When I was child, I grew up in a place with lots of snow. We were always outside playing in it. We would spend hour after hour tramping in the woods, tobogganing on the hills, skating down the river, and skiing through the fields. The snow was everywhere and it could be very deep, so deep that it was hard to go through.
Have you ever spent time tramping through the snow – not in a nicely cleared area, but in the middle of fields and forests and frozen rivers? If the snow is deep, it's a challenge to get anywhere, and you can expend a lot of energy trying. However, it's much easier to walk through it if you are following someone else who is cutting tracks for you. The person in front of you is doing all the work. He plows through the snow and makes a path while you simply follow behind. It still takes some energy, but all you have to do is walk in his footsteps. As long as you do, you've got it made.
After you've been walking for a while, you might get the idea that the person in front of you is going too slowly. You might think that you see a better route. You might even decide that it's taking too much time, so you make your own trail. You split off from the leader and launch out on your own.
That's when you find out how deep the snow really is and how difficult it is to blaze a trail through it by yourself. You grow weary and wish you could be back behind the one you were following earlier. You wonder if you are lost. Will you be left behind? Those thoughts race through your mind while you call out for your friend. But in the stillness of winter no reply is heard. You are certain that your friend does not know where you are. Fatigue sets in, then panic. Suddenly you hear the voice of your friend calling: “Are you all right?” he asks. Gratefully you indicate that you are, and without too much hesitation you fall in line behind the leader again, following him with great relief in your heart.
When the Lord Jesus calls and invites us to follow Him – i.e., to walk in His path, to hear whatever He has to say, to receive His blessings of salvation - there should be no hesitation on our part. And we would be wise not to try to break off on our own. It's hard to plow through the burden of sin and the trials of life. In fact, it's impossible for us to do it on our own. What a relief it is to have a Savior who is willing and able to do it for us. What a comfort it is to hear His voice, inviting us to fall in line behind Him.
Dear friend, Jesus is calling. What are you going to do? Struggle by yourself? Strike out on your own? Or will you listen to Him, allow Him to lead, and fall in line behind Him? When God Calls… what will you do? On the basis of our text may the Holy Spirit graciously help us to see that When God Calls we need to I. keep following Him; and II. excel in listening to Him.
I. When God Calls …keep following Him.
At the time of our text, God had called Israel to follow Him for many years already. It all began about 1000 years earlier when God had called Abraham to follow Him to a new land, far from the bad influence of his father's house and the heathen culture around them. From Abraham's line God would make a new nation, Israel, from which the promised Savior would come. Longing for the coming of that Savior, Abraham heard God's call and in faith set out behind Him, following to wherever the Lord took him.
He took Abraham to Canaan where He blessed him and made a great nation out of his descendants. For a time they had to leave the land promised to Abraham. They had to go down into Egypt to escape a famine. You know what happened to them there. Soon a pharaoh rose to power who knew nothing of the Israelite Joseph and how he had helped them. Pharaoh only saw this great nation among his people, and he was afraid. He saw them as a threat. So he enslaved them in Egypt for over 400 years.
When the time was right, God called another man, Moses, to lead His children of Israel out of their slavery in Egypt and back to the Promised Land. As Abraham before Him, Moses heeded God's call and in faith set out to follow the Lord wherever He took him and Israel. It was not an easy road, and some of them fell away from following God. Yet, for Moses and the majority of Israel that heard God's Call, He led them safely, brought them back to Canaan, and settled them securely in the land which He had promised to them. In that the hope of the coming Savior was kept alive within them.
Another 400 years passed, and again the people began to forget about God. He sent men who were known as judges to them, men like Gideon and Samson who called the people
to follow in the way of the Lord, but who weren't always successful in getting the people, let alone themselves, to pay attention to God's call to them.
In fact, at the time of our story, some 1000 years after God's initial call had come to Abraham, most of Israel did not hear God's voice calling them to follow Him, nor did they care to hear it. As a result our text began by saying, “In those days the word of the Lord was rare; there were not many visions.”
People had little interest in hearing what God had to say to them. The five books of Moses that the Holy Spirit had inspired him to write were kept in the tabernacle, but the priests neglected them. The high priest Eli's sons abused what God said and refused to follow His ways. Instead they led wicked lives. Few seemed to heed God's Call to follow Him . Instead, they struck out on their own. So the Lord withdrew His revealing presence from the land.
