Elevate - The Story Pt 12 - Samuel

The main ideas from this information are: - The importance of focusing on the things of God and not being distracted by worldly concerns. - The story of the Judges in the Bible and how they failed to completely drive out pagan nations. - The role of Samuel as the last judge of Israel and the one who anointed a king. - The temptation of Jesus in the wilderness and the significance of His response. - The importance of seeking and listening to God's voice in order to live a purposeful and authentic life. - The story of Samuel and his first encounter with hearing God's voice. - The restoration of the intimate relationship between God and His creation through Jesus. Get your mind off of that annoying co-worker at work. Get your mind off of, am I going to have enough money to pay my bills this month? Get your mind off of everything that would want to distract you and begin to put your thoughts and your mind and your heart on the things of God. Whatever is good, whatever is pure, whatever is praiseworthy, whatever is lovely, whatever is excellent, think on those things. Welcome to Elevate from Authentic Life Church in Mobile, Alabama with Pastor John DeQuatro. We hope it builds your faith and helps you to live a life for God that you've always wanted to live. We hope it inspires you to be a fully devoted, authentic follower of Jesus Christ. Enjoy the message and welcome to Elevate. All right, well we have been in our series, The Story. The Story is the narrative of the Bible. It's the story of the Bible. It's ultimately the story of Jesus Christ and the redemption of humanity through Jesus Christ. In the last couple of weeks, we have been in the book of Judges. If you remember, the Judges, that period is when Israel had entered into the promised land and during the conquest, when they were taking the land, the promised land that God gave them, they failed to completely drive out the foreign nations that were there, and so all of those pagan nations, all of the pagan gods, all the altars, all the ways that they worship, they didn't quite get rid of all of it, and so they continually chased after false gods of these other nations. They were tempted by the worship of these other nations, and so every time they did that, they walked out from underneath the protection of God, and when that happened, then they would be attacked and they would find themselves in a hairy situation and other nations would attack them, and it was difficult. And so in those moments, God would raise up a deliverer. God would raise up somebody that would help them to turn their hearts back to God, and then He would rescue their nation from the terrible things that were happening. And so today, we're still in the period of the Judges, but that period is winding down and we're getting into the book of 1 Samuel, and Samuel becomes the last judge of Israel, and God would use Samuel in very, very powerful ways, and he is the one that ultimately anoints a king to rule over Israel. Up until this point, they had no king. There were these judges and these men of God and priests that would hear from God and they would direct the nation, but ultimately through Samuel, a king comes, and then when a king comes, and we'll talk about that next week, that marks the end of the period of the Judges. So we're going to move into this story, but before we do, we're going to take a little detour. Is that all right? You'll understand. Okay, so Matthew chapter 4, verses 1 through 4, says this, Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, He was hungry. The tempter came to Him and said, If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread. Jesus answered, It is written. They shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. Now what's Jesus saying here? He was being tempted, and the temptation was not so much about the bread. I'm pretty sure that Jesus had enough self-discipline to withstand the hunger during a period of fasting, but the temptation was for Jesus to use His divinity to provide for His own needs independent of His Father. That was ultimately what the temptation was. So Jesus' reply is an apt reply, and it is a very powerful reply, because what He basically says is, Life is so much more than how I can work and provide for myself. Right? Man does not live on bread alone. It's not just about being provided for. It's not just about me doing what I need to do in order to make sure that I'm okay and that my flesh is okay. What He's saying is, right, because it's every word that comes from the mouth of God, He's saying that without hearing God's voice, I have nothing. I don't live just by the work of my hands. I don't live just to eat. I don't live for entertainment. I don't live to binge watch Netflix. That's not why I live. Right? Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. I have to hear the Word of God. I have to hear His voice, because without knowing God's will, anything that we do on this earth is just ultimately pointless. We've been talking about things that saved people do, and the first one here is saved people seek God. They seek God. They want to know His will. They want to hear His voice. They want to know what He is saying to them. And yes, we do need to work hard, and we do need to live on this earth and provide for our families and take care of things, but it's only secondary to first listening to the voice of God for our lives, because, you know, we're all very capable people. We can get it done, but it's not just about getting it done. It's about knowing what God wants and going that way, right? Walking in that authentic discipleship, walking in that authentic identity of who He's called us to be. So we need to hear God in a very personal way in order to walk in our authentic identity. We can't live, succeed, accomplish, or fulfill our purpose without first hearing from the Lord. And we need to hear God for our families, our spouses, our children, our grandchildren. We need to hear the voice of God concerning our career and the decisions that we'll make in our life. We need to hear His voice with regards to what is our purpose and our calling. Why are we here? He wants to tell us. And listening and hearing God's voice, it's a cultivated skill. You know, we talk and we pray, but sometimes our prayers are just all one way, right? We just