I'm the pastor of connections here at Foundry, but I want to share with you a struggle I've recently had with connection. The struggle to get wireless internet in the city of Sturlington. Now, if you're not familiar, I hear the laughs, but if you're not familiar with the struggle, you might be thinking, it is 2016, like, how hard can it be to get wireless internet? Or maybe you're thinking, this is the city of Sturlington, it's the fastest growing place in the entire state, like, what is the problem?
Well, I could testify to the struggle, y'all, and so can the rest of Foundry's staff who had to bless their hearts, witness my blood pressure rising over the course of the few weeks, I was attempting to get wireless internet service at Foundry's new office location here in Sturlington. I thought it was going to be, like, a simple process, just like you transfer any utilities from one space to the other. Well, after about approximately a thousand conversations on the phone with the corporation and people in different lands and in different time zones, I realized it wasn't going to be quite so easy. And after a series of rigamarole and just frustration, it was determined that we weren't going to be able to transfer our service, but that corporation didn't have the proper infrastructure up here in Sturlington for us to get wireless internet service.
So Plan B, I turned to a corporation I knew was operative in the area and spent an afternoon in their office and set up a Foundry account and scheduled a technician to come out. Well, during the appointed window, I waited and I waited and I waited and no one ever showed up until I got a phone call saying, Miss Salisbury, sorry, we can't come do the install because the equipment that we'd install wouldn't actually be sufficient to pick up the signals that are being emitted. Well, I think that if I were a cartoon character at this point, you could have seen the steam coming out of my ears. I just had to put the whole thing aside for a couple of days and I consulted some very helpful Sturlington residents who pointed me in the direction of another company.
And I called these folks and I explained to the very nice lady on the other end of the phone our simple need for wireless internet and some of these struggles that I had had. And after just a few minutes on her computer, she said, oh man, that won't be a problem at all. Look out your window. So I was a little confused, but I looked out of the window of the office and she said, do you see that tower over there, that cell phone internet tower?
And I looked out and just across the road, there was a tower. And she said, that's our tower. That's where our signal comes from. All that needs to happen is a technician has to come out and install a receiver and y'all will get great service.
I know that she could hear the sigh of relief in my voice as she told me that a technician could come out that afternoon and install working internet service. It was a huge relief. Well, we live in 2016. We expect to be able to connect immediately.
We expect to be able to get a signal anytime, anywhere and any place. And when we're unable to do that, we get really frustrated. I know that my story of connectivity frustration does not be only one sitting in this room this morning, and sure some of our connection stories could be considered first world problems, but our need to connect, our need to communicate with others is not that. It's an essential part of who we are as humans and part of who we are as children of God.
God is always communicating just like the signals in the air. God is always communicating to us. The ways that he communicates with us are so many and so many unique ways that we don't have words to describe all of those ways. And he communicates with each and every one of us in a distinct way.
But nevertheless, he is communicating with us. And we know just like with telecommunications, we have to have the pride of the people. We have to have the proper receivers up in order to receive a message at all. And so this morning, that's what we're going to talk about.
We're going to talk about our receptivity to God, to a God who comes to us and to a God who calls to us. And we're going to do that by looking at the story of a young prophet named Samuel. But like usual, if you'll just join me in prayer for a moment before I say anything else. God made the words that I say this morning and the things that we hear together, be the things that I need to say and the things that we need to hear together that we might be, people who are ready, who are willing to listen and to respond to your presence in our lives.
It's in your son's name we pray. Amen. So if you look through the Old Testament, if you flip through, you'll notice that there's two books with the title of Samuel. First Samuel and second Samuel.
And so this indicates that Samuel was a pretty important dude. He was the last of the great judges in the first in the line of great prophets. Samuel's the one who found and blessed the great King David. But our story this morning, it comes before any of that stuff happened.
Our story this morning happens in the beginning of first Samuel. There we learn about Samuel's parents, whose names were Hannah and Elkina. And we learn that they were faithful Jewish folks who worshiped in a town called Shiloh. And we learn that Hannah spent a lot of time in the place of worship there in Shiloh because she was grieved.
She was pained because she was unable to have a child. And so she pled and she prayed to the Lord for a child and the Lord heard her call and she became pregnant. And she had a child and that child they named Samuel. A lot of thanksgiving out of response to faithfulness of who God is.
He decided that when Samuel was old enough to be on his own to take him to the place of worship there in Shiloh. And to leave him in the care of the priest Eli. And so Samuel grew up in the tabernacle. He grew up learning the ways of the priesthood.
And so that's where our story picks up this morning. That's where we're going to begin reading. In first Samuel chapter three, if you want to read along with me. Three verses one through ten in your Bible or it will be on the screen next to me.
