It’s hard to imagine living in the dark ages.
For many of us, it’s hard to imagine living before 1990. No internet. Never mind life before 1960. Cars a luxury. Never mind life before the war.
Far worse than living in the technological dark age is to live in the moral dark age. In a society without law and order. Everyone just looks after themselves. Nothing is sacred. Total anarchy. And you live in fear.
1 and 2 Samuel in their context
The books of Samuel in the Bible tell the story of Israel coming out of her dark ages. Before 1 Samuel is a little book, Ruth. And before that is the book of Judges, that tells several hundred years of history.
The closing chapters of Judges are some of the blackest in the whole Bible. Indeed, things are so bleak, that the whole world is on its head.
You’d have thought that if you wanted to meet decent, upright people, your best bet would be to go and find the people of God, the nation of Israel. Instead, it turns out that they are just as bad as their neighbours who have never known this loving God. In fact, the Israelites were actually worse. There’s chaos, anarchy, selfishness and suffering on such a scale you’d never believe it. These were dark days indeed.
And then the book of 1 Samuel opens, and we meet an old man called Eli. He was the priest who was in charge of the worship of God. We meet him as his two sons are taking over the day-to-day work. They love their new job. It’s full of opportunities to exploit. They do whatever they fancy. If someone offered an animal to God, they’d keep the best cuts of meat for a slap up meal for themselves.
No wonder Israel was in the dark with leaders like this. The priests should have been leading the people, teaching them the right way to go. Instead, they embody the problem.
As you look around, our own society sometimes feels little different. It’s true our culture has advanced considerably. We’ve become more refined at it. But there are some atrocious things that go on today. They don’t just happen in Nigeria; they happen over here as well. Every day you can open the papers and read of the most appalling crimes. A violent man escapes from prison; the police catch up with him, but in those few days he appears to have committed armed robbery. We read of terrible things done years ago by sports stars and entertainers that we trusted. And over the page, in the same paper, is a public official using their expenses to line their own pocket.
In some ways, we do live in the dark ages after all. Which makes 1 and 2 Samuel a good book to read, because it speaks of God bringing Israel out of the dark period of the judges, and into better times.
Samuel – a new hope
In our story, we meet a young man named Samuel.
We’ve actually met him already in chapter 1. A young woman named Hannah was not able to have children. That ought to get our attention. The last time we met this problem, we were in the book of Genesis. Sarah, Rebekah and Rachel were all barren, and by a miracle of God we ended up with Isaac, Jacob, Benjamin and Jacob.
It was to them that God had made the most wonderful promises. Through their family, God would bring the world from being cursed to knowing his blessing. All nations would be blessed through them. It’s a plan that seems to have been a bit derailed by the time we reach the book of Judges.
And then 1 Samuel opens with the story of a young woman who can’t have children. And so as readers we start to wonder: What if God does the miracle again and gives Hannah a child? Might this be God coming to resume his plan to bless the world?
Wonderfully, she gives birth to a little boy Samuel. And she’s so grateful to God, that she dedicates him fully to God. Samuel will live at the temple and help out. He’ll be her gift to God.
Samuel grows up. He’s now a young man. And that’s where we meet him, in 1 Samuel chapter 3.
Rare Word
As the story opens, the scene is set for us. We’re told that the word of the Lord was rare. God was not in the habit of speaking. God was silent.
And then we’re given two more details that symbolise this. First there’s Eli, the ageing priest. Verse 2: “Eli, whose eyes were becoming so weak that he could barely see, was lying down in his usual place”. He’s got failing eyesight. It’s a physical description, but it fits his character. He was blind to the ways his sons were abusing their office. He was in the dark.
And Eli was lying down. That’s what you’d expect at night-time, but it’s his only posture in this story. Even the following morning, he has to call Samuel to come and talk to him. Eli’s blind. In the dark. Inert. Doing nothing. We could almost say he was a waste of space.
And yet wonderfully, God’s about to use him.
The other detail we get is in verse 3: The lamp of God had not yet gone out. They kept a lamp burning in the temple to symbolise God’s presence. We may be in the dark ages, but by God’s mercy, the lamp hasn’t actually gone out. It’s going out, but things aren’t yet totally black.
