Those who don’t learn from their history, it is said, are doomed to repeat it. This is certainly the case for the Israelites of old. Life is great, but then they drift away from God. They lose sight of God. They begin forgetting God. They begin living more and more like earthly citizens than the called out and set apart citizens of the Kingdom of God they are. As they drift farther and farther away, they seem to always find themselves in some kind of oppression. Whether exiled, bonded into slavery, or just always living in fear from the constant attacks of their neighbors, leaving God always ends up for them in oppression. When they can take the oppression no more, a voice is heard calling them to repent. Because life is so bad, that call is heard and it is embraced. Their repentance moves them from oppression and slavery into the promised land of deliverance and freedom. Then the whole thing repeats itself. The God life, the drift, the oppression, the revival, the deliverance, the God life. Over and over the cycle just seems to repeat itself. Our text puts us right in the middle of one of these cycles. It also puts us in the midst of a series called, “Could I Ask You For a Favor?” It is a study on 1 Samuel looking at the characteristics God desires of his people that open the door for Him to graciously favor us. Hear the Word of the Lord, from 1 Samuel 7.3-17.
As is usually the case, the walk away from God is neither sudden nor intentional. It is often very difficult to pinpoint exactly why, or where, or when the outward drift began. While at Virginia Beach, I ventured out into the ocean. I love the smell of the saltwater, the sound of the waves crashing, the power of the tide surging. The ocean seems to capture in my imagination all the best life has to offer. So, with the sun beating down, I ventured out into the surf. I thought I was just hanging out relaxing. I pushed my way through the break line and just bobbed as the waves rolled by. The beauty of the moment was interrupted by a screeching whistle. It was being blown at me. I thought I was safe, but after being called back, I realize how far I was from the safety of the beach from which I’d drifted.
So it was for Israel. If we back up to verse 2, we find that some twenty years had passed. It has been twenty years of drift. Certainly the “ministry” of Eli, and Hophni and Phineas played some part in the drift away from God. They had certainly drifted far from the white sands of God’s beach. Where goes the head, so goes the body. Those corrupt priests carry the ark of God before Israel’s army as they go into battle. Perhaps they think the God who is enthroned upon the ark will deliver them despite their corruption. They were wrong! They were soundly defeated and the ark of God was captured. It wasn’t Israel who went into captivity. It wasn’t Israel who became oppressed. This time, it was their God who was captured and enslaved. What have they done?
Despite the ark’s miraculous return (a story you will want to read for yourself in chapters 4-6), Israel continues in their drift. We find in Samuel’s address that the people have turned away from worshiping the Lord their God alone. They have incorporated idol worship into their worship. They obviously should have known better, but again, the drift is seldom intentional or sudden. Imagine coming to a new land. Life had been nomadic, but now life was sustained through agriculture. You have no idea how to grow things or about agronomics. It is all so strange and foreign to you. You decide to ask for help.
The people of Canaan teach you about soil and water, seedtime and harvest. They even show you the tools of the trade. Primitive plows, hoes, rakes, forks, and O yes, we can’t forget Ashtaroth and Baal. You ask who they are and you find out that Ashtaroth is the female god of love and fertility and Baal is the male god of storm. When you combine the fertility of the soil, and the rain of the storm, you get conditions prime for growing! It all makes sense, and your farming is surprisingly fruitful. So that’s what the Israelites did.
Crops, however, were not the only seeds being planted. Samuel has been faithfully planting the seed of God’s word into the hearts of the people. Not surprisingly then, crops are not the only things growing. A sense of lament and mourning has been growing in the hearts of the people as they have recently become aware of their drift away from God. There has been a growing sense of repentance as Samuel continues calling the people back to God. Finally, in today’s text, the people respond. They repent. They cleanse the land of the pagan gods. They return to the one true God. As they do, revival breaks out in the hearts and in their land. They all gather together, they make sacrifices, they fast, they cry out to God. All of Israel is in attendance as they repent and seek God.
But, as they are repenting and seeking God, the Philistines begin to mount an attack against them. Israel is faced with a choice. Will they turn their attention toward the approaching army, or will they continue praying to God? We are quite surprised by their answer. They call out to Samuel, “Do not cease to cry out to the Lord our God for us, and pray that he may save us from the hand of the Philistines.” Prayer becomes their priority. God hears them as he graciously favors those who pray. God’s voice thunders through the land and the Philistines are confused as they are driven away. The cycle is now complete: they drifted, they were oppressed, they were repentant and they were delivered.
A couple of things stand out in our story. In many ways Israel’s story is our story. It is not just the story of Israel, but it’s the story of the church. To some degree we all understand the cycle first hand. Life is going great. We just got out back from camp meeting. We have had a fresh vision of God. We feel closer than ever and we are so ready to share our experience with others. But real life always sets in. We begin to drift away. The mountaintop becomes smaller and smaller as time makes it vanish on the horizon of life. At some point, we turn around and realize we can no longer see the mountain. We are awakened to our drift, and so we do the only logical thing we can do. We repent. We turn around. We change direction. We begin the journey toward the mountain. By the grace of God we find ourselves delivered from the shadowy valley as we once again bask in the sunlight of the mountain. Yes, the cycle is all too familiar.
