1 Samuel 3, Do You Recognize His Voice?, Dr. John B. Carpenter

Covenant Reformed Baptist Church

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May 28, 2023

1 Samuel 3 Do You Recognize His Voice?

What Is Reformed Theology? with R. C. Sproul, Faith Alone Part 2, 5

00:00: 1 Samuel chapter 3, starting at verse 1. Now, the young man Samuel was ministering to the
00:06: Lord under Eli, and the word of the Lord was rare in those days. There was no frequent vision. At that time,
00:11: Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, was lying down in his own place.
00:17: The lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the
00:22: Lord where the ark of God was. Then the Lord called to Samuel and he said, Here I am, and ran to Eli and said,
00:31: Here I am, for you called me. But he said, I did not call.
00:37: Lie down again. So he went and lay down. And the Lord called again, Samuel. And Samuel arose and went to Eli and said,
00:45: Here I am, for you called me. But he said, I did not call, my son. Lie down again.
00:51: Now, Samuel did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him.
00:58: And the Lord called Samuel again the third time, and he arose and went to Eli and said, Here I am, for you called me.
01:04: Then Eli perceived that the Lord was calling the young man. Therefore, Eli said to Samuel, Go, lie down, and if he calls you, you shall say,
01:14: Speak, Lord, for your servant hears. So Samuel went and lay down in his place. And the
01:20: Lord came and stood, calling as at other times, Samuel, Samuel. And Samuel said,
01:26: Speak, for your servant hears. Then the Lord said to Samuel, Behold, I am about to do a thing in Israel at which the two ears of everyone who hears it will tingle.
01:38: On that day, I will fulfill against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house from beginning to end. And I declare to him that I'm about to punish his house forever for the iniquity that he knew because his sons were blaspheming
01:50: God, and he did not restrain them. Therefore, I swear to the house of Eli that the iniquity of Eli's house shall not be atoned for by sacrifice or offering forever.
02:03: Samuel lay until morning, then he opened the doors of the house of the Lord. And Samuel was afraid to tell the vision to Eli, but Eli called
02:11: Samuel and said, Samuel, my son. And he said, Here I am. And Eli said,
02:17: What was it that he told you? Do not hide it from me. May God do so to you and more also if you hide anything from me of all that he told you.
02:28: So Samuel told him everything and hid nothing from him. And he said, It is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him.
02:36: And Samuel grew, and the Lord was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground. And all
02:42: Israel from Dan to Beersheba knew that Samuel was established as a prophet of the Lord.
02:48: And the Lord appeared again at Shiloh, for the Lord revealed himself to Samuel at Shiloh by the word of the
02:54: Lord. May the Lord add his blessings to the reading of his holy word. Will you ever get a call and the caller
03:03: ID doesn't say who it's from? Maybe you don't check. Anyway, you answer it and the person just starts talking to you like you should know them.
03:13: They expect you to recognize them by their voice. Can you? Are you good at recognizing people just by their voice?
03:20: Well, studies show that most of us are good at recognizing people by their voice if we already know them. In other words, the better we know a person, the better we can pick out their voice, which is to say we only know the voices of people we know pretty well.
03:34: Studies also show that we're not good at recognizing the voices of strangers. Maybe we've only heard once or twice before.
03:40: If you're at a bank and hear a robber shouting, put your hands up or I'll shoot. So now you're an ear witness.
03:47: But maybe you don't actually see the robber, that he's wearing a mask or whatever. And then you are asked to identify the suspect in a police lineup.
03:57: So the police line up some men and the suspect is among them, about a half dozen or so, and they ask each of them to say one by one to you what you heard.
04:07: You're the ear witness. Put your hands up or I'll shoot. And then ask you to pick out which one's the one you heard.
04:13: The accuracy of the identification is very low, about 9 to 28 percent, depending on the number of the voices in the lineup, compared to about 55 to 60 percent for eyewitness accuracy.
04:27: So ear witnessing is really not much better than just kind of randomly picking out a suspect.
