The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
Epiphany is both a day, January 6, and it’s a season in the church calendar. Both the day and the season celebrate the light that came into the world for Jew and Gentile alike. On Epiphany Day, the traditional Gospel lesson is the arrival of the Wise Men, the Magi from the east. On the first Sunday of Epiphany, we celebrate the Baptism of our Lord Jesus Christ and the declaration from God the Father that Jesus is His beloved Son, in whom He is well pleased. This morning, it’s the Second Sunday after Epiphany, and the Old Testament text is the sermon this morning: 1 Samuel 3:1–10. This week we celebrate the light that came and shines on Israel, on the Hebrews, the Jewish people. Next week’s readings will focus the light shining on the Gentiles. One light for two kinds of people. When the Bible speaks about the light shining on people, it means that Christ’s glory — that is, His real person, His personhood — is no longer hidden. Come the Second Sunday of Epiphany, thus the proper: “For what had been hidden before the foundation of the world, You have made known to the nations in Your Son. In Him, being found in the substance of our mortal nature, You have manifested the fullness of Your glory.” From the beginning, God chose to reveal Himself and the glory of the promised Messiah primarily through human beings — first and foremost in the nature and in the flesh of Jesus Christ Himself. There God dwelt bodily in human form. But secondly, through the mission that He gave to the nation, to the Old Testament Church called Israel. And this self-revelation of God was prosecuted by the prophets of the Old Testament. Thus the prophetic and apostolic Scriptures are also fully human and fully divine. Thus we are to think of Epiphany in the way in which the Introit which we just spoke said: “I have not hidden Your deliverance within my heart; I have spoken of Your faithfulness and Your salvation.” It’s the proclaiming and telling that reveals who God is and what He has done for us and for our salvation.
As for the books, we don’t know who wrote the books First and Second Samuel. In fact, in the Hebrew Bible, there’s not two separate books — there’s just a single book called Samuel. Scholars refer to it as the unified book of Samuel. While Samuel may have written a few of the opening chapters, two or three of them, Samuel is not the author of the book that bears his name. Samuel’s own death is recorded in 1 Samuel 25. The book bears his name because Samuel was the primary character whose ministry shaped the two other characters in the rest of the book — that is, two kings: King Saul and King David. We also don’t know when these particular books were written. The book of Samuel provides a history that, when joined together with First and Second Kings, ends with the Babylonian captivity. We can date Eli’s ministry, which concludes in the early 11th century BC, and the anointing of David, which took place about 993 BC. The book of Samuel takes us all the way to the end of David’s reign, long after Samuel himself has died. So there’s mystery surrounding the book. Yet the book contains the very words, the revelation of God, to a young boy — 12 or 13 years old — who begins his prophetic ministry at that age. Hannah, his mother, was advanced in age when she conceived her son Samuel — not unlike Elizabeth with John the Baptist, and Sarah with Isaac.
The days of Samuel and Eli, we’re told, were not good days. They weren’t faithful days. They weren’t days filled with righteous people. It was the days of the judges, and Eli was the last of the judges. The children of God had lost their way, so the Lord God withheld His Word from them. Our lesson said: “The word of the Lord was rare in those days; there was no frequent vision.” In other words, there were no prophets and priests and the like proclaiming the very words of God. And due to the lack of prophets, enemies threatened the very existence of Israel. Eli, God’s appointed judge over Israel, had sons of his own, but we’re told repeatedly in the biblical text that they were unworthy to succeed their father. So Hannah was instructed to bring her son Samuel to Eli and to the Tabernacle, to serve as Eli’s apprentice in the ways of the Lord.
