Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Foreign.
[00:00:05] At this time, you may want to turn in your copy of the Scriptures, maybe a hard copy, maybe an electronic copy to First Samuel, Chapter one. And you're also going to see the Scripture on the screens behind me.
[00:00:19] Most of you do not recognize who I am. My name is Harry Shields.
[00:00:25] I'm going to say a couple of things. One of the things is that I'm going to be your guest preacher this Sunday, next Sunday. And then my son and I are doing a series together, and we'll talk about that series in just a moment. And so he'll be here three Sundays from today.
[00:00:46] All that you really need to know about me is that most mornings I open my computer and I have a folder, and I'll open that folder, and I have several documents there, and I have a statement on all of those documents right at the top.
[00:01:03] This is what it says.
[00:01:06] I exist to equip the people of God through the word of God, to live for the glory of God.
[00:01:15] That's why I'm here this morning. I want to equip myself trusted in God's power that you will be equipped so that together we will glorify God in everything that we do.
[00:01:31] First Samuel, Chapter one. And please follow along. As I read, there was a certain man of Ramathaim, Zophim of the hill country of Ephraim, whose name was Elkanah, the son of Joram, son of Elihu, son of Tohu, son of Zuph and Ephrathite.
[00:01:54] He had two wives.
[00:01:56] The name of the one was Hannah, and the name of the other Peninnah.
[00:02:01] And Peninnah had children, but Hannah had no children.
[00:02:07] Now this man used to go up year by year from his city to worship and to sacrifice to the Lord, where the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas were priests of the Lord.
[00:02:23] On the day when Elkanah sacrificed, he would give portions to Peninnah, his wife, and to all her sons and daughters.
[00:02:31] But to Hannah he gave a double portion because he loved her.
[00:02:37] Though the Lord had closed her womb, and her rival used to provoke her grievously to irritate her because the Lord had closed her womb.
[00:02:49] So it went on year by year.
[00:02:53] As often as she went up to the house of the Lord, she used to provoke her. Therefore Hannah wept and would not eat.
[00:03:01] And Elkanah, her husband, said to her, hannah, why do you weep? And why do you not eat?
[00:03:09] And why is your heart sad?
[00:03:12] Am I not more to you than 10 sons?
[00:03:17] After they had eaten and drunk in Shiloh, Hannah Rose now. Eli the priest was sitting on the seat beside the doorpost of the temple of the Lord.
[00:03:27] She was deeply distressed and prayed to the Lord and wept bitterly.
[00:03:32] And she vowed a vow and said, o Lord of hosts, if you will indeed look on the affliction of your servant and remember me and not forget your servant, and but will give to your servant a son, then I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life, and no razor shall touch his head.
[00:03:56] As she continued praying before the Lord, Eli observed her mouth.
[00:04:01] Hannah was speaking in her heart. Only her lips moved and her voice was not heard.
[00:04:08] Therefore Eli took her to be a drunken woman.
[00:04:13] And Eli said to her, how long will you go on being drunk?
[00:04:19] Put your wine away from you.
[00:04:21] But Hannah answered, no, my lord. I am a woman troubled in spirit. I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I have been pouring out my soul before the Lord.
[00:04:35] Do not regard your servant as a worthless woman, for all along I have been speaking out of the great anxiety and vexation.
[00:04:48] Then Eli answered, go in peace, and the God of Israel grant your petition that you have made to him.
[00:04:57] And she said, let your servant find favor in your eyes.
[00:05:02] Then the woman went her way and ate, and her face was no longer sad.
[00:05:09] They rose early in the morning and worshiped before the Lord.
[00:05:14] Then they went back to their house in Ramah. And Elkanah knew Hannah, his wife, and the Lord remembered her.
[00:05:23] And in due time Hannah conceived and bore a son. And she called his name Samuel.
[00:05:31] For she said, I have asked for him from the Lord.
[00:05:36] The man Elkanah and all his house went up to offer to the Lord the yearly sacrifice and to pay his vow. But Hannah did not go up. For she said to her husband, as soon as the child is weaned, I will bring him so that he may appear in the presence of the Lord and dwell there forever.
[00:05:59] Elkanah, her husband, said to her daughter, do what seems best to you.
[00:06:04] Wait until you have weaned him.
[00:06:07] Only may the Lord establish his word.
[00:06:11] So the woman remained and nursed her son until she weaned him. And when she had weaned him, she took him up with her, along with a three year old bull, an ephah of flour and a skin of wine.
[00:06:28] And she brought him to the house of the Lord at Shiloh. And the child was young.
