Childlike Listening
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Series Overview
Common Ground Workbook
Good morning Chapel family. I am so excited about the big Reveal that’s going to happen at the end of the service today—everyone who signed up to sponsor a child in Malawi is going to find out who chose them. So I know you’re excited, but you have to sit through the sermon first.
So just as the Chosen ministry directs our attention toward children in Malawi, we’re spending the first six weeks of this fall to focus on children in the Bible. Jesus said, “Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” So Jesus is inviting us to be childlike. Not childish; childlike. We said last week that that starts with humbling ourselves and receiving God’s gift of eternal life through simple faith. That’s how we enter the kingdom of heaven. But that’s just the beginning—because in order to keep growing spiritually, we need to take on certain childlike qualities. So for the next few weeks, we’re going to look at some examples of children and youth in the Bible who display those qualities. So let’s humble ourselves and learn from the children.
Today, we’re going to talk about Childlike Listening. I’m not suggesting that children listen well all the time. But sometimes they do. I can remember times when my kids were young, and I casually told them I would do something for them: “Yeah—we’ll probably go to Disney World next year.” And then it was next year—months and months after I had so flippantly uttered those words, and long forgotten that I spoke them. And one of my kids would say, “So dad—have you made the plane reservations for Florida yet?” Apparently they listen quite well when they want to. I also learned when my kids were little that when I spoke, my words carried unquestioned authority. So when I told them facts about science or history or the Bible or anything else, they believed it because dad said it. It was nice while it lasted.
But you see my point. Kids have the capacity to listen extremely well when they want to. And today we’re going to look at the story of a child who was an incredibly good listener—specifically, he listened to the voice of God. And because of that, he grew up to become a powerful spiritual leader in Israel. It all traced back to his listening.
So here’s my question for you: how well are you listening to the voice of God? Do you believe it’s even possible to hear the voice of God? There’s an old joke that goes like this: “If you talk to God, that’s called prayer. If God talks to you, that’s called schizophrenia.” So our culture makes fun of people who claim to hear God’s voice—only crazy people would say that. But the Bible tells a different story. I can tell you personally, hearing God’s voice is one of the most precious things in my life. So today, as we look at the story of young Samuel, open your heart to how God is inviting you to listen to his voice.
Our passage today is 1 Samuel chapter three. Let me give you a little background. Samuel’s mother, Hannah, was childless for a long time. And she prayed, “Lord, if you give me a son, I will dedicate him to your service for the rest of his life.” Sure enough, she got pregnant; it was a boy; she named him Samuel. And just like she promised, when the boy was probably three or four years old, she brought him to the tabernacle of God, which was in a place called Shiloh. The High Priest at the time was an old man named Eli. Eli had two adult sons who were also serving as priests, and they were doing a terrible job—we’ll hear more about that in a minute. So young Samuel served in the tabernacle under Eli’s leadership. And when we pick up the story today, Samuel is probably about twelve years old.
1 Samuel chapter 3. Let’s hear God’s Word…
1 The boy Samuel ministered before the LORD under Eli. In those days the word of the LORD was rare; there were not many visions.
2 One night Eli, whose eyes were becoming so weak that he could barely see, was lying down in his usual place. 3 The lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the house of the LORD, where the ark of God was. 4 Then the LORD called Samuel.
Samuel answered, “Here I am.” 5 And he ran to Eli and said, “Here I am; you called me.”
But Eli said, “I did not call; go back and lie down.” So he went and lay down.
6 Again the LORD called, “Samuel!” And Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, “Here I am; you called me.”
“My son,” Eli said, “I did not call; go back and lie down.”
7 Now Samuel did not yet know the LORD: The word of the LORD had not yet been revealed to him.
8 A third time the LORD called, “Samuel!” And Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, “Here I am; you called me.”
Then Eli realized that the LORD was calling the boy. 9 So Eli told Samuel, “Go and lie down, and if he calls you, say, ‘Speak, LORD, for your servant is listening.’” So Samuel went and lay down in his place.
10 The LORD came and stood there, calling as at the other times, “Samuel! Samuel!”
Then Samuel said, “Speak, for your servant is listening.”
11 And the LORD said to Samuel: “See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make the ears of everyone who hears about it tingle. 12 At that time I will carry out against Eli everything I spoke against his family—from beginning to end. 13 For I told him that I would judge his family forever because of the sin he knew about; his sons blasphemed God, and he failed to restrain them. 14 Therefore I swore to the house of Eli, ‘The guilt of Eli’s house will never be atoned for by sacrifice or offering.’”
