This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “I Samuel 1-7” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, August 31, 1997.
About this sermon
Samuel’s calling in the night gets misread more often than not, treated as a template for every believer’s personal experience rather than something genuinely unique to him. Three specific features set his childhood ministry apart from any ordinary calling. Even here, the coming of Christ’s kingdom is already present, not merely anticipated.
Sermon transcript
We read this morning from 1 Samuel chapter 3, beginning at verse 1. 1 Samuel chapter 3. Give your attention to God’s holy word. And the child Samuel ministered unto the Lord before Elon. And the words of the Lord were precious in those days. There was no open vision.
And it came to pass at that time when Eli was laid down in his place and his eyes began to wax dim that he could not see, and ere the lamp of God went out in the temple of the Lord where the ark of God was, and Samuel was laid down to sleep, that the Lord called Samuel and he answered.
And he ran unto Eli and said, Here am I, for thou callest me. And he said, I called not, lie down again. He went and lay down. And the Lord called yet again, Samuel. And Samuel rose and went to Eli and said, Here am I, for thou didst call me. And he answered, I called not, my son, lie down again.
Samuel did not know the Lord, neither was the word of the Lord yet revealed unto him. And the Lord called Samuel again the third time, and he arose and went to Eli and said, Here am I, for thou didst call me. And Eli perceived that the Lord had called the child. Therefore Eli said unto Samuel, Go, lie down, and it shall be, if he call thee, that thou shalt say, Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth. So Samuel went and lay down in his place, and the Lord came and stood and called, as at other times, Samuel, Samuel. Then Samuel answered, Speak, for thy servant heareth.
And then turning over to the book of Acts, Chapter 3. Peter and John, in this context, have ministered to the lame man in the gate of the temple, and they have healed him in the name of Christ. We begin our reading at verse 11. And as the lame man, which was healed, held Peter and John, all the people ran together unto them in the porch that is called Solomon’s, greatly wondering. And when Peter saw it, he answered unto the people, Ye men of Israel, why marvel ye at this?
Or why look ye so earnestly on us, as though by our own power or holiness we had made this man to walk? The God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob, the God of our fathers, hath glorified his son Jesus, whom ye delivered up and denied him in the presence of Pilate when he was determined to let him go. But ye denied the Holy One and the just, and desired a murderer to be granted unto you, and killed the Prince of life, whom God hath raised from the dead, whereof we are witnesses.
And his name, through faith in his name, hath made this man strong, whom ye see and know. Yea, the faith which is by him hath given him this perfect soundness in the presence of you all. And now, brethren, I know that through ignorance ye did it, as did also your rulers.
But those things which God before had showed by the mouth of all his prophets that Christ should suffer, he hath so fulfilled. Repent ye, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord. And he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you, whom the heaven must receive until the time of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began.” For Moses truly said unto the fathers, A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren right unto me. Him shall ye hear in all things whatsoever he shall say unto you. And it shall come to pass that every soul which will not hear that prophet shall be destroyed from among the people. Yea, and all the prophets from Samuel and those that follow after As many as have spoken have likewise foretold of these days. Ye are the children of the prophets and of the covenant which God made with our fathers, saying unto Abraham, And in thy seed shall all the kindreds of the earth be blessed.
Unto you, first, God, having raised up his Son Jesus, sent him to bless you in turning away every one of you from his iniquities. with me now. Our God, our hope for your word is not with regard to ourselves alone. You move our souls and our hearts to consider the horizons of your church. We pray, Father, for your blessing upon your people today, and Lord, may you grant grace to the many who rise before them to declare your word. And Father, those who are of faith, may you bless, and those who are not, may you convert. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
The story of Samuel’s call in 1 Samuel 3 is deceptively simple. It is also something of a swamp, where pools of quicksand await the all-too-confident that erring step. It is a familiar story, as familiar as the story of Hannah, Samuel’s mother, which preceded it. It is a story often used as a ready-made message for children. Not unlike the message we hear in the hymn we have just sung. The appeal runs along this line.
Samuel was a child who received the word of God and was obedient to it. So also, the children of the Church are to receive the word of God and be obedient to it. In fact, it is best if you, the children of this Church, are encouraged, as Hymn 655 endeavors to do, to speak about your own reception of the word and your obedience to it in the most personal terms. That you personally might have Samuel’s ear, Samuel’s heart, Samuel’s mind, being able to say, Out of your own unmurmuring faith, obedient and resigned, may I read with childlike eyes truths hidden from the wise.” Now, I want you to know that our great God certainly wants you, the children in this church, listening today. to receive his word and to obey his commands. And yes, there is a link between you, a child, and Samuel the child in this story, and at the very level of his example to you and for you. And yes, it is appropriate for you and for us all, for that matter, to sing Hymn 655 in the Trinity Hymnal.