04:33: In other words, you probably can't recognize the voice of someone you've only heard once before. But if you were in a bank and your husband or wife or brother or somebody you know very well like that came in with a mask and shouted, put your hands up or I'll shoot, you'd probably turn around and say,
04:49: Mary, what kind of crazy thing are you doing? Put that gun down and go home. Now, all of this is really just a long way of saying that to know someone's voice, you have to know them.
05:00: You have to know the person. You get to know their voice by knowing them. Voice recognition, at least for human beings, maybe computers, machines are better at than human beings are, but for us human beings, voice recognition depends on personal knowledge.
05:16: The same is true with God. If you want to know the voice of God, you have to get to know
05:22: God. Of course, that's kind of a catch -22, isn't it? You think about it, it's an apparent dilemma because of mutually dependent conditions.
05:30: You can't get to know God without hearing His voice, but you can't hear His voice without knowing Him. What are you to do?
05:38: Well, we see that here in five parts. First the problem, second the prompting, then the prophecy, fourth the preacher, and finally the prophet.
05:48: Well, the problem was that the word of the Lord was rare. Samuel, still a boy, probably about Anson's age, something like that, is helping in the tabernacle.
05:57: He is ministering to the Lord in verse 1, even though verse 7 tells us that he didn't know the
06:03: Lord. Now, in this way, this one way, anyway, he is like Eli's sons who were also described in the previous chapter, 1
06:11: Samuel 2 verse 12, as not knowing the Lord. Obviously, that doesn't mean that they, either
06:17: Samuel or Eli's sons, didn't know about the Lord. They had heard plenty about Him.
06:23: All of them lived and worked in the tabernacle. They're administering the sacrifices. They're helping people worship the Lord, but they don't know
06:30: Him. They had no relationship with Him. They have no reverence for Him in their heart. They have no awareness of His awesomeness, no love for Him.
06:38: Now, they were trying to lead people to worship a God that they themselves don't know.
06:46: Now, Eli's sons had given up a long time ago to know the Lord. Now, here they were, Hophni and Phinehas, they're surrounded by the signs of God's covenant with Israel.
06:54: They're in the tabernacle. They have the Ark of the Covenant there. There's all kinds of sacrifices. There's earnest pilgrims like Elkanah, remember him, coming to worship the
07:04: Lord and fulfill their vows. There's zealous believers like Hannah, passionately praying right in front of them, dedicating their children to the
07:12: Lord. Now, whether they actually had Levites by this time singing psalms, I don't know really.
07:18: But they probably had something like that going on or starting. But Eli's sons, surrounded by all of this, don't care about any of it.
07:29: They don't know or care to know any God beyond their belly. They're so familiar with the things of the
07:36: Lord, they've gotten a contempt for them. To them, it's just a place to line their pockets and chase girls.
07:43: Now, Samuel wasn't like that yet. He's still a young man. He's naive. He's being raised by Eli.
07:50: He does his tabernacle service in the presence of Eli. It says there in verse 1, under his supervision, he hasn't had time either to let familiarity breed contempt or to realize how blasphemously
08:04: Eli is letting his sons live. But he doesn't yet know the
08:11: Lord either. The problem was that the word of the Lord was rare in those days.
08:17: In other words, there wasn't much speaking of the word of God. And since God wasn't speaking much, it wasn't possible for many people to know him, like Samuel.
08:26: When God doesn't speak, people don't know him. The word of the
08:31: Lord was rare, literally like a precious jewel, so treasured when it appeared.
08:40: Where the word of God is treasured, it won't be rare for long. With Samuel, starts the era of the prophets.
08:48: There's 1 Samuel, there's Nathan, there's lots of other prophets we really don't know much about, then Elijah, Elisha, then the writing prophets like Isaiah, Micah, the good
08:56: Micah, and so on. The word of the Lord was rare and so treasured, and so God sent prophets to give it.
09:05: Where it's treasured, it will soon be revealed. It will soon flourish.
09:10: It won't be rare for much longer. The prophet Amos, on the other hand, showed that where it's not treasured, it will soon become rare.
