God's Prophet

"And all Israel from Dan to Beersheba knew that Samuel had been established as a prophet of the Lord. Then the Lord appeared again in Shiloh. For the Lord revealed himself to Samuel in Shiloh by the word of the Lord."

1 Samuel 3:20-21

We saw in the second chapter of this great book of the Old Testament the great contrast that we have between the family of Hannah and Elkanah and the family of Eli the priest. Hannah and Elkanah were blessed with a son, asked of the Lord and consecrated to the Lord. That son, of course, was Samuel, and in the course of time, God gave them other sons and daughters. But Samuel was set apart and raised up by God at a particular time in the history of Israel in order that through him God might reveal his own word to his own people at this point of their history. Eli the priest of God had attended to his priestly duties, but he had not attended his personal duties. The neglect of our personal duties can never be justified. It does not matter what we are, and it does not matter who we are; if we have duties to perform, personally, in our own homes and in our own families, God says to us that to obey and to attend to these duties is better than sacrifice. And Eli, this priest of the Old Testament had neglected to direct his sons, Hophni and Phinehas, in the ways of God, so that in chapter 2, as we saw, they are contrasted with Samuel by their own immorality and by their own godlessness and way of life that is an abomination to God himself.

Here they are, officiating at God's altars and burning incense in God's House, and attending to the things of the public worship of God, and yet they are far removed from the God of the covenant and from the God of Israel. They know everything about the house of Jehovah, but they know nothing about the Jehovah of this great house.

God has promised that he will not be without a witness, and without a priest to serve him in any age or generation. And Samuel, in the purposes of God, will fill the place of faithless Eli, and faithless Hophni and faithless Phinehas, and he is going to be a prophet of the Lord. This chapter contains an incident that is well known to everyone, I am sure. Here, Samuel, as a child, ministers to the Lord before Eli. And on one particular night, God spoke to Samuel, and God came to Samuel. Samuel did not understand at first that it was God who was speaking to him; but God persisted, and God continued calling until at last God made it clear to Samuel that Samuel was going to be set apart as a prophet. Samuel was given his very first sermon to preach this particular night when God came to him, and told him what he was to say to Eli and his house. And with that first sermon, there began the ministry after which this book is named.

The ministry of Samuel is one of the great ministries of the Old Testament. Samuel himself sinned, and Samuel himself came short in many, many ways; but Samuel's ministry was really the beginning of the movement of God among his people that would consolidate them into a kingdom. Remember, that is what God was focussing on in the covenant promises - he was going to give his people a king, a king who would rule over them after God's own heart, as a great type and foreshadowing of the great king to come, the King and Head of the church, the Lord Jesus Christ; the ministry which God will use to establish that kingdom is the ministry of Samuel, after whom this book is named.

From any account, this ministry is important at this point in the history of Israel, because the ministry of the Word of God is never unimportant. In every age and in every generation, the single most important thing that God does for his people is that he provides them with a gospel ministry. The central most important feature of the church in the New Testament age is this feature of an established, God-glorifying, Christ-appointed, Gospel-preaching ministry. Paul said to Timothy that in the last times many people would depart from the faith. They would be seduced by all kinds of ideas and philosophies and religious outlooks. Paul says to Timothy - 'The single most important thing for you to do in the city of Ephesus is to preach the Gospel'. And throughout the Bible, if we are prepared to thumb our way through it, we will see this, time and time again, that the central feature of biblical religion is the ministry that God has appointed for the preaching of the word, for the proclamation of the evangel, for the proclamation of the one great way of salvation.

If I were to ask you - what is the single most important resource in our church? It is not how much money we have. It is not how many members we have. It is not how many meetings we have. It is nothing of that. The single most important resource of any church in the New Testament age is a Christ-appointed ministry. And unless we realise that, we realise nothing about the New Testament and its teaching concerning the Christian church. Christ went up to Heaven; Paul tells us in Ephesians 4 that the first thing he did was to establish men to preach the Gospel. He made some apostles; he made some evangelists; he sent out preachers to herald the good news of the gospel - he set apart and he called and he equipped and he fashioned and he prepared men who would have one great end in view: that the gospel would be preached by them in the ministry of the New Testament church.

