Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
The text this morning is from First Samuel, the third chapter:
Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord in the presence of Eli. And the word of the Lord was rare in those days; there was no frequent vision… Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was. Then the Lord called Samuel, and he said, “Here I am!” and ran to Eli and said, “Here I am, for you called me.” But he said, “I did not call; lie down again.” So he went and lay down… 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. On that day I will fulfill against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house, from beginning to end…” And Samuel was afraid to tell the vision to Eli. But Eli called Samuel and said, “Samuel, my son.” And he said, “Here I am.” And Eli said, “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.” 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.” And Samuel grew, and the Lord was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground.
Thus far the text.
My dear friends in Christ,
At first glance, there is not much in this text for today that seems to make any sense of us. God calls this boy Samuel, working under Eli, a man who has done evil things by allowing his sons to do evil things in the sight of the Lord, God calls Samuel to be a prophet. But, in many ways, this is a hopeful passage for us, at least it is if we understand what is going on.
First, notice Samuel. Samuel is important to the nation of Israel. Remember that Samuel’s mother, Hannah, was barren. And she wept bitterly over this. Yet, when she went to the altar of the Lord to give her sacrifices, she prayed, and the priest, Eli, the evil one from the reading, blessed her.
In that blessing, the Lord used the words of Eli to open Hannah’s womb and give her a son, her firstborn son. And yet, Hannah was not ungrateful. For what the Lord had done for her, to give her a son to bear on the name of his father, her husband, Elkanah, Hannah gave Samuel into the service of the Lord, specifically as a servant of Eli. And there Samuel was serving Eli for many years.
Don’t think Hannah ungrateful or weak in this. Don’t see her giving her son to an evil man’s service. Instead, see her joy in the what the Lord has done. Look at her song in the second chapter of this book. It is exactly like the Magnificat, where Mary gives thanks to the Lord. This is a good thing that she has given her child over as a servant of Eli. This is what thanksgiving looks like, that we give all things to the Lord.
And what else is happening here? Eli has two wicked sons who served as priests. They spoiled the sacrifices of the people for their own benefit and they slept with women before the holy place, and Eli did absolutely nothing, even when all the people told him what was going on. He did ask them why they were doing it, but they did not listen to him. Eli’s responsibility was to cast them out, even have them stoned for their sins according to the Law of God, but Eli was a priest who had become lazy and a father who could not bear the thought.
But, even through all of this, Samuel was in service to Eli, watching it all. Sadly, however, the Word of the Lord had dried up. What’s this mean? It means that, well, today, to hear the Word of the Lord, we open our Scriptures, we read them seeing and hearing what our God has had to say. But in Samuel’s time, the only things that were written down were the books of Moses, Job, Joshua, maybe some of Judges. There wasn’t a lot of the Scriptures yet. And without much of our writings, the priests were utterly dependent upon the prophets to bring the Word of the Lord, the will of God to them. But our reading today tells us that this wasn’t happening very often.
Can you imagine this? It would be as if all the Bibles disappeared, except maybe one or two that all the churches in America had to send around. You couldn’t make copies, you couldn’t just have someone memorize it, you had to wait. Until then, the services of the people would be lacking. We would be missing so much.
And for the prophets and priests of Israel, they were lacking the knowledge of what God desired from them. These were evil times for Israel. The people had turned and did what was right in their own eyes, not the eyes of the Lord. They sought after their own will, and not the will of God. Even here, where the Tent of Meeting, the Tabernacle, the place God dwelt before the Temple was even a twinkle in David’s unborn eyes, in a place called Shiloh, which means peace, or if you will “Pleasantville,” there was no peace because they did not listen to the Lord. So the Lord cut of His voice from the people.
Until one night, Samuel hears the voice of the Lord, calling to him. Do not mistake this for some teaching that says, “Now you must also listen to the voice of the Lord.” The writer of Hebrews is very clear, “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son…” We do not need to listen for some voice from the Lord; we have no promise, no expectation that He will speak in this way. He has spoken to us through His Son, and we have the Lord’s words then even today. But Samuel heard the Lord; the Lord was going to call him to fulfill God’s will.
Imagine this: Samuel had no idea it was God calling to him because God had been silent for a while. Yet, God chooses a boy, 12 years old very likely, to serve Him in a way that no one would expect. The 12 year old boy becomes a prophet. And His first prophecy is one of destruction.
