Learning to Hear from God - Chaffee Campus with Pastor Greg Addison - April 12, 2026

Ministering to the heart of Western Arkansas's River Valley for over 165 years, welcome to Chapter and First, the Bible teaching ministry of Fort Smith's First Baptist Church.

You'll find sermons and teachings from Pastor Greg, our ministry staff, and guest speakers.

Thank you for listening.

Turn with me in your Bibles to Judges chapter 3.

Judges 3 · chapter mention

As we continue on our study of reading the Bible together chronologically through uh, you know, through the history of Scripture.

We're walking through that chronologically.

We've entered into the book of Judges.

Man, I want you to know you're almost a third of the way through.

That's incredible, isn't it?

Uh we are in double-digit books now in Judges.

And so you guys have done an incredible thing going this far.

What I want to talk to you about today is learning to hear from God.

Last week we talked about in that time where Gideon was called by the person of Jesus, an Old Testament presentation of Jesus.

We talked about that God is a personal God and He wants to speak to us and walk with us.

He's involved in your life, He cares about you individually.

And so today is a nice follow-up is a moment here where someone else, God speaks to them individually and invests himself in their life.

And specifically in this moment, when God speaks, this is a boy, a preteen, if you will, probably.

We guess he's around that age, who actually learns to listen and hear the voice of God.

And so it's a great time for us to listen to and think about how it is that we learn to hear from God.

One of the most common questions that I get as a pastor is, Lord, I got uh pastor, I got this decision.

I don't know what to do about it.

What do you think I should do?

How do I pray about this?

How do I hear from the Lord?

How do I know God's will?

Well, the answer to that is involved in hearing from the Lord.

And this is one of the most fundamental things that we do as followers of Jesus.

This is one of the most important skills that we have to learn.

How can you have a personal relationship with the Lord if you can't recognize his voice, if you can't learn to hear from him?

Now, the beautiful thing about being a Christian, being a follower of Christ, is that the Holy Spirit lives inside of us and he speaks to us and we walk with him on a daily basis, and there's nothing that intervenes itself in our relationship with him.

It is personal in every way.

And so the beauty of that means that we get to hear from the Lord.

We get to talk to him, and he talks to us, and we hear from him.

But that's a learned behavior.

It's like any relationship.

You have to get to know that person, to learn their voice, to hear as they speak to you.

And so we are learning that process.

So that's what we're going to look at today from the life of a young man named Samuel.

And so here's what the Bible says in Judges chapter 3, verse 1.

Judges 3:1

These are the nations the Lord left.

I'm not reading in the right, am I in the right spot?

1 Samuel 3.

I'm sorry.

I said judges, didn't I?

You guys are ahead of me as leaders.

I knew that wasn't right as soon as I read that.

1 Samuel chapter 3, verse 1.

1 Samuel 3:1

The boy Samuel served the Lord in Eli's presence.

Now listen to this verse.

In those days, the word of the Lord was rare, and prophetic visions were not widespread.

That may be one of the most tragic sentences in Scripture, right there.

What a terrible thing to be in where you're not hearing a word from the Lord.

So here's what the Bible says.

One day Eli, who is the priest over all of the ministries at that point, one day Eli, whose eyesight was failing, was lying in his room.

Now, Eli is elderly.

He's had a very, he's at the end of his ministry, he's had a very checkered ministry.

He has sons who are also priests, and they are evil and do all kinds of terrible stuff.

And if you've been reading, you read about that up to this point.

So here's Eli, this elderly man.

His eyesight is failing.

He's had this checkered ministry, struggling with that.

The Bible says he was lying in his room.

Before the lamp of God had gone out, Samuel was lying down in the tabernacle of the Lord where the ark of God was located.

So just quickly, the setting of this: Samuel is a is a young guy.

Samuel serving in the temple because his mother, Hannah, this is a famous story in Scripture.

If you've read, you know this, Hannah didn't have children, and she cried out to the Lord and she pled for the Lord over a long period of time.

