1 Samuel chapter 3, And the child Samuel ministered unto the Lord before Eli. And the word of the Lord was precious in those days, and there was no open vision. And it came to pass at that time when Eli was laid down in his place, and his eyes began to wax dim that he could not see. And there the lamp of God went out in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was, and Samuel was laid down to sleep. But the Lord called Samuel, and he answered, Here am I. And he ran unto Eli, and said unto him, Here am I, for thou callest me. And he said, I called not, lie down again. And he went and lay down. And the Lord called yet again, Samuel. And Samuel arose and went to Eli and said, Here am I, for thou didst call me. And he answered, I called not, my son, lie down again. Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, neither was the word of the Lord yet revealed unto him. And the Lord called Samuel again the third time, and he arose and went to Eli and said, Here am I, for thou didst call me. And Eli perceived that the Lord had called the child. Therefore Eli said unto Samuel, Go, lie down, And it shall be, if he shall call thee, that thou shalt say, Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth. So Samuel went, and lay down in his place. And the Lord came, and stood, and called, as at other times, Samuel, Samuel. Then Samuel answered, Speak, for thy servant here. Amen. The Lord will add his own blessing to the reading of his precious word for his name's sake. Samuel was in bed. A child resting after a long day's labor. Not for him the play and the pastimes of other children of his age Ever since birth he had been marked out for the service of God. His duties kept him around the house of God. A little helper to God's high priest. Today we think it's strange that a child should be so employed around the house of God. And certainly even in those times It was something, if not unique, certainly highly unusual. But I've little doubt that your sympathy would be wasted on Samuel if you thought of a poor child not enjoying his boyhood. I was thinking of this as I read this passage and I thought, you know, with all the hustle, all the activity, that was daily taking place around the tabernacle, the milling throngs, the constant conversation, the slaughter of animals and the sacrificing of those animals. That was the center of life in Israel and would undoubtedly have been an exciting situation for Mosmah. That night, however something Probably much more exciting, but certainly for Samuel much more unforgettable, was about to happen. As I said, he was there, lying in bed. We read that he was led down. In the words to sleep, italicized, I think we can say he was led down. If we put ourselves in his position, I think we can understand perhaps something of those moments. A boy, for all I know, thinking of home, or of tomorrow, or as most of us boys did when we lay awake for any time, what he would do when he grew up, or perhaps just drifting off to sleep. Then he heard his name called, Samuel. He got up and off to Eli. And by the way, I think it says a lot for the sweetness of the disposition of the boy, that having heard, he immediately got up. And it seemed that his patience was unlimited, certainly unbroken, as he kept on going back to Eli, up and off to Eli, only to be sent back with the perplexing Word, I didn't call you. Go and lie down. I don't know if I'm being unfair to Eli when I detect at the beginning something of a tone of austerity and irascible temperament in the old man. Don't bother me when an old fellow is getting off to sleep. He doesn't want a kid coming, wakening him up. I didn't call you. Go and lie down. The second time, and the third time, and at last Eli's awake enough to understand there's something happening here. Knowing that it must be the Lord calling, he told him what to do, go, and when he calls, answer, speak, Lord, for thy servant here. So Samuel laid down, as he laid himself there upon his bed, The Lord called for the fourth time and Samuel answered with those unforgettable words, God help us all to have the same heart reaction, speak because thy servant heareth. That was an important event For many aspects it was a very important event in the history of Israel. It was one of those turning points in the history of the nation. It was also an important event in the history of the revelation of redemption. But it was most of all an important event in the life of Samuel himself. And I want us tonight simply to consider it. that God called Samuel and revealed Himself to him. And as we consider that, we will find in it, I think, a beautiful illustration of God's gracious gospel call. What I have to say on it tonight is essentially very, very simple. I want to point out that God called Samuel It is not that Samuel called upon God. It is that God called upon Samuel. It is a sweet and familiar story with tremendous evangelical importance. And it is telling us, first and foremost, as God called Samuel, this was a sovereign call. The reason for this call resided in God. The motive for this call was in God's unspeakable grace. He called Samuel. The call of God to any man is always an exercise in sovereign grace. There is none that seeketh after God. There is no man left to his