talk. And through that, sometimes we often struggle to be able to discern what God's will is. But I want to tell you something today. God wants to speak to you. In fact, I believe God is always speaking to you. The question is, are you listening? He wants a relationship like He had with Moses, where God spoke to Him face to face as with a friend. We have the opportunity to have that. Do you believe God wants you to have that type of relationship with Him? I do. Do you believe it's possible to have a real conversation with God, to hear His voice so clearly that there's no question in your mind that He has spoken to you? Come on. I believe it. And it's true, and it's in the Word of God that we can have that kind of relationship with Him. And if we go all the way back to the beginning, in Genesis, it tells us about how God created man, and He conversed with him regularly, and He spent time with him in the garden. He would walk through the cool of the day in the garden to fellowship with Adam, His creation. God created us to have that type of intimate relationship with Him, one where He can talk to us and we'll hear Him, and we can talk with Him, and it's a free give-and-take kind of a relationship. But we know what happened. Right? Adam and Eve fell into sin, and we've talked about this through this series. It brought separation between God and His creation, but the Bible tells us that Jesus is the second Adam, the one that came to restore that Garden of Eden relationship between God and His creation. So now, because of the blood of Jesus, because of His finished work on the cross of Calvary, we have the privilege and the opportunity and the ability to hear from God and to have an intimate relationship with Him. Isn't that exciting? Come on, Jesus came not just so that we can come to church, not so that we can have a new philosophy of living. He came to restore what was lost in the garden. We can have that. Do you believe it? Do you believe it? Let me hear you. Come on, do you believe that today? Amen. So the question is, how do we cultivate the type of relationship with God whereby we can hear His voice? And I believe that one of the keys to this lies in the story of Samuel and his first encounter with hearing the voice of God. We read about it in our book in chapter 10. We find it in the book of 1 Samuel. But the background to this is Samuel's mother, Hannah, was unable to have children. She was barren, and she cried out to God day and night, Lord, give me a child, please give me a child. And in fact, she got so desperate that she vowed to God, God, if You would just give me a child, that I will give him back to You to be in Your service for the rest of his life. And so the Lord opened her womb and gave her a son, and she named her son Samuel. And when he was old enough, when he was weaned and able to get along, she took him to the temple. And he went and he lived in the temple with the high priest at the time whose name was Eli. And so he would go and he lived in the temple and he would serve God in the temple. So let's read about Samuel's first time hearing from God. We're in chapter 3 of 1 Samuel, beginning in verse 1. It says, The boy Samuel ministered before the Lord under Eli. In those days the word of the Lord was rare. There were not many visions. In this moment, people aren't hearing from God. God may be speaking, but people are not hearing what God is saying. The word of the Lord was rare. Verse 2, One night Eli, whose eyes were becoming so weak, Eli the high priest, his eyes were becoming so weak that he could barely see, was lying down in his usual place. The lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was laying down in the house of the Lord, where the ark of God was. Then the Lord called Samuel. Samuel answered, Here I am, and he ran to Eli and said, Here I am. You called me? Eli said, I didn't call you. Go back and lie down. So he went and lay down again. The Lord called Samuel, and Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, Here I am. You called me. My son, Eli said, I did not call. Go back and lie down. Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord. The word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him. A third time the Lord called Samuel, and Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, Here I am. You called me? Then Eli realized that the Lord was calling the boy. So Eli told Samuel, Go and lie down, and if he calls you, say, Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening. So Samuel went and lay down in his place. The Lord came and stood there, calling as at the other times. Samuel! Samuel! Samuel said, Speak, for your servant is listening. And the Lord said to Samuel, 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 forever because of the sin he knew about, his son's blasphemed 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." So we have something very interesting dynamic that's taking place here in the temple. Eli the priest was not a great guy. He wasn't a great dude. He just wasn't doing his job. He was very complacent with regards to his service in the temple and his duties as a priest, and he was very complacent with dealing with his children who were serving alongside of him as priests, and they were manipulating and taking advantage of people, and it was just a terrible situation, and so God was having to remove Eli and his unruly sons from the temple, and it was so bad that God had to speak to Samuel to get a message to Eli because Eli was no longer hearing the voice of God. How about that? The priest, the high priest, doesn't hear from God, but this is common even today. Even among pastors and ministry leaders, we become so numb to ministry and the things of God that we stop cultivating the necessary relationship to be able to hear from God, and dare I say that many, many Christians are kind of walking around in that same type of stupor, a very complacent way in which they relate to God whereby they don't ever really hear the voice of God. So God speaks to Eli, but He speaks it through Samuel, and this moment right here marks the beginning of Samuel's amazing ministry as a prophet, priest, and judge of Israel. Samuel's entire life, and we'll read about him through the next couple of chapters, but his life was marked by his ability to hear from God and then carry out God's