the LORD.” Notice the confession in verse 6, “…We have sinned against Jehovah,” and it says, “And Samuel judged the children of Israel in Mizpah. [7] And when the Philistines heard that the children of Israel were gathered together at Mizpah, the lords of the Philistines went up against Israel.”

And the war starts, verse 8, “And the children of Israel said to Samuel, Cease not to cry unto the LORD our God for us, that He will save us out of the hand of the Philistines. [9] [And Samuel took a sucking lamb, and offered it for a burnt offering wholly unto the LORD.] And Samuel cried, [unto the LORDD for Israel; and the LORD heard him.]” in verse 9. And he prayed, and an offering in verse 10, and the answer, “the LORD thundered with a great thunder on that day upon the Philistines, and discomforted them, [and they were smitten before Israel].” Verse 12, “[Then Samuel took a stone, and set it between Mizpah and Shen, and called the name of it Eben-ezer, saying, Hitherto has the LORD helped us.”] And Samuel took his famous Eben-ezer, the stone, the stone of help is literally what that means; Eben in Hebrew is the word stone, ezer is the word to help. And what he has said is that God has helped us to the [can’t understand word].

Now we want to show something about Samuel in conclusion; try to pull some of these fragments together. Samuel was a man who was bred by God out of a less than great home life. He had a lot of –R learned behavior patterns, learned behavior patterns that were not erased, even at the end of his ministry because we know this from 1 Samuel 8:3 [“And his sons walked not in his ways but turned aside after money, and took bribes, and perverted justice.”] But enough of them were dealt with in his life, in particular his fantastic attraction for the Lord, he was going to know the Lord. As a little boy he would sleep outside that tent until he got the Word of God. He had a determination to get the Word of God, and that’s the mark of the great Samuel. It wasn’t that he was such a fantastically moral man; though he may have been the Scriptures don’t point that out. The Scriptures point out his great desire, consuming thirst for the Word of God.

Now that’s what men have to have because if you get your eyes on your performance you’ll always be depressed because you can always find a contemporary, and what man is there who’s going on in life who isn’t thinking well, now I’m X, Y, Z years old, and look at so and so and they’re X, Y, Z years old and look at how far ahead of me they are. And there’s a tremendous peer pressure in every man to think in these terms. But the only way that he can really get it straight is not look at his peers but take the attitude Samuel had, I am going to learn about God, and I am going to take in the Word of God and that’s going to be number one. If I screw up over here well then I screw up over here but I am going to learn the Word of God. You see that determination, not to peel out at the first cause of disaster and just chuck everything overboard. You just keep on, like Samuel did.

The result of that kind of a man, who keeps on, even in the midst of his own failings, is shown in this very passage. Samuel stayed back out of the battle, only as long as the people were in rebellion against the Word. At the first sign that those people wanted back in fellowship Samuel was there. And you don’t find Samuel coming up, well people, let me brush the good off as I come around you; none of that stuff, no Pharisaism, none of this rub their noses in it Samuel, I told them so. You know, you could see him doing that; he had taught them and he had taught them and they didn’t bother. And they had sinned. And I suspect it’s because Samuel had to come to grips with sin in his own heart that he knew the sins in other men’s hearts. And so instead of ramming their noses into it he simply said all right, you’re ready at this point and I’ll help you. He was a grace-oriented individual. You see, he was righteous but he wasn’t metallically harsh in his righteousness. He was righteous but, so to speak, on the way; his righteousness experientially was still incomplete.

And knowing this about himself, that made Samuel be very gracious to these people. He prayed for them, he didn’t have to do that. That’s grace. He stooped down and he prayed for the very people that probably spit in his face and rebelled against his teaching. So the mark of this great man is his grace orientation. It’s precisely his own incomplete half-successful half-failing struggle with himself that gave him this tremendous grace attitude toward others. What kept it together for Samuel? Only one thing…he put the Lord first, and the Word, that’s first. I don’t care, my mistakes are not going to stop me from getting into the Word of God; my sins are not going to, no matter how they are, no matter how gross they are, no matter how ugly they are, my sins will not cut me off from taking in the Word of God. I’ll continue to take it in; there’s the attitude that Samuel had. Without it we all go down in the Christian life.