1 Samuel 2:18

1 Samuel 2:18

Samuel was a child-prophet, and that fact is pregnant with the deepest signification. That a child should have any interest in God's temple, and especially that a child should hold office in that temple, is a circumstance which should arrest our attention.

I. God's interest in human life begins at the earliest possible period. This is an argument for infant baptism which I have never known to be touched, much less shaken.

II. In Hannah's making Samuel a coat every year, we see how age must work for childhood, strength must toil lovingly and helpfully for weakness. The resources of life must beexpended on the children of need.

III. Looking at the call of Samuel we see: (1) Almighty God calling man at an unlikely time. In the pomp of mid-day He comes to us, blazing with all effulgence of glory, and addresses us with majesty and overwhelming force; in the hour of midnight He approaches His sleeping ones, and by dream or vision or still small voice, would hold intercourse with His saints. (2) We see Almighty God calling an unlikely person. We should have thought it more probable that God would call the aged prophet, rather than the ministering child. But the first shall be last and the last first. We may enlarge this incident so as to find in it a great principle of exquisite beauty and of worldwide application; that principle is that Almighty God is constantly sending messages by children.(3) In this scene we have also the revelation of the true state of man for receiving God's message "Speak, Lord; for Thy servant heareth." It is the place of the creature to listen to the Creator. Good listening is one condition of progress.

Parker, Wednesday Evenings in Cavendish Chapel,p. 28.

I. The first notice we have of Samuel's ministering before the Lord reminds us of the decency and gravity necessary at all times and in all persons, in approaching Him. As Samuel is an example of reverence in worship, so in Saul we have an example of irreverence. There have ever been these two kinds of Christians those who belonged to the Church, and those who did not. And while, on the one hand, reverence for sacred things has been a characteristic of Church Christians on the whole, so want of reverence has been characteristic of Christians not of the Church. The one have prophesied after the figure of Samuel, the other after the figure of Saul.

II. So natural is the connection between reverence and faith that the only wonder is, how any one can for a moment imagine he has faith in God, and yet allow himself to be irreverent towards Him. Hence even heathen religions have considered faith and reverence identical. Those who have separated from the Church of Christ have in this respect fallen into greater than pagan error. They have learned to be familiar and free with sacred things, as it were, on principle. They have considered awe to be superstition and reverence to be slavery.

III. Those who worship in a humble and reverent way will find the effect of it, through God's mercy, in their heavenly walk. If we honestly strive to obey God, then our outward manner will be reverent also. This is the true way of doing devotional service, not to have feelings without acts, or acts without feelings, but both to do and to feel to see that our hearts and bodies are both sanctified together and become one.

Plain Sermons by Contributors to "Tracts for the Times"vol. v., p. 167 (see also J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons,vol. viii., p. 1).

References: 1 Samuel 2:18. M. G. Pearse, Sermons for Children,p. 56; Outline Sermons for Children,p. 28; J. Reid Howatt, The Churchette,p. 120; R. D. B. Rawnsley, Village Sermons,1st series, p. 299.