It goes like this. It said, meanwhile the boy Samuel served the Lord by assisting Eli. Now in those days messages from the Lord were very rare and visions were quite uncommon. One night Eli, who was almost blind by now, had gone to bed.
The lamp of God had not yet gone out and Samuel, he was sleeping in the tabernacle near the ark of God. Suddenly the Lord called out. Samuel, yes Samuel replied. What is it?
He got up and ran to Eli. Here I am. Did you call me? I didn't call you Eli replied.
Go back to bed. So he did. Then the Lord called out again. Samuel, again Samuel got up and went to Eli.
Here I am. Did you call me? I didn't call you my son. Eli said, go back to bed.
Samuel did not yet know the Lord because he had never had a message from the Lord before. So the Lord called a third time and once more Samuel got up and went to Eli. Here I am. Did you call me?
Then Eli realized that it was the Lord who was calling the boy. So he said to Samuel, go and lie down. And again, and if someone calls, say speak Lord, your servant is listening. So Samuel went back to bed and the Lord came and called as before.
Samuel, Samuel, and Samuel replied, speak Lord, your servant is listening. Oh, there's something kind of fun about this story to me. It's fun because you can really visualize it happening kind of like it's a play. You can see this interaction between Eli and Samuel and the Lord happening, right?
Sort of we can imagine that. And if it were a play, I think it might sort of be a comedy because there's something just a little humorous about old blind Eli and really confused Samuel popping up and down in the middle of the night. But it's funny as it is. It's also a little unsettling because we learn that Samuel, although a servant wasn't sleeping in servants quarters, wasn't sleeping in some sort of dorm, but he was sleeping in the tabernacle of the Lord.
He was sleeping in the place where all of God's people understood God's presence to be. He was sleeping in the place where God's throne was, from where God rained over God's people. While Samuel was sleeping in the divine reception hall, yet he didn't recognize God. Now, it's unclear how many nights Samuel had spent sleeping in the tabernacle.
The larger story indicates that it had at least been a year. So night after night, Samuel went back to sleep in that place, yet he didn't actually expect to hear from God. He didn't actually expect for God to show up to him. Now, you may be thinking in verse 7, Alison it said, the kid had never heard from the Lord before.
So how was he supposed to know what it was like when it happened? Like can't we cut him a little slack? Yeah. I think we can cut him a little slack.
That is certainly fair. But I do think that the story tells us something about the power of expectancy. Eli went to bed that night just as, I mean, Samuel went to bed that night, not expecting the living God to show up. He went to bed like it was any other ordinary night.
It wasn't until Eli, wise and blind Eli realized that it was the Lord calling out to Samuel. It wasn't until he realized that and then instructed Samuel to go back and to lie down and to expect the Lord to show up. It was only once Samuel was expectant of this that he was able to listen to hear and to respond to the call of the Lord. And his response, of course, of these words, these powerful words, he says, speak Lord, your servant is listening.
And when he said that, he of course meant, yeah, I'm listening with my ears, but he would have been speaking in Hebrew. And so this idea of listening is something much bigger. It meant that he was now being attentive to you. He was now, if you will, listening with his whole life, with his whole being for the presence of God within his life.
And that point forward that Samuel was able to say, speak Lord, your servant is listening. He was able to live a life attentive and ready to respond to God. Now, to me, this just begs the question though, do we expect to hear from God? Like Samuel, we expect to hear from our bosses.
We expect to hear from our parents. We expect to hear from our children. We expect to hear from our spouses. We expect to hear from our significant others.
We expect to hear from our banks. We expect to hear from the media all of the time. Now, we come here and we expect to hear from someone leading worship. We expect to hear from someone preaching.
But do we expect to hear from God? And I'm going to go ahead and cut us all a little slack because I'm pretty sure none of us sleep in the tabernacle and just a few of us work in a church. But regardless, I think it's a good thing for us all to ask ourselves, do we expect to hear from God? So back to the story, we've learned a lot about Samuel and about this shift in expectancy and what that means for him and how that changed everything.
But like most stories in the Bible, this one has something to tell us about who God is and what God is up to you. These 10 verses in Samuel tell us that God is a God who comes and the God is a God who calls. Now, when I've read this story before, when I've heard quite a few sermons preached on it, when I've preached with it myself, I've always imagined that this voice, this voice of the Lord, the one that calls out Samuel, Samuel, to be the sort of disembodied thing, like the voice connected to the intercom in my elementary school classrooms, calling people to the office. Yet that voice, this imaginary voice of the Lord in my mind has always had the tone and the tenure of that of Morgan Freeman.