The Lord had formed the nation Israel for the purpose of bringing His salvation to the whole world, to all sinners. And in this moment of history, all there was was young little Samuel, appointed by the Lord God to be His next spokesman to both the Jew and the Gentile world. But before he could speak, Samuel needed to learn who the Lord God was, and what He had done in the past, and what He had promised to give to His people in the future. And for that, he needed a teacher. And he needed to learn to listen, and to hear what was being said. He needed to do what Eli taught him to do. Twice the Lord God called Samuel that night. Twice Samuel thought it was Eli calling out to him. Then verse seven tells us: “Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him” — that is, to the new young prophet. When the Lord God called Samuel a third time, Eli himself finally figured out that in fact God was calling Samuel into a new relationship with the Lord God — to be a prophet, to have the will of the heavenly Father revealed to this young boy. So Eli told Samuel, “Go, lie down, and if He calls you, you shall say, ‘Speak, Lord, for Your servant hears.'” This is the interesting part: he gives him the exact words he’s supposed to say. Liturgy, by the way, in the church, is saying back to God His words that He’s given to us. Remember that the next time you come across the Christian who belittles the liturgy. When they belittle the liturgy, they are belittling what God has actually spoken to us, to His church, to His children.
Samuel’s schooling was about to begin. Samuel now would come to know God in a way that he had never known Him before. Now, everybody has a god, and every culture has a religion — or it leads to religions. It’s innate in us as human beings to seek a God, to believe fundamentally that there’s something more than just human nature and human beings. So human beings often go looking for their gods or God, and that god is anything that they value above everything else. It can be power and money, praise and pleasure, peace, the appearance of self-righteousness or self-esteem, as we say today — whatever any person places as the highest good in his or her life, the thing to be valued most and to be earned, is in fact a god. But there is only one true God. This one true God is only known by His self-revelation — by how He speaks and acts toward us, and importantly, makes His will, His ways, and His deeds known to us. And that He does through the prophets and the apostles. We know that there is a God. We know that God is powerful. We know that God creates. But beyond that, unless God reveals Himself to us, we know very, very little about God. So, starting with ancient Israel, God revealed Himself in what He said and what He did, and how He made His words and deeds known to sinful human beings. As He did this, the children of God had to learn to trust and depend on the Word of the Lord — that God would in fact do what He promised He would do. The Lord God would prove Himself time and time again.
There’s a misdefinition of faith that says faith is believing in something of which there is no evidence. That is a false definition of faith. The children of Israel had to learn what God had done in the past, what He had said and promised in the past, and how He fulfilled those promises. That’s why time and time again in the Old Testament, God repeats what He’s done for them: “I called you to be My own nation. I called you and freed you from slavery in Egypt. I brought you through the Red Sea. I led you through the wilderness for 40 years. I fed you and clothed you. I brought you into your Promised Land,” and so on and so forth. God constantly was reminding the Hebrew people what He in fact had done, and proven to be true to His promises.
In Samuel and Eli’s day, the words and visions of God were rare — so rare that even little Samuel, who had been dedicated to serve the Lord in the Tabernacle, didn’t really know the Lord that he was serving. Again, verse 7: “Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him.” You see, Samuel wasn’t alone in his day of ignorance — ignorance of all things God. The people of Israel had forgotten the Lord God. They’d forgotten all the things that He had done for them. They didn’t recount them. They didn’t rely on the promises of the future, especially the promise of the Messiah. It’s not unlike the religious age in which we live. Religious ignorance is a plague upon the West. What was written by Paul in Romans chapter 1 has become true of the West, of our country, of our communities, and of all too many of our families: “For although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools.” We live in dark days. A great many people think they can call God by whatever name they please. It seems reasonable to them — even though the Scripture makes it very clear there is only one name under heaven by which one is saved. This is Jesus: “The stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” A great many people in the visible church are ignorant of, or reject, the teachings of the Bible and the Christian faith. God has and is speaking through His written Word, when it’s preached by faithful pastors. But they ignore those teachings. They call God by whatever name they want. They often think that it’s the same God, just called by different names — there’s no difference between one name and another. But the biblical text makes it abundantly clear, from the very beginning: the Lord God of the Old Testament, God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit of the New, are one and a specific God. God has and is speaking, yet our people in our day are not hearing.
