WHOEVER

CALLS UPON

THE NAME OF THE LORD GOD

  SHALL BE SAVED (ii)

                                         Men Who Called On God

King David

2 Samuel 22:3-7  The God who is my Rock, in Him will I trust. He is my Shield, and the Horn of my salvation, my High Tower, and my Refuge, my Savior. You save me from violence.  4  I will call upon Jehovah, who is worthy to be praised. And I shall be saved from my enemies.  5  When the waves of death encircled me, the floods of ungodly men made me afraid.  6  The sorrows of hell hemmed me in. The snares of death went in front of me.  7  In my distress I called upon Jehovah and cried to my God. And he heard my voice out of His temple, and my cry entered into His ears.

King David was anointed  the new ruler of Israel and suddenly he faced a lot of tribulation and very distressing times. Before God that was the period of preparation for him.

However we found that David was into the business of calling on the Lord, which explains why he was a treasure trove of wisdom and also why he was delivered from all his enemies.

Prophet Elijah

1 Kings 18:23-24  And let them give us two bulls, and let them choose one bull for themselves, and cut it in pieces and lay it on wood. But place no fire. And I will dress the other bull and lay it on wood, and place no fire.  24  And you call on the name of your gods, and I will call on the name of Jehovah. And it shall be, the god that answers by fire, He is God. And all the people answered and said, The word is good.

1 Kings 18:36  And it happened at the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice, Elijah the prophet came near and said, Jehovah, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and of Israel, let it be known this day that You are God in Israel, and that I am Your servant, and that I have done all these things at Your Word.

At a time when King Ahab had led the nation of Israel to completely forget about God and only worshiped Baal the Prophet Elijah proposed a contest between him and the servants of baal.

He suggested that he would call on Jehovah to send fire from heaven and baal prophets would also call on baal to send fire down from wherever baal was, and the God that will send fire would be the God that must be worshiped in Israel.

Elijah called on the Lord and as sure as He is, He sent fire from Heaven.

King Jehoshaphat

2 Chronicles 18:30-31  And the king of Syria had commanded the commanders of the chariots with him, saying, Do not fight with small or great, but only with the king of Israel.  31  And it happened when the commanders of the chariots saw Jehoshaphat, they said, It is the king of Israel. And they surrounded him to fight. But Jehoshaphat cried out, and Jehovah helped him. And God moved them to leave him.

King Jehoshaphat was a good king but he married the daughter of King Ahab and Jezebel, the wicked royal couple.

King Ahab wanted to go to war against the Syrians and he sought the help of his son-in-law Jehoshaphat.

As the battle raged on Jehoshaphat entered a trap of the Syrian army and nearly got killed, but he immediately cried out to the Lord and his life was preserved.

The nation of Israel

Ezra 10:1-3  And when Ezra had prayed, and when he had confessed, weeping and casting himself down before the house of God, there gathered to him out of Israel a very great congregation of men and women and children, for the people wept with a great weeping.  2  And Shechaniah the son of Jehiel, of the sons of Elam, answered and said to Ezra, We have sinned against our God and have taken strange women from the people of the land. Yet now there is hope in Israel concerning this thing.  3  And now let us make a covenant with our God to put away all the women, and such as have been born of them, according to the counsel of the Lord, and of those who tremble at the commandment of our God. And let it be done according to the Law.

The nation of Israel had just returned from captivity and the men had returned home with foreign wives and their off springs.

When Ezra the Prophet realized that the people had sinned against the Lord God, he begun to weep and call on the Lord on behalf of his people, and because of that the men came to the realization of the disobedience they were walking in and as a result took a unique decision to send their foreign wives back to their countries so that they will be in the pleasing perfect will of God.

Samson

Judges 16:28-30  And Samson called to Jehovah and said, O, Lord Jehovah, remember me, I pray You, and strengthen me, I pray You, only this once, O God, so that I may be at once avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes.  29  And Samson took hold of the two middle pillars upon which the house stood, and on which it was held up, of the one with his right hand, and of the other with his left.  30  And Samson said, Let me die with the Philistines. And he bowed himself mightily, and the house fell upon the lords and upon all the people in it. So the dead whom he killed at his death were more than those he killed in his life.

Samson was a judge raised by God to persecute the Philistines who had decided not to let the nation of Israel have any peace.

Samson had extra ordinary strength from God to annihilate his opponents  but then he had a weakness for strange women.

After revealing the physical source of his strength which was his uncut hair, Delilah his Philistine  spouse gave the secret to her Philistine kinsmen who seized that window of opportunity and cut Samson’s hair and thereby seized and took him into captivity.

In captivity they gouged his two eyes and they mocked and ridiculed him and then decided to put him on display in their temple to celebrate his demise.

One thing the Philistines forgot was that his hair had begun to grow so on the day of the festival whilst they were busy celebrating his defeat he called on the Lord and God gave him so much strength that he killed more Philistines that day than he did during his lifetime.

Hannah

 Now Hannah spoke in her heart; only her lips moved, but her voice was not heard: therefore Eli thought she had been drunken.  1 Samuel 1:13 And Eli said to her, How long wilt thou be drunken? put away thy wine from thee.  1 Samuel 1:14

And Hannah answered and said, No, my lord, I am a woman of a sorrowful spirit: I have drank neither wine nor strong drink, but have poured out my soul before the LORD.  1 Samuel 1:15

Hannah was barren and thereby became an object of ridicule to her rival. So each year when they went to temple of the Lord she decided to cry out and call on the Lord after her husband made it clear to her that he was not God to help her.

At  another visit to the temple of the Lord she revved up her call to the Lord pouring out her soul in desperation.

The Prophet saw her and thought she was drunk because of the manner in which was crying to God.

Prophet Eli questioned her and declared a blessing upon her. And it came to pass that she gave birth to a son whom she named Samuel who became the greatest Prophet of Israel, apart from Moses and Joshua.

God will not answer our calls to him

1. If we hate knowledge

2. If we do not fear God

3. If we Reject the counsel of God

4. If we Despise the correction of God

Proverbs 1:28-31  "Then they shall call upon me, and I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me;  29  instead they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of Jehovah.  30  They would have none of my counsel; they despised all my correction,  31  and they shall eat the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own desires."

The promise of God is that whoever calls upon Him will be saved however we need to be careful not to fall into any of the four groups listed above.