"Hearing the Voice of God: Part 2"
Sermon by the Rev. Matt Kennedy
Epiphany 3 year B
The Church of the Good Shepherd

1st Samuel 3:1-21

For those of you who were not here last Sunday, this morning is the second sermon in a new series on hearing the voice of God in your life. The primary text for this series is 1 st Samuel 3:1-21. Let‘s go ahead and turn there.

  Last week we made it part-way through Samuel chapter 3. Though he'd been raised in the Tabernacle; though he was knowledgeable of and obedient to God's law; though he lived with the priests; Samuel was, for all of that, unable to recognize God's voice, mistaking it for the voice of the high priest Eli.

  After Samuel awakens Eli three times, Eli, not Samuel, realizes in verse 8 that the voice is from the Lord. So in verse 9, Eli tells Samuel, “Go and lie down and if he calls you, say ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.'” There's a lot to unpack in this advice, but for now notice that Eli is telling Samuel how to come to know God. “I am now your servant and your servant is listening.”

Last Sunday we saw in verse 7, that Samuel failed to recognize the voice of the Lord because, he didn't yet know the Lord. A personal relationship with God is necessary, we said, before you can hear him. The only way to have that personal relationship today is by surrendering your life to him through his Son Jesus Christ.

But what about Samuel? In Genesis 15 we learn through Abraham's experience confirmed later by Paul in Romans 4 that Old Testament believers surrendered their hearts to God by trusting in God's promise to redeem his creation through Abraham's offspring; a promise personified in Christ, who, though he became man 700 years later, exists as God the Son eternally. So Old Testament believers came to know God through his Son as a promise just as we know him as that promise fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth.

Turning back to the passage you'll see in verse 10 that the Lord does indeed call Samuel again but this time the Lord actually appears. “The Lord came and stood there, calling as at other times, “Samuel, Samuel.” Given what I've just said, there's good reason to believe that this is a vision of the pre-incarnate Christ because 1. when God speaks within his creation he does so through his Word. We learn this in Genesis 1. And his Word as John's gospel tells us is his Son later made flesh in Jesus Christ. 2. This is the moment Samuel comes to know God and as we just said, you and I today and the OT believers in the past all establish a personal relationship with God through trusting in his promised savior, God the Son, the Word who became Jesus Christ. So Samuel is likely in the presence of the pre-incarnate Christ.

  And this time Samuel is prepared not just to hear but to surrender, “Speak for your servant is listening” Lord, "I'm yours," he says. "I'm your servant, speak to me.

 And he does. The Lord gives him the message recorded in verses 11-14. We'll get to that in a moment. For now we have enough to start drawing out some principles.

  There was one reason Samuel didn't hear the Lord at first. He didn't know him. In this section, Samuel has submitted himself to the Lord, he has established a relationship and he begins to hear his Word.

  So, as we said last week, the first step, and there're going to be six, so you might get a writing instrument ready, the first step to hearing God's voice is establishing a relationship with him by surrendering your life to Jesus Christ.

  But, as we also said last week just because you've given your heart to God and you're able to hear him doesn't mean that you know how to do it. How did Samuel learn so fast? Well, when Samuel finally heard and recognized God's voice, he was 1 st surrendered to him, but that wasn't all. He was also waiting and expecting to hear.

  That's the second step. Samuel, after receiving Eli‘s advice, returned to bed. But who thinks he went to sleep? He knows he's been hearing God's voice so he's alert, he's ready, he's waiting and expecting to hear his voice again. What about you? We know God speaks too don't we? What are the four primary lines of communication; the bible, prayer, the church, and our circumstances. But how often do you come to these communication lines alert, ready, waiting and expecting to hear God‘s voice? Have you ever been out of town and run into a friend unexpectedly? When that happens to me it generally takes the other person several tries to get my attention because I'm not expecting to see anyone I know. How many of us read the bible, pray, attend church and go through life as if we're in a strange city, not expecting our friend Jesus to speak? If you read your bible like a textbook, you won't hear God's voice to you. Every time you come to the bible. Every time you pray, every time you listen to a sermon or come to worship, every time a door opens or closes in your life, expect to hear the voice of God. He is speaking to you.

