Speak Lord For Your Servant Hears
1 SAM. 3:9-10

A. Often it is true that we only “hear” what we want to hear.
1. If we have a predisposition against God or any part of His will, it will affect our “hearing.”
a. Those who are not “of God” do not hear Him.
(A) Jesus said to the unbelieving Jews: “He who is of God hears God’s words;
therefore you do not hear, because you are not of God,” Jno. 8:47.
(1) How much better it is if we determine to have the attitude expressed in the words of young Samuel: “Speak, Lord, for Your servant hears,” 1 Sam. 3:9-10.
(a) What is involved in this kind of attitude toward God’s word?
The first requirement is reverence toward God Himself.
How humble and respectful are you toward God?
(2) Behind every obedient attitude toward God is a respectful and receptive
attitude toward Him and His Word. Eccl. 12:13; Lk. 6:46.
Samuel’s attitude is our example, 1 Sam. 3:9.
The attitude of respect will produce the submissiveness that comes from respect that is rightly owed. That means you don’t try to serve God in an advisory capacity.
(B) Some people are spiritually “autistic.” They are so withdrawn into their own
subjective selves they are unresponsive to outside communication, even from God?
How open are you to God? How “easily entreated” are you?
Jas. 3:17, says, in the KJV “The wisdom that is from above is...easy to be intreated” The NKJV says “willing to yield” Alford, says, “easily persuaded” And Knox, in his translation says, “ready to be convinced”
With respect to divine truth, do words like these describe you: accessible, open, teachable, receptive, responsive. Are you easily intreated?
I certainly hope you don’t have an unresponsive heart like Pharaoh in Exo. 5:2; or like King Jehoiakim in Jer. 36:22-25.
Most of all we need responsive hearts like King Josiah in 2 Kgs. 22:19, God said to him “Because your heart was responsive and you humbled yourself before the Me .....and because you tore your robes and wept in my presence, I have heard you, declares the LORD.”
When Cornelius sent for Peter as commanded by God, Peter arrived at his house and Cornelius speaks to Peter in Acts 10:33, saying, “When God spoke to me I sent for you immediately, and it was good of you to come. Now we are all here in the presence of God to listen to everything the Lord has commanded you to tell us." That’s the response we’re talking about.
b. The right attitude says, “When God speaks no man has the right to an opinion.”
(1) When God’s Word speaks to you , is there a “sympathetic vibration” within our hearts?
(1) Does God’s word “strike a responsive chord” within your heart?
(1) Upon reflection can you truly say, “My mind is attuned” to God’s mind?
(2) When God’s Word speaks, do you answer, as Samuel? “Speak, oh Lord, Thy servant will obey.”
(3) Being responsive to God’s Word means we are unresponsive to Satan’s temptations. It’s like the song says, “Buried with Christ, my blessed Redeemer, dead to the old life of folly and sin; Satan may call, the world may entreat me, there is no voice that answers within.” When Satan and temptatoin calls, I just will not respond! That’s what the song says.
(2) What is your real attitude about God’s Holy Word? Answer honestly.
(1) Are you really eager to study God’s word on your own?
(2) Do you honestly look forward to hearing someone teach from the Bible?

(3) How do you respond to those who come in the Lord’s name with something we need to hear? Do you consider them your enemy when they teach you the truth? That was Paul’s question in Gal. 4:16.
(4) Jesus spoke this warning, “Take heed how you hear. For whoever has, to him more will be given; and whoever does not have, even what he seems to have will be taken away from him.” Luke. 8:18. That scripture is about hearing and doing God’s Word. God can take away your understanding.
(2) If our Bible study is for mere curiosity, etc., we may not even recognize the answers to our questions when we find them. Whether we recognize the Lord’s “voice” when we hear it depends greatly on our attitude.
(1) “If anyone wants to do His will, he shall know concerning the doctrine, whether it is from God or whether I speak on My own authority.” Jno. 7:17.
(a) If you are not sincere God’s not going to waste His time helping you understand what it’s all about. God gives understanding.
(1) 2 Thess. 2:10-12, tells us, “The work of Satan is displayed in all kinds of counterfeit miracles, signs and wonders, and in every sort of evil that deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.”
(2) Eccl 2:26, “For God gives wisdom and knowledge to a man who is good in His sight...” God does not cast pearls before swine.
(2) It is as if God were asking, before permitting you to discern the truth: “Why do you want to know this? What do you intend to do with this information?”
(1) Having a genuine eagerness to do God’s will includes a willingness:
To do whatever He commands. To do it with our full strength. To do it
without delay. In the parable of the seed and sower Jesus described
the good seed in this way in Luke 8:15, “But the seeds that fall on the
good ground are those who, having heard the word with a noble and good
heart, keep it and bear fruit with patience.”
(2) Acts 20:32.

Spur - 07/15 /2001 pm