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[Music] On Catching the Whispers of God, a message by Dr. Bruce W. Thielman. [Music] The scripture reading of the morning is to be found in the Old Testament,

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the book of 1 Samuel, the third chapter, beginning the reading at the verse numbered 1. 1 Samuel 3 at verse 1. Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord under Eli, and the word of the Lord was rare in those days.

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There was no frequent vision. At that time Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, was lying down in his own place. The lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down within the temple of the Lord where the ark of God was. Then the Lord called, "Samuel, Samuel."

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And he said, "Here I am," and ran to Eli and said, "Here I am, for you called me." But he said, "I did not call. Lie down again." So he went and lay down. And the Lord called again, "Samuel."

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And Samuel arose and went to Eli and said, "Here I am, for you called me." But he said, "I did not call, my son. Lie down again." Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him. And the Lord called Samuel again the third time.

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And he arose and went to Eli and said, "Here I am, for you called me." Then Eli perceived that the Lord was calling the boy. Therefore Eli said to Samuel, "Go lie down, and if he calls you, you shall say, 'Speak, Lord, for thy servant hears.'" So Samuel went and lay down in his place.

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And the Lord came and stood forth, calling as at other times, "Samuel, Samuel." And Samuel said, "Speak, for thy 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 that hears it will tingle." May the same God who inspired these words incline our hearts to their understanding.

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Let us pray. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. The sentence, "He who has ears, let him hear," was often upon the lips of Jesus. It appeared regularly at the end of his particularly important lessons, almost like a chorus or refrain.

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A parable or teaching was presented in the Master's matchless method. And then as the last word, as the seal of importance, as the final injunction to hear, understand, and obey, Jesus would say, "He who has ears, let him hear." Now there are two very obvious implications to this sentence, and the first of these is found in its first phrase. Jesus said, "He who has ears, let him hear."

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This obviously implies that all men are to hear inasmuch as all men have ears. Let me forsake the beauty of the text and render it more bluntly. What Jesus is saying is, "As far as my teachings are concerned, if you have two ears on the sides of your head, these lessons are intended to be and are capable of being heard by you." As everyone has ears, except of course those who are deformed, and they're still included because this is a figurative expression,

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so everyone is instructed and is able to give attention to the word of the Lord. There is not a man, a woman, a boy, or a girl here or anywhere who is exempt from hearing Christ's words, or who is spiritually incapable of hearing Christ's words. Every one of us, regardless of our education, our cultural background, our temperament, or our natural ability, has the inborn capacity to receive the message of Jesus Christ. Now the second obvious implication of this single sentence is to be found in its second phrase.

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And it is that having ears with which to hear, we are to hear. "He who has ears, let him hear." In other words, Christ puts us under obligation to use the ears, the spiritual capacity which God has given to us. Whenever we learn of a person who has gone through life with a pair of ears on his head and a pair of eyes in his forehead, neither of which he educated or cultivated,

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when we learn of such an obvious neglect of natural capacities, we say that this is sin. This is a grievous misuse of God's blessings. Well, just so, Jesus is saying that the man who has the capacity for receiving and living God's word and forsakes that capacity, does not cultivate that capacity, that man is sinning against his creator and is in danger of the judgment.

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Obligation goes hand in hand with ability. If we have two ears, that is the ability to spiritually hear, and we are to hear. Now one other comment needs to be made about this command of Jesus, and that concerns this little word "hear." When Jesus instructs us to hear, he does not have reference to simply sitting back and letting a stream of words or ideas flow into our consciousness and out again.

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He is not telling us simply to attend to his words. More than that, he is not urging us to simply understand what he has to say. This hearing which he commands is not only apprehension. No, when Jesus says "hear," he means that we are to listen, to understand, and to act in obedience to what we have heard and understood.

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We are to attend, to apprehend, and to act on the basis of our attention and apprehension. Hearing, to Jesus, was in no sense passive. It was active and purposeful. To hear meant to do.

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To hear and not to do was a contradiction. It was as wicked as a cure discovered but never made known. Jesus then would have agreed with the thought of Mark Antony as Shakespeare conceived him. "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears," which is to say, "pay heed to me, hear what I have to say, and then on the basis of what I say, do as I command you."

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Now this is hearing as Jesus understood it. So give attention then to the word of the incarnate Son of God. "He who has ears, let him hear," which being paraphrased is to say, "all men are capable of hearing my word, therefore all men are to hear my word, and when I say hear, I mean that they are to listen, to understand, and to obey my word." This is the command of the Master of Men, and as his servants, we are bound to be obedient to it.