[00:06:35] Then they slaughtered the bull and they brought the child to Eli. And she said, o my Lord, as you live, my Lord, I am the woman who was standing here in your presence, praying to the Lord, for this child I prayed. And the Lord has granted me my petition that I made to him.
[00:06:57] Therefore, I have lent him to the Lord as long as he lives. He is lent to the Lord, and he worshiped the Lord there.
[00:07:09] This is the word of the Lord.
[00:07:11] So hear it and receive it and obey it for as long as God gives you life.
[00:07:20] For the next three Sundays, we're doing a sermon series. And the title is what if God is Really Real?
[00:07:30] Now, that may sound like an odd question for people who come to church, for people who have been singing to God and singing about God.
[00:07:39] But to me, it's an important question because we are living in an age of what is sometimes referred to as the age of deconstruction.
[00:07:48] Deconstruction is the kind of thing where we have faith, we talk about faith, we use religious language. And then after a period of time, because of different circumstances, we come to the point in which we say, I'm not sure that I believe what I once believed.
[00:08:05] And there are a variety of different reasons for that. To me, it reminds me just a little bit about a movie that is shown almost every single Christmas season.
[00:08:16] Miracle on 34th Street. Many of you know, the storyline goes something like this.
[00:08:21] Macy's has a Santa Claus. Every year, people come to see Santa Claus, children especially. And one year, this Santa, who's the normal guy filling the role, he's inebriated, can't show up. And so they're looking for another Santa Claus.
[00:08:36] A gentleman by the name of Kris Kringle shows up. He's hired.
[00:08:40] Everybody loves Kris Kringle. The children love him. They tell him all of their wishes, everything that they want. And he says, yes, you're going to get this wish.
[00:08:50] Well, as time passes, people begin to say, maybe this really is Santa Claus.
[00:08:56] Some people believe, especially the young ones, the older ones, they become more and more skeptical, and there's a lawsuit. They take Kris Kringle to court.
[00:09:06] Is this man Santa Claus or is he not?
[00:09:10] I'm telling you that story because sometimes we face the same thing with Santa Claus. Is he real? Is he not real? We do the same thing with God.
[00:09:18] We thought we believed in God, but we're not really sure that he's there.
[00:09:25] So what is it that we need to know about this God? If we say he's really, really God, the reason why we start to have these doubts about God is because we follow a progression.
[00:09:40] Goes like this.
[00:09:41] Starts out with once. Everybody has once. You have once this morning. Once are followed by disappointments. Not all the Time. But many times we face disappointments, and then after disappointments, we have doubts.
[00:09:53] Here's an example.
[00:09:55] You have a want this morning.
[00:09:57] Some of you want this sermon to be done sooner than later.
[00:10:03] I understand. I'll try to accommodate. But no promises.
[00:10:08] Or we might have a want in which we say, I'm going to the same restaurant after church this morning that I go to every Sunday. Last week the service was terrible.
[00:10:19] But you want for the service to be better this Sunday, but not always sure that that want will be fulfilled and you can be disappointed again.
[00:10:30] Sometimes the wants are even more serious.
[00:10:34] Sometimes we want for a marriage to be revived, for relationships to be healed.
[00:10:42] And we call out to God and we ask God to do something, and we pray one day, a second day, a third day, a hundredth day. Many days we don't see any change taking place.
[00:10:53] Why is it that God would not necessarily hear our prayers? What is he up to?
[00:10:59] Or it might be the thing that maybe someone that you know is far from the Lord and you've been praying for them.
[00:11:06] A spouse, a son, a daughter, a cousin, brother, sister, could be all sorts of things. And after a while, you begin to give up because you're not sure that God is really hearing your prayers. And so you're asking yourself, what's going on with all of this?
[00:11:23] If that's where you are this morning. And even if you're not there, you'll want to hear what God is teaching us through this passage in First Samuel, because it tells us some things about what God is up to.
[00:11:36] Here's what I like to do.
[00:11:38] Everything that I'm going to say this morning, you can hang on three hooks. Here's the first thing. Everything I'm going to say, you can hang on a hook that I'm going to call preview or overview of a passage.
[00:11:51] So we're going to talk about what the writer's doing in this passage. And then after that, we're going to come to a principle. And that's probably the most important thing I'm going to say this morning, and I hope you'll think about that principle and you'll take that principle with you into the rest of life. And then the third thing we're going to do is, after we look at that principle, we're going to probe it a little bit more so that we can see how we can practice this principle in life. So that's where we're headed. Preview, principle and practice.
[00:12:20] So with respect to the preview, we're asking another question. And that question is what is the writer doing in this passage?
