Liz Morris -January 17, 2021
Let us pray: Lord, open our hearts to hear your Word. May your teaching permeate through us so that we will strive to bring it to our lives in tangible ways and for Your glory. Amen
“Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” In the Old Testament reading, we hear Samuel being called by the Lord, but mistaking God’s voice for Eli’s. At this point in the Bible, man has fallen, prophets have professed the need for reconciliation with God, Judges have failed and God has agreed to put into place another form of politics; a monarchy. For the first time, God agrees to and establishes a political system in Israel headed by a human king. Why does God do this? Because man believes we are able to govern ourselves. Although the Judges were, in whole, unsuccessful, humanity decides a king will be. To be fair to humanity, we weren’t completely wrong; although we were wrong about a human king. Samuel is not king – he is a forerunner to the kings we do meet in this section of the Bible: kings Saul and David. Importantly, Samuel is also a prophet. He reminds us that people are flawed kings and leaders – something we are sure to be keenly feeling in current politics.
As we begin a new year, many of us might be feeling renewed, excited and hopeful, whilst many of us might be feeling discouraged, disempowered and lonely. However you are feeling, I believe there is a key message that links our Old Testament and New Testament readings this week. Although I began by reiterating verse 10 (“Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening”), Samuel does not immediately know he is being approached by God. At first, Samuel runs to Eli’s aid – knowing Eli is old and poor in sight. He is obedient to his master, but it is not Eli who is calling him. God is faithful in calling Samuel again.
Last week, Ron preached on four important purposes of life:
1. To find faith for yourself
2. To do justice and love mercy
3. To be changed on the inside
4. To give Jesus the most prominent place
Keep these four purposes in mind as we delve further into God’s Word today. None of these are an easy pursuit, and the willingness to discern between God’s calling and our own inner attitudes and prejudices is something both Samuel in the Old Testament and Nathanael in the New, must do in order to see what God’s intended purpose is for kingship.
If we start by looking at 1 Samuel, we learn in verse 7 that “Samuel did not yet know the Lord.” This does not mean that Samuel had never heard of God before. He was still what people would say is a godly person on paper. He is already serving the Lord in his service to Eli. However, what this verse suggests to us is that Samuel had ‘head knowledge’ of God and not ‘heart knowledge’ of God. This is the first time Samuel has encountered God speaking to his heart. This brings us back to the first purpose of life: to find faith for yourself. How much of God does your head know and how much is heart knowledge? In order for Samuel to know God, he had to ‘be changed on the inside’ (purpose 3).
Eli gives wise counsel – something we should not ignore. Your friendships and relationships that are God driven are used directly to ensure you are finding your own faith (purpose 1). Let’s look at the passage:
Eli directs Samuel to
– “Go and lie down, and if he calls you, say ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’” (v9)
Why is Samuel told to go and lie down and wait for God again? What Eli is teaching Samuel, and in turn what we are taught here too, is that the inner voice isn’t always God. There are contending voices around you. In order to hear God, we need to do the following:
- Make ourselves available for God to speak to us (Go and lie down)
- Not presume God is speaking (if he calls you)
- Respond to God’s word (Speak, Lord)
- Humble ourselves before God and his Word to us (your servant is listening)
When I was a student leader with the Australian Navigators, a Christian group I was connected to during my undergraduate degree at ANU, I was taught to read scripture through the acronym OICA. O is for observation – what can you see in the passage? This was not to be confused with the I which is for interpretation – now you have something stated in the passage, what inferences can be made and what questions do you have? The C stands for correlation – where else in the Bible do you see this message or lesson? We will come back to A at the end of today’s reflection.
Having observed Samuel being moulded in Godly counsel, we are taught:
- to be available
- to wait
- to respond
- to listen to God.
By following OICA, we are now able to look to correlating areas in the Bible concerning how to approach God and to follow purpose 3 for our lives: to be changed on the inside.
If you have your Bible with you, to ensure accountability, let’s go to John 1:43-?51 again. As always, it’s important to contextualise what you are reading, so that it is part of the bigger picture of God’s Word to us. As John was likely the last of the four Gospels to be written, it is written with the understanding that you know the other Gospels and what they say. John is written differently, as we have seen in previous weeks, as it begins by talking about the Word being the beginning of all things, rather than the physical birth of Christ. Theologically, this means John is written in the rhetoric style of logos – meaning logic: it is what knits together an argument so that the responder agrees with the logic behind what you are saying, further adding to the legitimacy of what you have said. In this way, John assumes you know about the other Gospels. Hence, we meet a few figures in the first chapter of John’s Gospel who are integral to understanding different ways of being called to discipleship.
