Samuel in his place

1 Samuel chapter 3, please, and verse number 1. And the child Samuel ministered unto the Lord before Eli, and the word of the Lord was precious. In those days there was no open vision. Came to pass at that time when Eli was laid down in his place, and his eyes began to wax dim that he could not see.

And there the lamp of God went out in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was. And Samuel was laid down to sleep. That the Lord called Samuel, and he answered, Here am I. And he ran unto Eli, and said, Here am I, for thou callest me.

And he said, I called not, lie down again. And he went and lay down. Lord called yet again, Samuel.

Samuel arose and went to Eli, and said, Here am I, for thou didst call me. And he answered, I called not, my son, lie down again. Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, neither was the word of the Lord yet revealed unto him.

And the Lord called Samuel again the third time, and he arose, and he went to Eli, and said, Here am I, for thou didst call me. And Eli perceived that the Lord had called the child. Therefore Eli said unto Samuel, Go lie down, and it shall be, if he shall call thee, that thou shalt say, Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth.

So Samuel went and lay down, and please notice the expression, in his place. And the Lord came and stood and called, As at other times, Samuel, Samuel. Then Samuel answered, Speak, for thy servant heareth.

The Lord said unto Samuel, Behold, I do a thing in Israel, at which both the ears of every one that heareth it shall tingle. That day I will perform against Eli all the things which I have spoken concerning the house which I begin. And I will also make an end.

For I have told him that I will judge his house forever for the iniquity which he knoweth, because his sons made themselves vile, and he restrained them not, and so forth. And down please to verse 18. Samuel told him every whit, hid nothing from him.

And he said, It is the Lord. Let him do that, do what seemeth him good. Samuel grew, and the Lord was with him, and did let none of his words fall to the ground.

This is one of those passages often ministered on and ministered from. And maybe one of those passages, just when you think that you have gleaned about all that there is to glean from it, you will read it again and you'll say, Oh, that's interesting. But isn't that just like the word of God is, is our repetitive reading of it and gleaning from it, it constantly yields its truths.

Its minds run deep. It doesn't obviously and easily sometimes yield to us. Maybe that's really the purpose of God in it all is that we might read and even glean further.

I would have to remind you that was a very dark day in Israel at this time. Now, I maybe run a little different than a lot of commentaries would about Eli and a lot of that's been said about Eli and maybe it's because I'm sometimes too much of a positive thinker, but please do not think that Eli was always in the condition which is founded in this chapter. There had been better days in Eli's life than there are in this chapter.

Much better days. In fact, it's interesting to notice that Samuel cannot somehow perceive the difference between the voice of the Lord and the voice of Eli. I mean, give the man credit.

There must have been something of a real spiritual tone in the voice of Eli, who at other times obviously had called this man Samuel, that Samuel actually thinks, that's the Lord calling me. Or is Eli calling me? And Eli finally realizes the Lord is calling this man. It would not be easy for an older man that had dealings with God to recognize that here's God speaking to a younger man, much younger man, just a boy.

What about me? If God's got something to say, can he not say it to me? Why this younger man? That's to his credit. That is to Eli's credit that he perceived that God was calling the child, that God was calling Samuel. Otherwise, he could have said, listen, my boy, you're dreaming, go and lay down.

Forget about it. You're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're imagining things. And all the time, God was trying to speak to this young man, Samuel, but speak to the nation, speak to Eli, speak to all, but he was going to speak through this man, Samuel.

What I have enjoyed from it is this, just in recent reading of it is, that Samuel does not recognize that voice until he is in his place. Because that's what we read there in verse number nine, right at the end of verse. So Samuel went and laid down in his place.

And once he is in his place, there's no need now to run to, to, there's no need now to, to run and say to Eli and question who is really calling him. So I learned something that's very, very valuable, or at least I should try to learn something from it, and it is this, that when I am not in my place, I can't expect to hear from God. Where we are spiritually speaking, I'm not thinking so much just of a geographical location or just a position in the house at this time that he's being called as even in a spiritual condition.

Would I be, would it be too challenging a question to ask this audience tonight? In your spiritual condition, are you in the place where God would have you to be? Sometimes, you know, brethren, we try to saddle a horse that's too high. Sometimes we're like the man that went to take a higher room in the place that was given to him. When somebody else comes down and it says with shame, he begins to take the lower room.

Something isn't there. We sing about it at times. Do we really understand what it is to be able to find our place and to keep our place? You see, we had to learn our place, did we not, in conversion? We would never know what salvation is.

It was so hard, at least it was for me, to take the place that God was giving me. The place that he was giving me was one of being lost and ungodly, and I somehow thought those were very harsh terms for somebody that was raised in a sheltered Christian home. But what blessing was there for me? What blessing was there for you, brother, sister? What blessing was there until you were willing to take just that place? What was that place? That was the place God gave you.