The Bible is God’s self-revelation. It is God’s written Word, inspired through human beings to write with the capacity they’re able to write, and to learn and to teach what God has done for us and for our salvation. Vestiges of our Western civilization reflecting Christianity are all but gone. The church is mocked, it’s lampooned, increasingly attacked, desecrated by the activists. The basic tenets of sanctity of life, male and female identities, traditional values, officially are often legislated against by our legislatures, our courts, our institutions, and even many branches of religion themselves. We are persecuted — subtly, and more and more openly — for believing that what the Bible teaches is what God has said and what God has done. If you are going to understand why we are seeing a rise of special interest groups, activists, political and religious zealots protesting and rioting, you only need to understand that in the absence of the one true God and religion, there is a vacuum in human nature — and that vacuum will be filled by anything that the imagination can conjure up. But no person can find their true meaning and purpose in this life until they know God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
For the children of Israel, the silence of the prophetic revelation was about to end. And surprisingly, the first recipient of God’s Word of judgment was Eli himself. The Lord God would send young Samuel with the following words for his father in the faith, Eli: “And the Lord came and stood, calling as at other times, ‘Samuel! Samuel!’ And Samuel said” — by the way, just exactly as Eli had taught him — “‘Speak, for Your servant hears.’ Then the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Behold, I am about to do a thing in Israel at which the two ears of everyone who hears it will tingle. On that day I will fulfill against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house, from beginning to end. And I declare to him that I am about to punish his house forever, for the iniquity that he knew, because his sons were blaspheming God, and he did not restrain them.'” In other words, Eli, the prophet and the priest of the Tabernacle, had allowed his own sons to become pagans without resistance — practicing pagan religions in his own house — and Eli did nothing. So the first word to be revealed after generations of silence was a word of Law against his own prophet, Eli. The Lord speaks of judgment against Eli and his house for allowing false gods. So much for the parents that we hear these days who say, “I don’t want to take him to church — they force religion on them. I don’t want to force any religion on them. If they choose something later in life, that’s just hunky-dory, that’s fine by me, whatever religion they want, that’s fine.” Then there’s surprise when they become pagans through and through. So much for parents that didn’t raise their children in the true Christian faith, simply because they had a notion of what a good parent did and didn’t do.
The speaking of the Lord God resumes — first with a judgment of Law. And which commandment is it? It’s the First Commandment: “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.” This is the one that Eli’s household had broken. As for the young prophet, 12, 13 years old, the text says: “And Samuel grew, and the Lord was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground. And all Israel from Dan to Beersheba knew that Samuel had been established as a prophet of the Lord. And the Lord appeared again at Shiloh, for the Lord revealed Himself to Samuel at Shiloh by the word of the Lord.” And thus a judgment was spoken against the children of Israel. But still the Israelites did not listen. They did not repent. In fact, they didn’t like being told what to do by a lowly prophet, even now that he was advanced in years. They didn’t want to hear him. He spent a lifetime preaching and teaching and speaking the words of God to God’s very own adopted children, but they refused to listen. They didn’t want to be governed by a theocracy, by a lowly prophet. They wanted whatever other kingdom in the world had. They wanted a king — any kind of king would do for them. And when he became old, the elders of the people told Samuel, “Behold, you are old and your sons do not walk in your ways. Now appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations.” With few exceptions, that king thing didn’t work out so well for the Northern or the Southern Kingdom. The two kingdoms did exactly the same thing: they worshiped other gods, and 200 years apart, they were conquered by their enemies and hauled into captivity.