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Now I really doubt that any Christian would dispute what I just suggested. Once a man accepts meaningfully Christ's will, way, and word for his life, he fully understands that he must use his spiritual equipment to the utmost in an earnest effort to know what Christ would have him do and then to do it. I've never known a Christian, and I refer of course to the genuine article and not some hypocritical facsimile, who was not anxious to know God's will for himself and then to fulfill that will. I certainly do not mean to imply that truly committed Christians are always within the will of God. No, we're far from that.

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Sin enters in and it corrupts and twists and perverts, and we oft times deliberately deny what we know is God's will in our lives. This happens to all men. It is part of the world that we have made for ourselves. But the true servant of God recognizes his sin, and because he recognizes it, he struggles all the harder through Christ to overcome it, to know God's will for himself and then to do it. I say then that the dedicated servant of God is well aware of the fact that he is to fulfill God's will in his life, and he's trying.

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He knows he is to hear Christ and to obey him, and he's struggling to do just that. But, and here's the rub, how is the Christian to know what God's will for him is? We know we are to hear and obey, but how do we hear? We often feel outside of God's plans because we do not catch the sound of his voice.

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We do not seem to be able to tune in on his wavelength. Our problem is not so much, at least at the outset, doing God's will, as knowing God's will. It is not doing what it says, but knowing what it is. How many Christians have said, with one combination of words or another,

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"I know I have the ear to hear, and I know I am to hear, but I don't know how to hear." How do you learn to use the ear that hears? How do you catch the whispers of God? Well, it is in an attempt to answer this question that I want to share these thoughts with you.

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How do you learn to use the ear that hears? Well, I suggest that part of the answer, at least, is to be found in one of the most dramatic scenes and stories of the Old Testament. The call of God to Samuel, which I have already read in your hearing. Samuel, the son of Hannah, was dedicated to God by his mother before he was born,

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a practice much to be desired in these days. And, true to her vow, Hannah enlisted Samuel in the work of the Lord when he was twelve years old. He became the youthful assistant to the old priest Eli, a good man, but a man who, across the course of his life, had made many mistakes.

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Eli's priestly responsibility was a very grave one, for it was he who guarded the Ark of the Covenant, which contained the sacred tablets of the Law delivered to Moses by God atop Mount Sinai. Now, because the Ark and its contents were the most holy objects of Jewish worship,

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they were protected both night and day. Indeed, Eli had a room next to the room in which the sacred relics were kept, and there he would lie down to rest each night, sleeping lightly, like the mother of a small child with one ear trained to pick up strange noises

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and one eye half-open to catch any unusual sights. But Eli had collected many years, and his eyesight and hearing had grown dim. And so Samuel was employed to help him. The young lad was given a bed near the Ark itself, and there every night he would lie down to sleep.

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The dimly burning lamp cast weird shadows on the walls, and the breathing of the old priest was heard heavy upon the air. But the soft light and the regular rhythm of Eli's snores only served to lull the boy more rapidly to sleep, and there, beneath the shadow of the Almighty, he took his rest.

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Now on a certain night, only shortly after he had fallen asleep, Samuel was awakened by a soft voice calling, "Samuel, Samuel." He immediately ran to the bedside of Eli, asking, "Here I am. You called for me?" But Eli replied, "I did not call. Lie down again."

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In only a short time, however, Samuel once again heard his name, "Samuel, Samuel." And once again the boy ran to the old priest's side, and once again he was told to go back to sleep. And yet a third time Samuel heard himself called, and for the third time he hurried to Eli's side, only this time the now fully awakened priest began to understand.

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He sensed that Samuel was being called of God, and so he gave the boy certain instructions which we will notice in a moment. But first I want to pause to point out that it was Eli and not Samuel who first recognized that God was calling. It was Eli's ear that heard and not the youth's.

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And this was so because Eli was sensitive to the voice of God. And that's the first necessity if one would have the ear that hears, a nature sensitive to the whisperings of the Almighty. The airplane pilot, flying his plane through snowy clouds,

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knows in an instant when one of his engines is not functioning properly. His ears are sensitive to the roar of his plane. The physician places his stethoscope gently to the chest of his patient, and can tell quickly if the heart is healthy or diseased.

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His ears are sensitive to the murmurs of this human mechanism. The orchestra conductor leads his hundred men in some intricate Beethoven scherzo, but he tenses on the podium and points out unerringly the horn playing with the slightest variation from true pitch. He is sensitive to the sound of the music.

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A carload of teenagers whizzes along the highway at 55 miles an hour, and as another car passes by, one of the youngsters hears the briefest snatch of music and exclaims, "It's Elton John, and he's the most!" Her ears are sensitive to the voice of her idol.

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The trained psychiatric counselor hears the subtle nuances of his patient's speech, and thus finds the key to unlock the door of a hidden personality. He is sensitive to the overtones in the speech of the mentally disturbed. Almost all men are sensitive to some sound or sounds which relate to their work,

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their interests, their likes or their dislikes, but, strange to say, rare is that man who is sensitive to the voice of God, the thin, small voice of the Eternal. The ears of most of us are simply closed to the sound from heaven.