own devices who has a heart for God, who has a mind for God, Wherever you see a heart for God, you know that sovereign grace has preceded it and caused it. And so here, in the case of Samuel, when we look from Samuel to ourselves, we praise God for what the Scripture calls a heavenly calling. What Romans 8 says is a calling according to God's eternal purpose. For whom He did foreknow, He predestinated. Whom He predestinated, He called. Whom He called, He justified. And whom He justified, He glorified. Right there at the heart of the eternal purpose of God for salvation, preceded by foreordination and predestination, followed by justification and glorification. Right there, as the heartthrob of God's purpose of grace to sinners, there is His sovereign, gracious call. Paul wrote to Timothy and said God has saved us and called us with a holy calling not according to our works but according to his own purpose and grace which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began. God's call was to Samuel as a call of sovereignty and as I've emphasized but want now particularly to underline a call of grace. God could speak to men for a hundred reasons. The most obvious is to find fault with them. Which of us could complain if the Almighty were to speak and say, I know you, I see you, I understand you, and I condemn you? Which of us could say, Lord, You're being harsh. I have not merited all of this. Not one. Nor could Samuel. But God's call to Samuel was not to condemn him. It was entirely a purpose of love, of mercy, of self-revelation. It was a purpose of kindness and grace. That's what God's call is to every guilty sinner. When he calls him to himself, he does so as he loves him and intends to do him good. Peter said in 1 Peter 2 and 9, You are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation of peculiar people, that ye should show forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness. into His marvelous light. A call of sovereignty, a call of grace. But notice, and this is the lovely thing about God's call, He called Him personally. He came and He called Him by His name. And he repeated that name. And again he called him by his name. And then the fourth time he repeated the name, Samuel, Samuel. with all the pathos of the divine nature, with all the love that is the very essence of God, with all the kindness that ultimately would send the Son of God to Calvary, with all the power of the Holy Ghost to reach to the depths of a human soul, God stood. Think of this, the eternal God who had scattered the stars through space, who had angels by the myriad attendant upon his call, the God of glory stood by the bed of a child, and with all the outpouring of his heart he cries, Samuel, Samuel. Oh, it was a cry to awaken the dead. It was a cry to arouse the despondent or the careless. It was the cry and the call that was personal, by name, and peculiarly adapted to Samuel's state. As I thought of this, I thought of some of the people God called to Himself. And yet He didn't use the same technique when He called to Samuel. He didn't call Samuel the way He called Saul of Tartus. when he had to knock that proud Pharisee from his horse and leave him blinded in the dust with the overwhelming glory of the Christ of God. Saul of Tarsus needed that, but not Samuel. Nor did he call him as he called the Philippian jailer. with an earthquake and rumbles that put the fear of God and the fear of eternity into that hardened old sinner. Such a call might well have devastated Samuel. Nor did he even appear to him as he appeared to John in the Isle of Patmos with such a glowing vision of his majesty that John fell as one dead. No, he came with the voice of heaven. He came with Samuel's name upon his lips in a way that was friendly, unthreatening. You notice there's no sign of panic in Samuel when he hears this voice. That's an amazing thing, you know. Because why is Samuel, and we'll talk about this in a moment, thought it must be Eli I think the only reason for that is because there was nobody else there to call him but Samuel knew Eli's voice probably better than he knew any other voice on earth yet here when he's told this is the Lord speaking there's no panic God was calling him by name That's the beautiful thing about the gospel call. There are millions of sinners in the world who hear that call every year. There are souls, perhaps in a gathering, God is moving and bringing individual souls and the gospel is adapted to every single one of them. How often, I think there'd be people here, this would be your testimony, I was sitting in a meeting and the preacher was preaching and the message didn't seem to be for anybody else, God was speaking to me, it had my name on it. Oh, God's call. is always personal. He said in Isaiah 43 and verse 1, O Israel, fear not, for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name, thou art mine. Again in the 45th chapter of Isaiah, I have even called thee by thy name. He is a sovereign, gracious, personal call. Those are the marks of the gospel call. Let me remark quickly that Samuel did not recognize God's call. God called. Now stop and think of this. Here is God's creature created in some fashion with the knowledge of His Creator stamped upon His very being. And yet, when