FBCWest 721 | Samuel Confirmed as a Prophet
Recorded On: 07/19/2026
Bulletin
Hymn # 177 “I Am Resolved”
SCRIPTURE READING
Psalms 42:1 - 5
Giving of Selves and Our Offerings
OFFERTORY PRAYER
OFFERTORY MUSIC – Pru Hungate
Praise and Worship
“This Is Amazing Grace”
“Resurrecting”
“Behold the Lamb”
Proclamation of the Word
Message by Pastor Joe
“Samuel Confirmed as a Prophet”
PRAYER TIME / Time of Reflection
“Who You Say I Am”
Sermon Notes
1 Samuel 3:1 Samuel as a boy ministered to the Lord. The word and visions from the Lord was rare in those days
1 Samuel 3:2 & 3 Eli’s eyesight was decreasing. Samuel sleeps in the temple
1 Samuel 3:4 – 9 The Lord calls Samuel, but not knowing it’s God, goes to Eli in response to the call. After the third time Eli tells him it is the Lord calling and tells him what to say
1 Samuel 3:10 – 14 The Lord stans and tells Samuel what He is going to do with Eli and his household
1 Samuel 3:15 – 18 Samuel doesn’t want to tell Eli what the Lord said, but Eli compels him to
1 Samuel 3:19 - 21 Samuel continued to grow, the Lord was with him and all Israel knew that Samuel was confirmed as a prophet
Scritpures
Transcript of Service
If you're a believer or follower of Jesus or you think someday you might become one, I encourage you to listen to this message about who is called and confirmed as a prophet. You might ask, how is the person who has been living thousands of years ago affect my life? That's exactly why you should listen to this message. We have this special thing that we think, well, only the pastors and only missionaries, only certain people have received God's call. And that's not true. If you are a believer, you've been called by God to do something. Again, sometimes we get off track on what our calling is because what people tell us maybe that our calling is. So on 1 Samuel 3, in verse 1 says this, Now the boy Samuel, now I'm going to come back to this, but this is a number of times Samuel has been referred to, I think this is now the 5th time that he's been referred to as the boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord before Eli.
And the word of the Lord was rare in those days. Visions were infrequent. There shouldn't be a period of time when God just didn't talk to his people. And so there weren't profits and different, there wasn't that it never happened. It was just very rare and people weren't accustomed to it. But Samuel was ministering in assisting Eli.
And it happened that at that time as Eli was lying down in his place down in the gun to grow dim, he could not see well. So that's the point that he's getting older, his physical infirmities are beginning to affect him. And so the lamp of God had not yet gone out. It's meant that God hadn't. And Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord where the ark of God was. Now this is unique because the ark of the covenant is that which has the mercy seed and that which on the day of it told me that the high priest would come and place the offering upon it where it was the symbol of the presence of God. It was a symbol of the throne of God in heaven. And so Samuel was laying down near it as he slept.
And as the Lord called, he said, here I am. So Samuel was awakened by the voice of the Lord but he didn't know it. Then he ran to Eli and said, here I am, for you called me. But he said, I did not call you lie down again. So when will they down? And the Lord called you. So Samuel rose and went to Eli and said, here I am, for you called me. But he answered, I did not call you my son lie down again.
Now Samuel did not let know the Lord nor had the word of the Lord been revealed to him. So it wasn't a personal relationship with the Lord. He wasn't service of Eli and doing the things that he was supposed to do, that he was dedicated to do, but he was doing it because that was what he was supposed to do as supposed to knowing the relationship or the word of the Lord and familiar with that voice.
Paul Samuel again for the third time, he rose and went to Eli and I want to stop there. Most of us would have said, well, that old guy is getting decrepit. He can't see. His brain is probably malfunctioning. He's calling me, but it does remember he's calling me. So maybe I just, and just say, no, Eli, he believes it's calling him. So he goes, even though each time he goes, Eli says, I didn't call you.
And so this is what happened. So as Rose and went to Eli and said, here I am, for you called me. And Eli discerned that the boy and Eli said to Samuel, go lie down and it will show me if he calls you that you shall say, speak Lord, for your servant is listening. So Samuel went and laid down in his place.
Now once you notice, he goes, speak Lord, your servant is here. There is a spiritual thing that people talk about that says to have a servant's heart. No, no, we're not to have a servant's heart. We are to be servants. Jesus came not to be served a servant.
It doesn't matter how you feel about serving. That's what you do. If your master tells you to do something, it doesn't matter whether you feel like doing or not because you're a servant, you do it. God has called us to be servants and servants of each other. So don't think about having a servant's heart. Think about being a servant. And that's what Samuel was.