We have the same problem today. God speaks, and we don’t listen. We, in fact, listen to the wrong words. “God is leading me to do X, Y, and Z,” we think — because we feel that it’s right. We think God speaks in our feelings. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that. We think God speaks somehow through our circumstances: “Oh, if A happens, then it must mean I have to pick Z.” The book of John calls that sign faith — you’re living by your circumstances, you’re not living by faith, you’re living by sight. And you somehow think God keeps moving things on a chessboard to force you to do one thing or another, when in fact there’s this thing called Gospel freedom, where you in fact do have some agency. We live in a time when we see that God’s Word, right theology, the right understanding of faith, is pooh-poohed. “Can’t say that you’re right.” “How do you Lutherans know you’re right?” I say it’s self-evident. Just give that answer, see how that works. It’s self-evident — it’s according to the words right there in the Bible. Just show me the passage where we’re wrong, and we’ll repent. We think right and wrong are established by our culture, our day and age, and the latest edicts of the woke and the academics of Western civilization. And thus by the millions, kids get out of school and march to the tune of the wrong drum.
If we’re really going to know the voice of God, we must go where it is that He speaks. And where is that? Hebrews 1:1–2 tells us — it’s a confirmation verse: “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son, Jesus Christ.” He spoke to us in the Gospels. How do we know that? Because the Gospel writers were taught ultimately by Jesus. The Epistles, written by mostly Paul and Peter, a few others — Paul spent three years in the desert in Arabia being instructed by Jesus Himself in the doctrines and understanding of the Old Testament. Thus the Epistles as well come from Jesus Christ. He taught them what to say, and guided and inspired them as they wrote. To hear His voice, we must go to where He promises to be heard, and not any other place. The Scripture is where you learn to recognize the voice, the doctrines of Jesus Christ. If we know what God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit have said, taught, and done through the prophets and the apostles, we’d be less confused about our place in life, and what we’re supposed to do, and how we’re supposed to conduct ourselves in our families and in our employment, and as citizens of a particular country and constitution. Remember this collect that we use from time to time: “Blessed Lord, who hast caused all Holy Scriptures to be written for our learning, grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of Thy holy Word we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which Thou hast given us in our Savior Jesus Christ.” We even pray that we actually become Bible scholars, so to speak — that we study and learn and listen and understand. The Lord’s not left us without human voices to speak in His stead, and by His command and by His authority and in His name. John 20: Jesus said to the disciples, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent Me, even so I am sending you.” And when He had said this, He breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.” This is how you’re to hear the words of Absolution when we do the common confession and the common Absolution at the start of the Divine Service. We begin by confessing our sin, and God, who is faithful and just, forgives our sin and cleanses us from all unrighteousness — because the pastor speaks.
So the church and the world need the words of God. People today — your family, your friends, your neighbors — they don’t need your opinion about what the Bible says. They need you to declare what the Bible says. They don’t need no more worldly philosophies and causes to chase after. The world, your neighbor, and your family needs the Word that brings about the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. And once that is done, then they need the words that teach us what it means to be children of the heavenly Father. This message is only found in Christ and in His written Word. He alone brings salvation, because He bore all the sins of the world, shed His innocent blood to wash you clean, entered the tomb, and on the third day rose again, so that you too would rise again with Him in glory. That’s the message for which Samuel and all the prophets spoke and longed for — the message that has been so richly poured out on you and me in the waters of our Baptism, in the Sacrament of the Altar you receive the food of immortality, Christ’s very body and blood, and in the words of Holy Absolution you are delivered the forgiveness of your sins. And all God’s redeemed are sent to speak with His own words. You’re redeemed by Christ, the Holy One promised through the prophets of old and proclaimed by the apostles of the New Testament. Our days may be dark as Samuel’s days, but just as in former days, God’s Son Jesus Christ comes to us. The Light of the world has come into the darkness with His Word, to cast light upon those who have been held in captivity. So live in His light until the day He calls you home to His glorious light in heaven. The words of young Samuel, “Speak, for Your servant hears,” were spoken long ago. But they should be the words that we speak every week in the service. Hear what God’s Son speaks of Christ, of His Father, of the Holy Spirit. And now He speaks to you: your sins are forgiven you. Amen.
May the peace that surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.