Gospel—D. Rule
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We will start.
By singing together #38.
#38.
Until I get started.
I know how they're saving faith to make it happen.
For all believing in this.
In my heart, but I know.
I have been living with God and never swayed in heaven and he can take home.
To keep that which I remembered.
I know.
I said really, Jesus, fruit of the word.
Creating him.
But I know.
I have been leaving.
Persuaded.
That he is able.
To keep that which I have been.
No, God does.
God knows that on my mind, right at the moment when we were singing, I looked at you and wasn't very happy that you're so far away from me. I want to talk to you.
But then I thought, no, I don't need to talk to you tonight. I can't get close to you in the way that you need tonight.
But.
God.
Wants to speak to you tonight.
I hope you're going to listen.
To what God has to say to you, and he can get right where you are and He knows what's going on in your mind, whether you're thinking about checking out from a hotel tomorrow, what you're going to do after this meeting is over.
What you were doing at supper time, Some part of a conversation you had today.
Those things have their place.
But I urge you.
To let God speak to you.
Tonight and right now. So let's talk to him. Our God, we ask that you will speak.
That the one who is up front will just be your voice.
But most important, our God, that you will speak by your word.
To each one.
And the result will be that if they are still lost and in their sins and don't know you and your love, that they will listen and learn and believe and receive and know the Lord Jesus tonight as their Savior. So we ask our God.
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To work for the honor.
Of thy love and the work of thy Lord Jesus in his precious name.
Amen.
Turn.
To First Samuel, chapter one.
In First Samuel chapter one.
We have a mother.
That talk to God.
She told God what she was thinking.
And she was not very happy and she talked to God about it.
We're then going to see what God has to say about a boy.
That she got from God, from the Lord.
And the Lord, she talked to the to the Lord.
And in what we're going to see is the Lord.
Talk to her son.
You need to talk to the Lord.
And you need to let the Lord talk to you and speak to you.
So listen.
For him tonight.
In chapter one.
Now verse one, there was a certain man of.
Ramoth Zofum of Mount Ephraim, and his name was El Cana.
You know God's very personal.
And I don't know because I'm not the one that needs to speak to you.
But God knows your name.
Just like he knew this man. You're an individual.
You're a single person of his attention because he cares for you. He loves you, and so he knows you.
So here's a man, and he's introduced to us, and we learn his name.
It says in verse two he had two wives. The name of one was Hannah.
And the name of the other Vanina.
They too had names.
They were individuals. They were people that God cared about individually. And we're not going to. We're going to see what God had to say, or more of it is what Hannah had to say.
To the Lord.
Also it says of this man in verse three he went up.
Out of his city yearly to worship and to sacrifice unto the Lord of hosts in Shiloh.
And the two sons of Eli Hofney and Phinehas, the priests of the Lord, were there. Everybody's got a name because they're cared about individually. Here's a man that every year he took his family.
To a place where he could present them and himself.
Before the Lord.
You're here this weekend.
To a place.
Where some of you come every year.
To the Lord.
To listen.
To present.
To see others.
That also have come every year, at least many years to be here.
And that's what this man did. He took.
His family, some of you children are here. You had nothing to do with coming.
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Except probably a little bit like in my household at your age, my dad at a certain point in time said get in the car. And that's what we did.
We couldn't have told you how to get where we were going. We had nothing to do with the decision to go there.
There's a boy every year. My dad took us yearly to a place called Detroit for a time, just like here.
And when the time came to go, it was like some of you children.
You've got in the car.
And some seemingly a long time later, he got where you were going.
That was this way.
This man every year took his family.
Where they could.
Interact.
And present themselves before the Lord.
So it says.
In verse four, and when the time was that El Cana offered, that is when he got there, he had things that he wanted to present.
He was an adult and he had things to present to the Lord.
But.
We're going to look at his wife, particularly in verse five. But unto Hannah he gave a worthy portion, for he loved Hannah.
There's a father.
Or a husband who loved his this wife Hannah, and he wanted her to be happy. He wanted to do for her as good husbands want to do and desire to do for their wife.
But notice the middle in the verse five. A very important statement.
But.
The Lord.
Had shut up her womb.