He was serving Eli. Now he's saying, okay, it's God who's speaking. So he goes, here I am, Lord, for your servant is listening. So just as I was faithful to Eli, I will be faithful to you. I will listen. So Samuel went and lay down in his place. Then the Lord came and stood and called as at the other time. Samuel, Samuel, now he sells his name twice.
So speak for your servant is listening. He does exactly what Eli told him to do. The Lord said to Samuel, they hold on about to do a thing in Israel at which both ears of everyone who hears it will tingle. And that day I will carry out against that I have spoken concerning his house from beginning to end.
Or I have told him that I'm about to judge his house forever for the iniquity which he knew because his sons brought a curse on themselves and he did not rebuke them. Born to the house of Eli, that the iniquity of Eli's house shall not be atoned for by sacrifice or offering forever. So God tells Samuel what he is going to do concerning Eli in his house. This is now the person who knows about this. There was a prophet who came to Eli and said, God is judged you. And this is how you are going to know because both of your sons are going to die at the same time and other things are going to happen. Because then Eli discovered it.
Now God is telling Samuel in prophecy what will happen. And when it happens, people are going to be peaked in interest. They are going to hear more about it.
Their ears will tingle. So Samuel laid down until morning and he opened the doors of the house of the Lord. So people will be coming to offer their sacrifices offering to the Lord so he opens the doors so that they might do that.
So he is just moving along but he should not like, well God spoke to me. I am special. No, he continues doing what he always did. Was afraid to tell the vision to Eli because no one likes bad news. That's why when people say, well I got good news and bad news which you want me to tell first and I always hope you say the good news so that it can buffer the bad news. We just, you know, that's why we have don't kill the messenger. He doesn't want to tell Eli the bad news. However, unbeknownst to him, Eli already knows the bad news.
And then he like calls Samuel and said, Samuel my son, he said, here I am. He's always responding to the call. Here I am. What do you want? What?
Whether it's Eli or the Lord. Here I am speak. He said, what is the word that he spoke to you? Please do not hide it from me. May God do so to you and more also if you hide anything from me, all of the words that he spoke to. It threatens him.
He goes, if you don't tell me the truth, whatever God told you that will happen, it's going to be worse for you. And so Samuel feels compelled to tell. So Samuel told them everything and he had nothing from him. He said, is the Lord? Let him do what seems good to him. Now Eli's response is great in the sense of whatever God's will is let it be done.
I just wish he was a little more like David who said, Lord, created me at clean heart, whatever, judge me in whatever, but judge me when I'm more righteous even though I still deserve judgment. He never seems to repent. It just, whatever it seems good to do. The Samuel grew and the Lord was with him of his words fail. So as Samuel grew, the Lord continued to be with him because Samuel was a servant and he continued to speak and noticed that as Samuel spoke, God's word continued to be there. Samuel's prophetic statements were in accordance with God's words.
Now I want you to note, and I'm going to step in the word and discuss a little more. Now even to Bershiba knew that Samuel was confirmed as a prophet of the Lord. And the Lord appeared again at Shiloh because the Lord revealed himself to Samuel at Shiloh by the word of the Lord. Notice several things about this calling that we need to understand. Number one, God did not call Samuel because Samuel had an ability to foresee the future. Samuel was called a prophet because God was going to speak to him and then Samuel was to tell the people that God told him. I want to often rethink that God gives us talents and abilities and therefore that's a part of our calling.
Samuel did it seeing the future until God spoke it to him. When God calls you to do something, it then gives you the ability to do it. So we have this kind of backwards that, if God gave me a talent or an ability, that must be part of my calling. Give you an example. One may have given you a great voice of singing voice or great speaking voice.
Let's say singing. People then think, well my calling is to sing and to do whatever. And that's wonderful. And as an acquire or worship band or whatever or maybe soloists that God is giving you that talent and you're helping us, those of us who don't sing well, to sing well. So you're serving. That's not necessarily your calling. Or you see, even if you couldn't carry a tune or a pitch in a bucket, you're still called to praise the Lord. Now it helps my ears if you can sing because it's nice.
But notice the word keeps saying shout to the Lord. Let everything that has breath, praise the Lord. Didn't say everything that has breath and is on pitch, praise the Lord, we're all to praise the Lord. So if you can't sing, shout it. My mother had a, my mother only sang falsetto.