And when we come to the Word of God and ask 'What does the word of God say about the church?', we must realise this - that in the picture that the New Testament paints concerning the church in the world, at the very centre of it there is a Christ-settled ministry. And I want to come to this great passage of the Old Testament, to the record of Samuel's call and commission and appointment to be a prophet of the Lord to remind ourselves of what the Bible says about the ministry Christ has appointed in his own church. The apostle Paul tells me that "We do not preach ourselves". It is not the function of the preacher to preach himself, or of the pulpit to preach itself. "We preach Christ crucified" - not Christ without a cross, not a cross without Christ, but Christ on the cross for the salvation of men and women and boys and girls to the end of time. And when you read through the history of the church through the ages, you will discover that at times of revival and blessing, when the Spirit of God was poured out upon the church - the Great Awakening in America, the Reformation in Europe, all these great movements of the Spirit of God - what was the central feature of these movements of revival? It was a Christ-centred, Christ-appointed, Christ-glorifying ministry. It was not some kind of entertainment that was laid on by the church, some kind of free-for-all in these churches; it was this: the pulpits into which Christ had placed his own men at various times in the church's history were blessed by him, and the Spirit of God came down, the Word of God was proclaimed, and sinners were saved.

There is nothing in the Word of God which warrants us to move away from this position of the centrality of the Christian gospel and of the Christian ministry in the New Testament church. You remember what happened in Britain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries under the influence of the Puritans. They had been brought up in the Anglican system, and many of them had worshipped in churches which were so ornate and so elaborate and so glamorised, and central to the worship was the activity of the priest officiating at the altar, and all the liturgy, the Prayer Books - everything to do with the drama of external religion.

Do you know what the Puritans did once they built their churches? They stripped away all the ornamentation - all the grandiose drama, all that was peripheral in religion, and they placed in the centre of their simple church buildings what they considered to be the most important piece of furnishing in any religious place of worship - they centralised their pulpits. Instead of the altar being in the supreme place, they gave that place to the pulpit. Why? Because they recognised that it is the ministry of the Word that is vital for the good, and health, and life of the church.

And it is still the same. A church or a congregation or a people are only as good as the ministry they receive. Don't get me wrong: I am not saying that a congregation is only as good as the minister it receives. Thank God that is not the case! But what I am saying is that it is as good as the ministry it receives; because a Gospel ministry, Christ-appointed, Christ-centred, Christ-preaching ministry is the very lifeline of the church of God in this world. Every bit as much as the ministry of Samuel was so vital for the children of Israel in these Old Testament times.

Let me highlight four things that stand out in this chapter concerning the ministry of Samuel. Let us note first, the NEED for this ministry. Then let us look at God's PROVISION of this ministry. Thirdly, we will look at the NATURE of his ministry, and finally at the POWER of his ministry.

(1) The Need for Samuel's Ministry

Why was it so vital that there should be a prophet who would proclaim the word of God and bring the word of God to the people? We are told in the very beginning of the chapter that the word of God was precious at this time. Why? Because there was no open vision. There was no open revelation - no completed Bible to which people could go, and no place where the Bible was heralded out clearly. And why not? Because the sins of the people were so great that God had stopped his revelatory process. The word of God was simply not there.

We are told in the Gospels that there were places where Jesus could do no miracles. Why? Was it because of any shortage of power? Not at all. Was it because of some deficiency with himself? Not at all. He could do no mighty work there because of their UNBELIEF. It was their sin that put restraints on the revelation of His glory. It is the same here in the Old Testament. The sin of the covenant people has closed up the vision, and has closed up the revelation: there is no open vision any more. That is why, for those who truly believed, and who truly loved the Lord, and were truly the people of God, any word from God was precious. Any word they received was precious. Anything that they heard from Heaven for their own souls was precious, and they held on to it, and they tested it and they lived by it.

How precious is the Word of God to us? That is really the supreme question. What value do we place on a word from Heaven to our soul? What value do we put on what God has said in his word? What value do we place on the Scriptures, where Christ is revealed, inspired by the Spirit of God and full of the Christ of God. Listen to the psalmist: "O how I love your law! It is my study all the day; it makes me wiser than my foes for it doth with me stay". This is what he says to God from the depths of his heart: "do not take away the word that you spoke to your servant." It is precious; he is holding on to it. He does not want to lose it. Is the word of God precious to us? Do we love it? Love it to the extent that we would be willing to part with anything before parting with our Bible? So much so that we would be willing to lose everything but the word of God from Heaven to our soul?