But it is also important that you begin to learn that this hymn And the interpretation of our story about Samuel that I have shared with you thus far have definite, certain limitations. It is the Church’s failure, and particularly the Church’s failure to you, to deal with those limitations. It is these limitations this morning that concern me in my message. For the Church’s habit of leaving this story about the boy Samuel at the level of a mere example is actually, at the close of the day, quite destructive.
If all we see here is the material for a children’s hymn with a lesson about listening to and obeying the word of God, then we have already wandered off into that swamp of which I spoke, and are already up to our necks in quicksand. Why do I say this? Well, to begin with, as much as Samuel, the child, is like all other children, and as much as Samuel, the child before the Lord, is like other children before the Lord, with obligations to him, at the very same time, this figure, Samuel, is utterly different.
How many of us here today, when we were children, were deposited by our mothers in the Church to be raised by the minister? I might ask further. How many Jewish children can you think of in the course of Scripture? were so deposited. Not many, I judge. And how many of those Jewish children, how many of us, has ever been awakened by God himself calling out our names in the middle of the night? And how many of those Jewish children, how many of us have received a message directly from God comparable to that message received by Samuel? You get my point, I trust.
Because Samuel is unique, because he is so different We can never be satisfied with the approach that sees him as merely a child like all other children. But I trust you are also able to see further the implications of the point I am making. Some of you are ahead of me. since there are those in the Church who have built upon the figure of Samuel in the interests of their expectations concerning the common operations of the Holy Spirit.
For these people, not only is Samuel the pattern of every child’s religious experience, He is also the promise, yes, in Old Testament form, to many a believer with regard to their expectation concerning spiritual endowment. Therefore, contrary to what I have been saying this morning, what I have been endeavoring to communicate, these people fully expect their religious experience to be just like Samuel. Samuel was visited by God in the dead of night in some substantive, discernible, and recognizable form, and that’s just how he will visit me. Samuel heard the very voice of God with his own ears, and so will I. Samuel received visual and verbal revelation from God, and so have I. Samuel was a prophet, and I am nothing less.
The severe danger to the moral and religious example approach to biblical interpretation, when it is used in exclusivity, is more than just the simplistic level at which it leaves the Scriptures, but the way in which it encourages us in the Church to think of all moral and religious examples in Scripture to be common to every believer in every age, especially now that we have entered the so-called age of the Spirit. So if God spoke audibly to Samuel, he must speak audibly to me. If Jesus’ disciples received miraculous powers, I can receive them too. If some early Christian spoke in revelatory, miraculous tongues, I can do the same.
We are courting disaster and chaos with such an approach to the Bible. You see, as I have been intimating, the heart of the Bible’s story about Samuel is not so how Samuel and we are alike, but how Samuel and we are different. In fact, the overall testimony of Scripture emphasizes just how unique Samuel was. If we are true to our confession concerning Scripture’s authority and sufficiency, While Scripture is its own best interpreter, we will find great help in appropriating Samuel from the light shining from the whole of God’s Word.
Let me remind you of a few helpful texts. First of all, Psalm 99, verses 6 and 7. These verses read this way in the New American Standard Version. Moses and Aaron were among his priests, and Samuel was among those who called on his name. They called upon the Lord, and he answered them. He spoke to them in the pillar of cloud, they kept his testimonies, and the statute that he gave them.” Now, I want you to notice a couple of things about these verses. First, Moses, Aaron, and Samuel are mentioned in the same breath.
They are treated as engaged in a common ministry. It seems specifically a ministry of intercession. The emphasis seems to be on their common priestly office. But in addition to this, secondly, all three of these men in this text seem to be involved, strangely, in the same events.
This is apparent in verse 7, where the psalmist says, the Lord spoke to these men in the pillar of cloud, and also that these men kept the statute which the Lord gave them. Now, it is important to understand this latter reference. That reference to the statute at the end of verse 7 means, specifically, the law and the event of the giving of the law at Sinai. Its connection with what appears above should be obvious to us. The statute being the event of the revelation of the law at Sinai is coupled here with the appearance of the pillar of cloud. That cloud that accompanied Israel, but especially punctuated the ministry of Moses.
But at this point you are now scratching your head. Because you know Samuel lives some 300 years after Moses and Aaron. And as you remember things, as illustrious as Samuel’s ministry was, you don’t recall any appearance of the pillar of cloud during the time of his service. Is the psalmist therefore daft? Is he mistaken in his appropriation of the historical detail of Israel’s past?
Of course not. He knows that history very well. Probably knows them better than we do. But the psalmist here is making a determined doctrinal point, a determined and insistent theological point. Samuel, you see, is an extension of the Old Testament redemptive event at the Red Sea. He is at peace with it. It is as if he were there. Such is his relationship to it. Not only that, it is as if he were present at Sinai itself, when Moses and Aaron were privy to the deposits of the law of God.