15 Samuel lay down until morning and then opened the doors of the house of the LORD. He was afraid to tell Eli the vision, 16 but Eli called him and said, “Samuel, my son.”
Samuel answered, “Here I am.”
17 “What was it he said to you?” Eli asked. “Do not hide it from me. May God deal with you, be it ever so severely, if you hide from me anything he told you.” 18 So Samuel told him everything, hiding nothing from him. Then Eli said, “He is the LORD; let him do what is good in his eyes.”
19 The LORD was with Samuel as he grew up, and he let none of Samuel’s words fall to the ground. 20 And all Israel from Dan to Beersheba recognized that Samuel was attested as a prophet of the LORD. 21 The LORD continued to appear at Shiloh, and there he revealed himself to Samuel through his word.
4:1a And Samuel’s word came to all Israel. This is the Word of the Lord.
I’m going to divide this message into two parts: The Art of Listening to God, and The Effects of Listening to God. The art and the effects of listening to God.
So, first: The Art of Listening to God. So here’s this 12-year-old boy, living in the Tabernacle; he goes to bed one night, and he hears this voice: “Samuel.” It’s the middle of the night, so he figures it must be urgent, so he runs to Eli; “Here I am; you called me.” Eli says, “I didn’t call you—go back to bed.” So
he goes back to bed and lies down. As he’s drifting off to sleep, it happens again: “Samuel!” He gets up and goes to Eli: “Here I am.” Eli says, “No—it wasn’t me.” Probably figures Samuel is dreaming. But then it happens a third time, and it finally dawns on Eli, “This is the voice of the Lord!” Eli was a very flawed person, as we’ll see in a minute. But he had enough spiritual discernment to realize that Samuel was being called by God. Which was really amazing, because we read in verse 1 that “the word of the Lord was rare in those days.” So I’m sure Eli is now fully awake, and he gives Samuel the perfect advice: “Go and lie down, and if he calls you again, here’s what you should say: ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’”
If you forget everything else I say today, remember that prayer: Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening. Because that’s the mindset—that’s the posture—of a listener.
So Samuel goes back and lies down. I highly doubt he fell asleep. And sure enough, “Samuel, Samuel!” Samuel says, “Speak, for your servant is listening.” It seems like God has been waiting for that heart of receptivity, and he speaks. Unfortunately, the message he speaks is not a pleasant one. It’s a message of judgment against Eli—specifically because of the behavior of his sons. See, Eli’s sons were serving as priests, but they were corrupt priests. They stole from the offerings that people brought to the tabernacle; they used their position as priests to take advantage of women who came to worship. And God says their father Eli knew this was going on, but he didn’t stop them. So Eli and his family are about to be judged for their sin.
Sometimes God speaks encouraging and comforting words; other times God speaks hard words; but he always speaks truth. And Samuel had the incredible privilege of being a recipient of God’s truth.
So…what does this have to do with us? In some ways, we’re very different from Samuel, right? We’re not serving in the Tabernacle of God. We haven’t been called as prophets of God—at least not in the same way Samuel was. So what does this have to do with us?
We often quote the famous passage, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and strength”—in fact, Jesus said that’s the most important commandment in the whole Old Testament. But when you read the original in Deuteronomy, you know what word that whole passage begins with? Hear. Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and strength. It begins with an invitation to hear. In fact, the Hebrew word for “hear” is shema, and this passage is famously known as “The Shema.” It’s God’s invitation to all his people to listen—just like Samuel did that night.
And that invitation to listen continues throughout the Bible. Sometimes it’s urging people to listen to what God is telling them directly, through his Holy Spirit in their conscience.
Lots of times it’s urging people to listen to what God is saying through his prophets.
Sometimes it’s urging people to listen to what God is saying through his creation—Psalm 19:1 says The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the works of his hands. When you walk outside on a crisp, fall day and the landscape is exploding with red and gold and orange leaves, God is actually saying something—he’s telling you that his glory infinitely greater than all those lesser kinds of glory that we chase after. Are we listening?
Most often, the Bible urges people to listen to what God is saying through his written Word, the Scriptures. You know what the longest chapter in the whole Bible is? Psalm 119—it has 176 verses, and the entire thing is about treasuring God’s voice through the Scriptures. In fact, I told you to remember that prayer of young Samuel—“Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” Here’s another prayer I would put right alongside that—Psalm 119:18—Open my eyes, that I may see wonderful
things in your Law. “Open eyes” are the same as “open ears”—it means you’re hungry to receive what God is saying.