My friends, let us realise how precious this deposit of truth is that God has given to us in his word. But let us also realise that the reason we need a gospel ministry in the United Kingdom at the threshold of the twenty-first century is because there are so few places where the Word of God is loved and preached in all its glory and in all its sincerity and in all its fulness. Let us realise that it is possible for us to go to churches and sit in churches, and never hear the Word of God. It is possible for us to be in places of worship, places of religious devotion, places where there are services held, but the Word of God is never preached and never proclaimed in all its fulness and glory. If it was true here, at this point that the word of God was a rare thing, it is true throughout the length and breadth of our nation. Thank God that there are men in our church, and in other churches, who will proclaim the whole counsel of God, and preach the truth as it is in Christ without fear or favour, but let us hang our heads in shame as a nation that such places are few and far between. Let us hang our heads in shame before the God of all the earth, that the land of Knox is no longer the land of the Book; that the land that heard the preaching of great men of God like Bishop Ryle and C.H. Spurgeon, and Lloyd-Jones and many other giants of the faith, yes and lesser giants too whose names were never inscribed in history but who were faithful preachers of the evangel; yet there is a famine in our land, not a famine for bread or water, but for the word of God.

And Britain is no longer Great, because we have come away from the one source of true greatness, and turned our backs on the Word of life. The day the queen was crowned, she was given a Bible and she was exhorted to remember that these were the living oracles of God. But in Britain now, the Bible is hardly thought of as the living oracles of God. That does not make the need for a Gospel ministry less; it makes the need for it even more urgent and even more burning in our day and generation. What does Christ say to us? He says "Pray to the Lord of the harvest, that he will send out labourers into his harvest". He does not say "Pray that the church's deficit will be dealt with", or "Pray that the churches will be beautifully kept, and beautifully ornamented", but "Pray that God will raise up gospel preachers to sow the seed of the kingdom throughout the length and breadth of our kingdom, and in all the kingdoms of the world. Is this our great burden and concern? The spiritual wealth of a people is measured by the calibre of a people's ministry. The word of God was rare in Samuel's day. It is rare still. But thank God that his cause is not extinguished by the rarity of his word. His name is not extinct. In the preaching of the Gospel he still speaks to men and women and boys and girls.

(2) God's Provision of a Gospel Ministry

God has his eye on Samuel. He is going to make Samuel a preacher of his word and covenant. God is going to say to Samuel - "You will be my prophet", and all the land would know that Samuel was raised up to be a prophet of the living God. Does it not thrill you to read this chapter; study it and see that it says to us that however dark irreligious and spiritually dead our land is, God has boys in schools and Sunday Schools, in homes and families, even boys yet unborn whom he is going to raise up to be his prophets and his spokesmen and his ministers in the world. Let us not forget that.

There are boys going through our Sabbath Schools whom God is going to make preachers of the Gospel. There are boys in our day schools whom God is going to raise up as the ministers of his truth. There are boys and young men upon whom God's eye has fallen, and whom he has ordained from all eternity to be the heralds of his evangel, just as he had his eye on Samuel. And Samuel's youth, his childishness is emphasised; his age is not specified, but we are told that it was the child Samuel who ministered to the Lord (3:1), and God intended that this child should be made a prophet of the covenant. Jeremiah objected when God called him to be a prophet; he said, "Lord, I cannot speak - I am only a child!". God said "Who told you you were a child? I have called you and separated you to be a prophet, a preacher of the covenant - you tell the people what I have given you to speak". Paul says to Timothy "Let no man despise your youth; your call is not from men but from God. God's eye is on you, and God has set you apart to be a preacher of the evangel.

It is not the age that makes the preacher, but the call of the Lord. Here was Samuel, ministering before the Lord in the temple. One particular night Eli was "laid down in his place". I wonder if he should have lain down? I think sometimes Eli was too fond of sleeping. The lamp was still burning, and he ought to have been awake. But Eli was getting old; his eyes were heavy and he fell asleep. Samuel too went to sleep and God called him. Samuel ran to Eli, thinking that it was Eli's voice he had heard. Eli said "No, I didn't call you; go and lie down again". God called again to Samuel; again Samuel ran to Eli; again the same thing happened. It happened a third time.