will in Israel. He's the one who anointed the first king of Israel. He's also the one that removed him as the king of Israel. He's the one who then anointed King David. We all know King David, but he was so in tune with God's voice that he directed the spiritual affairs of an entire nation. Powerful man of God. So how did Samuel cultivate this ability to hear God's voice so clearly? Well, I think there's a key here, and we're going to go back to what we just read. We're going to look at the first four verses again. It says this, The boy Samuel ministered before the Lord under Eli. In those days, the word of the Lord was rare. There were not many visions. Eli, whose eyes were becoming so weak that he could barely see, was lying down in his usual place. Now listen what it says in verse three, The lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the house of the Lord where the ark of God was. Then the Lord called, Samuel. Samuel answered, Here I am. So what was the key here? Look at where Samuel was sleeping in verse three. It says that he was lying down in the house of the Lord near the ark of God. Okay, so what? What does that mean for what we're trying to get across here? If you're familiar with the ark of the covenant, you'll know that it was a very special item that was in the temple. It was a golden box, and inside the ark were some reminders of God's law. The Ten Commandments were in there. Aaron's staff was in there. There were some manna that they had collected from when they were wandering in the wilderness that they put in there. But then they covered the box with a lid, and on this lid there were two cherubim that were made out of pure gold, and that was called the mercy seat, and between the wings of that cherubim is where God's presence physically dwelt among Israel. So the ark was literally God's presence among the people. Now Samuel was becoming accustomed to God's presence. It said up to this point he hadn't really known the Lord. He hadn't heard the Lord speak yet, but he was becoming accustomed to God's presence. He chose to sleep near the ark, so very close to the mercy seat where the presence of God was located. Now if you understand how the tabernacle in those days was situated, there was an outer court, and that's where the people would come in and they would come in to offer their sacrifices. And within that courtyard there was a tent, and the outer room of that tent was called the holy place, and in the holy place there was the golden candlestick and the table of showbread and the table of incense. Those items were in there. The holy place was the next room, which was the most holy place, or some would call it the holy of holies. It was separated from the holy. You had the courtyard, then you had the holy place, and then you had the holy of holies. Now the holy of holies was separated from the holy place by a very thick curtain that covered it and kept people out, and inside the holy of holies is where they kept the ark of the covenant. And only the high priest could enter into the holy of holies only once a year on the day of atonement. Now it's not clear, as you read it, if Samuel was actually in the holy place or just outside in the temple courtyard. We know he wasn't in the holy of holies, but we do know this. He had situated himself as close as he could get to the ark of the covenant, which was the presence of God. And I have to believe that this was not just one night he chose to go sleep over there. I believe that this was a habit of Samuel's, that he camped out near the presence of God. And I believe that his familiarity with the presence of God, with his desire to be close to God, to be close to God's presence, I believe that was the key to beginning to hear the voice of God in his life. And here's the amazing part. The veil had not been torn yet. There still was no way for him to get actually into the holy of holies and be right there next to the ark with the presence of God, because if he had gotten right up to the ark and touched it, he would have died. But he got as close as he could. Now the amazing thing is that today the veil has been torn. That big veil that separated Israel from the presence of God was ripped in two. Read this in Matthew 27, beginning in verse 45. This is while Jesus was being crucified on the cross. From noon until three in the afternoon, darkness came over all the land. About three in the afternoon, Jesus cried out in a loud voice, Eli, Eli, lemma sabachthani, which means my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And some of those standing there heard this. They said, he's calling Elijah. Immediately one of them ran and got a sponge. He filled it with wine vinegar, put it on a staff and offered it to Jesus to drink. And the rest said, now leave him alone. Let's see if Elijah comes to save him. And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. At that moment, the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. This was a powerful thing. This was probably the most significant thing to ever happen on the history of the earth. When Jesus died, at that very moment, his death brought about access to the presence of God. It's amazing what took place, this veil, this thing that separated people. They knew he was there and he was close, but they couldn't be in there with him. It was torn in two and it was split wide open, and what is the significance of that? It's that now we all have access to God's presence. We can be in his presence whenever we want, and we can hear God's voice for our lives, but we need to cultivate that presence in our lives. How do we access that presence now? Well, we don't have to do what they did then and sacrifice bulls and goats and rams and make atonement. Jesus did that. We don't have to have a priest that mediates for us. I am not a mediator for you. I am simply an instrument, a tool in God's hand to help you understand the Word of God so that you can be equipped to be the person that God has called you to be. But I am not a mediator between you and God. That has been done away with. We have Jesus who gives us the very access to the Father. He says, I am the way. I am the truth. I am the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. So how do we get into His presence? How do we get to that place? Because the Bible says to approach the throne of grace