You know, he wanted to do everything he could for.
But God had a hand in her life in a way that.
He didn't have control over God, had that control, and God by his purpose decided at that point she wasn't going to be able to have children.
She was unhappy.
She was one unhappy person.
It says the other of his wives.
Made her unhappy partly because she was unhappy that she couldn't have a child.
And it's important to see that who was keeping her from having a child was the Lord.
So you're here tonight. I don't know what age you are. You might be 100, I don't know. I don't think anybody here is 100.
But you might be 5, you might be 25.
You might be 50.
But you may be sitting in your seat inside you.
Unsatisfied. Unhappy.
And people that love you.
Can say I love you, be happy, but you're not.
Because the Lord is the only one that can satisfy what you need tonight.
If you're like Hannah.
She had a desire that was right. She wanted something.
And.
Yet the Lord.
The one who had the power to do it hadn't given it to her. In fact, he was the one keeping her.
From having.
It.
So it says in verse 7.
And as he did so year by year.
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This wasn't.
One conference. This wasn't one event.
That she was.
In a place of being unhappy, it went on for a long time.
Year by year by year and.
There it was.
There it was. Maybe you were here last year, maybe you were here the year before and you came here looking for something and you haven't found it.
And you're unsatisfied.
And you've gone back home.
And gone to school or gone to your job or whatever it is.
Maybe just played with your toys as a little child and yet there's that inside you, something that is missing.
That leaves you like Hannah.
So what she do? What do you do about it when you're not happy?
Verse seven, what she did, she wept.
She cried.
And it says she didn't need that.
That's how unhappy she was. She wept.
And she didn't want to eat.
So what happens?
Her husband in verse 8, Elcanus says to her, Hannah, why are you weeping? Why aren't you eating?
Why is your heart sad?
Am I not better?
Than ten sons.
She wanted a son and her husband who wanted her to be happy, he says to her, Aren't I better than didn't you having ten sons?
She doesn't tell us what she answered.
We can only imagine.
In the condition of her heart, what she might have answered, but that God doesn't put us to speculate about that because it's not important from God's perspective, and so he.
Inverse.
Verse 9 So Hannah rose up.
After they had eaten and after they had drunk, she went a little ways.
At least she was really neat. He did what he could and it helped her a little bit, but it didn't meet what was inside her. It didn't satisfy the need that was inside her and so as a result.
It says in verse 10.
She was in bitterness of soul.
You know when you have something that is making you unhappy and it goes on for a long time.
It's very easy to get bitter.
In your unhappiness, and maybe you're here tonight as a person who inside you, you might not appear that way outside.
You may not even want to admit it to yourself.
But inside, down deep inside you, you're bitter.
Because you don't have what it is you feel.
Would make you happy and perhaps you feel that somebody.
Is keeping you from being what you want to be and how.
So what's she do about it?
She prayed.
Unto the Lord she talked to the Lord.
About it.
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It's the right thing to do.
It's what you need to do tonight.
If you're bitter.
If you don't have in your soul that which is satisfying, she cried when she talked to the Lord. That's how much she felt that it wasn't some little light thing to her.
And so she talked to the Lord.
So do you, I hope.
You need to.
The Lord had kept something from her.
We're going to give you a personal illustration because personal illustrations people tend to remember better.
When I was a boy.
My mom and dad told me I need to talk to the Lord.
That is, pray.
And.
They taught me words to say to the Lord, or thoughts that I should say to the Lord.
And.
When I was pretty small, I learned that you were supposed to talk to the Lord.
And I was told that you could talk to the Lord and He would give you things.
And I needed a certain toy.
I needed a certain toy, so I talked to the Lord and I said Lord.
I need this toy.
And.
Tomorrow morning I'm going to do it out in the playroom beside Grandpa's toy box that he got given for us, and I'm going to go behind the toy box to pick up what I'm asking you for.
So I did that. I went down the next morning and I fully expected that when I went.
And got behind and I was rather shocked and couldn't understand.
That the thing I asked the Lord for?
Wasn't there?
Took a while to learn.
You know, sometimes we ask the Lord for things that He knows better than we do, and he says no.
I had some things that the Lord needed to teach me and.