09:22: Amos said in Amos chapter 8, verse 11, that since they are not, Israel is not heeding the word of the
09:28: Lord, soon they will not be hearing it. That God will send a famine of hearing the word of God.
09:35: When there's no heeding the word, there's soon no hearing of it. Now, perhaps now, in this time, in Samuel's time, that Israel's decline has now become so obvious, now on full display, that in the tabernacle itself, you know, earnest pilgrims coming into the tabernacle, and what they see is corruption in the tabernacle itself.
10:01: Eli's son's not caring about God's word, not caring about worship or adultery.
10:09: Maybe some people like Elkanah and Hannah began to treasure the word of God, to crave it and to plead to the
10:15: Lord to reveal himself. And so he closed the womb of Hannah, so she would give a vow to give
10:22: Samuel to the Lord, and this could happen. The problem is that there was no frequent vision at the end of verse 1.
10:33: Now, God's people couldn't hear God because he's not speaking, and they couldn't see him either in their hearts or their lives or prophetic visions, for that matter, but any kind of sense that God is alive and working in their life.
10:49: They didn't have that because he was not revealing himself. So people did not know him.
10:55: That's the problem. Second, the prompting, from verses 2 to 9. Samuel has to be prompted to listen to the
11:03: Lord because he doesn't know him yet. There was no frequent vision, and not coincidentally, notice verse 1, no frequent vision.
11:11: In verse 2, Eli has dim vision. The chief priest could hardly see. The priest's lack of vision demonstrated the lack of vision, and Eli's lack of physical vision demonstrated the lack of spiritual vision of the people.
11:26: Where there is no vision, Proverbs 29, verse 18 says, the people perish. They perish because they don't know God. They can't see him in their life.
11:33: And without knowing God, they cast off restraint like Eli's sons. They become lawless, become sensate.
11:39: There's no revelation in their heart that the Lord is real. And where there's no vision, there's no revelation of God, there's no knowledge of him, no relationship with him, then there's no limit.
11:49: People do whatever is right in their own eyes. And Eli is a literal representation of what happens when there's no spiritual vision from God.
11:59: Eli was asleep one night, says the lamp of God had not yet gone out in verse 3. Some people think, and I didn't really know this myself until this week, but some people think that, talk about their spiritual light had not yet gone out.
12:12: Don't hide your light under a bushel, that kind of thing, that had not yet gone out, that hadn't yet been extinguished by their sin.
12:19: But what it really refers to, as it turns out, is there's a literal lamp in the tabernacle that according to the law in Exodus, chapter 27, verse 21, was supposed to remain lit from evening to morning.
12:31: In other words, through the night. So the tabernacle was supposed to have a light on. So if you saw it at night, there would be a light on in it, a lamp lit.
12:39: And, of course, to keep it lit from evening to morning, that means they had to put enough oil in it every night to last until the sunrise.
12:47: So when it says the lamp of God had not yet gone out, means simply that the lamp was still burning, so we know that it was still dark outside.
12:55: It's early morning. It's before dawn. Samuel was asleep in the tabernacle where the ark was and the
13:01: Holy of Holies itself, apparently. He wasn't supposed to be there, but that's against God's law, but he didn't probably know that.
13:08: You know, they probably just set up a mat there for him. And he sleeps where he's told. And then he hears a voice,
13:15: Samuel. He assumes it was Eli's voice. You know, Eli is old. He's nearly blind.
13:20: And so he's probably calling out for Samuel's help frequently. Samuel runs to Eli, notice he runs to him this first time.
13:27: Here I am, for you called me, in verse 5. What? What? Probably groggy.
13:33: I didn't call. Lie down again. Go back to bed. Could have sworn he called me.
13:40: He's probably thinking to himself. Second time Samuel hears a voice. Samuel. He runs to Eli again.
13:48: Here I am, for you called me, in verse 6. Eli, again, denies it.
13:53: I did not call. Lie down again. Samuel doesn't know the voice of the
13:59: Lord because he doesn't yet know the Lord. You can't recognize the voice of someone you don't know. He didn't know the
14:04: Lord because at the end of verse 7, the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him. So God has it been revealed to him.