And eventually he blessed her with a child.

And she promised, if you will give me a child, I will return him back to you.

Which is a beautiful story in the Old Testament.

But really, for all of us who are parents, that's what we do anyway, right?

When God blesses us with these children that we have to raise, we give them to the Lord, and we raise them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

Well, in that time and setting, what Hannah did was she got him to a certain point, and then she turned him over to the temple to serve and to learn as she met that promise to consecrate him to the Lord.

And so Samuel is being raised, serving in the temple under Eli.

And so when the Bible says that he is in the tabernacle and the lamp of God had not gone out, the way the tabernacle was built at that time, there were two rooms.

There was an outer room called the holy place, and in that room there were three pieces of furniture.

There was the table of showbread, and we sort of studied that when we back through that, but it symbolizes certain things.

There is an altar of incense, and the incense is burning all the time.

That represents the prayers of God's people before him.

And then on this side of the room, there is a candelabra, what we would see as a menorah with the candlesticks in it.

And that was staying lighted all the time.

It's a beautiful picture of Jesus.

And so Samuel apparently has been given the assignment to stay there in this outer room of the tabernacle and ensure that those things that are to remain burning keep burning.

And so what you also get here is this imagery.

And here he's going to intervene and speak to Samuel and begin to call him and raise him up as the next priest and leader in Israel.

So the Bible says that as Samuel is there, lying there, the Lord called Samuel, and he answered him, Here am I.

He ran to Eli and said, Here I am, you called me.

He heard an audible voice, and he thinks it must be Eli calling him.

I didn't call, Eli replied.

So he went to lay down.

Once again, the Lord called Samuel.

Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, Here I am, you called me.

I didn't call you, my son, he replied.

Go back and lie down.

Now Samuel had not yet experienced the Lord.

In other words, this is new for him.

He's learning.

He's serving the Lord, he's being raised in that, but he hasn't yet learned how to understand the voice of the Lord.

He had not yet experienced the Lord, because the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him, Samuel.

Once again, for the third time, the Lord called Samuel.

He got up and went to Eli and said, Here I am, you called me.

Then Eli understood that the Lord was calling the boy.

Now here's the problem in this deal.

Why in the world did it take Eli, who's supposed to be the priest, three times to recognize what was happening?

His heart should be attuned as the spiritual leader to the voice of God, but it takes him three times before it finally dawns on him what's happening.

He told Samuel, Go and lie down.

If he calls you, say, Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.

So Samuel went and laid down his place.

The Lord came, stood there, and called out as before, Samuel, Samuel.

And Samuel responded, Speak, for your servant is listening.

He did exactly what Eli instructed him to do.

The Lord said to Samuel, I'm about to do something in Israel that everyone who hears about it will shudder.

On that day I will carry out against Eli everything I said about his family from the beginning to end.

Now in chapter two, the Bible says that a prophet was raised up to speak to Eli and pronounce God's judgment on him for his sin and for the sins of his sons, and for him not fixing what they were doing wrong as the priest and as their father.

Verse 13, I told him that I am going to judge his family forever because of the iniquity he knows about.

His sons are defiling the sanctuary, and he has not stopped them.

Therefore, I have sworn to Eli's family, the iniquity of Eli's family will never be wiped out by either sacrifice or offering.

That's a pretty severe judgment.

And this is a preteen guy, probably twelve or thirteen, what scholars estimate.

And he's taking this heavy message.

Samuel lay down until the morning.

Then he opened the doors of the Lord's house.

He was afraid to tell Eli the vision.

Now, wouldn't you be?

That's pretty significant to have to go tell your mentor and your boss, the priest of God, that message.

But Eli called and said to him, Samuel, my son, here I am, answered Samuel.

What was the message God gave you?

Eli asked.

Don't hide it from me.

May God punish you and do so severely if you hide anything from me that he told you.

So Samuel told him everything and did not hide anything from him.

Eli responded, He is the Lord, he will do what he thinks.