We meet and hear John the Baptist’s testimony of Jesus before meeting John, Andrew and Simon Peter, who is named Cephus, or Peter, by Jesus. What John is doing is chronicling the different ways people respond to Jesus’ call on their life. Thus, we meet Philip and Andrew in our New Testament reading today. Read with me: “The next day Jesus decided to leave for Galilee. Finding Philip, he said to him, “Follow me.” Philip, like Andrew and Peter, was from the town of Bethsaida.” What does it take for Philip to follow Jesus? One simple, yet powerful command of ‘follow me’. Philip was available, waited for Jesus to command him to follow His teaching, Philip responded by joining and listened to God. Philip does what Samuel is taught to do but in the very first go. Philip is a witness to one way to come to Christ – heed His call and follow. John 1 highlights different ways of coming to Christ:
- Andrew came to Jesus because of the preaching of John the Baptist.
- Peter came to Jesus because of the witness of his brother, Andrew.
- Philip came to Jesus as a result of the direct call of Jesus.
And then there is Nathanael who embodies for us why it is important to look at the third point of life’s four purposes: to be changed on the inside.
Nathanael has not made himself available, has not waited patiently, is not ready to respond and not ready to listen to God because of his prejudices. We read in verses 45-?46 the following: “Philip found Nathanael and told him, “We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. “Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” Nathanael asked. “Come and see,” said Philip.”
Nathanael hears Jesus is from Nazareth – a small town, near no major or important cities, and essentially, it is the modern-?day equivalent of hailing from Canberra! It’s the last place anyone would think anything interesting would occur. Nazareth would not produce anything valuable, in Nathanael’s eyes, and therefore his sarcastic throw away comment reveals much about his hardened heart state towards anything that is not deemed worthy in a broader, social sense. What is important to see here is how Philip does not argue with Nathanael’s prejudiced comments, but rather, he invites him to be challenged in those prejudices and meet Jesus in person. A valuable lesson for us comes from Philip’s interaction with his friend here. Get out of God’s way. God will deal with the prejudices – and we see that straight away when Nathanael is confronted with Jesus himself. When Jesus tells Nathanael that he saw him ‘under the fig tree’, we can look at this in two ways. Perhaps Nathanael was meditating or praying under a physical fig tree, but this is also a common phrase at the time meaning meditation on the Scriptures – spending time with God. Jesus says “I saw you” there. God sees you even when you do not make yourself available, when perhaps your prejudices are stopping you from being fully present before God, and He does not stop calling you until you answer. You have many opportunities to be called to God. It’s not a once in a life time call. Otherwise, Samuel would have missed his chance, as would Nathanael and many other figures in the Bible; and this is the same with us. The fourth way to come to Christ is what Nathanael highlights:
- Nathanael came to Jesus as he overcame personal prejudices due to a personal encounter with Jesus.
What I’d like to end on is the testimony of what Nathanael says when his puts his prejudices aside. We read in verse 49 that Nathanael testifies that Jesus is the “Son of God; you are the king of Israel.” If you’re remembering, Samuel was the prophet who is the forerunner to the human kings put in place by God when we asked this of Him. What Nathanael testifies is that Jesus is not a political or military saviour, but the Son of God – a Messianic title free from political and nationalistic gravitas and a reminder of what we actually asked for – a King.
The A in OICA stands for application. Now that you have observed, interpreted and correlated Scripture, what will you apply? Perhaps you need to make time for God’s voice to be heard through the strain of the everyday, to make yourself available. Or perhaps you need to be like Philip and not argue with your friends, but to point them towards a personal encounter with Jesus without entertaining their prejudices. Maybe you need to be like Nathanael and put aside your prejudices in order to be changed from the inside. The application is up to you.
What both our 1 Samuel 3 and John 1 passages confirm is: flesh and blood (humanity) needs to be subordinate to Word and Spirit in the establishment of Kingship. Our true King is both fully human and fully God – perhaps not the king we asked for, but the King we need.