14:12: There's no knowing God without knowing his word. But now the voice is prompting him to listen and finally start to know
14:23: God. For the third time, the voice calls, Samuel. Samuel gets up.
14:29: It doesn't say he ran this time. So he's getting a little tired of running to Eli. Maybe he's thinking, in verse 8, maybe he's thinking, you know,
14:37: I got to attend to this old man again. He's getting senile. You know, he's calling for me and then he's forgetting what he called me for.
14:45: Here I am, you called me. Eli figures out that there's something odd going on. Maybe supernatural.
14:51: Maybe the Lord is calling Samuel. People are eager to hear from God again. The word of the Lord was rare. It's precious, like a jewel.
14:57: And so Eli tells Samuel to go back to bed. And if he hears the voice again say,
15:04: Eli prompts him what to say, speak, Lord. And notice it's all capital letters,
15:11: Lord. So it's not just a respectful Sir, like a man is calling, but Lord, Yahweh, the
15:18: I Am, speak, Lord, God, for I, for your servant, that is me,
15:25: I'm your servant, hears. I'll listen this time. He's prompting
15:31: Samuel to listen to the Lord because Samuel doesn't know the
15:36: Lord yet. God was calling and he kept thinking, Samuel kept thinking it was a man.
15:42: God can call us. And we think it's just people. It's just my mother telling me to go to church again.
15:50: It's my husband nagging me to listen to this religious stuff again. It's just the preacher, you know, saying his usual stuff again.
15:57: I want to go back to sleep. They need prompting. It's not me.
16:03: God is calling you. Say, speak, Lord. I'll listen.
16:11: So Samuel goes back to bed waiting for the voice that should start becoming familiar by now, prompted to listen this time.
16:17: Third, the prophecy. Starting verse 10, the word of the Lord was rare. Now here it is.
16:22: Here's the prophecy from the Lord. It says, the Lord came and stood this time.
16:29: Apparently there was a vision of some kind. There were no frequent visions. Remember verse 1? And now
16:34: Samuel hears from God and he sees a vision. This is
16:39: Samuel's introduction to the Lord. Now the modern assumption is that if you want someone to get to know you, you want someone to want to get to know you, that you start out with the most attractive about you.
16:51: Look at any dating site. Everyone say first off what's positive about them, what's attractive, inviting you.
16:57: I'm an adventurous, curious, ambitious, athletic, super intelligent person with great personality, lots of humility.
17:05: You'd be crazy not to want me. How do you think the Lord is going to introduce himself to Samuel? Maybe it's like the old, you remember the four spiritual laws track?
17:14: You ever seen that? The Lord loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. That's the way they start out. That's not the way
17:20: God starts here, is it? Now instead, starting verse 10, calls Samuel again. This time, interestingly, he calls his name twice.
17:26: Samuel, Samuel, for this fourth time. Samuel responds, prompted, speak, for your servant hears.
17:37: And the Lord begins, immediately launching into a prophecy, announcing judgment on Eli.
17:46: Behold, look at this. The Lord says, I'm about to do a thing in Israel. Notice the
17:51: Lord does it. I, the Lord speaking, I am about to do a thing.
17:57: The Lord does it. Even though in the next couple of chapters, what is described here is what the Lord is doing.
18:04: In the next couple of chapters, it's the Philistines doing it. And an apparent, what we call an accident, when
18:11: Eli falls over backwards and breaks his neck. But the Lord here says that he, the
18:17: Lord says, I am doing this thing. He's behind it all. He's doing it. When people hear the news of it, the
18:23: Lord says their ears will tingle. This is one of four times this phrase is used in the Bible, ears tingling.
18:30: The three other times in 2 Kings and Jeremiah, it's about the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple. It's an odd expression, your ears will tingle.
18:37: It implies you're shocked. You're devastated. It's something so you would have never expected.