[00:12:29] Every writer, especially the biblical writers, they're doing something with what they're saying.
[00:12:35] It's not just words on a page. It's not just a story. But why does God want us to understand and know this story that took place in history and in time?
[00:12:47] I want you to notice some things about the story as it begins to unfold. I want you to notice that this story has a relationship with another book in the Bible.
[00:12:57] That other book in the Bible is the Book of Judges.
[00:13:00] Now frame it up this way. I want you to notice that roundabout verse four.
[00:13:06] We are told. Actually, it's in verse three. We are told that Elkanah goes up to Shiloh to worship where Eli the priest was. And we are told just one short phrase, that the sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas were there.
[00:13:24] Nothing else is said about them in this chapter. In fact, it's a couple chapters later where we begin to hear about Hophni and Phinehas. Why is that important?
[00:13:34] Because what you're going to discover in 1st Samuel or in the Book of Samuel is that Hophni and Phinehas were not good men. They were evil men. Even though they were priests, they engaged in all sorts of corruption.
[00:13:48] Why did they do that?
[00:13:50] You can read about that in the Book of Judges.
[00:13:53] There is a line that's repeated three times in the last four chapters of that book. Here's the line. There was no king in Israel, so everybody did what was right in his own mind.
[00:14:09] Interesting phrase, because it's actually a prelude to 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings, and 1 and 2 Chronicles and no king in Israel.
[00:14:20] That was because God was to be understood to be Israel's king. Even so, Deuteronomy 17, God said, I'm going to give a king to Israel. Here's what he's supposed to do.
[00:14:33] The king, early on in his reign, he is to write out on a scroll the law of God. And then every day he's to stand before the scroll. Doesn't mean he read every word of it, but he is to read from the law of God.
[00:14:47] Here's why.
[00:14:49] Because people would begin to say, how are we to live the law?
[00:14:53] How are we to be righteous people?
[00:14:56] Oh, here's what we do.
[00:14:58] We stand and we will look at the king, how the king talks, how the king lives, because he's supposed to be living in righteousness, and we'll follow him. But there was no king in Israel, and everyone did what was right in his own Lies.
[00:15:13] You must see that relationship with the Book of Judges to understand what God is doing in this chapter and what he's doing through the rest of the book. 1 Samuel 1 has a relationship to the Book of Judges.
[00:15:26] Second thing I want you to see as we preview this passage is that it has a theme, and the theme is a theme of rejection.
[00:15:35] A spotlight falls on some different people, certainly the man in the passage, Elkanah and his second wife, Peninnah, and then primarily falls on a woman by the name of Hannah.
[00:15:48] You'll notice in verse two, it says that Elkanah had two wives. That's problematic in and of itself.
[00:15:56] But there was a reason for it. Whether it was a good reason or not, there was a reason for it. And the reason was that in ancient Israel there was no social safety net, nothing like Social Security or Medicare.
[00:16:11] And so as a couple got older and older, they'd begin to say, how are we going to live in our old age? Oh, we have children and the children will take care of us.
[00:16:22] So that's what Elkanah is thinking. And we assume that Hannah was his first wife. And as the years passed, they had no children. And Elkanah's beginning to think, what am I going to do? So he takes a second wife and she has children.
[00:16:35] Now, here's where the rejection comes in.
[00:16:38] When you look at that thing in verse two and it says, Peninnah had children, but Hannah had no children, immediately there is going to be social, cultural rejection will take place in the form of gossip.
[00:16:54] People are going to begin to say, as they walk down the street, go into the villages, into the marketplace, they're going to say, have you ever noticed that Hannah doesn't have any children?
[00:17:03] I wonder what sin she committed.
[00:17:08] That was the thinking. And so very subtly, the culture, the society, begins to reject Hannah.
[00:17:15] Cultural rejection.
[00:17:17] There's another kind of rejection. In this passage, we notice that she is also facing the rejection of the other woman. Here's why I say it. Verses 6 and 7.
[00:17:29] Verse 6 is. And her rival used to provoke her grievously to irritate her because the Lord had closed her womb. So it went on verse seven, year by year, where this other woman would provoke her.
[00:17:44] Can you imagine the great shame that Hannah must have experienced? She wanted a baby more than anything.
[00:17:54] That's a good want, that's a legitimate want, and it's not being fulfilled. So she's facing all of this disappointment, and her rival rejects her along the way. Cultural revival, rejection by the other woman as well.
[00:18:12] There's a third kind of rejection as well. We see it in verse eight.
[00:18:17] She is subtly rejected by her husband.