That was the place that God had for you. It's interesting that when it comes to Adam, it says this, I noticed this just in my own reading some time ago, that God placed Adam in the garden eastward. In other words, he just didn't, so to say, kind of plop him into the garden and say, you know, whatever.

I'm not saying that he was restricted in his movements, but God even had a place for him in the vastness of that garden. Isn't it wonderful to think and to realize that God still has a place for us? But we can get out of that place. Isn't that what we're reminded of? The wise man reminded us Solomon was a man that reminded us that.

He says, as the bird that wandereth from her nest, so is the man that wandereth out of his place. Something in our nature, something in us, brethren and sisters, that causes us at times to wander out of our place. There are things that mark a person that is in their place, that has found the place that God has for them.

They're happy. They are. They're very content.

They have no wrong ambitions. There's no rivalry. There's no seeking some place that is not theirs.

And they're enjoying fellowship. They're enjoying the Lord. There's just something sweet about it.

Now, the other side of that, the contrasting side of that is to find someone that's seeking a place that God never intended for them. There's tremendous discontent. And there's unhappiness.

And I would be very hard to be convinced that they're enjoying the Lord. You know why? They're not in the place that God would have for them. Now, where was it that Samuel learned the value of being in his place? Early in life.

Early in life. Just as it is great to be saved early in life, it's great to learn our place early in life. Put it very simply.

To be gathered where he is, where two or three are, in heaven being gathered together, in my name, there am I, in the midst of them. God has a place for every child of his. He does.

So here is God calling to this man, Samuel, young man Samuel. Here's Eli, a deplorable condition of the nation, terrible state of things in his own home, a lot of things that were going wrong. But the delightful thing is that God was still in the business of speaking.

And brethren, I've come to this conference to tell you that God is still, pardon the expression, God is still in the business of speaking if we're in the right place. Now, I have no idea what's going on in your life. I don't know what challenges or what difficulties, what problems that you may be having.

But I can assure you that God has a place for you. And when you are in that place, you will be all the man, all the woman that God ever intends you to be. You see, in this world, I may not be, and you may not be in business or whatever, all that you would like to be.

So what? But when it comes to spiritual things, isn't it lovely to know that we can be all that God ever wanted us to be? It's interesting that Samuel earns his place early in life. And you can go through, I was going to say, the history of Samuel and read about Samuel and the consistency of his life. Samuel never wandered out of his place.

Samuel was a very humble man. David was too. But there's times when David got out of his place.

We all know that. Solomon got out of his place. That's why Solomon writes those words.

He's writing from his own experience, maybe. As a bird that wanders from his nest, so is the man that wanders from his place. And I could go down to the word of God and show you men that got out of the place that God had for them.

But not this man, Samuel. Very humble man. Samuel was the man that when the words of God were to be fought, he was there.

When the word of God was to be taught, Samuel was there. And when the will of God was to be sought, you can count on Samuel. He was there.

I mean, people that owed everything to this man actually handed him a vote of no confidence. They just simply said to him one day, you know, you're too old. You're too old.

And besides that, we want a king. You know, Samuel's disappointment was not that they were ousting him. Samuel's disappointment was they were going counter to the will of God.

And Samuel understood the cost of that. You know, the result of that would be? You know what this nation hadn't learned from experience? That it was possible for a whole nation to be out of place. God taught them lessons in the wilderness.

I know that. She'll never convince me that they were in their place wandering in the wilderness. That's why that hymn was on my heart at the beginning of the meeting this evening.

About our wandering, about the need of the Savior to guide us. I wonder if we're willing to be led. When does we come to this conference? I'm speaking from my own heart, brothers and sisters, I do before God.

Am I standing here tonight trying to tell you I've always been in the place that God had for me? No, no, there's times I'm sure I've, I've got a running at my own charges. In my own warfare. All of us have.

But how good to learn and to relearn the value of being in that place. It's interesting, but it's just concerning Abraham. You can go back over to your Bible and learn this.

That he got up early in the morning and says, to the place, to the place where he stood before the Lord. What was that? What, what place was that? That was the place that God had for him. Well, what does God tell Moses in chapter 33 of the Exodus when things are, are difficult? When his own wife doesn't understand really what the man is doing.

When Joshua, his closest friend, really didn't understand the ways of God either. Those are lovely words down here, the latter part of the chapter. I don't know what verse it is, but he said, Moses, there is a place by me.

There always is. There always is a place by me. It's when we want to cause that distance.

That we get out of the place. So if I'm going to approach this conference. And you're going to approach this conference.

