I recently had the privilege of teaching from 1 Samuel 3. In order to give structure to the talk, I divided the passage into three parts – Samuel the boy, Samuel the youth and Samuel the man. This blog post is based on part 1 of that talk – Samuel, the boy.
1 Samuel 3:1-9
This first part of 1 Samuel 3 is rich in history and culture. Yet when many of us study this passage, it barely features except to ‘set the scene’ of God’s call to Samuel. I admit that when I prepared the talk, I also intended to skip over it in order to ‘get to the main point’.
I’m glad I didn’t.
The main application that I take from this passage is this: God is with us even when life feels dark.
God is with us even when life feels dark.
Samuel
In verse 1 of 1 Samuel chapter 3, we read that Samuel ministered before the LORD under Eli.
You most likely know the background to this story. Samuel was the first child born to a woman named Hannah. This poor lady had desperately wanted children, but it hadn’t happened. Some years earlier, she had prayed passionately about her childlessness at this very tabernacle. Eli had mistaken her grief for drunkenness and had spoken sharply to the distraught woman. After realising his mistake, the old man had then blessed her. “Go in peace,” he had told her, “and may the God of Israel grant you what you have asked of him.”
Samuel was born the following year. In recognition of God’s goodness, Samuel’s mother brought him back to this same priest when he was just a little boy. Her desire, which her husband endorsed, was that Samuel would grow up in the tabernacle of God. Every year, Hannah would visit and bring her son new and bigger clothes, but the boy would no longer live with his birth family.
Hannah had five more children after Samuel.
A child who ministered
In verse 1 of 1 Samuel chapter 3, we read that Samuel ministered before the LORD under Eli.
In my community in Australia, a mother wouldn’t think of offering her child to God by sending them to work in a church when their peers would just be starting pre-school. However, in parts of the world I regularly visit, children are often sent to Buddhist temples as gestures of devotion.
It’s sad for the child to be separated from their family and they work hard in both practical and religious activities. Yet it also often means that the child gets an education and that their physical needs are met. It’s not as uncommon as we might imagine here in Australia.
Do you remember the horrendous days during which 12 Thai boys and their soccer coach were stuck in a cave in northern Thailand in 2018? Amazingly, all 12 boys and the coach were rescued. One of those boys was a Christian, a stateless kid whose family had fled across the Thai border to escape persecution and violence. Long before his ordeal in the cave, his parents had delivered him to a local Thai Baptist church. He lives at the church and is growing up in a multicultural multi-lingual setting. His English skills would serve his group well when their English-speaking rescuers first arrived.
As for his 11 Buddhist team-mates, they later became child-monks, though for just nine days. It was an expression of gratitude and of honour to a Thai diver who had lost his life in the rescue effort. Their coach, who had previously served as a monk for some time, undertook another longer period of service in a monastery too.
Perhaps Hannah’s decision to send her son to minister under Eli before the LORD so long ago is not that unusual after all. It just feels very strange to an individualistic Australian woman like me.
Eli
In verse 1 of 1 Samuel chapter 3, we read that Samuel ministered before the LORD under Eli.
Eli was the head priest at the time and quite an old man by this stage. His eyes were becoming so weak that he could barely see. He was a heavy man too – we read about that in the account of his death sometime later at age 98 (see 1 Samuel 4). Eli was a bit of a softie, I imagine, and not a strict disciplinarian. There is no mention of his wife, but the Bible says a lot about his sons.
Eli’s sons were grown up by the time Samuel moved in and they also served as priests in Israel. In 1 Samuel chapter 2, we read that they were bad priests. They did dreadful things to God’s people and did not treat the people’s offerings as holy. There is still abuse of power amongst God’s leaders today, as the media frequently reminds us. It’s an age-old problem.
God would not tolerate the behaviour of Eli’s sons for long, but for a time, it was allowed to continue. In his sovereignty, God even permitted these vile men to be around the tender young child who would become Israel’s great prophet – Samuel. In fact, as we shall see in the next section, what we think of as ‘Samuel’s call’ was actually God’s proclamation of judgement on this family.
What an environment for a boy to grow up in. Samuel was far from his family of origin, loosely incorporated into a dysfunctional family, and all within the setting of a holy tabernacle with the trimmings of worship but in which there was tremendous abuse of power and privilege.
Yet in it all, God was present.
In those days the word of the LORD was rare
1 Samuel 3:1b tells us that “In those days the word of the LORD was rare; there were not many visions.”
The priests still went through the motions of worship. Certainly Samuel’s parents, along with many others, went to the tabernacle every year to worship in the ways prescribed for Jews back then.
It perhaps felt like God was absent. Yet God had great plans for Samuel and the whole nation. 1 Samuel 3:7 says that “Samuel did not yet know the LORD: The word of the LORD had not yet been revealed to him.” But all that was about to change. Samuel was well positioned to act when he did hear the divine call.
The story of Samuel’s childhood reinforces to me the value of raising kids in the knowledge and fear of the LORD. We need not go to the lengths that Hannah did in delivering her son to the tabernacle and handing him over to the clergy, of course. Sadly, we must be wary of broken people who abuse their power and position. The child protection documentation and strategies of our modern world are needed. Despite it all, may we persevere in raising kids to know the Lord.
The newly appointed vice-president of the USA took her vows with her hand on the Bible which had belonged to a neighbour. I keep well away from writing about American politics. I don’t know or understand enough to justify a public opinion. However, it is not contentious to relate the story of a good Christian neighbour who had a profound effect on Vice-President Harris as a child. In the vice-president’s own words,
On Sundays, we’d pile into the back of Mrs. Shelton’s station wagon along with other kids, on the way to the 23rd Avenue Church of God….