When Jesus taught, he often said, “If anyone has ears to hear, let them hear.” Revelation 3 has seven Holy Spirit-inspired letters written to seven different churches, and every letter ends with the line, Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches.
So it really couldn’t be any more clear: the entire Bible is filled with invitations—not just to prophets; to every believer—to lean in and hear what God is saying.
You know what the problem is? Busyness. Noise. The new season of NFL football and Dancing with the Stars. It’s almost become cliché to blame social media and the Internet, but there’s actually something significant happening since the Internet has entered our lives. All the way back in 2011, Nicholas Carr wrote a book called The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains. Listen to this quote:
What the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. Whether I’m online or not, my mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.
Isn’t that a great analogy? And since he wrote that, there’s been a ton of additional research that shows how the Internet is actually re-wiring our brains and making it more difficult to focus on and think deeply about important things. And look—the internet is here to stay—and it’s an amazing tool—I’m grateful for it. But if we’re wise, we will make a choice to not spend all our time there. To intentionally set aside time to listen carefully and meditate on the voice of God.
For me, by far the most important part of my day is the 45 minutes every morning when I read and meditate on and pray over a short section of Scripture. This is not Dave the pastor, preparing a sermon; this is Dave the man, preparing for life. I often begin those times with the prayer of Samuel: “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” I read carefully and slowly, I record my thoughts in a simple notebook. And then I take the main idea of what I hear God saying to me through the Bible, and I write a once-sentence prayer, asking God for help to live out what I just heard from his Word. And I put that prayer in my Notes app on my phone. If you were to pick up my iPhone and go to my Notes app, you’d see hundreds of one sentence prayers. That is God’s Word to me for that day, and I carry it with me, and look for opportunities to live it out. That approach has been so powerful in my life; in fact, I made it the topic of my doctoral thesis that I completed last year, and I’m going to be teaching that method in our first ever “J-Term” this coming January. But it’s all about listening well to what God is saying.
Last Saturday morning, the Scripture I read was about being merciful when people offend you. I don’t remember exactly, but my one-sentence prayer was something like, “Father, since you show mercy when I sin against you, help me to show mercy to the people who sin against me.” That was interesting, because there was something that I was slightly upset with Norma Jean about, and I was planning to talk to her about when she woke up, so I thought maybe God was trying to get my attention. So I wrote that prayer in my iPhone. Later that morning, Norma Jean and I were having breakfast together, and she said, “I have to tell you about the devotional I had this morning.” She likes to use the Bible app, and they have different Christian leaders giving short devotionals every day. And she said, “Today it was all about being merciful to people who offend you.” And I thought, “God, you can stop now—I got it.” So I brought up that issue that was bothering me—but the way I did it was so much different—so much more merciful—because I had listened to what God said. What do you think
would have happened if I didn’t listen to God that morning, or if Norma Jean just skipped her time in the Word that morning? We would have been much more likely to argue and blame and be distant. I’m telling you: listening to God changes things.
Make the choice—make the time—to block out the distractions and listen to God. It will change so much about your life.
Which leads to the second and final point: The Effects of Listening to God. Young Samuel wakes up the next morning, and it says “he was afraid to tell Eli” what God had said. Can you blame him? This was not a fun message to deliver. But to Eli’s credit, he says, “I want you to tell me everything.” So Samuel tells him everything he heard from God. And that really marks the beginning of Samuel’s calling as a prophet: for the rest of his life, he would faithfully take whatever he heard from God—whether it was good new or bad news—and pass it on to the people.
Look again at verse 19: 19 The LORD was with Samuel as he grew up, and he let none of Samuel’s words fall to the ground. 20 And all Israel from Dan to Beersheba recognized that Samuel was attested as a prophet of the LORD. 21 The LORD continued to appear at Shiloh, and there he revealed himself to Samuel through his word. 4:1a And Samuel’s word came to all Israel.
Remember what it said at the very beginning of the chapter? In those days the word of the Lord was rare. But now, the Word of the Lord was spreading out to all Israel…because somebody chose to listen. Listening to the voice of God changes everything.
I love what it says in verse 19: The LORD was with Samuel as he grew up, and he let none of Samuel’s words fall to the ground. In other words, when Samuel spoke, people listened. Because they realized that Samuel was not trying to please people; he didn’t care about popularity; he wasn’t trying to gain anything for himself. His words had gravitas—weight—substance.