I'm sure she's up in heaven, either God fixed her voice or she's still singing falsetto. Because apparently God writes off pitch music because he does more of us don't have the ability to sing. And so there's this, the sense of if you're able to sing and some not to happen to your voice, you go, well, I've lost my purpose. Know that wasn't your purpose.
That was your service. God has called you to do something more than just your talents because if he just gave you your talents, he doesn't, he gets glory and honor because you weren't able to do it. But now you are because it gave you the power to do it.
So when he calls you, he gives it. Now notice another thing. He calls Samuel as a boy. Age is not a restriction. God calls those who will respond.
Notice even when he thought Eli called to them three separate times, he kept going because he was a servant. God is more likely to call servant than one of the things you're supposed to serve me. So on the one extreme, age is not a factor. As a matter of fact, as we see Samuel grows and as he grows in the Lord, he's more effective in the Lord with the Lord.
He's heard the word of the Lord and God has confirmed all that he spoke. At the other end, Moses was 80 years old when God calls him to go to Egypt again and let talk to Pharaoh and have his Samuel as a boy. God calls.
Moses is an 80 year old man and God calls him. I'm no longer a boy. I'm not yet 80. He's not a factor. If God calls you, it doesn't matter how. Moses when God call him said, you know, Lord, I don't speak well. So that was his excuse. Lord, you're calling me to talk to Pharaoh.
I don't speak well. What was God's answer? Who made man's mouth? I called you to do something.
I will give you the ability to do it. So if God has called you to do something, he's going to give you that ability, but that ability that you may have beforehand doesn't mean that you're calling. All too often, we let things discourage us. What we may think that God has called us to do certain things, there were people I know who thought that they should be preachers. And I gave them the opportunity to preach. They were preachers. They may have thought they were calls, but there was no evidence of that calling because God didn't seem to give them the ability to preach.
They gave the ability to talk, but didn't give them the ability to preach. Notice in God's calling that everyone knows Samuel's the prophet. They confirm it from the north of the kingdom to the south of the kingdom. They know Samuel's the prophet. Now, you may not be successful in your calling because sometimes God calls us to do useful things. But what do you mean by that? He calls when Isaiah had a vision of the Lord that he was high and lifted up and holy. And God said, who will go for us?
Isaiah said, I'll go, I'll speak for you. When God's message to Isaiah was, you're going to tell them things and they're going to reject it. Your ministry is to speak, but no one will respond.
I think your calling is not a calling because it's not successful. The question is, are you faithful to the calling? Isaiah continued to preach knowing that people would not respond because God told them that people are not going to respond, but your job is to preach. We have also been called as believers to be witnesses. Our job is not to save anybody. That is the Holy Spirit's job. Our calling, our job is to be witnesses.
And he may call you to do other things, but everybody's calling is to be a witness, whether you're a pastor, a Sunday school teacher, or you sit in the queue every Sunday. We'll have to send this. One last thing about calling. We don't have to be important or significant to be called. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians, the 1st chapter, consider your calling.
He wrote to the pastors, but to the people. Consider your calling. He said, they're not many wise. I'm not calling people because they're wise or smart or intelligent. Not many mighty. It doesn't matter your strength. You might five year old, whatever, and you can hardly get out of bed, but if God calls you to do something, He'll give you the strength to do it.
Because they're not many wise, not many mighty, and not many noble. Not all of us are special, we're just ordinary folks. God chooses ordinary, or quite frankly, many times, subordinary people so that He might do extraordinary things so that God might get to glory. Here's a space that silver tongue, it could wax eloquently and whatever. You come to Lord because you are convinced by my speaking or by the power of God.
Just the power of God. But when I write, I seem to be thoughtful in whatever. And then when I come, you kind of think, well, this guy's kind of a wishy-washy guy to guy. Because this calling was to spur on not only the Christians and Corinth and Galatia and Ephesus is calling, lasted for millennia. And who knows, you're calling as whatever place you may think has no benefit.
But maybe generations after you may benefit by you're calling. So don't think you're calling as your ability, but God's ability to work. So we are whatever God says we are. He calls us to be a prophet, then we're a prophet. He calls us to be a pastor, then we're a pastor. He calls us to be a missionary, we're a missionary. He calls us to be a farmer, to witness in the homes of people who would income to church, then that's what we are. He calls us to do what he calls us to do and we should be faithful because God will continue to be faithful to us.
In Samuel's life, from boyhood to his end, he continues to speak to Samuel and not one word was ever not fulfilled. God promised you in your calling, but likewise, he fulfilled and all of God's people said.