The scene is set. We’re in the dark. And the heart of the problem is that nobody has heard God speak for a long time. Probably, they don’t want him to speak. It would be too much of an inconvenience to have to pay attention to him.
Well, all of that is about to change.
A word to Samuel
There they are, just going off to sleep, when Samuel hears a voice. It calls his name, “Samuel”. It must have been a very clear voice. Samuel was in no doubt what it said. He just assumed it was Eli, so rushed to report for duty. But it wasn’t Eli, so Samuel was sent back to bed.
It happens a second time. And a third time. It’s a comic scene. Not dissimilar to ringing the doorbell and running away. Samuel thinks Eli keeps calling, only to deny it. Eli wishes Samuel would go to sleep and stop pretending.
But then finally Eli twigs. It’s God who’s calling the boy. Neither of them had ever heard God’s voice before. Of course they didn’t recognise him. So Eli tells him, verse 9: Go and lie down, and if he calls you, say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening’. So Samuel goes back to bed.
And sure enough, the voice calls a fourth time. This time he’s ready. Verse 10: Then Samuel said, ‘Speak, for your servant is listening.’ He can’t quite bring himself to use God’s name. It would be embarrassing if it turned out to be someone else after all. But other than that, he says exactly what Eli told him.
And it was God. And I doubt Samuel got much sleep after hearing what God had to say. Verse 11: See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make the ears of everyone who hears about it tingle. At that time I will carry out against Eli everything I spoke against his family – from beginning to end. For I told him that I would judge his family for ever because of the sin he knew about; his sons uttered blasphemies against God, and he failed to restrain them. Therefore I swore to the house of Eli, ‘The guilt of Eli’s house will never be atoned for by sacrifice or offering’.
Poor Samuel! If only he hadn’t rushed into Eli those three times. Nobody would ever need to know. But Eli was never going to forget being woken up three times in the night. What would he say?
Sure enough, Eli calls. Verse 16: Samuel, my son. They must have been very close. It’s also scarily like the three times in the night. He replies: Here I am. And then verse 17: What was it he said to you?
Well I think Eli knew. Or at least guessed. In chapter 2, God had passed a message to Eli that he was going to judge him and his sons. Eli knew the Samuel’s news was bad, because he said to Samuel: May God deal with you, be it ever so severely, if you hide from me anything he told you. Literally, if you hide anything from me, God will do it to you instead!
Samuel had a choice to make. Which mattered more? What God has just said? Or his friendship with Eli? He decided that God’s words mattered more – he told Eli the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And Eli, for once in his life, did something right. He also acknowledged that what God has said is what matters. Verse 18: He is the Lord; let him do what is good in his eyes.
A word for all Israel
At the start of the story, Samuel did not yet know the Lord; the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him. Now, he knows God’s voice. He knows how to recognise it. Samuel has moved from being ignorant of God’s word to knowing it.
And the same thing has happened for all Israel as well. We’re coming out of the dark ages.
This little scene wasn’t a one off. Verse 21: The Lord continued to appear at Shiloh, and there he revealed himself to Samuel through his word. This was the new thing. God would appear to Samuel and speak to him.
And God always kept his word. Verse 19: The Lord was with Samuel as he grew up, and he let none of Samuel’s words fall to the ground. God spoke to Samuel, and Samuel would pass the message on to everyone else. And God never let him down. He never had the embarrassment of giving a word from God that turned out to be a duff.
Which means Samuel got quite a reputation. Verse 20: All Israel from Dan to Beersheba (that’s north to south) recognised that Samuel was attested as a prophet of the Lord. Samuel was the real thing. A true prophet. If he says that God said something, then he did.
And so, chapter 4 and verse 1: Samuel’s word came to all Israel.
By the end of the story, not only has Samuel learned to recognise God’s voice. The whole of Israel has. The story started with God’s words being very rare indeed. And by the end of the story, everyone has access to God’s words, because Samuel is speaking them reliably.
God: Humbler. Gracious. Speaking
Let’s ask ourselves what this story is telling us about God.
I think there are three things.
Firstly, God is a humbling God. At the heart of this story is what God said to Samuel. Samuel’s very first sermon was one he’d never forget. God was going to bring the house of Eli to an end. The reason Israel was in the dark ages was because their leaders were living as they pleased. They had no respect for God. And so they led the people to treat God’s wishes as an irrelevance.