Samuel grew, and the Lord was with him, and he fulfilled everything Samuel prophesied.

All Israel from Dan to Beersheba, that's an idiom that means kind of everybody, the whole place, from Israel, all of Israel from Dan to Beersheba, knew that Samuel was a confirmed prophet of the Lord.

The Lord continued to appear in Shiloh because there he revealed himself to Samuel by his word.

And so here is Samuel.

He begins to hear from the Lord, learns to recognize the voice of the Lord, and becomes a prophet of the Lord.

Now, in that process, you can notice a couple of things.

This, the Bible says it's the first time he has heard God speak to him.

And so it's a great time for us to think through what that process is, learning how to hear from God, as we learn that lesson from Samuel's life.

So here's lesson one that I want you to see.

Lesson one, focus the ears of your heart on hearing the Lord speak to you.

Now, our heart has ears.

There are ways that we can listen.

Now, here's what you get sometime at advice, and this is one of the worst things I hate.

I hate this, I can't stand this advice.

How many of you, you know, don't raise your hands, how many of you heard somebody say, don't raise your hands, because you all have.

And because of my sin, my sin must be punished.

And where does that sin come from?

It comes from the soul and the heart and the person of Greg.

I defy the Lord and his instructions in my life, and that is sin.

And because of that, Jesus had to go to the cross and die in my place to pay the price for our sins, be raised again, conquering death and sin to offer new life.

And when I am saved, what I come is I recognize, Lord, I'm a sinner.

I have sinned.

I have sinned against you, and I'm sorry.

Please forgive me.

And thank you for Jesus, who took the punishment for my sin on the cross.

And that's where our heart is.

That's where it starts.

Now, the good thing is the Bible tells us that when we get saved, all of these things happen that change us.

You heard the story where Jesus tells a man who comes and asks him questions and said, You must be born again.

What does that mean?

That means that we are made new when we give our lives to Christ.

We take our sinful heart and we give it to him, and what happens?

He changes us.

The Bible says that if any man is in Christ, he is a new creation.

We are created new.

We are given a new heart.

The Bible also tells us we're given a new name, we're given a new eyesight, we're given a new future, we are given a new eternity, we are changed, right?

But we are still learning this process of becoming like Jesus.

And that is a every day, every week, every month, every year, growing to be more like Jesus.

It is a learned process.

That's why in the book of Proverbs, the Bible says, guard your heart with all diligence, because from it flow the issues of life.

That's why the command Jesus gives us, and he reminds us of what the commandments tell us: love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

We are to focus our heart on him.

We're not to follow our heart.

We are to turn our heart to the Lord.

We are to focus on him.

We are to be obedient to him.

We are to be seeking him.

And what that means is we turn our ears, and especially the ears of our heart, and that we mean the essence of who we are, the person of who Greg is.

I am to turn that attention to the Lord.

It is a very specific commitment that we make.

Now you think about here's a priest, Eli, who has not been walking with the Lord.

He's been allowing his sons not to walk with the Lord.

Here is the priest of God, and when God speaks in the temple of God, the tabernacle of God, the priest of God does not know it's his voice, and doesn't even know it's his voice for three times it takes him to figure out.

You see, he has lost a point where his heart is not focused on the Lord.

He is not paying attention, he's not listening.

And you get a sense of his heart at the end of this when God gives him this devastating pronouncement of judgment for the second time in chapter 2.

A prophet comes and tells him, and now God tells him through a child, through a preteen child, he comes and he gives him this.

And Eli does not respond with repentance, he does not turn his heart to the Lord.

What does he do?

He just kind of throws his hands up and goes, I guess it's done.

I guess God's gonna do what God does.

How tragic is that?

And because of that heart, the Bible says that there has not been a voice or a word of God for a long time.

That it was rare in those days.

Now, here you get Samuel.

The Bible says that Samuel is serving the Lord, he's learning, he is following what Eli teaches him, he is following the commitment that his mother made with his life, he is serving the Lord, he's learning, and in that learned process, God blesses him and steps in and begins to speak to him.