You know, we sing all kinds of hymns about God speaking to us. And we pray the Lord speak to us. We talk about being in the condition that God might speak to us.

Let's think about being in the position whereby God can speak to us. To be in that place, my, you think of that home there in Bethany. Fine, you look at it, you say, my, that's tremendous.

Look what Martha's doing. And Martha said, look, look what Mary isn't doing. Do you know something? I believe both of them were in their place.

The difficulty was this. The difficulty was this. Because you got to remember that Martha worshipped him too.

The difficulty was this. There was one that was concerned that somebody else was out of place. She should have been helping there.

You see, if I'm going to be obsessed with everybody else that I think that's out of step or out of place. It'll happen. I'll soon be out of my place.

I'll soon be going on the aggressive side and say, well, what's happening here? What are you doing? Why aren't you doing this? I will soon be asking that question. And Lord, what shall this man do? What does the Lord say? What is that to thou? In other words, you just stay your place. You just stay your place.

You know, in assembly life, we see different things happen and different things, you know, maybe you're a brother and you say, you know, they just passed over me on that. I would have been glad to help them, whatever. And for some reason, well, isn't the brethren forgot about you? If they did, God had a purpose in that.

We just recognize that. Maybe you felt slighted. Maybe you felt betrayed.

Maybe you felt let down. Things can happen among sisters too. Things that nobody intended to happen.

Someone has become offended. They become hurt by it. And nobody intended to hurt them.

Nobody intended to cause any injury at all. You felt slighted. You thought, well, do I have a place here or not? Yes, you do.

Yes, you do. It's nice to be able to just recognize that. No matter how low it is, no matter how simple it might be.

I remember years ago, and you've likely heard me tell this maybe in ministry before, maybe you haven't, but I took Mr. Albert Ramsey, Paul Kimber and I did to the Cleveland conference. This would be just after the new hall was built in Monticello. And Paul and I were, well, we had a lot of answers.

And I think we were in our 20s or so, you know, when you knew everything. And of course, Mr. Ramsey knew that too. He said, see that brother over there in the corner, he says, with his sleeves rolled up.

And he says, he's washing dishes. Well, they have a dishwasher then. We said, yeah, we see more there.

He said, you know who that man is? He said, oh, he didn't know who he was. Well, he said, that's Mr. Art Pyle. He says he happens to be the president of Huff Bakeries.

He said he could have likely about 200 people come in here and do what he's doing today. But you know what he's doing? He's just operating in this place. I never forgot that.

I never forgot that. I hope I never forget that. You would not have to be around me too long to know that, you know, in the greatest stretch of imagination, I am no carpenter, okay? That's why I always enjoyed working with John Procopio.

Those Procopios were born with hammers in their hands. They are carpenters. They are builders.

There's something in their nature about it. I've got another friend, Scott McLeod. He's a mechanic right to the max.

He could fix anything. It's just there. I was helping build a hall, and I was.

I can lift plywood. I can position it. I can go for this and go for that in the northern part of our province, and God bless him.

But a preacher dropped in to see me. He heard I was working there, and I remember he stood there, and he said, yeah, like nothing else to do? What are you doing here? Maybe. Understanding my limited skills, it was a good question.

What are you doing here? Do you know I was there helping build that hall? I felt at that time that's where the Lord wanted me to be. Maybe there's times where I've been up here, and I should have been somewhere building a hall. Never think, brethren and sisters, that it's below your dignity to do the simplest task that God has for you if that is the place that God wants you at that time.

Because there is the principle, the word of God, how true it is. For one that will be humbled will be exalted in due time. No one ever loses.

No one ever loses by taking that low ground. That was something that marked Samuel and marked him through his life. You remember, it will be Samuel that will witness Saul.

Saul was a man. Here's the king they wanted. Head and shoulders above the people.

All that he was going to be. But he becomes very impatient when it comes to those sacrifices. And immediately, the big king, if I can call him that, is out of his place.

It must have been so difficult for Samuel to bring that rebuke to him. Yet at that time, Samuel was the one that was in his place. That was hard to do.

Samuel wasn't trying to step up one on him. Samuel wasn't. I mean, it broke Samuel's heart as much as it did anybody's to know that the Lord had rejected Saul.

That really, he had David for the throne and not him. But, you know, brothers and sisters, this man Samuel learned something else. It's sad.

He had learned from an older man what not to do. He had learned mistakes from an older man that he hoped he would never make. You know, some of us that, just let me say, aren't getting younger anymore.

And have younger men that are working with us need ever to be so careful that they may not go from us and see mistakes, things that we're doing. And they're learning from things from us that were wrong. And they're hoping they never do them.

Now, none of us are perfect. None of us have A plus. All of us make mistakes.