There is something quite wonderful here. Do you see it? The moment Samuel hears a voice he runs to Eli. That it his work, it is his duty. That is why he is here. He is there to minister to the Lord before Eli. And when he hears a voice he does not close his ears to it; he jumps up and he runs to Eli. Do you see - it is a cardinal rule in the church of Christ that before a man is a good shepherd he must be a good sheep. Samuel runs to his duty when he hears the voice. To be sure, he has a lot to learn. But here is a man who is faithful in the least things, and God is going to make him faithful in the most things, and faithful in the important things, as well as faithful in these little things. Samuel runs to his duty when he hears the voice. Are we ready to do our duty. It may be that in our estimation God has not given us very much to do in this world. Perhaps our complaint is that we wish we could serve him more, and have more to do for the Lord. Remember, though, that wherever God has placed you is the greatest place that you could be. Whatever your calling, and whatever your occupation, do it well, and do it to the Lord. Maybe you are complaining because of all the responsibilities of parenthood that are keeping you from serving the Lord in other ways. My friend, if God has made you a parent, you run to your duty, and do it well, doing it to the Lord. Maybe God has given you a very simple occupation in this world; nothing great, nothing grand. Perhaps you wish that you could serve him better in some other occupation or some other place. But God has closed these doors. Wherever God has put you, wherever you are you serve him well and you do all things for his glory. That is what Samuel was doing - running to his duty when he heard a voice; until he realised it was not the voice of Eli at all.

There is something else quite amazing here. We are told in verse 10 that the Lord came and STOOD and called as at other times "Samuel, Samuel". We are not told that at the other times God came and stood there. But this time he did. This time he came and stood and named Samuel twice and he closed Samuel in with himself so that at last there was nowhere else for Samuel to go, and nothing else for Samuel to do but listen to the voice and obey the call of God to be a prophet of Jehovah.

That is how God provides Gospel ministers. That is how he furnishes his church with men to proclaim the evangel. Men who can do nothing else. Men to whom God comes and beside whom God stands and to whom God says "Samuel, Samuel", so that there is no arguing and no dubiety and there is no doubt. Listen to the great apostle to the Gentiles. What does he say? "Necessity is laid upon me" He could do nothing other than preach the gospel in all its fulness and all its glory. And those who have received his call are unable not to be preachers of the Gospel. Nothing could persuade them to stay out of the ministry when God has called them into the ministry; and God forbid that anyone should enter the ministry without such a constraint and without such a call. A body in the pulpit is not enough for a Christian ministry. You need a man whom God has called, unmistakeably, personally, upon whom God has laid necessity, who says "Woe is unto me if I preach not the Gospel".

Whatever we have in our churches or congregations, God forbid that we should be without this one great central feature of New Testament religion - that God sends his heralds out with the evangel. How can people believe on him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how can people preach unless they are sent? That is the great argument of the New Testament, and we must pray to God that he will send out men who will preach the gospel in season and out of season and proclaim the great message of God's truth.

(3) The Nature of Samuel's Ministry

What was it that Samuel had to preach. We have it here in embryonic form in the first sermon that Samuel was commissioned to deliver. God gave it to him and laid it before him. I wish every sermon could come to preachers as easily as this sermon came to Samuel. God said to Samuel "You go and tell Eli that I am going to do a work". This is the first thing. God says to Samuel "Go and tell men that I am at work. That I am not sitting down on my throne oblivious to what's going on in the world. No; there is a God in Heaven and He knows absolutely everything that there is to know. And the message of the Gospel brings me face to face with that God. And the Christian ministry reminds me that there is more to reality than what my naked human eye can see and what my ears and what my life can experience - God says to me through the proclamation of the Word "Tell everyone that I am at work in the world".

What a glorious message! A message of a living, powerful, working God, who is sovereign in history, sovereign in creation and providence, sovereign in redemption, and sovereign in all the affairs of his church. The ministry of the word is commissioned to the reminder to people that there is a God with whom they have to do.

Then there is this: God says to Samuel "Go and say to Eli that his house is to be judged. His sons made themselves vile, and he restrained them not. Go and say that I have sworn that the iniquity of Eli's house shall not be purged with sacrifice for ever". What a solemn, solemn message - Go and tell the

religious house of Eli that their sin is so great that no sacrifice can atone for it, there is no blood to wash them clean, there is no place for them to turn to. Little wonder that we read here that Samuel was afraid to deliver the message, to stand before Eli and to say to Eli "Eli, your sin has come up to God and God says that your house is to be destroyed because you did not restrain your sins, they did not take the opportunity to repent and they hardened themselves against God, and now there is no more sacrifice that will atone for them.

