Believe to Receive, Dare to Share

 “Believe to Receive, Dare to Share ”

 Message @ Jericho Ridge Community Church – Sunday, June 29, 2014

Text: I Samuel 3 // Series: Games & Thrones: I Samuel

Good morning. Welcome to Jericho Ridge as we launch into summer!  Now, if you are new or visiting with us, I want to let you in on a little secret… our goal during the summers is to take you on a journey through the Old Testament.  The Bible can sometimes feel like a long and confusing book and so we want you to have a handle on where to find people, places and things in the Big God Story.  Now, kids you guys often do this better than we do as adults so you are here to help us and keep us on track, OK? J. 

A few summers ago, we started [sung] at the very beginning, a very good place to start.  We looked at the book of Genesis – which is so intriguing that it took us two sermon series to tackle it J.  Then we did the book of Exodus where we explored the amazing power and provision of God as He rescued His people from slavery and oppression in ancient Egypt.  Then last summer, we did a series called “Crossing Over” where we combined Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy and Joshua. And we finished off and left you hanging at Joshua chapter 10.  So why now at the start of summer 2014 are we picking up in I Samuel you might ask?  Well, we taught through the book of Judges actually the summer BEFORE we did Genesis (just to keep you guessing) and then we’re going to save the book Ruth for its own series cause there’s lots of goodies in there. 

But where are we in our Big God story?  Let me fill in some gaps for you.  When we left off in Joshua 10, the people God had chosen were standing right on the edge of the land of promise but there was LOTS of work left to be done.  They still needed to get into the land and get organized BUT they ran into a speed bump, actually LOTS of speed bumps along that journey into the land God had promised them.  They go into the land BUT they don’t fully possess it.  They don’t do everything that God tells them to do and this causes trouble for them not just for a little bit, but for the rest of the story.  This kind of thinking shows up in the book of Judges.  It represents a bad cycle where the people fall into bad habits of serving God, falling away, serving God and falling away again….  And toward the end of the book of Judges, even leaders the judges get worse and worse.  And the Bible says this is partly because “Israel has no king”.  The throne is not established – and since there is no continuous or stable leadership, people are playing games, religiously, politically and in every area of their lives.   Hence the title of our summer series Games & Thrones. 

But as we get to the end of the book of Judges, we see the emergence in the Old Testament of a new kind of leader, a prophet.  A person who listens to God and then speaks forth the words of God and the heart of God to those who have willing ears to hear.  The Old Testament book of I Samuel is named for its most prominent character, a man by the name of well, Samuel.  Samuel is of one of the main figures in this part of the Old Testament. We have Adam & Eve, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Joshua, the Judges then next up is really my man Sam.

Now, in chapters 1 & 2 of the book, we get a window into Samuel’s early life.  Samuel has a fascinating back story.  We learn of his mother’s bareness; she can’t have a baby.  But she cries out to God and Samuel is the answer to the prayers of faith offered by his mother Hannah.  In fact, Samuel’s name means “heard of God”.  Chapter 2 records her amazing prayer.

But amidst the individual stories of God’s provision and power at work, the bigger picture story for the Israelites is not looking good at all.  No strong civic or political leadership has emerged since Joshua or the days of the Judges. Kids, how many of you have been to Municipal awareness days?  This is the field trip where you come to City hall and learn all about what they do.  Did you sit in the council chambers?  Can you imagine the city of Surrey or the Township of Langley with nobody in charge?  No one making decisions about where roads go, nobody collecting property taxes or paying teachers (oh wait… that’s going on right now!) 

In Samuel’s day there is still religious leaders – the priests that we learned about in Exodus. We have Eli the priest whom the text says was very old (and when the Bible says you are old, you are REALLY OLD!).  And we also have recorded the actions of his two sons at the end of chapter 2.  The Bible tells us that they were really bad dudes who had no respect for the Lord or for their duties as priests.  I Sam 2:17 says that God took this very seriously.  Eli was aware of what his sons were doing to the people of Israel.  They were using their positions as priests to lie, cheat and steal and Eli warned them to stop but they didn’t stop.  They kept right on doing the things God hated and warned the sons of Eli not to do.  And old Eli took no action at all.  The Bible says his eyes were growing dim and it’s as if his failing eyesight is not just a physical condition, but a spiritual one as well.  Eli and his family are in big trouble as we’ll see in a few minutes.