boldly, where we're allowed, we're able to come into His presence. We know that when we said yes to Jesus and placed our faith in Him for the forgiveness of our sins, that His Spirit came to live within us. The very presence of God goes with us wherever we go, but how do we cultivate that presence so that we can hear the voice of God? Save people, seek God. Save people, seek God. Daily devotion, right? In your Bible, if you've never heard God's voice in your own spirit speak, you at least can hear His voice through the pages of the words that He gave us. He's speaking through His Word, worshiping, but listen, all those things can be just routine. The key is to become expectant and engaged with what God is doing. When we come in here on a Sunday morning and we've come here together corporately to meet with God, we can't just be here being like, oh, this is a new song. I don't really...I don't know if I like this song. I promise you, you're not going to experience the presence of God if that's your attitude when you come into worship. If you're criticizing because there's some haze and a couple of lights going, and I'm telling you, you're not going to...none of this stuff stops the presence of God. You do. It's about being expectant and engaged. So listen, when we sing a new song, like we sang today, which is a great song, holy, right? Holy forever. Great song. None of you knew it. You maybe never heard it before. If we stand there just going, oh, another new song that I don't know, can't we just sing Amazing Grace? I promise you, you don't get to enter into the presence of God, but when you come into the house of God or any time that you come before the Lord and you say, God, I might not even know these songs, but I don't care. They're singing about you, God, and I love you, and I want to be in your presence, and so I'm just going to throw up my hands, and I'm just going to worship the Lord, and even if I don't know how to sing, I'm going to make a joyful noise before the Lord, because I've come in here to meet with you, God. I expect that when I come into your presence, you're going to speak to me. I am ready. I'm engaged in what's going on. Can I tell you, the roof would blow off this place if every single one of us was just simply engaged and saying, God, I expect you to do something and to speak to me in this moment. Jesus, proximity doesn't matter anymore. It's heart position, because you can be in a room of people that are all experiencing the presence of God and feel nothing. You can, and maybe you're wondering, why do they seem so elated? Why do they have such a euphoric relationship with God? You may wonder those things, and I want to tell you that there is not a veil that separates you from the presence of God. You have complete access, but there is this veil of our flesh that we need to get through. You wonder why we come in and we encourage you to raise your hands, we encourage you to shout sometimes, and sometimes people dance, and sometimes people jump. You know what they're doing? They're engaging their flesh, and ultimately they're getting it out of the way. They're just saying, you know what, this flesh, I feel uncomfortable, I don't know. You know what? Forget it. Just do something to get past the veil of this flesh that keeps you in your head, that keeps you feeling weird about stuff, and keeps you thinking about other things, and just push past that flesh so that you can get into the presence of God. But it's not just here in this room. We call this the house of God because we do come in here and we meet with Him, but it's really kind of misnamed. You are the house of God. You have the presence of God with you everywhere that you go, and so we need to protect that presence of God in our life and cultivate that presence. Like Samuel, he just said, I'm going to get as close to God as I possibly can. I'm going to lay there and sleep all night, right as close as I can get to the very presence of God. We need to have that mentality because we need to be hearing from God all the time, at work, at school, at home. It's not just for these moments of corporate worship and a prayer time, or gathering as believers together. He dwells within you. He goes with you wherever you go, and so you've got to cultivate that awareness of the presence of God so that you can protect it, protect that presence of God so that you can walk in it and don't allow the veil of your flesh to shield you from God's presence. Listen to these scriptures. Psalm 19, verse 14 says, May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my rock and my Redeemer. He's saying, Lord, let everything I say, let how I think, let it be pleasing to you. Why? Because I just want to be in your presence. Proverbs 4, 23, above all else, guard your heart for everything you do flows from it. Why do we guard our heart? Because the enemy would love to do nothing but pull us away from the presence of God. But we guard our heart, and we're careful what we let into our heart, we're careful what we let into our eyes and into our ears, we're careful, and we're protecting the presence of God in our life. Philippians 4, 8 says, Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things. He's saying, Get your mind off of that annoying coworker at work. Get your mind off of, I've got to see the next episode of Grey's Anatomy. Get your mind off of your soap operas. Get your mind off of, am I going to have enough money to pay my bills this month? Get your mind off of everything that would want to distract you, and begin to put your thoughts and your mind and your heart on the things of God. Whatever is good, whatever is pure, whatever is praiseworthy, whatever is lovely, whatever is excellent, think on those things. Think on God. Thank you for listening to Elevate. We hope this message encouraged, inspired, and challenged you. Authentic Life Church is located at 3750 Michael Boulevard in Mobile, Alabama. Visit our website, AuthenticLife.tv, for more information about Authentic Life Church. To find out what we have going on, or to make a donation, you can also find us on Facebook. We'd love for you to join us on Sundays at 10 a.m. for our weekend service. We have excellent children's, nursery, and youth programs, so bring the family. For Pastor John DeQuatro, I'm Scott Chestnut. Thanks again for listening, and God bless you.