And to get Israel out of those dark ages, God was going to get rid of those leaders. God is a humbling God. Anyone who thinks that God can be ignored, and you can make up right and wrong for yourself, is in for a big shock. They’ll find out that God is the wrong person to pick a fight with, because he always wins. God is a humbling God.
Second, God is a gracious God. In many ways, the biggest miracle of all here is that God speaks at all. The main reason why his word was rare was that nobody wanted to know it. God would have been quite within his rights to leave them to it. But he didn’t. He opened a new chapter in their history. He revealed himself to Samuel. And he started speaking again.
That’s an enormously kind and gracious thing to do. We all push God away. We all decide, at times, that God’s take on life is inconvenient. When we treat God that way, it is an act of kindness that he speaks to us afresh. God is a gracious God.
And third, and perhaps most obviously, God is a speaking God. God speaks to Samuel. And through Samuel, God speaks to his people.
This is the God of 1 Samuel chapter 3: A humbling God. A gracious God. A speaking God.
A greater prophet
The people would need reminding of this many times down the centuries.
The period of the Judges wasn’t their only dark spell. Many times, they would turn away from God. Again and again, the word of the Lord would become rare. And each time, God was kind – he’d send another batch of prophets to speak to them.
That cycle repeated itself over and over, until one day God broke it by sending his final prophet.
Let me read the opening verses of the New Testament book of Hebrews: In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son.
That took us out of the dark ages for good. We’re not in the dark days now. We’re in the last days. The days when God has spoken to us by his Son.
Indeed, Jesus, the Son of God, may even remind you of Samuel. Luke in particular deliberately alludes to the story of Samuel as he introduces us to Jesus.
When Mary is told she’s going to have a baby, she sings a song. We call it the Magnificat. And its’ a riff on Hannah’s song in 1 Samuel chapter 1. The same language. The same shape.
Jesus is born, and is then presented in the temple as an infant. Much as Hannah took the weaned Samuel, and presented him to Eli.
Jesus grows up a little and becomes a young man. Again his parents visit Jerusalem, only they lose him there. And when they catch up with him, he’s in the temple. He’s speaking with the teachers there, only it seems that he’s the one doing the instructing. Much as Samuel, Eli’s protégé, ends up telling him what God has to say.
The infant narrative in Luke quite deliberately paints Jesus as another Samuel.
Samuel the prophet. Many other prophets down the centuries, as the people turned away from God and rarefied his word. But then one final prophet, God’s own Son, through whom God has spoken for all time.
A choice
From this moment on, the people of Israel had a choice.
They either look like Eli, or they look like Samuel.
And we face the same choice today.
They could look like Eli. Live by whatever you think is right. Choose to live as though we were still in the dark ages.
But we’ve discovered that God is a God who squashes those who live like this. You don’t pick a fight with this God, and expect to win.
It was true for them. It’s even more true for us. Here’s the second chapter of Hebrews. We must pay the most careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away. For since the message spoken through angels was binding, and every violation and disobedience received its just punishment, how shall we escape if we ignore so great a salvation?
It’s a rhetorical question. We won’t. We’ve just read what would happen to Eli and his sons. The writer of the Hebrews asks us: What makes you think you’d get off any more lightly if you ignore the God you’ve heard about?
That’s one option for them. Live like Eli.
Or they could look more like Samuel.
They could realise that God is a God who speaks clearly. Samuel heard God’s voice so clearly he thought it was Eli speaking. God doesn’t mumble or speak with a lisp; when God wants to say something, he speaks in audible words that you can’t mistake.
God won’t speak to the people directly, of course. That’s not the God they’ve got. They’ve got a God who speaks very clearly indeed to Samuel, and then the words of Samuel to them are the words of God himself.
It was true for them. It’s even more true for us. Here’s Jesus, in John chapter 3 verse 34. He’s speaking about himself. The one whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God gives the Spirit without limit.
That’s the choice the people faced. It’s the choice that each of us faces today.
God has spoken. He did so through Samuel. He’s done so definitively through the Lord Jesus. None of his words fall to the ground. God’s prophet is well and truly established.
There’s now a way out of the dark ages. It comes as the people of God listen to his voice.
And then we base our lives, not on what we fancy, but on what God says.