Not really sure if I've been watching too much Bruce Almighty or what's going on with that. But then my mind's eye, the Lord's voice in this story is just this disembodied sort of thing calling out in the night. That was until I went back to the text in the beginning of verse 10 jumped out to me. And it says this, it says, the Lord came and the Lord called out as before.
Now, the Lord came to Samuel. The Lord showed up to Samuel. And when the Lord shows up to someone or someone's in the Old Testament, we have a fancy word for it. It's called a theophony.
It means an appearance of the Lord. It means God's presence shining forth. It means God showing up to someone in an unmistakable way. Now, God came to Samuel.
He showed up to Samuel in an unmistakable way right in the middle of Samuel's ordinary waking and sleeping right in the middle of his ordinary comings and goings. Now, God came to Samuel, but there's no doubt that God also called to Samuel. But the thing is he didn't just call one time, not just two times, not just three times, but until Samuel was ready, until he was expected, until he had made space within his little young life to be able to listen and to respond. Now, God is a God who comes, and God is a God who calls.
God is a God who comes. We know this. We just celebrated Christmas. God's coming to us.
God putting on flesh and blood and moving into our neighborhood. For our Christmas, the sermon chad reminded us that so beautifully that because Christmas has happened, we now live in a world where hope is a person and truth has a heartbeat. We sang joy to the world. The Lord has come.
The earth received her king and let every heart prepare him room. But here's the thing, we didn't just sing and we don't just sing joy to the world because Jesus was born in a manger some two thousand years ago. But we sing joy to the world because he grew to be a great teacher who called each of his followers by name. He grew to be the great shepherd who drew in and drew to himself and called out to the lost and the least.
We don't just sing joy to the world because he came, but because eventually he himself became the lamb, the one who made a sacrifice, the greatest sacrifice of all time that allowed us away to salvation. We didn't just sing joy to the world on Christmas because Jesus was born, but we sing this because he still comes to us and he still calls out to each of us, each of us by name. He enters into what we are doing, our ordinary comings and goings, our ordinary waking and sleeping and asks us to follow him. He seeks us when we are lost, when we feel broken and confused and he makes the way clear.
Oh God, is a God who comes and God is a God who calls. So who are we? So I'll back to that question that we asked earlier. Are we ones that expect our God to show up?
Are we ones ready to put up our receivers to receive the signal? Are we ones ready to listen and to make space in our lives for the presence of Jesus in it today, tomorrow, in the year and in the years to come? Are we ones that expect our God to show up? There's a thing, we'd only read these 10 verses this morning, but like all stories in the Bible, this one keeps going and God does indeed respond to Samuel's thing of speak, Lord, your servant is listening.
God gives Samuel a task and it is a big, big task. It's one that thrusts him from being just a servant, boy, to being a prophet for the entire people of Israel. I do not envy him. Sometimes what God calls us to is a big, big task, something that thrusts us from the here to the there quickly and dramatically.
But sometimes it's something small. Jesus calls us to you sometimes, it's something we think is insignificant. But either way, however God calls us, we also know that it's not always easy to listen and to hear and to respond because we live in a noisy world. There are signals being admitted everywhere.
Voices are bombarding us. It is a noisy, static, at times chaotic place. And so sometimes we don't hear the voice of God. And sometimes when we do, the static is so loud that we miss here, we misunderstand and it causes us to misstep.
Nevertheless, God is a God who calls and Jesus is one who asks us to follow him. And now here's the thing, following Jesus, it's not an abstract sort of thing. It's not something we just read about. It's not something that we just talk about, but it is an activity.
One of my seminary professors, he said this once, he said, the goal of every Christian and Christian community is to become followers of Jesus Christ. Yes, I realize that is incredibly straightforward and obvious. But what he said after that has been something that's been stirring within me in recent times and maybe it will stir up something in you. He said the goal of every Christian and of every Christian community is to become followers of Jesus Christ.
But we don't become followers of Jesus Christ by reading books about following Jesus Christ. We become followers of Jesus Christ by following him, even if by fits and starts. And we don't get it right all of the time. I don't think any of us could claim that.
We miss here, we miss read it as a noisy world. But I think it's the case that the more that we practice, the more that we make space in our lives, the more that we put up our receivers to receive the message of our God who comes to us and our God who calls to us. The more ready we will be as individuals and as a community to say, speak, Lord, your servants, we're listening. Will you pray with me?
God in this new year, just a few weeks after Christmas, we find ourselves here quiet after a busy, busy holiday season. So in this quiet, in this beginning time, be with us. Come to us and continue to call to us as we look forward to the coming days and to the coming months. Be with us in our comings and our goings and our waking and our sleeping in our families and our communities and in all the places we find ourselves.
Remind us that you indeed are big enough and that you indeed have come. And so it's in your son's name. We pray. Amen.