1 Samuel 3:10 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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1 Samuel 3:10

Comments

How old was the young Samuel? We cannot be sure. He may have been eight, nine, ten by now, or he maybe he was a teenager. Time has passed; his mother has come and clothed him annually; how many years we are not told, but still he is young. And his first message from the Lord is a very difficult one. The young Samuel knows what is going on in the temple. He knows that Eli has not reproved his sons. He knows there must be a time for reformation. But he loves Eli, who has been very faithful to him, taught him everything: the books of Moses, and all procedures of worship. The indications are from the narrative that Eli had a very fatherly relationship with him. This is difficult for Samuel.‘And the LORD came, and stood, and called as at other times.’ This time, anyway, it was as though the Lord spoke in the very room. ‘He came and stood’ – that can only mean there was a presence as well, and called, repeating the name. ‘Then Samuel answered, Speak; for thy servant heareth [obediently]’, and what he had was a very hard word. He may have known it was coming. It may be that Eli had with grief shared with the young man what God had said to him, but what the prophecy with which to begin his prophetic ministry. A young man! He was obviously strong enough for it, spiritually advanced enough for this. The Lord says to him, ‘You must tell Eli the condemnation is coming; it's too late to act; it's too late to repent.’ The warning had already been given. ‘When I begin, I will also make an end.’ So Samuel's first assignment as a very young priest Levite is an enormously difficult one. He is in at the deep end, as we would say.Perhaps Eli, on hearing this, would think: ‘I am the high priest; I offer up sacrifices to the Lord. There is always a way of forgiveness available’, but not this time. The Lord reveals a limit in this case. This cannot be atoned for; it has gone too far. He will reject any sacrifice made on their behalf.

Application

If you have got children, young converts, people young in the faith growing up before the Lord, obviously you don't tear them apart with difficult things. Never distress them more than they can bear or take, but gently, appropriately, and early, we must share with our young in the faith the problems, the spiritual problems, of our day and age. Samuel was only just called, and, as he was called, the hardest thing of all for a lad to take was put into his soul. He had to have revealed to him the weaknesses and the failings of his mentor, the one who he loved and served as a father in the faith; he had to have it all disclosed him that Eli tragically had failed and gone wrong. Now you might think that is very harsh, but it isn't harsh. If people are don't have spiritual metal and understanding, they must be introduced to these things early. It is always a grief to find people of good intellect, young people who the world is prepared to fill with all kinds of worldly profundities in their undergraduate studies, people who are being programmed to believe that they are being trained to go to the top of some profession or other; it’s always grieving when you find such people so incredibly naïve about spiritual affairs. It isn’t their fault. It's that the people through whom they were saved kept all the hard things from them, never told them about the real spiritual world, about the real state of the nation, the real problems that beset us in evangelicalism, the real successes and achievements of the devil, though we have all the power of God on our side. These things were never said.

It’s so with adults too, very often. Years ago when they were still quite a lot of fervent evangelicals in the Baptist Union, it was amazing to find pastor who would say, ‘I would love to bring my church out of the denomination, but my people are so uneducated about these things. You would say, ‘Well, how long have you been pastor?’ ‘Oh. fifteen years’, and yet the people didn't know the issues. The people in that evangelical Baptist Church thought the Baptist Union was the most beautiful organisation of born-again churches in the world. The members of that evangelical Baptist Church thought that all the members of the Baptist Union Council were born again men, and everybody was keen. Totally misled! For years, though they were adults and not just young people, their spiritual guides and leaders had said, ‘Oh, we can't tell them such difficult things’, and the result has been the total loss of almost a whole generation of evangelicals. So we must always remember in the right manner to share the problems, because we are called to this warfare together.

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1 Samuel 3:10 Commentary and Bible Study