So the Lord's like Hannah, ** *** wanted a child in the Lord at up to that point was saying no.
Did she stop talking to the Lord? No, she didn't. She kept on.
Verse 12 and it came to pass. She continued praying.
This man Eli that worked at the temple was about in those days what we would call a man of God.
And responsible for the spiritual good of the people that came there.
And he saw her praying.
And he didn't understand.
He did not understand, he didn't realize, and in fact, he came to wrong conclusions about her.
You may be in a condition here tonight that you say, and maybe it's true. Nobody understands.
The Lord does.
The Lord understands perfectly.
Exactly where you are tonight. What's going on in your mind at this moment?
What's in your heart, what you want, what you believe and what you don't, and so on.
He didn't understand, but God used him anyways. Sometimes we don't understand things and God will use us anyways. And he used her the Eli anyways to give her a word that was a comfort to her and he said.
May you find grace.
And so it says in verse 18, she went her way. She ate. Her countenance wasn't sad anymore. She stopped crying.
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She ate. She went home.
And.
It says verse the end of verse 19 the Lord remembered her.
All the time had come when he was going to give her the desire of her heart. She'd waited for years.
She was unhappy for a long time, but the Lord was in control. He's in control of your life. He's in control of the circumstances of what's going on with you. And so the Lord, he remembers her and he gives her the child she desired in verse 20, and she names it Samuel.
That means asked of God, she'd ask this child of God and he gives it to her.
Now we're going to.
Time passes quick. We're going to turn around and talk about her son.
Samuel.
She says in verse 25 for this child I prayed and she had learned quite a few things during her unhappy period and the Lord was using those things and she said to the Lord, thank as it were, thank you Lord.
And I this child is for you.
Your mother, your father here tonight. You have children here.
Is your heart right about your children?
The Lord gave them to you.
Are you willing, as it were, to give him back to him and raise them for him?
With the desire that they become his children. Well, that was what was in Hannah.
She learned a very important lesson in her life. We see in chapter 2, verse one, Hannah prayed that became a lifelong part of Hannah's life and the Lord had answered the biggest prayer of her life. And she continues and we will only have the time to touch on a little bit of this very valuable prayer.
That she spoke to God, that reflected things that she'd learned.
Through the experiences of her life.
That everybody in this room, one way or another, needs to learn what Hannah learned.
If you haven't learned it, you're in God's school and he's a patient teacher.
And if you're the Lords, you're going to learn some of these things. We'll just look at, name them, almost a few of them, so we can get on to talk about Samuel verse 2. There's none holy as the Lord. She'd learned that the Lord was holy.
Have you?
There is none else beside thee. She learned that there was no substitute. There was no alternative. The Lord was it.
She learned verse three, don't talk proud.
Don't have too great a thoughts of yourself.
She was. She was a good learner in my opinion.
She learned in verse three the Lord is a God of knowledge.
He knows everything.
Eli didn't understand her. Her husband didn't understand her fully, even though he loved her and cared for her. But she really had learned that God was a God of knowledge. He knew.
You sit in your seat, whether you're a young person, a child, or an older one, the Lord understands you.
Perfectly. And he knows everything about you.
Nobody else does, including yourself.
You don't even understand yourself in any ways. Like God knows you. He's a God of knowledge. That means that he knows. I say, what are you thinking about? And I have no idea.
But God does. He knows everything. He knows exactly what you're thinking at this moment and what's important to you and so on.
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She then goes on to compare different people.
God raises some people up.
But he put some people down, he gives some people life, and he brings death.
He lets some people or makes some people be poor, and other people he makes rich.
And some that start out rich and think they're pretty great, he takes it away from them and they find out they're just like everybody else, they're poor and so on. And we'll leave it at that. Other things that she she learned.
And we need to talk to the Lord, learn the same things.
OK in chapter 2.
It says.
Verse 11 This child Samuel ministered unto the Lord.
And I'll just characterize him. He was a good kid.
He was a good boy.
We don't read anything bad about the way he was in what he did. He was a what we would call a good boy. He was probably a joy.
To Eli, who we worked for, and to.
His parents.
And so on. It was a joy. He was a good son.