And Samuel may not at first understand it's the voice of God, but he hears and he reaches out and he asks and he keeps asking.

And then when someone helps him, when Eli finally says, Listen, present yourself to the Lord, that's God speaking to you, Samuel.

Samuel listens.

Now, can you imagine?

I mean, put on your sanctified imagination for a minute.

Here is this 12, 13-year-old guy.

He's heard this voice, and all of a sudden, through this conversation with Eli, he's figured out that God is speaking to him.

Let me tell you what.

Speak again.

Lord, I hope I haven't missed the opportunity to hear the voice from God.

I listen to God.

God is speaking to me.

I would be afraid to miss it.

I would want to hear it.

I would turn and listen, and I would focus my ears to hear God speak again.

And God does.

You see, Samuel is turning his heart to the Lord.

You have to intentionally learn.

That's why the Bible teaches us this is a learned deal.

He had not heard it yet, but now he learns, and then the Bible tells us that he continues to hear from the Lord as he moves forward because he paid attention and he focused his attention on hearing from God.

So that brings us a second question.

How do we do that?

Lesson number two present yourself as a listener to hear from the Lord.

Eli's instruction to Samuel was to go, present himself, lie down, be where you were when God spoke to you, listen and pay attention, and when God speaks, you tell the Lord, I am here your servant to listen.

Now that is a key moment right there.

And that's the really the crux of this whole lesson.

What we need to understand is as followers of Christ, we need to present ourselves to hear as a listener.

So many times we go about what we're doing and the Christian life, we think it's like a pair of glasses.

You see, if I take my glasses off, it really begins to be difficult to see.

I can see about half of you in the middle of the room.

If you're too close or you too far, I can't see you anymore.

And I'm not going to take out my Bible and read it because I sure cannot read that.

My grandson, my oldest grandson, Killian, now has a game.

My granddad name is Bomber.

And so Killian and Bomber have a game now.

He likes to come and rip my glasses off, and he thinks it's funny.

And I'm like, yeah, that's funny, but Bomber can't see you anymore.

Give me my glasses back.

And we tend to think the Christian life is like that.

I've learned these things.

I paid attention in Sunday school.

I paid attention in my discipleship group.

I took notes in service and I got this.

So I put on my belief system like this, and then I just walk about my day on my own, and I do what I want to do, and I figure that my vision is fixed because I learned some Bible information and I can just go on about and do what I'm doing.

That is not the way the Christian life works.

It is a relationship.

It's not merely a belief system.

Now we have beliefs, and those are important, and we get them from God's word, but listen, we are learning from the person of Jesus, and we are following Him, and He is guiding us, and we're speaking to Him, and that means we have to learn to sit and listen to the Lord.

We all need to develop that ability to turn everything off and to get a few times in the day where we just stop and we listen.

And you must present yourself to the Lord.

You're even beginning to see in secular leadership training things and secular counseling things, they have some general understanding of how this works.

If you read things about how to be successful or how to build discipline in your life and all that, even they acknowledge that there are times we need to sit and be still.

And yet people don't do that.

That's a skill that we have lost in our culture today.

And especially for a believer, it's far more than just sitting and meditating.

It is sitting with an open Bible and an open heart.

And just as Samuel said, Lord, I am your servant and I am listening.

How do we do that?

You must do that through your attention on the person of Jesus and through the word of God as He speaks to us.

Here's a beautiful picture in Hebrews chapter 1.

Hebrews 1 · chapter mention

This is an incredible picture of Jesus.

I've read this several times this week.

I read it once or twice, and then the Lord figured I didn't get it quick enough, and so he made me come back to it through other things to pay attention to it.

Here's what the Bible says.

Long ago, God spoke to the fathers by the prophets at different times and in different ways.

And these days, he has spoken to us by his Son.

God has appointed Jesus, heir of all things, and made the universe through him the Son of God, Jesus is the radiance of God's glory and the exact expression of his nature, sustaining all things by his powerful word.