Another thing stands out in the story. It is the way God graciously favors those who pray. Prayer has a central role in their turn back to God and the deliverance, freedom, and holiness God creates. At the very heart of Israel’s turn to God was prayer – a prayer of repentance. In that prayer they made a confession of their sin, an acknowledgement of God as the one true god, and a statement of priority. When evil came in the form of the Philistine army, their reaction was to not to quit, to pick up swords and to get back to God later, their priority was to make sure that the prayer did not cease. Prayer was central to the deliverance experienced by Israel. This too is something we fully understand. When we are confronted by the reality of our drift away from God, usually by some sort of “oppression,” our response, too, is prayer.
I would, however, ask us to push a bit farther this morning and ask not how prayer gets us back on track with God, but rather how prayer can keep us on the right track with God? In most of my life growing up in the Church of the Nazarene, attending many different Churches, being educated in a Nazarene University and Seminary, and then serving in a couple of Nazarene churches, prayer has always been understood as the way we communicate with God. We see this quite clearly in both of our scripture readings this morning. The people of Israel asked Samuel to pray to God…to give Him a message…to communicate with Him. Likewise, the disciples wanted Jesus to teach them how to pray, because John taught his disciples to pray. Surprisingly, Jesus response was a very beautiful, but brief and simple “prayer.”
In both cases, prayer is about communicating with God – expressing ourselves to God. But is that all prayer is? I would suggest that our lessons today also teaches us prayer is not just communication. Communication certainly is a part of prayer, but scripture seems clear that prayer is much broader than just communication. Imagine if you will, the life you live with your family – perhaps with siblings, perhaps with parents, perhaps with a spouse, perhaps with a roommate. I image for life to be smooth there must be a fair bit of communication. But is it really possible to communicate all the time? Is it really necessary to communicate all the time? Is it really beneficial to communicate all the time? The answer is obviously no.
We must communicate, but more than that we must commune – we must live together. We must enjoy one another’s presence. I love when Antonina comes home from work and we get to talk about our day. Very seldom do we just sit and talk. We talk while we cook. We talk while we eat. We talk while we do dishes. We communicate as we commune, but often we commune without communicating. We go for an evening boat ride up the river. The evening breeze blows through our hair. The mist of the river sprays us in the face. It would be must too difficult to talk over the rushing wind and the roaring motor, so we just enjoy one another’s company – we commune – as we course down the river. We drive down to Steubenville to catch an afternoon matinee. Though we do not talk, we enjoy sharing the story with one another as we watch it unfold before our eyes on the silver screen. Even when we are not together, we are enjoying one another by remembering our past together and looking forward to the end of the day when we will be together again. No, we do not always talk, but we do always enjoy one another’s presence. We do not always communicate, but we always commune. There is not always communication, but there is always communion.
Prayer is not just the things we say, but rather it is the way we approach living life. Samuel challenged Israel, “If you are truly repentant, then clear your lives of all the false Gods, direct your hearts to the Lord, and serve Him only.” Here is a good definition of the life of prayer to which we are all called. At the center is our communication with God as we regularly direct our hearts to the Lord, but that is lived out in the everyday decisions we make to keep our lives pure and holy, and to serve God only. Prayer is what we say, but it is also how we live.
In the Gospel, Jesus moves us beyond the mere communication aspect of prayer into the realms of seeking and knocking. It is not enough that we simply ask God questions. It is not enough that we communicate with Him. We must also seek Him. We must search for Him. It is not enough that we seek Him on occasion, or when we need Him most urgently. Jesus urges us to approach Him with perseverance. Paul urges us to pray without ceasing. Prayer then, becomes for us an issue of communion rather than mere communication. It becomes the very fabric of our lives.
The good news is abundant for us this morning. Prayer is not what we do when we get to a certain point in the cycle of life, it is what we do at every point of our life. It is how we live our life every day. Had Israel approached life this way, communing with God at every turn, one might fairly ask if the cycle would have been broken? If every day were spent in determined seeking, in dogged pursuit, in adoring communion, would there have been any drift at all? The lesson for us is to be constantly communing with God, endlessly enjoying His presence, and ceaselessly seeking His face. The really good news is that seeking God is not like a game of hide and seek; it is not like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Seeking God is looking for a God who is running to us. God sent Jesus into the world, so that we might enjoy life in His world. Jesus came into this earthly kingdom that we might live daily in God’s eternal kingdom. We need not look too hard to find God, for God has already come to the world, in Christ, to seek us. We need only to enjoy His eternal presence in our life as God graciously favors those who pray, with communication but more importantly in communion. To the glory of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