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I think there are several reasons for this, and it might do us well to note them here. The first is simply being too busy. There's an old legend about Saint Bernard traveling to one of the councils of the Roman Church. All day long he traveled along a lovely lake, but as night fell,

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he lifted his eyes from his deep meditation and asked, "Where is the lake?" Now that's the case with a good number of us. We travel alongside the wisdom of God, the lake of his love, and never even notice it, because we're too wrapped up in other things, too involved in minor matters.

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Which of us has not known the experience of being so engrossed in one task or another that we did not hear the chime of the clock and thus were late for some more urgent obligation? We've read of soldiers being so completely absorbed in the fury of the fight that a thunderstorm had rattled over their heads and no man heard the roll and no man saw the flash.

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Well, just so, many of us are so wrapped up in our work, our family, our pleasure, the getting or seeking of some new thing, so completely absorbed in our tasks and responsibilities, that if all but trumpets of Jericho were blown in our ears, we would not hear. We often are not sensitive because we are too busy.

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Or perhaps we are insensitive because superficially at least, we have heard too often. I don't think you can begin to imagine the despair that sometimes comes over a preaching minister, a person for example in my own position, when he faces a congregation of people that is familiar to weariness with everything he has to say.

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And because they are so superficially familiar with it, this congregation fancies that there's no need for them to give heed anymore. Now I ask you, what can a poor man like me do to get through that crust of familiarity with the mere surface of Christian truth and teaching,

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which is around so many people who at least appear to be listening. People come and they listen to me and they say, "Oh, he's nothing original to say, we've heard it all before." Now I offer and rebuttal the suggestion, yes, your ears have heard it, but have you heard it? "Jesus Christ died for me."

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You have been told that ever since you were a little child, and so the thousand and first, the million and first repetition of it has little power over you. But if once, just once, that truth could get through the crust of familiarity and touch your heart, your bare heart with its quick naked point of fire shod love,

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I think there would be a wound made that would in the end mean healing in your life beyond anything you've experienced before. Yet I know even as I say these words that some of you will go away presently or turn off this tape machine presently, just as you have done a thousand times before, and my words will rebound from you like an India rubber ball from a wall,

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or run off you like water from a seabird's plumes, just because you think you have heard it all before. And you have never heard it all your days. You are insensitive because of previous superficial hearing. And then there are times when we don't hear because we just don't want to hear.

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We put our fingers in our ears. There are some souls who have a rather good idea of just what God would say to them if they ever stopped to listen, so they make it a point not to stop and not to listen. My Christian friends always be aware of the fact that the spiritual intransigence of many atheists or agnostics

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is due to their unwillingness to make the changes in their lives which belief in God would demand. There are multitudes whose rejection of the work of the Holy Spirit is based solely upon the personal discomfort they know they would suffer if ever that Spirit were to get within them. Indeed, I am quite convinced that the majority of so-called unbelievers actually do believe in the existence of God,

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but they deny their belief because to affirm it would immediately necessitate changes in their lives, and these changes they simply will not make. So let it be noted, as sad but nonetheless true, that many are insensitive to the voice of God because they want it that way. They live with their fingers in their ears.

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We then fail to hear the whisperings of the Eternal because we are insensitive to Him, and our insensitivity is the direct result of our living in the thick of thin things, that is, being too busy, or of our believing that we do hear when in reality we hear only superficially, or of our unwillingness to hear because we have some idea of the obligations that hearing involves.

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This, I think, is old Eli's first lesson for us as we seek the ear that hears, become sensitive to the voice of God by facing and defeating those interfering factors which we've just taken the time to notice. But Eli's words to the boy Samuel were more specific than this. When the aged priest recognized what was truly happening, he told his young assistant two very specific things.

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First he told him what to do, and then he told him what to say. "Go lie down," that is, "wait and listen," was Eli's word on what to do. And I take this as an instruction to wait upon and listen for the Lord, or to put it in more traditional terms, to practice spiritual discipline. To go back to the series of illustrations which I used a few minutes ago, no man would presume to fly a plane until he'd been taught how to do it.

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No rational person would presume to diagnose ills and prescribe remedies until he had studied and mastered medicine. No reasonably intelligent individual would mount the podium in a great concert hall to direct a great orchestra without years of study. No person with any common sense whatever would presume to give psychiatric help unless he was first trained to do so. In every field of human endeavor, discipline and training are necessary for success.

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To assume otherwise is to court disaster. But we too often forget that communion with God, using the ear that hears, is a human endeavor. And as training and study are necessary for every other human task, so they are necessary for the task of conversation with the Almighty. You would never expect to have any brilliant insight into biology or astronomy if you were not educated in these disciplines.

