Ministries
Resources
1 Samuel 3:7:
7Now Samuel did not yet know the LORD, neither was the word of the LORD yet revealed unto him.
When some one asks you about a certain person whether you know him, the meaning can be twofold. It may mean, just casually, whether you would know him if you met him. If the inquiry concerns his character, it means, whether you understand him.
He who on the eve of your departure abroad entrusts an important document to your care for some one living there, merely intends by the question whether you know who he is, to prevent your handing it to the wrong person. If, on the other hand, some one were to consult his father about engaging in some business with this or that man, the father's question in reply: "Do you know him?" would mean: "Are you sure that he is honorable, reliable and in his department an able man ?"
This twofold, very different meaning in this matter of knowing any one personally must be reckoned with in the uses of the term in Scripture, in religion and in the knowledge of God.
To "know" is fundamentally always to observe a difference. He who is not conversant with Botany, sees, as he goes out of doors, nothing but trees and shrubs. He, on the other hand, who has learned the difference between an oak and a beech, oleander and rhododendron, jasmine and snowball, begonia and heliotrope, knows what he sees and has learned to enjoy the riches of this knowledge. The same is true among people. If you walk through a crowded street in a foreign city you see nothing but people before and on all sides of you, who do not speak to you in passing. On the other hand, when you walk the street of your own home town almost every one is familiar to you, and sometimes you can call even the smallest child by name.
But this goes no further than the difference between one person and another. As you pass them you make no mistake. Their outward appearance is familiar to you. The moment you see them you know them.
If, on the other hand, you mean that closer and more intimate knowledge which enables you to judge of a person's character, of his inner life, endeavors and aims, you come to an entirely different distinction. Not the difference in facial features and outward appearance, but the knowledge of his utterances and feelings. Knowledge then becomes examination, the entering into the inner existence of a person.
When, in I Samuel (3:7) we read that Samuel did not yet "know" the Lord, it means exclusively this first outward knowledge. It by no means indicates that deeper, truer knowledge of the Divine Being which only springs from secret fellowship with Him.
In one of the watches of the night Samuel heard himself called by name. He heard it as clearly and distinctly as though Eli had called him. But he knew not yet the difference between the call that comes from God and the call given by a man. Three times therefore, he went to Eli saying: "Thou didst call me." And only when Eli repeatedly assured him that he had not called him, and finally suggested to him that this might be a call from God, a new light arose upon Samuel and in that voice he himself now recognized the voice of his God.
The voice is a wondrous mystery. Each man has a voice of his own. It is because of this that you at once recognize a voice in the dark as that of your father, your husband, your brother. The wonder is equally great that each man and each child should have a voice of his own, as that we should have the ability to recognize that difference between voice and voice.
And the Lord also has a voice of His own, and it is for us to distinguish that voice of God from the voices of men. He who does not understand this difference does not know the Lord as yet. He who understands it knows the Lord. And it is this provisionally still outward knowledge of God which precedes the more intimate fellowship with the Lord, and so, by degrees, attains unto the rich full knowledge of His attributes, which is eternal life.
In this knowledge of God there is a twofold dispensation.
The first in the Old and the New Testaments was the portion of the patriarchs, Prophets and Apostles. They received a special revelation from God. God spake with them through dreams, visions and appearances, and also through internal address, in their heart, or through external address, to their ear. And, of course, this might have gone on in this way, so that we, every one personally for himself, might have heard the voice of God.
But it has not pleased God so to do. It has seemed good to Him first to give His Revelation personally to Prophets and to Apostles, with audible voice or through visible appearance, and finally in the Incarnated Word.
Later, however, this changed. The revelation given up to that time has been collected in Scripture, and this revelation gathered together in full has since become the common good of all believers, the permanent durable treasure of the whole Church of Christ.
This does not mean to say that now there is no more secret fellowship with God, nor that now God can not give any one personal leading and direction. But nothing more is added to Revelation. To the truth as it has been revealed there is no augmentation. And sickly mysticism that imagines that this is still possible has not been able these nineteen centuries to add a line to the Scriptures.
The way of knowing the Lord has thereby become different for us from what it was for Samuel.
For us the Word is the voice of God. And we no longer hear ourselves called by our name. We receive no more by audible voices new light from above.
But the selfsame difference nevertheless goes on.
Scripture speaks to every man. But with this difference. One will read the Bible and not hear the voice of God in it, because he does not know Him. Another will read this selfsame Scripture and hear God's voice in it, because grace has brought him to the knowledge of God.
This is hard to understand. You, who have been permitted to grasp the mystery of the Word, and day by day to undergo its blessed, mystical operation within you, and have come thereby to a fixed, unshakable faith, stand amazed that in so many families the Bible has been laid aside; that he who still reads it finds nothing in it worthy of special note and that you find yourself bitterly opposed when you maintain that every one is in duty bound to subject himself to that Word.
