Can You Hear Me Now?

Can You Hear Me Now?

1 Samuel 3:1-21

        This is the well-known passage where little Samuel is laying down and keeps mistaking God’s voice for his caretaker’s Eli. At the end he, and Eli, figure it out and God gives him a rather harsh word for Eli to hear.

                It shouldn’t surprise us, after yesterday’s passage, that the opening verse here says “the word of the Lord was rare in those days”. We say “no duh”, when your kids are a sinful, unjust, philandering, disgrace to the priesthood and the nation and you, Eli, do nothing about it, it shouldn’t be a surprise that God wasn’t communicating through you much. Then we see a description of Eli himself, the High Priest, that his “eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see”. On the surface this is probably just a reference to his literal eyesight, however, given the context of this chapter, it is also a reference to his poor spiritual sight.

                This poor spiritual sight proves true when little Samuel hears a voice in the night and goes to Eli to see if he was calling him. Of course we know that it was God not Eli but it takes Eli three times before he figures it out (we’ll cut the little boy Samuel some slack). This continues to follow the theme of God using the humble and unexpected for His glory. God gives little Samuel a serious message to relay to Eli, but God did not give the message to Eli, the High Priest, himself.

The message is that Eli and his sons have royally messed up and disobeyed and dishonored God. They are not only going to pay with their lives but their entire family line will be cut out from the people of Israel. Their family is going to end and they will no longer have an inheritance with the promises of Abraham as the people of God. Big stuff. As you might imagine, little Samuel is a bit hesitant to tell his caretaker this wonderful news but Eli basically forces him to lay it to him strait. He doesn’t argue with it but just says “It is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him.”

From here we see Samuel catapulting into spiritual leadership over Israel and Eli’s house being diminished.

Lesson: What kind of things are in your life that you know you need to change but you let them linger, thinking that they are not really that big of a deal? Don’t put it off any longer. Use this lesson as a wakeup call to get right with God while you still can.

If God has given you the spiritual sight to see your sin then you need to repent of it while your sight lasts. God’s mercy is long but doesn’t last forever, He is also just and will hold you accountable for your sin. Choose this day to be humbly used by God as an instrument for His righteousness!