That also though Eli had two sons.
Verse 12 it says of his two sons they knew not in verse 12. A very important statement.
The sons of Eli were sons of Belial. That means they were bad.
And they knew not the Lord.
They knew not the Lord.
Do you know him?
You may be good.
In the way you act.
The question is, the important question for you tonight is do you know the Lord?
It says these two sons, they didn't know the Lord.
And.
Verse 18 a little more on Samuel. He ministered before the Lord even though he was a child. Everything we read about Samuel was is good as to how he behaved and what he did as we read through he ministered but.
The.
Sons of these other two sons.
Of Eli verse 17. The sin of the young men was very great before the Lord. They were bad sons.
They sinned all the time.
They dishonored the name of the Lord Jesus in their life and eventually God put them to death for it.
They didn't know the Lord.
Their father talked to him. Verse 23 said why do you do these things?
I hear of your evil.
He didn't. He wasn't a good father.
They didn't properly restrain them, but he cared about them and he was upset.
By what they were doing and the dishonor to Jehovah the Lord that they were.
And he says.
My sons, it's no good report. Verse 24, I hear about you.
And so on.
He said in verse 25, if you sinned against somebody else, well that's one thing, but if you sin against the Lord.
Who's going to? Who's going to be able to do anything for you?
I can't say to the Lord be good to my sons they're bad. Who's going to come to the Lord on for you if you act that way and later on we read that God did put him to death because of their life. Is God someday going to have to take your life because you.
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Turned out like those boys and justice live in sin.
And as a result, he has to say that's it.
Your life's done.
Verse Chapter 3. Verse one.
This child Samuel ministered unto the Lord.
Verse 3.
Air, the lamp of God, went out in the temple of the Lord. There was the ark, and Samuel was laid down to sleep.
Now look, we're going to see about Samuel verse four, the Lord called Samuel.
And he answered, Here am I.
Good boy.
Sounds good.
But the thing about it is, he had no idea he was talking to him.
He didn't recognize that it was the Lord that was speaking to him.
If you're in this room tonight and you don't know the Lord, he's speaking to you and you don't know it.
You're like Samuel, you may be a good boy, but in the importance of knowing the Lord, you're no different than Eli's sons.
In that way, you're just as far from God as they were. No matter how you're acting and think you are, you have an opinion of yourself. You might say I'm pretty. I'm no, I'm not perfect, but I'm kind of all right. I'm not like the kid down the street or at school or something like that.
So he goes to Eli and Eli said, no, I didn't call you. I'm I'm not talking to you.
Go back to bed.
Verse 6.
The Lord called again Samuel.
It's important, I think, to see that the Lord just spoke to him and he didn't. And he said, hear my eyes. He knew somebody was talking to him, but he didn't know who. Here the Lord gets a little more personal and he says Samuel, he calls him by his name.
Are you listening tonight to the Lord?
And letting him is you hear him say your name to you, I'm speaking to you. Well, that's what the Lord was doing to Samuel.
And so he goes back to Eli. No, I didn't have anything to say to you. Why verse seven? Samuel did not yet know the Lord.
Samuel didn't know the Lord. Verse 8. The Lord called Samuel again the third time.
And he goes to Eli again. And finally Eli realizes.
The Lord must be speaking to Samuel, so he says.
Samuel.
Verse 9 Go lie down and it will be if he calls you.
You shall say He tells him what to say to respond this time, he says.
You're to say, speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth.
Speak, Lord.
For thy servant here.
Samuel Gozen lies down.
And.
For the fourth time.
Lord speaks to him in verse 10.
Lord came and stood and called as at other times, and he's even more personally than ever been with Samuel. He says Samuel, Samuel.
He repeats his name and he.
Samuel responds.
Speak for thy servant here.
Actually, the Lord was opening up His eyes in his heart. He wasn't very far along at this point because He doesn't say Lord, but He is responding according to what He understood. And He does say, Speak for thy servant, heareth. And He was, we can see from what we read about it, He was sincere about it.
And the Lord speaks to him some more and as we read along.