Mrs. Shelton would bring her Bible to church every Sunday. Sitting alongside her, I was introduced to the teachings of that Bible. My earliest memories were of a loving God, a God who asked us to “speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves” and to “defend the rights of the poor and needy.”
https://www.bustle.com/news/without-this-woman-i-wouldnt-be-the-senator-i-am-today-15910352 written by Kamala Harris 5 Feb 2019 and accessed 8 Feb 2021
May God bless Sunday school teachers and others who intentionally build into young lives. It may feel like their service is a bit of a slog at times, but God alone knows who those under their influence will one day become.
No ordinary bedroom
One night Eli … was lying down in his usual place. The lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the house of the LORD, where the ark of God was.
1 Samuel 3:2a, 3 NIV
I wonder where Eli usually slept? I wonder where Samuel slept? Did they have beds? Surely they had something to cushion the hard surface and blankets to keep them warm at night. Did they have pillows back then? Sheets? So many questions……
One thing is sure. Samuel slept in a place which was no ordinary bedroom. He slept in the house of the LORD, where the ark of God was!
The ark of God
I cannot fathom, however, that Samuel actually slept in sight of the ark of God. The ark was in the house of the LORD, yes, and that was where Samuel slept, but the ark of God was incredibly holy. No ordinary person could even approach it according to the instructions given through Moses several generations earlier. Only priests could draw near it and then only after ceremonial cleansing.
The ark of God was basically a wooden box, covered in gold, with carry poles either side. Over this very special box were figures of cherubim, angel-like creatures, their wings outstretched. Inside the box were the stone tablets on which God’s Law was inscribed, a pot of manna and the staff of the ancient priest, Aaron. It was said that God would sit on the box between the cherubim – ‘the mercy seat,’ they called it. (See Exodus 25 and Hebrews 9.)
No, Samuel slept in the house of the LORD where the ark was, but not actually physically near the ark of God … not without a curtain to separate it from him, at least. That’s my understanding from other parts of Scripture, anyhow. Besides which, for a young boy … or even for a middle-aged woman … the ark of God would have been terrifying in its holiness, with the high standards of God outlined in the law written on those stone tablets within it.
At the same time, in 1 Samuel 4, we read of how the people of Samuel’s day would soon take the Ark of God into battle with them as a kind of talisman, something with power to protect them. So perhaps they didn’t treat it with the honour it deserved, though that, too, would change in the coming years.
The lamp of God
This passage also refers to the ‘lamp of God’. Through Moses, God had given very specific instructions about one particular lampstand there in the Tabernacle. Since this lamp in 1 Samuel 3 is described as ‘the lamp of God’, it seems reasonable to assume that it is the one and the same.
The lampstand was fancy, made of pure gold and featuring almond flowers, buds and blossoms. It is described in detail in Exodus 25, and was made according to the pattern prescribed by the Almighty One himself from a mountain of fire and thunder.
The Israelite priests were to ensure that the flames never went out. This is what God had instructed his people through Moses on the matter:
Command the Israelites to bring you clear oil of pressed olives for the light so that the lamps may be kept burning continually. … Aaron is to tend the lamps before the LORD from evening till morning continually. This is to be a lasting ordinance for the generations to come. The lamps on the pure gold lamp stand before the LORD must be tended continually.
Leviticus 24:1-4 NIV
1 Samuel 3:3 suggests that the priests might have become slack on that front. “The lamp of God had not yet gone out….”, the verse says. Mind you, given that Eli was almost blind and that his sons abused their position, it is hardly surprising that nobody did what was needed to keep the lights burning all night.
I wonder if one of Samuel’s job’s was to top up the oil during the night? And how anyone could manage that without alarm clocks, let alone a boy?
Jesus and lampstands
To modern Christians such as ourselves, lampstands like this are also symbolic. About 1000 years after Samuel’s day, the apostle John would be granted a vision in which lampstands would feature. I shall copy here an excerpt of John’s account.
I, John, your brother and companion in the suffering and kingdom and patient endurance…. On the Lord’s Day I was in the Spirit, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet….
I turned around to see the voice that was speaking to me. And when I turned I saw seven golden lampstands, and among the lampstands was someone like a son of man…..
His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance. When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. Then he placed his right hand on me and said: “Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades….
“The mystery of … the seven golden lampstands is this: … the seven lampstands are the seven churches.
Revelation 1:9a,10, 12-13a, 16b-18, 20b NIV
The passage starts with John’s suffering. He then saw lampstands and, amongst them, a figure terrifying in its holiness. That figure was Jesus, and the lampstands were the churches. That is us. It is all of us who follow Jesus in this broken and confusing world.
Jesus is present. He is with us as we muddle our way through life. He doesn’t condone our misdemeanours anymore than he did the sins (active or passive) of the churches which were addressed in John’s Revelation. But he is with us, and that spurs us on to persevere in our faith.
Light and darkness
I wonder if you can identify with the boy Samuel? Do you ever feel like life is unfathomable … you can’t make head or tail of what is going on? Do you ever feel like life is spinning out of control? Health – finances – relationships – a pandemic – disappointments – pressures at work or in study – grief? Do you ever feel like evil is present and winning? Do you ever feel like God is distant? Do you feel like the world is in darkness?
Be encouraged. Stand firm. God is with us. His light shines through us. And in his great sovereignty, that light never will be extinguished. It isn’t up to us to keep the lights burning. God has done it, and he has great things in store for his creation through Jesus.
Even when it feels like darkness surrounds us, God is present.
Stand firm.
(PS As well as standing firm, volunteer for the Sunday school roster. I literally did just that after putting together this talk-cum-blog-post.)