God called, He didn't recognize it. Why? We're told specifically why. That Samuel, verse 7, did not yet know the Lord. Now, I know that there are Commentators who say that simply means that he had not yet been inaugurated into his prophetic office, had not yet started receiving revelations of prophetic truth. But that's what the second half of the verse says. Neither was the Word of the Lord yet revealed unto him. And I don't take that as a parallel. I take that as a contrast. Here we have two things. First and foremost, He didn't know the Lord and therefore he was not yet a prophet. But he didn't know the Lord. This is an amazing thing. It's a solemnizing thing. This is God's resume of Samuel at whatever age he was as a young boy. Born to Hannah. Lee is, say, until maybe five or six years old, in Hannah's house, to one of the greatest prayer warriors ever known in the Church of God, caught at her knee. But he didn't know the Lord. Now, having lived in the house of God, having seen all the ritual of the house of God, having attended in all the sacrifices of the house of God, having listened to the reading and to the praying, having been in the presence of Eli the high priest, having heard maybe a thousand times the recital of the great Shema Yisrael, Hear, O Israel, the Lord, our Lord is one God. And yet, after it all, He didn't. Know the Lord. Solemn truth. There are people who sit in this house week after week, and they hear the gospel, and the voice of the Spirit of God through that gospel, speaking, calling the prodigal home. The reason they do not know the call of God, despite having Christian parents, Christian upbringing, Christian education, Christian preaching, despite being about the house of God, despite knowing all the ins and outs of what goes on in the house of God. You've sat in morning services, evening services, prayer meetings, meetings of every description, and yet, though you've learned parts of the Bible, You can say prayers whose words are perfect. You know not the Lord. What a tragedy. What a tragedy. To be so close to the things of God. And to be so far from God Himself. In Samuel's case there was an added reason that's given in verse 1. That is that he was not exposed to the vital power of the Word of God. We read that the Word of the Lord was precious in those days. Precious because it was rare. There was no open vision. In other words, Eli, who was the man of God, and I believe a saith man, and undoubtedly he was in the right place. He was not a usurper of the high priestly position. But Eli was not a man in vital contact and communion with God. Eli was not a man who could expound the Word of God with power. Here is a warning for every preacher. He had sold his ministry and he had sold his effectiveness because he would not discipline his own family. He made gods of his children and when he exalted those little idols, they grew up into large monsters who cursed his life, his home, his ministry, his service and ultimately his nation. He had no open vision. Now there was no other place for Samuel to go. Had there been, he would have done well to have gone. There was no other ministry under which to sit. This was the best place Hannah could have sent him. And yet how tragic that for all the Orthodox say, and there was still quite a lot of that, There was nothing of the vital power of the Holy Spirit. There was nothing of the vital reality of the Word of God. Samuel could hear all the dead ritual without any exposure to the Word and the power of the Holy Ghost. I fear that across America That is altogether too frequent an occurrence. And Christians damn their children by putting them under a dead ministry. I understand the pressures that are upon Christian parents, I fully understand that. But I want to tell you parents, you get the cart before the horse, and you get time before eternity. You put yourself and your children before God when you start to say, I want to see the church that has the best gymnasium. I want to see the church that has this program and that program and the other program. My children need these programs. Your children can go to hell with those programs. What your children need is an exposure to the preaching of the Word of God in the power of the Holy Ghost. I have nothing against them having a gymnasium. If I did, we wouldn't have one over here. I have nothing against them getting a tibble tennis paddle and playing ping pong. I want to tell you if that's the only reason parents put their children in a church because of the programs. They're in danger of losing them. Samuel didn't know the Lord. He was around religion, but he wasn't exposed to the power of God's Word. And then once God called him, Samuel explained it in merely natural terms. He thought it was just Eli calling. And even when he was told it wasn't Eli calling, he thought, well, it must be Eli calling, it can't be anything else. Here was a child in the house of God, and despite all the history of the movings of God in the nation of Israel, his mind was so trained to think that it couldn't be anything but natural. Supernatural never entered into it. But the call of God was explained in natural terms. and how often this is the case you bring it to yourself the Lord and Christians can relate to