18:44: You just can't, like there's resistance. This can't possibly be true. What I'm hearing, maybe today we'd say, what
18:50: I'm seeing, see it on TV. You're shocked. You're devastated. You're horrified. It's like what you felt in September 11, 2001, when you saw the towers hit and then crumble and the feeling that there could be attacks anywhere.
19:02: Your ears tingled. The original word implies shaking or trembling, like with fear.
19:08: When God's prophecy is fulfilled, it will cause people to stagger. This is
19:14: Samuel's introduction to the Lord. So far, he's been surrounded by people who talk about the Lord of hosts, and yet they either violate his word, they usually worship for himself or ignoring what
19:25: God says about worship and sex and acting as if there will be no judgment, there's no God to have to fear.
19:31: They believe there's a God, but you don't have to fear him. There's no word of his to have to tremble at.
19:38: But Samuel's introduction to God shows that all of that is wrong. All of what he's seen demonstrated from Eli's sons right in front of him is wrong, that God is holy and awesome and fearsome if you blaspheme him.
19:55: If you're a hireling, you know the term hireling? Separate from a shepherd, he's hired to do it, and if he's attacked, he'll just run away.
20:02: He's just in it for the money. If you're a hireling, like Eli's sons, using worship to enrich yourself, to keep that iron rice bowl and indulge all your lust, that's why you're in this religious business.
20:16: Well, you better tremble. Lesson one, Samuel, in knowing God. God is holy.
20:25: On that day, in verse 12, the day when everyone's ears will tingle, the
20:30: Lord says, I will fulfill again against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house from beginning to end.
20:36: All that that unnamed prophet in chapter 2, he said that Eli's house will be nearly wiped out.
20:43: He said, I will cut off your strength and the strength of your father's house, and the sign will be that Hophni and Phinehas will die on the same day.
20:50: That'll all be fulfilled from beginning to end. Notice how determined the Lord sounds in verse 13.
20:55: I declare to him, to Eli, that I am about to.
21:01: Again, God says, I am doing this. Don't think this is an accident. Don't think this is the Philistines acting outside my control.
21:06: The time is coming very soon to punish his house, his family forever.
21:13: The Lord is introducing himself to Samuel by telling him that the events that are soon to take place in the very next chapter are his doing.
21:22: His hand at work, using the Philistines, using what we would call accidents to bring about judgment on Eli for what up until now,
21:30: Samuel has probably just grown up thinking, you know, this is business as usual. He's a child raised in this environment.
21:37: This is kind of the way things are done. The priests always pick out the best meat for themselves before it's cooked. They threat the worshipers if they don't go along, and they're strangely friendly to those young women.
21:46: Samuel is learning that the Lord he's heard a lot about in this tyrannical is different than the way he's treated by these priests.
21:59: Some of the things people take for granted in churches today are corrupt, and they don't know it.
22:05: They just take it for granted. They think this is the way things have always been done. Churches is like this.
22:10: This is the way the church is. Sermons are always topical motivational speeches about my felt needs, how
22:18: I can be successful. That's what they're supposed to be, aren't they? Music has always been about our feelings. So what it's for?
22:25: The absence of psalm singing, even though the New Testament twice commands us to sing psalms. Who does that? Unrepentant sin is not addressed by the church.
22:32: The lack of discipline, many people in churches in America today have never seen the Lord Jesus' words in Matthew 18 followed.
22:40: Probably all of them know about it, but no one follows it. I'm exaggerating a little bit.
22:46: Jesus gave a direct command to his churches how to deal with sin, and it is now widely ignored. People can go for decades.
22:53: They're raised in churches like this, growing up in this environment, thinking this is normal. This is the way things are done.
23:00: And there will be no judgment for it. They just assume. But one day God will introduce himself.
23:06: And those he introduces himself to will learn different. The Lord introduces himself to Samuel with a prophecy in which he declares that Eli, Eli who didn't personally do these sins, will be punished personally for the iniquity that he knew.
23:28: Because his sons were blaspheming God. This is God speaking. God's saying, Eli, you knew your sons were blaspheming me, and he did not restrain them.
23:39: He allowed blasphemy to go on. He didn't want it to happen. He didn't rebuke them for it. But he wouldn't exercise his power.