  Third step, notice Samuel‘s location. He was in the Tabernacle at Shiloh. We talked about the Tabernacle last week. It was the primary place where God chose to communicate with his people. Look at verse 21, “The Lord Continued to appear at Shiloh, and there he revealed himself to Samuel through his Word.” Samuel spent his life living within the Tabernacle the primary line of communication. Even before he knew God personally he was devoted to the place where God spoke. We have not one, but four lines of communication. The third step to hearing God's voice in your life is to be devoted to the places where God chooses to speak. If you never read your bible I can promise you, you'll never hear him speak through it. If you only pray on Sunday morning, don't expect to have an ecstatic encounter with the Almighty. If you only come to church when you're on the schedule don't be surprised if you can't hear his voice. Like Samuel, believers must be devoted to the places where God speaks. Regular daily time in the bible. Regular daily time in prayer. Regular weekly worship, doing these things puts you right there in the places God has specifically chosen to reveal himself. The more you are there the more you will hear.

 The fourth step to hearing God's voice is obedience. Why did God speak to Samuel instead of the high priest Eli? If you read verses 11-14, you'll see that God was displeased with Eli. Eli's sons, also priests, slept around on their wives and worshipped other gods. God commanded Eli to discipline them. Eli willfully and consistently refused to obey this command. Finally God decided to discipline Eli's sons and Eli. But, since Eli's disobedience had severed his communication with God, God's warning comes through Samuel. Willful consistent disobedience severs your personal communication with God, not because God turns away, but because you do. Eli is a believer, so he's going to heaven, but his disobedience has stopped up his ears. God's personal intimacy with Eli is interrupted. Now, there's a difference between willful consistent sin and everyday sins. Willful sin is when you choose to do something or continue doing something you know displeases God AND you're not repentant. You want to do it, you do it, you don't even try to stop, and you're not repentant, remorseful or even humble before God. If you're a believer caught up in some kind of sin or addiction but you're repenting and trying to stop and want to live obediently, I'm not talking about you. God's going to help you break those chains. But a believer who's, let's say cheating on his wife, who knows God‘s Word but doesn't care, doesn't stop, doesn't even feel bad, doesn't repent and plans to do it again; that's willful sin. That's stopping up your ears. We're all sinners, but this kind of willful rebellion is not normal nor should it be part of a regular Christian life. If you're living in a sin like this, repentance alone will reestablish that intimacy and personal connection to God.

  On to the fifth step. Know yourself. Samuel knew himself well enough to know he wasn't imagining things. He may not have known God's voice, but he knew that he wasn't hearing his own voice. Key to knowing yourself is Paul's advice to know your weaknesses. “Think of yourself with sober judgment” he says in Romans 12:3. If you know you're an alcoholic and while praying, you hear a voice say, “go buy a 12 pack“, that's not God. When I was a youth minister, teenage couples used to tell me that it was okay for them to sleep together because they prayed and God told them their love was so special in his eyes that they were already married. They'd been listening to the voice of their own desires rather than the voice of God. Paul says, “know yourself,” know your strengths and weaknesses. That will help you to know when you're hearing your own desires masquerading as the voice of God. We often attribute the voice of our desires to God. If you know yourself you can avoid that.

  The sixth and final step to hearing God's voice in your life is being tuned to it. Think of a tuning fork. Tuning forks are tools musicians use to tell them when an instrument is off or on key. When the sound of their instrument matches the sound of the tuning fork, they know they're in tune. Now, key to recognizing God's voice is knowing when the voice you heart is in or out of tune with God‘s voice. If you know God‘s tune, if you know what sort of things God does and says, if you know his ways, then chances are you'll know whether the voice in your heart is his or not. The only way to tune your heart to God is through the bible. The bible is the tuning fork of the Christian life. The more you read his Word the more you get a feel for his character, his personality, the kinds of things he does and says and the less likely it is that you will confuse his voice with yours. Over time you become tuned to him. Your ability to hear God's voice through the other three lines of communication depends on your familiarity with the bible, the first line. If you're tuned in you'll be sitting in church. Or at prayer and you'll hear or feel a voice in your heart and catch yourself saying, “that was God.” and you'll know because it's completely in tune with the tuning fork.

Amen.

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