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Umm, Lord speak to him again in the 21St verse. He's got, he's, he's come to know the Lord and the Lord appears again and he reveals himself to Samuel. And how does he do it? Verse 21, by the word of the Lord. You probably are holding in your hands the word of the Lord and the Lord's going to use it if you're not refusing it to speak to you.
Listen. Learn.
Believe. Enjoy.
You live in a different time than Samuel, but I'm going to tell a little personal story about what you need if you don't know the Lord.
Last summer I was on my way to a conference like this in Ohio, in a place called Carrollton. And I had occasion to have to stop overnight at a little hotel on the road. And when I got up in the morning and this hotel served a breakfast like I'm sure the hotels here do. And so I went down to get my breakfast and there were little round tables and I sat down at one, and most of them were.
And there was a man and his son and they sat down at the table with me and we started a conversation and it wasn't 5 minutes into it that we were talking to each other's brothers in the Lord.
And he told me how.
He was one of eight children.
And he told me about his older brother.
And if you don't know the Lord?
You need to hear about his older brother.
He lived in a family and he said my mom and my mom had respect for for God.
But we never had the Bible in the house. They didn't have the word of the Lord to speak to them.
But.
One time they lived about 20 miles north of Detroit, MI and and his older brother was in Detroit one day and there was a preacher there.
At that time presenting the Lord Jesus Christ and the preacher.
Ah, his older brother went to hear this man.
You hadn't heard these kind of words before.
But he listened.
He heard. He believed what he heard. He was so excited by what he believed he heard and had come to understand for the very first time he'd ever heard the message that he lived 20 miles north of the city. And he literally ran and walked twenty miles home in his excitement of what he had just learned and received.
He gets home.
Then his mother sees him come in in this state that she hadn't seen before. Then she says what's happened?
He says to his mother.
I'm a Sinner.
Jesus Christ came into the world to die for me.
I'm saved.
God loves me.
Her mother looked at him, and she.
What saved me?
And so, having heard the message one time in his life, he had heard it clearly. Clearly.
And he says.
It means that you've accepted Jesus Christ to save you.
And he talked to her, tell she understood a little bit.
And this is what he did. It's precious.
He put his finger in her chest.
And he got right up in her face and he says you need to be saved.
And you need to be saved now.
He then took her two cheekbones between his hands and he held her like that. And he says now.
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She got saved right then.
How could she know you need to be saved now?
If you haven't been saved before.
I mean, aren't already saved.
Times come to an end.
I'm of two minds about.
Whether to go on for three or four more minutes, I think I'm going to.
I knew a young person just like some of you young people.
Very well.
And he came to meetings like this.
He knew.
I listened to him in the assembly where I lived, the place where I live, stand up to the platform of the hall like this and present Jesus Christ to an audience.
He was smart.
Incredibly smart.
He went to the local university.
And he was the top student in one of the four most important law schools in the United States.
He graduated at the top of his class. He went to work for a law firm.
Of a man named Mr. Nixon. Richard Nixon.
He wrote speeches for Mr. Nixon when he was running for the president of the United States.
I said to him one day.
I said I couldn't argue with him, he could turn me inside out if it was arguing. But I said to him, you're a fool.
And you'll never be happy.
On the road.
I said I'm I'll be always happier than you are.
They about cried, he said. That's right, you always will be. I have no hope of being happy.
Later on.
Yeah, he rose.
In his profession, if you will.
But he had nothing to hold onto. He had no hope. He had no heart, he had no life. He ended up an alcoholic.
And had a miserable death.
Are you going to be like that?
I know what I speak. That's one of my brothers, and I understand the awfulness.
Of sitting in a room like this and refusing to be like that young man that heard the word for the first time and believed it.
Don't be a fool.
Accept God's love, accept the Lord Jesus.
Now.
Spray our God. We ask that there will be anybody in this room if you come right now, Lord.
And the room is emptied.
You think of how awful it would be if one of the.
People in the room is still in the room alone.
To be forever separated from you because they refused your love and work, Lord Jesus. So we just pray for everyone and the desire Lord, if you give the shout.
While we're here in this room that we'll all go together to be with you forever.
We ask for your work and blessing on your Word, our God speak and by the Spirit make each one listen and receive. In the name of the Lord Jesus and for His glory. Amen.