What does the Gospel say to us? The Gospel says that this is God's hour of grace for all of us, and if we do not come to Christ tonight we may never come. For those who reject Christ "there remains no more sacrifice for sin". It does not matter how you view the religions of the world; God says that without Christ's sacrifice there is no sacrifice. It does not matter how you view the lives of men; unless you close in now with God's offer of salvation you stand in risk of a lost eternity. God forbid that on that last great day when we stand before God, anybody should say to their preacher "Why did you not tell me it would be like this?" God forbid that when this world is over and our lives are laid bare and naked before the God of all the earth that any one should say to their minister "Why did you not tell me to flee to Christ?" There is only one place of salvation, and it is in Jesus. Come, my friend, if you have not come. Religion did not save Hophni and Phinehas; do not trust in religion. Do not trust in church attendance - church attendance did not save Hophni and Phinehas. Do not trust to your experiences. Experiences did not save Hophni and Phinehas. Trust in Christ and in Christ alone.

God said to Samuel to tell Eli that his day of grace was over because he did not repent. In this same message there was a message of grace; the house of Eli was to be a warning to every other house in Israel and Samuel was to declare to all of Israel that for all who repent there is atonement, and forgiveness and sacrifice. Now the Gospel has not changed one little bit. The world has gone on a long way since Samuel's day, but the heart of man is still the same and the Gospel of God's grace is still the same. Today, in a day of grace, from a Christ of grace, there comes an invitation to you and me. Christ says "Come". My friend, you are warranted to come, and invited to come, and Christ in the Gospel constrains you to come, and says to those who are still outside of Jesus "Why will you not come to me that you might have life?" That is what the Gospel ministry of the New Testament is for - to set before men the one great issue of life and of death. In Christ there is salvation. Out of Christ there is nothing but sin and ruin by the fall. What will it be for us? Having known and having heard the teachings ofthe Gospel perhaps since childhood, what are we and where are we in relation to the Christ of God?

(4) The Power of Samuel's ministry

All Israel from Dan in the north, to Beersheba in the south - the extremities of the land - they all knew that this was God's prophet. Many did not like him, but they knew he was God's prophet. Many refused to listen, but they knew he was God's prophet. Many turned away their eyes from him, and turned away their ears from him, but they knew he was God's prophet. And those who were led by him and taught by him came to know the blessing of the God whom he preached, and served, and set before them. If God sets among you a man to preach the gospel you will know it, not because of the man, but because of the God of the gospel and the God of the Bible and the God of Calvary's cross.

And what is your duty towards such a ministry? You must support it. You are mandated by the word of God if God gives you the preaching of the Gospel you are to support it. You are to support it in your prayers, to pray that God would bless that Gospel and that message because no other message can do anyone any good. You are to support it financially. That is what the New Testament says. Paul says, "I give you my spiritual things; you must support the ministry of the word with your natural things". But above all, you are to support it with your attendance at the Gospel place of preaching, and lay hold on that Gospel as if you were never to hear it again.

Is that not how Richard Baxter viewed his ministry? "I preach", he wrote, "as though to never preach again, and as a dying man to dying men". The Westminster divines knew the importance of gospel preaching. Those of you who have the Confession of Faith and the Directory of Public Worship read it, especially the Directory. It tells you all about what we are meant to be doing when we worship God in a public manner. Listen: "The public worship being begun the people are wholly to attend upon it, forbearing to read any thing except what the minister is then reading or citing and abstaining much more from all private whisperings, conferences, salutations or doing reverence to any person present or coming in, as also [listen to this] from all gazing - you are not allowed to gaze in public worship -sleeping and other indecent behaviour which may disturb the minister or people in the service of God". It's not funny. These were people who had a burden for the glory of God and the worship of God and knew the value of a Gospel minister. I am reminded of what John Owen once said, when he described the giving of a Gospel minister to a congregation as worth more than all the pomp and ceremony in the enthronement of all the bishops and cardinals throughout the whole world. He knew the value of Gospel preaching, and he knew the value of a Gospel minister. The sad thing is that when it is so rare there are still people who prefer to gaze and sleep and disturb others in the worship of the sanctuary of God. Have we really come to undervalue a word from Heaven to that extent? Or do we also know how precious the Word of God is to us. God forbid that I should have said anything here by way of lifting up myself in this sermon. I do not want to lift up myself but I do want to lift up my office and my calling and the great work of proclaiming, above all, the great Saviour that I have been commissioned to preach, and to say to all "You need Christ, and he is there for you to come to".

© Iain D. Campbell 2001