But this man Samuel was raised in such a situation, such circumstances. Was there ever really a darker day? You know what the sad thing is? It says that, you know, he was in his place too. That's why I emphasized it in the reading.

He was in his place. Isn't that sad? You say, what kind of a place was that? Was that a place that God had for him? No, that's a place that he kind of fortunately carved out for himself. Where he wouldn't restrain his sons.

Where he couldn't keep his family as God would have them kept. There's where it says it. What did we read that right back there? It is, yes, verse number two.

Came to pass at the time when Eli was laid down in his place and his eyes began to wax dim and that he could not see. Now, it's interesting when you take the, in contrast, the two of these. Here's an old age veteran, a man that knew dealings with God.

Now he's become dim. Now he's lost spiritual perception. Now he is losing everything that Samuel is going to pick up and going to rightly judge Israel and lead him.

You see, those that have been an example to me in my Christian experience from going back to my younger days were men that were in their place. They weren't necessarily overseers in the assembly that I grew up in. But they recognized their place and they were men in their place.

I learned a lot from them. I learned from the overseers in the assembly as well. But I learned from those men.

I learned valuable lessons from them. I have to say there's older men that, sadly, I learned some lessons from too. I learned some things not to do.

And boy, I trust that before God when others see things, mistakes we have made, that they learn those lessons and don't repeat them as well. So might we just approach this conference consciously? That God has a place for us. God may not be calling you to some far-flung island or country to labor in.

If he is, God bless you. That's where he would have you to be. That's where you should be.

That's not what really I'm talking about. What I'm really coming at this evening isn't so much even position in the assembly, whether you're an overseer or a shepherd or whatever you're seeking to do. I'm talking about spiritual condition.

Am I really in the place that God would have me to be now? You know, it's sad. It's sad if I have sought a place in life that has limited me or has prevented me from being in the place that God would have me to be. Simply because of the choices.

Simply because of the carnal desires of the flesh. And of my heart. Wasn't that really Samson? Think of a man like Samson.

How you would go down to those vineyards and say, Samson, what are you doing here? You were told. He'd have his excuses. He would tell you.

And the folly of it. David and different ones you could go through. You'd say, Samson, what a heartbreak.

Think of what you could have been. But you're never in the place that God wanted you to be. You're somewhere else.

You see, not to speak about myself or, and I'm not here to talk about my call to the work of earthen, because I really didn't want to go in it. I'll be honest with you. The brethren back in St. Thomas, the ones that are still living that signed the letter, no, not once did I ever knock on their door and say, you know, I want to go to work.

It's good business. Tired of this farming. I want to go to work.

Not at all. They knocked on my door. I didn't go to them.

They came to me. Because I was a runaway prophet, if you like. I didn't mind doing gospel work, but I really didn't anticipate doing this full time.

Only in the mercy of God, only in the mercy of God, can I look back and thank God for the way that he has led. There came decisions in our life, my wife and I, when I look now and think, you know, should we have moved at that time? Should we have gone here? Should we have gone there? I have to say some of them, I'm not sure. Maybe we should have.

At the time, maybe I thought the assembly was small in Sussex and I would have a week work here and I'd have a week one up north. And maybe I was just thinking that because I really wanted to stay in Sussex, didn't want to go up north. I'm just telling you different things.

These are challenges that go through all of our lives. But you know where it first starts? It starts in a place of a devoted heart, a fellowship with God, in the enjoyment of his word, in the enjoyment of his presence, and the enjoyment of his company. Listen, he located you in the place that you took.

It was the place that he gave you, as I've already pointed out, as ungodly and lost and he saved you. As far as I know from this Bible, there's only one way to be saved. You know that too.

There's only one way to be baptized. There's only one way to gather. It's to gather in the place where he has chosen to place his name.

Isn't that Deuteronomy chapter 12? Not every place, but the place which the Lord had chosen to place his name. And here's a young man, just young in life, just starting, with a very exercised mother, not an ambitious mother, not like the mother in the New Testament that's seeking positions for her sons, simply standing in her exercise of heart. There's Samuel.

Here's Eli. Here's his sons. Here's the seed of the nation.

And we can be ever so thankful, and so can the nation be, that there was a young man here, it says, so Samuel went and he lay down in his place. You know, it tells me this. I don't think that, I don't think he's, yeah, maybe he did lay down and go to sleep again.

I don't think, if I thought God was calling me, that's what he would be doing. But you know what he was doing? He was at rest in the place that God had for him. May God help us.

May he speak to our hearts. Like I say, I don't know the circumstance in your life, you don't know them in mine. I need this as much as, maybe you do.

Maybe I need it more. I admit to that. But God help us just to recognize that we can expect him to speak to us when we are in our place.