23:45: He's the chief priest. He's the judge over Israel. He wouldn't use his power to stop them.
23:51: The holiness of God didn't mean more to him than his son's career. Therefore, in verse 14, because of what
23:57: Eli allows, I swear, God declares in verse 13 and God swears in verse 14, you're absolutely determined the iniquity of Eli's house shall not be atoned for by sacrifice or offering forever.
24:19: It's an unforgivable sin. There is no sacrifice that can buy forgiveness for that sin because it has abused the sacrifices themselves.
24:31: It's like blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes you born again. It gives you a new heart so you can cry out,
24:38: Abba, Father. If you slander the Holy Spirit by calling his work of the devil, there's no forgiveness for that.
24:46: You're insulting the very one and blaspheming the very one who can save you, who can apply the sacrifice of Christ to your life.
24:55: Like here, where the very sacrifice that could have atoned for their sin, they have abused for themselves.
25:03: So there's no sacrifice for them. Well, the first lesson, Samuel, in knowing
25:08: God is that he's so holy. Don't insult him.
25:14: Don't think you can get away with blaspheming him, just living in outright disobedience to him. Don't think that you can abuse what he's given for salvation and make it about yourself and your belly and just get away with it.
25:26: That's the prophecy. Next is the preacher.
25:33: Samuel has received the prophecy, but to be a prophet, he'll have to be able to deliver it, to be a preacher.
25:42: He must learn the hard task of telling people what they don't want to hear.
25:49: After hearing from the Lord, he just lays there. Notice how he just lays there. He doesn't go running to Eli to tell him what the
25:58: Lord had said. When it's time to get up, apparently his job is to open the doors to the tabernacle so, you know, they're open for business.
26:06: He does that as usual. In verse 15, Samuel was afraid to tell the vision to Eli.
26:12: It's bad news. You know, Eli might hold it against him. Samuel was afraid to tell the vision to Eli.
26:21: Preachers today are often afraid to tell people what they don't want to hear. The most popular preacher in America, Joel Osteen, notably doesn't talk about sin.
26:33: He says that people already feel, he says, beaten down, and he wants to lift people up.
26:40: You know, maybe the gospel would do that, but never mind. Today, people expect the preacher to lift them up, tell them what they want to hear, make them feel good about themselves, that they have no sins to repent of, they have nothing to fear, there's no judgment coming, there's no
26:54: God to tremble at. Oh, sure, there's a God, but he's on your side. He's to give you your best life now.
27:00: So don't worry about it. Just kind of learn his secrets to success. That's what it's all about. Indeed, they'll insist, many people today will insist, that if a preacher makes them feel convicted, what they call ashamed, something is wrong, not with them, but with the preacher.
27:15: And so the hirelings are afraid to tell people God's Word, because they're looking around, man, if I tell them this,
27:21: I might lose my job. Oh, they'll tell people the popular parts. And so they'll skip around Scripture, verse here, verse there, to give topical sermons on how to be successful, how to have your best life now, always lift them up, except when it comes to tithing.
27:36: Not giving enough is the one thing they'll be willing to make people feel a little uncomfortable about. Hmm, I wonder why.
27:44: Well, anyway, they'll probably never come to 1 Samuel 2, verse 25. We saw last week it was the will of the
27:50: Lord to put them to death. So people really don't know God.
27:57: Someone once criticized me for too much convicting, being a downer. Seriously.
28:04: Right up the road from here, by the way. Someone else told me that I shouldn't preach anything someone disagrees with.
28:10: I guess I should always be about lifting up, right? One of the best compliments I got was from Molly Pinkham, remember her?
28:16: Who used to come here before they moved to Greensboro, her and her husband Adam. She wrote that here she was convicted of sins she didn't even know she had.
28:27: Sorry. Not sorry. That's what happens when you preach the Word. The Word of God, the
28:32: Bible, is our prophecy, it's our vision of God. And if we preach the whole thing, well, you're going to be convicted probably of sins sometimes you didn't know you had as you're getting to know
28:41: God. Thank you, Molly. Samuel is afraid to preach the
28:46: Word to Eli. But Eli called him, this time for real, in verse 16. He won't let him go.
