Meeting God For The Very First Time

"Meeting God For The Very First Time"
1 Samuel 3:1-10

Think back to the first time you had a meet up with God.  Were you a child?  A teen?  An adult?

Other believers might tell you, you have to have one of those “A-ha moments” and you have to know exactly when that was.  Memorize the date so you can spout it out the next time the Mormons come to your door.

But that’s not how God always works.  If you were to have one of those kinds of moments, and then you thought about it long enough, you’d probably see that God was at work for a long time trying to get your attention.  You just didn’t recognize it until that one sterling moment when everything fell into place for you, God-wise.

I’m assuming that most of you have read the title for this sermon by now.  You may have looked at it and thought, “I have already met the Lord; if Steve is getting all evangelistic, it’s too late—I’m already a believer.  Steve doesn’t need to convince me to come to the Lord, I’m already there.”

And that’s what I’m assuming.  That all of you are already there.  You’ve had a meet up with God.  So you can lower your shields—I’m not coming at you like the Borg, telling you, “Resistance is futile.”  (If you don’t know who the Borg are, ask someone who watches Star Trek.)

Anyway,  after you have had some kind of first encounter with God, and you know God is real, there’s another kind of experience you may have.  Months or years after your meet up with God, you may experience, “the silence.”   A time when God doesn’t speak.

That’s where we are in the story just read about old Eli the priest.  He was a faithful and wise man, who served God in the temple.  Eli had a couple of sons who were on par with Donald Trump’s sons—you never knew which one was more stupid; you just had to wait for the news story of the day to confirm that.  But besides that, or in spite of that, people looked up to Eli as the wise, old codger priest.  He did what God wanted him to do.  At least he thought he was doing that.  Because God was silent.

The opening verse sets up that fact for our story:
In those days, when the boy Samuel was serving the LORD under the direction of Eli, there were very few messages from the LORD, and visions from God were quite rare.

So our story opens with a dilemma.  It isn’t a problem with Eli.  Or with Samuel.  It’s a problem with God.  God has gone silent.  Nothing is happening spiritually.  God appears to be taking a vacation from being God, or, at least, taking some serious down time.

You wouldn’t think God has a problem communicating.  You know how it is with your spouse or your kid.
“How are you doing?”
“Fine.”
“What did you do today?”
“Nothing.”
“Were you alive today?”
“Huh?”

We don’t expect to have that kind of conversation with God Almighty.  Especially when things aren’t going so hot in our lives and we need a little spiritual convo with the Lord.  It’s not a good sign when we try to spark up a little prayer dialogue with God, you push the power button on your God-remote and not only is there no picture, there is no sound.  We’ve already established that you know God is for real, but just not real attentive at the moment.

No message.  No vision.

There’s bound to be some confusion.  For the priest, Eli, his whole job was about talking with God, going into the Holy of Holies, and coming back out to report what God had said.  But day-after-day, Eli comes out from behind the curtain and shrugs his shoulders in front of the other priests.  Nothing.  Why is God silent?  Why does God go silent, especially when you need a message from God?

Part of the problem in our day is that there are too many people out there who think they are hearing messages from God all the time. They purport to know what God is thinking all the time, and they are not shy in telling the rest of us about their direct line to the Almighty.  From my perspective, all that is purely arrogant.  For us, it seems that there are too many voices and visions, many of which are conflicting and hokey.  In my mind, God may be just as silent when there are a lot of supposed visions and voices going on, as in Eli’s time when God was just silent—no words, no vision.  In our day and time, it isn’t that God is speaking a lot; it’s just that people are speaking for God—blah, blah, blah, and more blah.

What do you do, when God goes into silent mode?

There isn’t a whole lot you can do.  God is in charge of when God speaks and when God chooses not to speak.  If we take Eli and Samuel’s story as a guide, I think there are some things we can learn.

First, we wait.  Eli didn’t talk ill of God for God’s silence.  Eli knew that all he could do is wait on God.  And Eli taught Samuel about waiting.  It wasn’t a lethargic waiting.  Both were carrying on with their duties.

The story tells us that there was an oil lamp that burned over the Ark of the Covenant.  While they waited for a word from the Lord, they tended the lamp.  They made sure there was oil and the flame was kept burning.

In verse 15 we are told that one of the priests duties was to open the doors of the temple each morning.  Eli took care of that, even though he was mostly blind and couldn’t see where he was going.

In other words, while you are waiting on the Lord for a word or a vision, you still carry on with what might be called your spiritual chores.  You don’t give up on the daily routines that you would normally do if the Lord was speaking to you every day.  You don’t give up.  You keep going.  You keep putting one foot in front of the other, until the day God graces you with a word or vision from above.  You keep praying, even though it’s a one way conversation for the time being.


Because, that day will come.  God will finally speak.  The Voice-of-God drought will end.  As our story tells us, “Then the LORD called, ‘Samuel, Samuel!’”