Dear friends, no greater judgment can fall upon a nation than when it suffers the loss of God's Word because it refused to follow Him. No greater calamity can fall upon a person than when God's revealing presence is taken from him because he refused to heed God's Call to follow. In such a situation the prophet Amos said (8:11): “Men will stagger from sea to sea and wander from north to east, searching for the word of the Lord, but they will not find it.”
It reminds me again of that picture of struggling through the snow and growing weary because the person got impatient following someone else's lead or because he thought he could do much better by striking out on his own. It doesn't work that way! That's a hard way to go, especially if the leader we abandon is God.
Without Him we are lost, because He, the almighty, the all-knowing, the holy One is everything. We have none of these capacities. The burden of sin and its consequences heavily affect us and are impossible for us to overcome. We are lost without His leading – if not now, than surely in eternity.
But the Lord Jesus has done everything for you. He has gone through the hardest thing that anyone can possibly go through. He suffered and died on the cross so that He could pay for all your sins. He holds out the benefit of His work in His Word and Sacraments, and invites you to follow Him. “Look,” He says, “here are the tracks I have made. I have carried you out from under the guilt and burden of sin. I have cut your path to eternal life. And I will guide you safely there, through thick and through thin, no matter what happens. Come, follow me.”
Dear friend, it is impossible to plow through the burden of your sins or the trials of life on your own. But you've got a Savior who did and now calls you to follow Him. What a relief and comfort it is to have a Savior who goes before you.
So, dear friend, When God Calls don't be like ancient Israel here at the time of Samuel. Instead be quick to follow and to keep following Him.
II. When God Calls… excel in listening to Him.
How does one follow? It starts with humble listening, of which the young Samuel is a great example.
When he was a small boy, Samuel had been brought by his parents to serve the Lord in His temple at a time when Israel was not heeding God's call to follow Him. He became the personal attendant of the high priest Eli. In his old age Eli was going blind and Samuel would help him with the work in the temple.
Many of young Samuel's duties could be described as custodial. He opened the doors of the Lord's house in the morning; he trimmed the wicks on the lamps inside; he filled them with oil to last through the hours of darkness. He was the priest's attendant.
Late one night Samuel was awakened by the sound of a voice calling his name. What else could he think except that the old and dim-seeing Eli needed him? Our text says, “He did not yet know the Lord.” He had heard plenty about God from his faithful mother and the priests in the temple. But he had not yet heard God calling Him directly. That would mark the rest of his long prophetic ministry in Israel. But at this point in his young life, that had not yet happened.
So Samuel ran to Eli's beside and dutifully called out, “Here I am.” But Eli dismissed him, as if Samuel had been dreaming. Only after the young man had dutifully reported to Eli's bedside 3 times did the old priest realize that the Lord was calling him. Eli told Samuel how to answer when God called. So the next time Samuel heard his name being called, he answered with the words that would become the essence of his calling as a prophet: “Speak, Lord, for Your servant is listening.”
Isn't it interesting that when the Lord calls people to follow Him and when He looks for someone to speak for Him, the very first qualification is that the person be quiet and be willing to listen when God speaks? That quality marked the prophet's entire life here on out. The secret of Samuel's success as a prophet was not that he excelled in speaking, but that he excelled in listening! What about us? When the Lord Calls , do we excel in listening?
In our loud and topsy-turvy world in which each of us is on the go from morning to night, hurrying and scurrying from one appointment to another, how important that we stop and cultivate the habit of quiet listening rather than being so quick to tell Him about ourselves! No matter what we say, there are countless opportunities that we can take throughout the day for closing the door against the noise of the world and for listening, really listening to our heavenly Father and what He has to tell us.
Isaiah writes, “In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength” (30:15). Could it be that our lives are so unruly and are at such unrest because we need to learn, as young Samuel did, to excel in listening to the Word of our God? If only each of us would cultivate more the consistent habit of quietness when God calls – moments when our hearts and minds are attuned to only the words of our Lord and Savior!
It is there, in His Word, that He calls us. It is there, in His Word, where He guides us. It is there, in His Word, where He gives us the strength and makes it easier for us to plow through life, walking in His footsteps. It is there, in His Word, where we learn that He saves us by grace through faith. And it is there, in His Word, that He promises one day we shall “see greater things and shall see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending” upon Christ and those who follow Him (Jn.1:50f) . Nothing else in our lives is more important than His Word that convinces us that He is our Savior. It is the only thing that has the power to bless us and to draw us to Him, now and in eternity.
God grant that When He Calls we excel in listening and be quick to follow Him; for Jesus' sake. Amen.