28:53: He won't let him go without telling him. Samuel, my son, he calls him. Notice Eli is practically
28:59: Samuel's adoptive father. He's the one raising him, providing for him, feeding him, all that. And Samuel is supposed to tell him that destruction is soon coming on him and there's no hope, there's no atonement for it.
29:15: But Eli gives him no choice in verse 17. What was it that he told you? Do not hide it from me.
29:21: So he knows it's bad news. May God do so to you, the judgment you heard.
29:26: And more, if you hide anything from me of all that he told you. Actually, good instructions here for Samuel's later career.
29:35: And so in verse 18, Samuel tells him everything, all that doom and gloom.
29:41: And Eli responded, it is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him.
29:47: I don't think this is pious. It sounds really pious. But I don't think this is pious dedication, but passive resignation.
29:55: He long ago decided not to do what he can do to stop the blasphemy. He probably doesn't even take the warning of judgment seriously anymore.
30:03: If he does, he probably thinks it will be long after he's dead. But he's just not taking it seriously anymore at this point, which is why when it comes, he reacts like he does.
30:13: But the breakthrough is that Samuel is a prophet. He decided that he's willing to declare the
30:19: Word of God even when it might hurt. He's not just going to comfort the afflicted, like Joel Osteen, but he's going to afflict the comfortable, if need be.
30:28: Finally, a fifth, the prophet. Samuel got the call.
30:35: The Lord was with him, in verse 19. As he grows up, he's recognized as a prophet. The Word of the
30:40: Lord had been rare. Now Samuel has it. And so the Lord doesn't let his words fall to the ground.
30:47: Let's go unfulfilled. Just empty words, just kind of blathering, pious sayings about having your best life now.
30:55: They're not like that. Samuel now knew God, and so he knew the voice of God. Since Samuel was hearing the
31:01: Word of God, Samuel spoke the words of God, and so others could get to know
31:07: God. So all Israel, just from Dan to Beersheba, the far north to the far south, knew that Samuel was established or confirmed, because they are ordained possibly, as a prophet.
31:20: The Lord appeared to Samuel at Shiloh. In that last verse, the Lord revealed himself to Samuel so that now
31:28: Samuel really knows the Lord. God revealed himself by or in, that is, through the
31:39: Word of God. The Lord reveals himself through His Word.
31:44: There's no getting to know God without His Word. We can't get to know
31:50: God strolling in the forest, enjoying nature, playing golf, staring up at the star -filled sky.
31:58: Now maybe God's Spirit could use that to prompt us to remember His Word, the heavens declare the glory of God.
32:05: But there's no knowing God, no being in relationship with God without His Word.
32:11: People who believe that they know God through their feelings, they feel this is right, they feel that they're close to God, they feel that He approves of their favorite sin, they're deceived.
32:25: They don't know God. You can't know God apart from His Word. That's why we're doing what we're doing right now.
32:33: We're reading the Word, we're preaching the Word, we're singing the Word, so that through it you can know
32:39: God. The Spirit of God can be using the Word of God to reveal
32:45: Himself to you. Do you recognize
32:51: His voice and His Word? Now this doesn't just mean mentally learning
32:56: Scripture, reading it, memorizing it, singing it. It is that, and you should be doing that, but it's not just that.
33:02: It can't be boiled down to just a mental exercise. The Lord speaks through it. And if you're one of His sheep, you recognize
33:11: His voice. Jesus said, my sheep, hear my voice. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
33:19: The Word that Samuel began to recognize as he heard it from here on, the Word that never fell to the ground, never became nothing, became futile, became just empty, it never failed.
33:30: The Word through which he got to know the Lord, that Word became a man full of grace and truth.
33:40: And that Word was the good shepherd who speaks to you if you're one of His sheep. And if you're one of His sheep, you know
33:50: His voice. Through Him, that's through the Word, you can know
33:57: God. So, do you recognize