There are a couple of things about this that are important.  First, to whom God finally spoke.  God spoke to Samuel.  The boy.  Not the old, blind priest.  In those days, a 7 year old boy would be chosen to attend to the inner part of the sanctuary where the Ark of God sat.  That 7 year old boy would remain in service to the Temple for the rest of his life.  So we can assume old Eli the priest had been there his whole life, but had not heard from God.  Now, a new seven year old boy—Samuel—begins his life long service, and is the one God chose to speak to.

We don’t get to choose whom God speaks to.  Often the one God chooses to communicate with is someone unexpected.  I remember my daughter Kristin waking up one morning and saying, “Daddy, I had a dream.”
I said, “Oh, what was your dream.”
She said, “I dreamed God came down from heaven and played with me in my room.  Then God took me up to heaven and we played up there.  Then God brought me back to my room and put me to bed.”
I remember being silent.  I remember wondering why God would give such a vision to my young daughter and what it was all about?  I was somewhat afraid, to tell you the truth.  But for some reason, God chose to reveal himself in a most amazing way to my daughter.  It’s something I’ve wondered about for the over 30 years she has been alive.  But like I said, we don’t get to have a say as to who and when God speaks.   For the story we’re looking at this morning, about Samuel, God chose to speak to a seven year old.

There is something funny about the next part of the Eli and Samuel story.  When God speaks to young Samuel, he thinks Eli is the one calling out to him.  The funny thing about that is that Samuel’s sleeping mat would have been right next to the Ark of God.  Samuel is laying down next to the golden chest that houses the stone tablets of the 10 Commandments.  Samuel is sleeping right next to the seat of God, where it was believed God sat when God finally did speak to the priest.

But where does Samuel go when he hears the Voice?  To Eli.  Clear away from the sacred golden chest, into another place in the temple, the room where the old man is sleeping.  What’s semi-funny about that is, when God’s silence is finally broken, God’s Voice is not recognized.  Even Eli the priest doesn’t know what’s going on.  It takes Eli three times to finally get an inkling of what an amazing thing is happening.

It speaks to me about the times God is—finally—so close, and we don’t realize it.  We go searching in other places for who the owner of that mysterious Voice is, not realizing it is God Almighty breaking a long silence.

There are times, when I may be talking with someone who is feeling this absence of God, this apparent cooling down of God toward them.  They may be hurting terribly.  They have run to God, but they seem to end up running towards a place where God isn’t.  And they don’t understand.

I say, “You know those times you are hugging someone and they are hugging you so close, you can’t see them?  That’s what it is like during some of those times you feel like God is absent.  It isn’t that God is so far away from you.  It’s more that God is holding you so close you can’t see the One who’s holding you.”

That’s how it was for Samuel.  God was so close, maybe sitting right there on the Ark of God, but Samuel didn’t look up from his bed to see if God was there.  Instead, Samuel runs to Eli.  If Samuel had just turned his head, he would have seen God Almighty.  That may be all it takes for us as well—to just turn our head, and speak with God who is right there.


Once old Eli understands what must be going on, he gives young Samuel his instructions:  “Go, lie down; and if he calls you, you shall say, ‘Speak, LORD, for your servant is listening.’”

Even though Eli has never heard the Voice of God, or may have never been spoken to by God during his life-long service in the Temple, he at least knew how to recognize when God was speaking.  Even though he doesn’t get to hear the Voice of God, Eli gets to instruct another, a child really, in how to listen for and respond to God when God speaks.

Because, Samuel didn’t know.  Samuel may not have known what he was doing in the first place, not understanding why he was the one chosen by Eli to hang around this place for the rest of his life.  The story tell us, “Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord...” (verse 7).  So not only has Eli probably never heard from God, Samuel doesn’t even know who God is, is chosen to serve this unknown and unknowable God, and all of a sudden, out of no where speaks to the boy.

Now Samuel was going to find out about God.  And Eli would get to be Samuel’s spiritual mentor.   I think that is one of the most important parts of being a parent or grandparent, if you have already met up with God—to be a spiritual mentor.  Maybe you have never heard God’s Voice.  It is still important to teach our children how to listen for that Voice, and how to respond when the maybe long silent Voice finally speaks.


At the end of this part of Samuel’s story, a part that wasn’t read, at verse 19, it says, “As Samuel grew up, the LORD was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground.”  Samuel had met God for the very first time.  In this very first meeting, Samuel met the God he had never known.  In this very first meeting, Samuel is given a mission to speak for God—to speak words of change, words that built up a people, and words that would tear down what needed to come to an end.  In this very first meeting, Samuel was beginning to understand that he must now be willing to be used by this God who rarely spoke, and to live for God’s own purposes.

I like that phrase of how God affected Samuel, that God “...let none of Samuel’s words fall to the ground.”  When we really meet God for the first time, and all the ongoing times, when we let God’s Voice be our own, our words aren’t lead balloons.  They don’t just fall to the ground.  They are full of meaning and full of power, because those words are full of God.


If you haven’t heard from God in a long while, keep tending the flame.  Keep opening the doors.  Keep paying attention.  Keep waiting.  Maybe God won’t speak to you, but to someone close to you, and by so doing you will equally be blessed.