Contrasting starkly with their wickedness and stubbornness, we have the story of a young boy Samuel.  You see Samuel’s mother was so grateful for him that she dedicated him to the Lord and as a young child, Samuel went to live full time at the Tabernacle or Temple of the Lord.  He served the Lord by assisting old Eli.  And here’s where the story of the Lord speaking to Samuel begins.  Let’s watch this short video clip which is taken from the text in I Samuel 3.  You can follow along in your Bible

VIDEO – 3 minutes

Now this is where we usually stop the story isn’t it?  And the moral becomes “we should listen to God’s voice” or some variation on that theme - which is true, but it’s not the whole story.  It’s not even the most interesting part of the story!  Let’s keep reading together because things are just getting interesting!  Now that we know God is speaking to Samuel, our logical question should be “what is God saying?!”  And the shocking thing is that it is NOT good news. 

Turn with me in your Bibles or follow along on your smartphone I Samuel 3:10-14. 

Whoa!  This is not good news, is it?  I mean it is so shocking that the ears of everyone who hear it are going to tingle.  And remember, Samuel is a young boy still.  And he’s been given a very important but very dire message.  What would you do in his situation?  What do you do when God speaks to you but He gives you a message or a task that is difficult? 

While you are thinking about that question, I want us to play a game here this morning.  It’s likely one you are familiar with – the Telephone Game.  This is where I give the first person a word or phrase and they repeat it to the person beside them who repeats it to the person behind them till it gets to the back of your section.  So we are going to pit section vs. section J

Phrase 1 – Unique New York

Phrase 2 – Walking in a winter wonderland

Phrase 3 – Ally alligator ate eleven avocados in the afternoon

Phrase 4 - The dead Army duck sat placidly as the construction crew strode confidently past

Already – each section report from the back.  What did you get?  (repeat original phrase).  So my point in playing this game is this: The harder something is to hear or to say, the more we are tempted to simplify it and knock some of the rough edges off of it.  A simple phrase or task is, well, simple.  But once it gets harder, we often want to make it simple again. 

When the message is challenging, we are not sure we heard it right.  The same thing can happen in learning to listen to God’s voice.  The first part of listening is that we have to open our ears to hear.  We have to believe that God is speaking to us.  This was Samuel’s very first experience with listening to God so like us, he has to Believe to Receive.  The question for you and I is the same as it was for little Samuel: Do we have ears to hear what God is saying?  As He speaks to us through His word the Bible, as He speaks to us in prayer, as He speaks to us through wise counsel from our friends…  This is why so often in the Bible you come across the phrase “He who has ears, let them hear!”  You cannot assume that just because you have a functional ear lobe that you will get the message in the telephone game.  The same is true as we are learning to hear from God…  We have to practice opening our ears because there are some very real Challenges to hearing:

1)   Lack of believing faith that God speaks today – you might think “He did that in the Bible” “people like Jung Hoon and Pearl working on Bible translation in Asia” or “professionally religious people like Pastor Keith” but not you.  That lack of faith will keep you from hearing.  Perhaps for you today, you need to open yourself up to the possibility that God is real, that He is alive and that He wants to speak to you!   

2)   Gunk in our lives that keeps us from hearing – Kids, what is this?  A cotton swab or q-tip.  What is it for?  Clearing the gunk out of your ears!  Sometimes, we have things in our lives that keep us from hearing from God. The Bible calls these attitudes, actions or beliefs sin.  Which means that we have decided in our heart that we know what is right and good and God does not.  And when we do this over and over again, it’s like a layer after layer of ear wax that builds up and eventually, this can prevent us from hearing from God.  The solution?  A Q-tip prayer: “God, clean my life up from all of the things that prevent me from hearing from you and walking in obedience”

3)   Uncertainty if we are hearing the right message (or anything at all) – this is one I wrestle with.  Especially if the message is hard.  If it is easy, that’s one thing but this section, you guys struggled because the phrase was much more difficult.  You begin to ask yourself “did I really hear that?!” I think that if I was little Samuel, I would have been asking the exact same thing: God, are you SURE that that is the message you have for me to give to Eli?  It’s really hard.  Are you sure I heard you correctly?  Maybe you have a nicer, soften kind message of encouragement for Eli?”

Let’s see what Samuel does with his message from God.  Look with me at the next few verses: I Samuel 3:15-18.