this in their own testimony and I trust that if you're not saved God will use it to touch your heart but you think of the number of times God has spoken God has spoken through circumstances God has spoken through perhaps bereavement God has spoken through sickness or suffering. God has spoken through the preaching of His Word. Or the testimony of another. Or the sudden death of a young person. A thousand ways God has to speak. And yet, what do you naturally do? Put it off. You try to explain it in purely natural terms. That's always been true but it's far more true nowadays. We have a statistical analysis for everything. We have a probability level for everything. When God speaks, like Samuel, you don't recognize it. Now let me come to the most beautiful part of the whole story. God called Samuel. Samuel did not recognize the call of God. But God called Samuel until he responded. Four times! Now that was grace. And yet when I look at my own life, when I was saved as a boy, How often did God have to speak to me to bring me to the light of the knowledge of sins forgiven in Christ? How many years did God speak to you before He brought you to that place to which Samuel came with an open heart, I'm listening, I'm responding. Oh, here is a persistent call. We read of the shepherd going after the sheep. You see him out there on the hillside, wild and bare. And he's calling for that sheep, and he's looking for that sheep. And we read in the words of the Saviour that he searched until he found to change the figure. He called, as in Samuel's case, until he heard. the desired response, all the persistence. If God were not persistent, where would we be tonight? If God were not persistent in calling, if God said, like some parts of the American jurisdiction, three strikes and you're out, where would you be tonight? If God says, I speak once, and if you don't respond, go your way, Where would you be? But persistently. Some of you have done your very best to get yourselves away as far as you can from ever hearing the call of God. You don't like to hear gospel preaching because you don't like to be challenged with that call. You don't like people to talk to you. Because you don't want to be challenged by that call. If God were just to give you what you want, I want to tell you, it would be tragedy. Be careful what you ask for, for He can do it. He can do it. Dr. Paisley tells the story of an early experience in his ministry on the Raven Hill Road in Belfast. As he preached the gospel Sunday night after Sunday night, he saw a very elegant young lady sitting in the meeting and obviously, obviously, tremendously distraught. The conviction of God was written all over her face. She was in an agony of conscience. Could hardly struggle out of the meetings. That went on for a number of weeks. Then the next week she came back. Face was calm. She listened to the sermon. This time there was not a tear. This time there was not an interest. Dr. Paisley was a very aggressively evangelistic preacher and he thought nothing of stopping people on the way out to say, I want to talk to you about your soul. And so he stopped that young woman, took her into the room just by the side of the, off the hallway of the church that he was standing, shaking hands in. And he said, I noticed you in these meetings, deeply distraught, but now tonight I see you calm. What has happened? He was hoping she would say the calmness is because in this week I had my sins dealt with. But she said, Preacher, I listened to you preach and I was under such conviction of sin that I couldn't stick it. God was dealing with me in a way I could not endure. She told him about the interest she had in life that could not have been consonant with the life of a Christian. She said, so this week I went to my room and I got on my knees and I prayed to God. My prayer was that God would leave me alone to go my way, to live my life. She said, I got up from my knees and I haven't had a moment's worry since. And as far as I know, that never changed. Be careful what you ask for. There is a persistence in God's call. But beware that you do not presume upon it, because that can be destructive. I said that this was a sovereign call, straight from God to Samuel. And that's a glorious thing about the gospel call. A preacher may preach, but it's not the call of the preacher, it's the call of God. It is straight from God to the heart. But yet, though it is sovereign, God did employ means. He could have himself made Samuel understand, this is not Eli. After all, God was doing the speaking. He could have said, Samuel, sit there and lie there. This is not Eli, but he didn't do that. He could have sent an angel to say, this is not Eli, but he didn't do that. He allowed it to come from the mouth of Eli. You see, Paul told the Thessalonians, He called you by our gospel. In other words, God, in one sense, deals directly with the human soul when He calls that soul to eternal life. It is the immediate action of the Holy Spirit upon the human spirit. And there's nothing there, there's no place in there for anything of man. But God has not called us to Roman Catholic quietism, where we simply sit back without the means of grace and mystically await for some light from heaven. God has not endorsed