Then he goes on after this beautiful picture of Jesus to describe that Jesus stepped out of heaven as our high priest, went through everything that we go through, yet did it without sin, and then he died, paid the price for our sins, rose again, and has all of these experiences now as a human, so we can come to him in our times of need, and we can boldly step before him and ask for his aid and his help.

And then it says, right after that, that God's word is living and powerful and sharper than a two-edged sword, dividing a son of the soul and the spirit, the bones and marrow.

It is the discerner and thoughts of the intents of our heart.

And so what the Bible is teaching us as followers of Christ, what happens is Jesus is how God speaks to us.

And so we go and we focus on him, we pay attention to him, we learn about him, we seek him, we turn to his word, we learn about him through his word, we listen through his word.

What is God telling me?

What is God shaping in my life?

What is God calling me to?

What is he pointing out in my life that needs to come out?

What is he pointing out in my life that needs to be placed into my life?

I'm coming to the throne of grace because I know that Jesus is my high priest, and with his grace is there for me to come and speak directly to him.

And if I'm going to speak to him, he's going to speak back, and that means I have to listen.

I suggest that if you don't have that habit, you find a time, especially in the morning, where you get alone and you just sit with God's word and you listen.

And let him speak to you.

Present yourself as a listener.

Finally, be ready to obey what God calls you to do.

If he speaks to your life, listen.

This was hard for Samuel to step into Eli's life and to pronounce this.

And yet he was obedient because he knew that God had spoken.

And when God speaks to your life, if you will respond, you will have the same experience that the Bible described with Samuel, that he walked with God all of his days, and God spoke to him regularly.

If you will focus on him, look for him to speak, present yourself as a listener and be obedient, what he tells you, God will speak to you regularly.

That's the lesson in the teaching of God's word.

It's the promise of what it means to be a follower of Christ.

I want you to bow your heads as we close.

And I just want to ask you this question.

Are you listening to the Lord?

Are you setting aside that time to listen?

The first time that we hear the Lord and we learn to listen to Him, just as Samuel did, is that beautiful testimony that Luke gave of Ash.

He heard God speak in that first service.

He hung around, he presented himself to the Lord, and he responded to God's call for salvation.

If you've never accepted Christ as your Savior, listen, that is exactly what happened.

God speaks to you.

It may have been the first happen, time it's happened to you, or it may have been calling you.

And I'm just in the role of Eli.

Our songs and testimonies this morning are just in the role of Eli to tell you, hey, listen, God is speaking.

Listen.

If you've never trusted Christ as your Savior, we're going to invite you to give your life to Christ.

The band's going to give us one last time of worship.

After the service is over, we want you to hang around, eat, have a good time, fellowship, get to know some of our BCM students.

But we have some folks in the back.

And if you would like to accept Christ as your Savior, we're here to share with you how that works, to walk you through that journey, to encourage you in that decision.

Answer any questions that you might have.

Come see one of us after the service.

Brothers and sisters, if you are reading through and God's speaking to you as you're reading through chronology, I want to encourage you to that.

If you're new, you haven't done this, or you've gotten on track, we want to invite you to jump right in here.

1 Samuel, a new book.

It gives you an opportunity to jump right in and listen to God speak to you.

Present yourself as a listener.

Lord, we thank you that you do speak to us and you love us personally, individually.

You step into our lives, you communicate your desires for us and what you want us to do and how you want us to grow and who you save us to be.

And Lord, I pray this morning that you'll just remind us and encourage us how important it is to stop and listen as you speak.

We pray these things in your name, in the saving name of Jesus, and all God's people sin.

We pray this message has been a blessing to you and helped to strengthen your walk with Jesus.

Please know we want to minister to you and pray for you.

Send an email to contact us at fsfbc.org and let us pray for you and help you in any way we can.

Thank you for listening to Chapter and First, the Bible Teaching Ministry of Fort Smith's First Baptist Church.