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By what right, then, does anyone expect spiritual insight if they are not exercised in that discipline? It was Thomas Edison who said that genius is 98% perspiration and 2% inspiration. And this is the key to spiritual genius also. It is 98% spiritual preparation and training and only 2% inspiration.

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Now this discipline and training comes to us in three ways. Regular worship, regular prayer, and regular study of the scriptures. There are some who vigorously maintain that they do not have to go to church to be good Christians, and further that they can be just as good Christians without participating in the spiritual disciplines of Bible study and prayer.

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But such a claim is ridiculous. It makes as much sense as to say that a man can become a great poet without reading poetry, or a great doctor without studying medicine, or a great musician without learning to read music. Do you think that I would dare step into a pulpit Sunday after Sunday if I had not first studied my text long in advance,

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brooded over it, struggled with it, then written the sermon and rewritten it and prayed over it and sweated over it? Do you think that sermons just fall from homiletical fruit trees like ripe apples? Well, they do not. And just as sermons come only through patient discipline,

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just so spiritual insight of any kind comes only through the patient discipline of worship, prayer, and study. There just isn't any other way. There used to be an old violinist who walked the streets of Vienna playing for the crowds, and he never failed to charm those crowds with the mellowness of his instrument.

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When asked to explain the charm of his playing, he would invariably raise his violin, and tenderly caressing its graceful curves, he would say, "Oh, a great deal of sunshine must have gone into this wood, and what has gone in must come out." Well, it is just so in our spiritual experience.

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The amount of sunshine that comes out is directly dependent on the hours of sunshine that went in. One enjoys the brilliant light and comforting warmth of communion with God in direct proportion to how diligently one has worshipped him and prayed to him and studied him and his will for all men.

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"Go, lie down," said Eli. "Wait upon the Lord, and you will hear him." And even as this was true when Eli said it, so it is true today. But the old man went on. Samuel, he said, "If he calls you, you shall say, 'Speak, Lord, for thy servant hears.'"

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"Speak, Lord, for thy servant hears." Those were the words Eli taught Samuel to say. And those are the words we must learn to say if we would hear the voice of God, if we would have the ear that hears.

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Notice the words carefully. "We are not to say, 'Speak, Lord, that I may say that God has spoken to me.' We are not to say, 'Speak, Lord, and I shall give your words due consideration and let you know of my decision.' We are not to say, 'Speak, Lord, and let you and me thrash this whole matter out.'

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No, these words are not the invitation to the voice of the Eternal. God answers only one prayer to hear his voice, and it is a very simple one. "Speak, Lord, for thy servant hears." The key word is that word "servant."

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Not partner, not associate, not assistant, not employee, but servant, slave. "Go ahead, Lord. Tell me what you want me to do, and I shall do it." Those were the words Eli taught Samuel. Those are the words Samuel teaches us.

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Those are the only words God hears, and those are the only words that will enable us to hear God. You do not bargain with the Eternal. You do not entertain the Almighty. You do not propose agreements with the Lord of hosts.

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You obey. I want to repeat that so that there will be no doubt to what I'm saying. Are you listening? I ask you to put aside your bulletin, or to turn off the television set, and to get your mind on the subject.

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Forget about the roast for a moment and listen. The only time you will hear the voice of God is when you invite that voice with your pledged obedience. "Speak, Lord, for thy servant hears." Those are the words, the only words that reach the ears of the Eternal.

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And Samuel did as he was told. And the Scriptures read, "And the Lord came and stood forth, calling as at other times, 'Samuel, Samuel.' And Samuel said, 'Speak, for thy servant hears.' And the Lord said to Samuel, 'Behold, I am about to do a thing in Israel at which the two ears of everyone that hears it will tingle.'

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And it was so." Please turn your cassette to the other side. Every sermon, my friend, no matter how complex, has its genesis in a basic outline. So in conclusion, I want to share with you the outline with which this message began.

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The stones on which it was built. Point one. Christ commands all of us to hear him and to obey him. But how do we do this?

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Point two. The Scriptures teach us through the voice of Eli. We are told, A, to become sensitive to God's voice by not being too busy, too superficial, or too cowardly. B, to wait upon the Lord through worship, prayer, and study. And C, to speak to him as his dutiful servant.

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Point three. If we do these things, he will set our ears to tingling with his glorious truth. This, I submit, is the way to have ears that hear. The way to catch the whispers of the eternal. Let us pray.

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O God, so capture our hearing that not the slightest phrase of your guidance and your love might be missed by us. We would walk in constant company with thee. Make us then listening and obedient servants. For we pray it in Jesus' name. Amen.

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