God is going to destroy the house of Eli because of Eli’s sons and because Eli did not stop them. That’s not a nice word from the Lord. That’s just plain scary. And God expects a twelve year old boy to deliver this word to his master. I have had a hard enough time delivering bad news to people that I’ve been in charge of; I can’t imagine what Samuel was going through with someone in charge of him.
But this is what prophets do. They deliver the news to the people. They get to do some cool stuff. Samuel got to anoint Israel’s first king, Saul. But, you know, that really only came after he warned Israel that a king would be bad news for them. He led a couple armies, killed the King of the Amalekites, Agag. He got to anoint David; that worked out kind of okay, though David proved to be a pretty big sinner, too. Samuel had a lot of hard words for Israel, as did most of the prophets. Samuel was a good prophet, but he wasn’t a well-liked one. He didn’t tell people what the wanted to hear; he told them what God said they needed to hear.
So this is a hopeful passage in this, why? In that Samuel is a type of Christ. Remember Samuel’s mother, Hannah. Hannah had her own Magnificat, just like Mary’s. And if Hannah and Mary go together, then the child of Hannah is like Christ, too. Mary was a virgin, Hannah was barren. Samuel and Jesus were firstborn sons, unexpected to their mothers. Both were given into the service of the Lord. Both were chosen while they were young, Samuel when he was 12, Christ at His conception. Both delivered the Word of the Lord to the people. Both gave harsh words of the Law of condemnation. Both gave good, comforting words of the Gospel. Samuel is a precursor, a laser pointer, to Christ, because he works as Christ does. He works as the prophet, to bring the Word of God to the people.
And that’s really why this is hopeful. God has worked the same way through the prophets and priests from the beginning even until now. He has delivered hard words of the Law, for indeed we are all sinners deserving the same fate as Eli and his family. Eli fell over on his stool and died, his sons died in the battle over the Ark of the Covenant, and his grandson was given the name Ichabod, meaning that the glory of the God has left Israel. Not a good way to go, and that’s what we all deserve.
For our sins, for our gossip, for our slander, for our back-biting we deserve to die. For our hatred, for our malice, for our laziness, we deserve to go to hell. For all our sin, we deserve nothing but the wrath of God. For all that we do, we deserve to have our whole family hated by God and to be wiped of the map as was Eli’s family.
Yet, in the graciousness of God in Christ Jesus, we won’t be. Instead, we are welcomed into the presence of God. Our sins have been atoned for in the death of Christ, and we have the promise of eternal life in the Resurrection. Christ has given us a promise of these things in His very Word. That’s why we don’t have prophets speaking out of nothing but the vision of the Lord. Christ has given to you every promise of goodness you could ever hope to expect. Our Lord is good to us.
So then, in the Church, God works in the same way as through Samuel and as through Christ. He gives pastors to speak the Word of God. Not that God speaks to us as He did Samuel. Not that pastors are holy like Christ, that’s impossible. But that pastors deliver words of Law and Gospel to us. They have the hard task of telling us what we don’t want to hear, but what we need to hear. And they have the privilege of forgiving sins through the Holy Absolution, through Holy Baptism, and through the Lord’s Supper.
This isn’t because pastors are better than anyone else. I need this just as much as everyone, which is why I have my own pastors over me. It’s because Christ has given us the authority, His authority, to preach and to teach. He has given us the responsibility to do what is right and to not deviate from His Word. And He has given us the fun of preaching the joy of the Christian hope to you, the joy of everlasting life, the joy of the Resurrection.
And we do this in the ways I’ve already said. We do this in the way of the prophets in declaring the Word of God by reading it and teaching it and preaching it. And we do this in the way of the priests by absolving sins. And we do this in the way of Christ in the Sacraments. Actually, all three people and groups did the same thing. But, do you see? God has worked this way throughout all of history because Christ would tell us to do these things. God has always given His Law to His people because Christ would give us the Law to convict us of our sins. And God has always given His Gospel, His promises, to His people because His people would repent and turn from their wicked ways and they needed the comfort of God. And God has always given His means of grace to His people because we are people who are physical and need a physical God.
So, God the Father gave us His Son who became a physical man. And that physical Son of God gave us physical Means of Grace, just as He did in the Old Testament. Circumcision came before Baptism, the Passover came before the Lord’s Supper, the sacrifices before Christ’s cross for us.
This is how our God works. He’s consistent, He’s dependable, and we can look to Him to take care us, as He took care of Israel, as He took care of Hannah, as He took care of Eli, as He took care of Samuel. God takes care of us, too, through the Word, through the Sacraments, through Christ, because that’s what He’s always done. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Now may the peace of God which passes all human understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord! Amen.
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