Think of little Samuel hearing this hard message from God.  If I was him, the first thing I would want to do is see if I could soften it or put another more positive spin on it.  Or I would clam right up and when Eli came asking “what did God say to you last night?” I would say “um, nothing”.  Because sometimes our challenge isn’t believing to receive from God, it’s having the courage to share.  If part 1 of the challenge is “Believe to Receive” and Part 2 is “Dare to Share”.  The question here is “Do we have the courage to speak out or to act on what God is saying to us?” or will we keep silent 

This isn’t about sharing your faith with other people, though it could certainly apply there.  This is about when you know that you know that God has given you a task or a message to share and so you’ve heard it loud and clear – but you refuse to act on it in any way and so you short circuit the process.  And I get it.  I have done this many, many times in my life.  Because there are very real challenges to speaking or acting on what you hear from the Lord.  And in my experience, the harder the task is or the harder the message is, the more excuses I tend to make.  See if you can identify with any of these. God says “I want you to mow your neighbour’s lawn to show you care for them”  my first thought? “I’ll do it a later” – Often times my very first thought when God asks me to do something is why isn’t not a good idea to do it right now.  Procrastination is one of my challenges.

Or how about this: God asks you to speak a word of encouragement and affirmation to someone and you get nervous so inside your head you begin to over-analyze the interaction.  Well, God, did you really say that?  What if I mis-heard you and I encourage that person but you really wanted me to encourage that person over there?”  To which God might reply “Oh, no.  What a horrible thing – two people get encouraged!”  I think this one is especially true when God asks us to do something complicated or difficult, however.  God, are you sure you want me to give more money away?  Are you sure you want us to pick up and move our family? Are you really asking me to give up my Spring break and go to Guatemala?”  Sometimes when what God is asking of us is a higher risk, we simply explain it away by telling ourselves “Well God would never ask that or me, would He?”  And we tell ourselves “I must have misunderstood. God didn’t really say or ask that of me, did He?”  Friends, when you know that God has spoken to you clearly about something, you must act on it because you will be held accountable for it.  Sometimes things are ambiguous and then you keep pressing into God to ask Him for clarity on timeline, geography, amount… wherever it is you need clarity on.  But when it is clear and you just don’t like what God says, do not explain it away.

The last challenge that I have in daring to share is that I deflect.  I think to myself “who am I to tell them that?”  God, could you give this message to someone closer to them to deliver?  Could you just tell them Yourself, God?”  Why me?  I am sure Samuel felt that way when he heard the message God gave him about Eli and Eli’s sons.  Yikes!  I don’t want this message, God!  But this is where believing to receive and daring to share is simply an act of obedience.  Obedience means having the courage to speak out or to act on what God is saying to us, even when it is difficult. 

Obedience is opening our ears so that we can hear from God and then having the course to speak out or to act on what God is saying to us, even when it is difficult.  The phrase that has helped me remember the two parts of this process has been what I shared with you today: “Believe to Receive, Dare to Share”.  And you know what happens when you learn to practice these two disciples?  Well, let’s look at Samuel’s life.  Keep reading to the end of the chapter with me: I Samuel 3:19-4:1  

My prayer for myself and for each of you is that we would be people who listen well.  Whose ears are clean and clear and open to hear; that you and I grow each year as people of faith who actively and regularly believe that we will receive from God. That’s why we have our prayer response times.  That’s why last Sunday night, we opened it up at Paul’s baptism to have people speak words of blessing and affirmation into his life – because we believe that God is speaking and that you and I can hear from Him.  But hearing is only the first part.  We also have to dare to share.  To be people who step out of our comfort zones and who take risks and who are bold in speaking out what God is putting on our hearts. And as we do this, God will continue to give you and I ears that hear, mouths that speak and hands that are willing to do His will.  Let’s pray together as we move into a time of responding in song. Prayer team [Meg & I; Katy Kwon + Keith Reed]

Benediction: Dominican monastic Blessing from the 13^th Century:

May God the Father bless us

May God the Son heal us.

May God the Holy Spirit enlighten us, and give us

eyes to see with,

ears to hear with,

hands to do the work of God with,

feet to walk with,

a mouth to preach the word of salvation with,

and peace to watch over us and lead us at last, by our Lord’s gift, to the Kingdom. Amen.