Protestant Quakerism. God has said, yes, in this mysterious act, God and the soul are one on one and yet God uses means, He uses the preaching of the gospel. I cannot explain that, but I rejoice in it, that the preaching of the gospel is God's way of carrying on the work that He could just as well do without any preachers. God is not dependent on me, I'm dependent on Him. But thank God, he uses means, it has pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to see of them that believe. Therefore, let us preach Christ. Christians, go and tell of Jesus. Wherever you go, tell of Christ. Witness for Christ. Call sinners to Christ. Can you effectually call them? No, sir, you can't. But God uses means. Do not fall for this old lie that since it's all of God and it's all of grace, there's nothing we can do to advance the Kingdom of God. There is everything that we should do to advance the Kingdom of God. Because God has ordained that we have this treasure on earth and vessels that the excellency of the power might be of God and not of us. And it was a successful call. That's the difference between the general call of the gospel and the effectual call of sovereign grace. That call is always successful. Whom He called, He justified. There's that calling that is inevitably followed by justification and eternal life. It's like the voice of Jesus at the tomb of Lazarus. Lazarus, come forth! I've often put the question, those of you who have heard it a hundred times will now hear it time 101. It's well worth thinking about. Lazarus, come forth! Did Lazarus live because he obeyed the call of Christ? Or did he obey the call of Christ because in giving that call, Christ communicated life? The answer is very simple. With the call there came the life. Dead men don't obey anything. Dead men just stay dead. Oh, the call of grace is successful, and I'm thankful for that. Because every one of us, you know, we're sinners, depraved, unclean, impure, and stubborn, bone-headed, hard-headed, and hard-hearted. And determined to go our way, left to ourselves, we would go straight on to destruction. If God's call were only a word of advice, or if it were only A tender word of invitation. And by the way, that's one thing I hate about our modern hymn books, and maybe I'm condemning our own, Joan. But one thing I hate, they take all the great, any hymns about the call of God, and they reduce God's call to an invitation. Ah, there's a world of difference. There's an invitation, alright. But the call of God is more than an invitation. If God just gave me a well-meaning invitation, I'd still have been on the way to hell. because I was dead in trespasses and sins but God spoke successfully He stood as Jesus over the tomb of Lazarus and He called, as He did with Samuel, called me by my name and brought me to Himself and yet, here's the full story, yet This persistent, sovereign, successful call needed Samuel's response. Now I've just said that the effectual call produces the life that enables the sinner to respond, that's true. And we may well say sovereign grace will do its work, that's altogether very true. But we must not read back into a sinner's dealings with God and God's dealings with a sinner, things that we learn later in the Christian life. And we must not make the sovereignty of God's call an out for the sinner. Listen, whatever theologically goes before this, when God called Samuel, God was never satisfied until he got the proper response from Samuel. The call of God demands to be heard. Thy servant heareth. Well, may we pray as I heard John Douglas teach his children pray many years ago at the family altar. Lord, give me Samuel's ears. Ears to hear. We're hearing. I am in hearing, we are receiving. God's call demands a response. You stop to think tonight. If you're unsaved, what is the call of the gospel? It's a call that's from heaven to you. It's a call of grace to you. It is a call of love to you. It is a call out of sin into salvation, out of guilt into justification. It's a call out of condemnation into eternal life. It's a call from Him who says, I died and shed my precious blood for the guilty sons of Adam's race. Question is, what is your response? What will it be? It can only be one of two things. Either rebellious or receptive. Which will it be? If you're not a Christian, God has spoken to you about your need of Christ. You be careful. It's a holy and wonderful thing to hear the gospel call But it demands your response. If you are a Christian, and God comes to speak to you, perhaps about service he requires, a position to be filled, a work to be done, a life to be lived, Listen, God is waiting to hear those words, speak Lord, thy servant heareth. That night God's call opened up a whole new relationship with the Lord, a whole new revelation from the Lord, and a whole new responsibility for the Lord. for the young child Samuel and it led him into an everlasting reign with the Lord for soon Samuel's short life was over soon the child became an old man and he died and yet he lived his soul was in peace as King Saul found out when he tried to contact him through necromancy and the witch of Endor And all of this depended on that crucial night when as a child he heard the call of God and said, speak Lord, thy servant heareth.