Samuel becomes a participant in the accomplishment of these events, and a servant in the interests of a ministry that flows forth from them. Samuel’s labors, therefore, are consistent with what has preceded him. They are the further realization, the extension of God’s purpose already struck in the Exodus salvation. The effect is such that we see Samuel as subordinate then to that great definitive salvation in the Exodus. He himself defined by it, according to what the psalmist says. His meaning, even his calling out, in 1 Samuel 3, so regularly subjected to the most simplistic interpretation, is not grasped By making this man an example merely of a child’s piety, as much as we want to see our children pious, and even as pious as Samuel, much less is Samuel’s meaning and his call to be understood in terms of the potential that he has for a common personal spiritual empowerment. we like him hearing voices at midnight. Instead, Samuel in his meaning for us is more carved out as unique in the history of salvation, truly as unique as Moses and Aaron themselves.
And as such, he is bound to the further implication of God’s rescue of Israel from Egypt, and the ongoing story of his people. But there is another dimension to this whole matter, to which we must refer before we conclude. It is a dimension hinted at by another Old Testament passage that then brought out most clearly by the New Testament text that we read this morning. The other Old Testament passage is Jeremiah 15 verse 1, which reads this way, again in God is speaking to the prophet, even though Moses and Samuel were to stand before me, my heart would not be with this people.
Send them away from me, and let them go. I don’t have time to develop it for you this morning, but I certainly hope that you caught the force and the power of those last words. Send them away from you and let them go. You can almost hear the echo, let my people go, in the conclusion of that line.
And you understand the significance of these words. It is overwhelming. since these words actually seem to envision a reversal of the undoing of the exodus itself. God telling Pharaoh to let his people go, now these people being let go by him for destruction. But we’re dealing here with the mention of Samuel, aren’t we? The beginning part of this verse. The mention of Moses and Samuel together is not merely in light of their common, earnest, and successful mediation for Israel in the past, but because both of them are what we might ethical and pivotal figures in the history of salvation.
As to how ethical, how pivotal, we now turn to that New Testament passage that I referred to, Acts 3.24. It reads this way. again in the New American Standard. And likewise, Peter speaking, he just having referred to Moses in the earlier verses, the previous verses, and likewise, all the prophets who have spoken from Samuel and his successors onward, also announced these days. Once more, as in the previous texts, Moses and Samuel are joined together. Once more, their unified service to the ongoing history of salvation is stressed. But here, now, at last, is clear indication of Samuel’s true uniqueness and the uncommon service that he renders, and that even distinct from Moses. You are at the end of the line, and it is at this point that it is to become clear to you.
From Acts 3.24, it then would seem that the prophetic ministry has now, with Samuel, entered a most distinctive stage, and that with his call, 1 Samuel 3, as if the prophets were to be identified and marked from Samuel, as if a new era had begun with the appearance of Samuel and the performance of his ministry, as if the prophets themselves had a true beginning in and from this figure. This is what I meant by saying that Moses and Samuel are truly ethical and pivotal figures in the whole of the story of salvation. Jeremiah’s mention of them is meant in part to pinpoint the epochs. Moses and the epoch of the law, and then Samuel and the epoch of the prophets.
And here’s the conclusion. you will find the meaning of the boy Samuel, and you will find the root of entrance into the story about his crawl, not just in a consideration of the continuity between the epochs of the law and the prophets, but in a consideration of that transition from the one epoch to the other.
If you are still with me, and I know some of you are, if you are still with me in this exercise, it is this transition now, from the law to the prophets, that previews the coming transition from the entirety of the Old Testament into the New. You’re going to see it laid out in front of you. All of the anticipatory aspects of the New Covenant are going to begin to spring upon your mind. It’s going to explode on your consciousness. You’ll open the text, you’ll see Samuel, but you’ll see more. You’ll see the New Covenant, the New Testament. You’ll see the coming of the Kingdom. You’ll see the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.
I’m trying to tell you how to read your Bible. I’ll say it for you once more, so I might impress it upon your minds. The transition from the Law to the Prophets, from Moses to Samuel, previews the coming transition from the Old Testament to the New, with the arrival of the Kingdom of God in Jesus Christ, the Lord’s Anointed. we will be approaching in the coming messages Samuel’s call with these things in mind, with nothing less than the gospel before our eyes.
In the meantime, and while you’re singing hymn 655, child and adult alike, in obediently receiving the word of God, endeavor by all the spiritual energy that you can muster to read with childlike eyes truths hidden from the wise. Those truths, I tell you, are Christ and his gospel. Yes, we who delight in the simple things of childhood and the simplicity of children. But may we press on to the mature things.
Lord, help us that we might be ourselves a help to our children, that we with them might read your word rightly. Father, to this end, we plead with you, not only for ourselves, but for your church as a whole, that she would truly be the people of your word, in the deepest and most profound sense. May we never be satisfied with mere moralism, may we run away from mysticism, May we find ourselves, O God, rather in your word, delighted with its presentation of Christ, the full range of the history of salvation, even as it declares to us our place in that history.
The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.