And yet nothing is more simple. The many who have broken with Scripture, do not know the Lord. They do not distinguish nor recognize His voice. They do not perceive nor feel that in the Scripture Almighty God calls them and speaks to them.
And this makes the separation. This digs the abyss. This makes division in the same land between one part of the population and the other. And this is something that breeds bitterness, because these very people, who do not know the Lord and in Scripture do not hear His words nor His voice, are baptized members of the Church of Christ.
Not only do they insist on calling themselves Christians, but they pride themselves on the fact that they honor Christianity as a purely moral power, and with this understanding of it stand on higher vantage ground and are more enlightened than those who narrowly adhere to barren Creeds.
This leads to an ever more sharply defined difference between people and people.
They who do not know the Lord, who do not hear His voice, and who reject His Word are not able to put themselves in the place of their fellow-countrymen who delight themselves in the knowledge of the Lord, who refresh themselves in the hearing of His voice, and who in His Word have firm ground for their faith.
And, on the other hand, they who know the Lord can bear witness to it. They can openly confess it. They can come to the defense of the ordinances of the Lord. But they are not able to impart their faith to others. They can not open the inner ear of their fellow-men to that holy mysticism of our God.
And yet there is a difference here.
Among those who do not know the Lord there are enemies of God, who have stopped their ears to every utterance of His voice. But there are also seeking, wandering souls who envy you because you have faith, and who would thank you, if you might be the means, in God's hand, of bringing them to it.
Of the former, Jesus said: "Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine" (Matthew 7:6). With them nothing can be done except to bear with them, to suffer whatever injury they might inflict upon you, and to show them the power of your faith.
But of the latter, Jesus said: "He that is not against me is for me " (Matthew 12:30). On these the service of seeking love must be expended. These are the spiritually sick who are waiting for spiritual treatment.
A treatment of a twofold kind.
First, that you shall treat every one according to the nature of his spiritual malady. John the Baptist had a particular message for every man that came to him. And more striking still is the example of Jesus who dispensed a special medicine to every spiritual invalid. Herein lies the admonition to those who deal with all unbelievers in the same way, and who thereby show their lack of spiritual discernment.
And secondly, this treatment includes the no less urgent claim, that you who do believe shall spare them offense.
Nothing is more repulsive and more steadily offensive to those who do not as yet believe than the unspirituality of those who believe; their formal profession without moral and spiritual fruit, their zeal without the background of consecration and holiness, their bold assertions without corresponding seriousness of life.
They feel inclined to accept your sacred mysteries provided they can but discover that sacred power goes out from you. And when they see that there is no such power, that the good works which they expect from you are not forthcoming, that this higher seriousness of life is not in evidence; when on the contrary they constantly hear of hypocrites who present themselves in good form, and then prove themselves inferior in character and in their inner life to those who make no profession of the faith, they are offended by it and this holds them back from Christ.
So it was in the days of Samuel, when Hophni and Phineas abused things that were sacred, and Eli showed himself lacking in moral courage to enter righteous protests against them.
The conflict becomes so fierce!
Oh, that the children of God might understand their sacred calling, with manly courage to confess their faith; but above all else, by their family example, in their business and social activities, by their seriousness of purpose —in brief, by their whole life to be preachers of the Christ.
* * * * * * *This devotional classic offers 110 meditations on a single thought from Psalm 73: "As for me, it is good to be near to God." The author states, "The fellowship of being near unto God must become reality ... it must permeate and give color to our feeling, our perceptions, our sensations, our thinking, our imagining, our willing, our acting, our speaking. It must not stand as a foreign factor in our life, but it must be the passion that breathes throughout our whole existence."
The meditations reflect the blending of spiritual vigor with doctrinal loyalty so consistently expressed in the life of Abraham Kuyper. These are devotions with true substance, avoiding the extremes about which Kuyper adds a word of caution: "Stress in creedal confession, without drinking from the Living Fountain, runs dry in barren orthodoxy, just as truly as spiritual emotion, without clearness in confessional standards, makes one sink in the bog of sickly mysticism."
Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920) was a Dutch political leader and Calvinist theologian. Elected to parliament in 1874, he became Prime Minister in 1901 and served in that capacity until 1905. As a theologian, he revived a systematic, orthodox Calvinism. He founded the Free Reformed Church and the Free University of Amsterdam. His other works include Principles of Sacred Theology, Lectures on Calvinism, and The Work of the Holy Spirit
Further information about Abraham Kuyper's life can be seen in the translator's "Biographical Note"; further information about To Be Near Unto God can be Abraham Kuyper's "Preface" to that book.
© 2024 The Orthodox Presbyterian Church