And listen: the more we follow his example, and learn to listen for the voice of God, the same will be true of us. We will have something to say that’s more valuable than the latest fad. We won’t be fishing for “likes” or followers. We won’t just be parroting what we’ve heard online or on social media. Our words won’t fall into neat alignment with any human political system. In fact, if we’re truly listening to the voice of Jesus, our liberal friends will think we’re too conservative, and our conservative friends will think we’re too liberal. Which is okay, because we’re not trying to be popular, and we realize the kingdom of Jesus is something altogether different.
When we choose to be people who listen to the voice of God—through the Holy Spirit’s still, small voice in our conscience, through the wonder of creation, and mostly through the written Word of God—when we become listeners, our words will not fall to the ground. The things we say will have potency and impact, because they’re shaped by what God has said. People will seek our counsel, because they realize we’re in tune with God.
Erwin McManus is a pastor in Los Angeles, and he told a story about when his son, Aaron, was in middle school. He went off to his first church camp, and in the middle of the week, Pastor Erwin went to check on the kids. And he got some bad news—apparently, his son Aaron had tried to beat up another kid, but his friends held him back. He was angry and unrepentant, and he wanted to leave camp. He pulled together all his stuff and shoved it into the car.
And his dad sad, “Let’s just have a talk before we leave. So they walked into the woods and sat on two big rocks. He said, “Aaron, is there any voice inside you telling you what you should do?” His son nodded. "What's the voice telling you?" "That I should stay and work it out." "Can you identify that voice?" He immediately said, “Yeah. It’s God.” His dad said, “Aaron, do you realize what just
happened? You heard God's voice. He spoke to you from within your soul. Forget everything else that's happened. God spoke to you, and you were able to recognize him."
And Aaron said: "Well, I'm still not doing what God said."
And here’s how his dad describes the rest of the conversation:
I explained to him that that was his choice, but this is what would happen. If he rejected the voice of God coming from deep within and chose to disobey his guidance, his heart would become hardened, and his ears would become dull. If he continued on this path, there would be a day when he would never again hear the voice of God. There would come a day when he would deny that God even speaks or has ever spoken to him. But if he treasures God's voice however it comes to him—through the Scriptures, through his conscience—and responds to him with obedience, then his heart would be softened, and his ears would always be able to hear the whisper of God into his soul.
That was really, really good advice.
Little 12-year-old Samuel lay down on his mat in the dark, and he said, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” Little did he know that prayer would change the course of his entire life—and it can change yours.
Let’s pray together—you can remain seated during the prayer—and then we’re going to introduce the Big Reveal!
PRAY
Chosen Reveal
Play Reveal Video (2 minutes)
Chapel family, what happened here the past two weeks when we invited you to be chosen was amazing. We had a goal of sponsoring 300 children from Malawi—which would help them with their education and clean drinking water and food and spiritual guidance. That was the goal. And I am so proud to tell you the Chapel family sponsored 401 kids!!! Praise God for that. Great job, Chapel!
And if you think this is an exciting moment at The Chapel, you should have seen what was happening in Bwanje, Malawi last week. As you probably know, Pastor Paul and his wife Megan were there, and Paul wants to tell us a little more about what he saw.
Paul briefly describe three slides:
-Church building
-Women’s Co-op
-Fresh water well
Dave: “You also got to be present while people from our Chapel family were chosen. And I understand you captured some video of that moment? Let’s watch this…:
-Run video of Chapel folks getting chosen
Dave: “And you and Megan had the incredible privilege of being there in person when you were chosen. Tell us about the little girl who chose you.” (Paul talk about sponsored girl)
Paul: “Dave, we also got some video that you and Norma Jean might be interested in—watch this.”
-Run video of Dave & Norma Jean being chosen
(At 9am service, Dave will say how excited they are to open their envelope at the end of the morning; at the 10:30 service Dave and Norma Jean will open their Chosen envelope on stage together.)
Dave’s Closing words: I am so grateful for this moment, because the blessing to this community will be significant. As a parent, I put myself in the shoes of the parents of one of these precious kids—just knowing that their child was given the dignity of choice, and that there’s this person in New Jersey who wants to start a friendship with them, and pray for them, and invest in their lives, and learn from them. What a gift for any parent. And this is a gift that will truly bless us and them.
So thank you to everyone who decided to be Chosen. If you haven’t signed up yet but you’d like to , you still can—just go to worldvision.org/thechapel, and you can still sponsor a child in Malawi. And for all of us—when you leave today, World Vision has provided these bookmarks. So please take one of these as you leave today, because they’re filled with Scripture about how all of us, as believers, have been chosen by God.