[00:18:22] Look at what verse eight says.
[00:18:24] And Elkanah, her husband, said to her, hannah, why do you weep? And why do you not eat? And why is your heart sad? Am I not more to you than 10 sons?
[00:18:38] If Elkanah was in your men's group, some of you would be wise to take him aside and say, elkanah, don't say that again.
[00:18:47] You mean well, but you're blowing it. It doesn't really comfort her. She feels rejection. When you say that, she's rejected by the culture, rejected by the other woman. And now she is rejected by her own husband, even though he doesn't know it.
[00:19:05] So there's a relationship with the Book of Judges theme of rejection.
[00:19:10] I want you to notice also that there is revelation in this passage, and you've already seen it. A revelation of God.
[00:19:19] Look at verses five and six. And this is significant.
[00:19:23] We are told in verse five.
[00:19:27] But to Hannah, he, that is Elkanah, gave a double portion because he loved her, but the Lord had closed her womb.
[00:19:40] Look at the middle of verse six. And her rival used to provoke her grievously to irritate her because the Lord had closed her womb. And immediately we asked the question, why would a good God do something like that?
[00:19:56] This God that we've been singing to this morning, offering up our praise, we've talked about the fact that he has loosed us from our sin and freed us from death and the bondage to death and sin. But why would a good God somehow allow this woman, even to allow us to face disappointment? What is he up to?
[00:20:19] If you read on in the chapter, you will notice that this good God, for a period of time, he closes the womb of Hannah. But later on she prays this prayer. She asks God to somehow provide her with this son, Eli. The priest comes along, and even though he's skeptical of what she's doing at first, he says, your vow is going to be fulfilled. And she's delighted. And she becomes impregnated. And she eventually gives birth to a son. She calls him Samuel because he has come from the Lord.
[00:20:51] It's the Lord has given her this son.
[00:20:54] We still have to ask the question, but why all of this time? Why doesn't God just give her a son right away?
[00:21:01] Because God is doing something. He's trying to teach Hannah something, He's trying to teach Elkanah something, and he's trying to teach Israel something.
[00:21:10] In chapter two, Hannah prays a prayer. It's in the form of a kind of a song. So apparently she not only prayed this, but she sung this song. And I want you to notice especially the last two verses of this song, verses 9 and 10.
[00:21:25] Here's what it says. He will guard the feet of his faithful ones, but the wicked shall be cut off in d darkness. For not by might shall a man prevail.
[00:21:37] The adversities of the Lord shall be. Excuse me. The adversaries of the Lord shall be broken to pieces.
[00:21:44] Against them he will thunder in heaven.
[00:21:48] The Lord will judge the ends of the earth. Now notice the last line.
[00:21:53] He will give strength to his king and exalt the horns of his anointed.
[00:22:02] But there was no king yet.
[00:22:04] And everyone did what was right in his own eyes.
[00:22:08] But God was up to something. And apparently Hannah knew it. She had been given special insight, special revelation to see that God was using her, even using her empty womb, to ultimately bring about God's perfect plan.
[00:22:24] That leads us to a principle.
[00:22:26] And if you remember anything about this sermon, if you write down anything about this message this morning, I hope you will write this down. Listen up.
[00:22:37] God is really real and he wants to incorporate your disappointments into his kingdom plans.
[00:22:49] God is really true. He's really powerful. He really exists.
[00:22:54] And in his existence, he's trying to incorporate our broken dreams into his kingdom purposes.
[00:23:03] Now, as soon as I say that, I would hope that you would have some questions. I have three that I want to pose to us this morning. Here are the three questions. One of the questions is, why should you believe that?
[00:23:18] It sounds rather painful that God is using our pain to accomplish his purpose. So why should you believe that?
[00:23:25] Second question I want to try to answer is, okay, what are God's kingdom plans? If he's incorporating us into those kingdom plans, what are they? And then the third question I want to try to answer this morning is, how do we respond if God's doing all of this? What should my response be?
[00:23:42] First question, why in the world should you believe that God wants to take your disappointments and incorporate them into his prayer? Why believe that?
[00:23:54] My quick answer is this. It is the track record of God.
[00:23:59] It is what God does over and over and over again in almost every book of the Bible.
[00:24:07] Allow me just to cite a couple of scriptures, but there are many that substantiate this fact that God is taking our discipline, transforming them, and putting us into his kingdom purposes. Here's 1 John 21:5.
[00:24:22] It's an account where Peter is following the crucifixion and the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, some of the apostles have already seen Jesus. And so word is getting around that he's alive, that the tomb is empty.
[00:24:40] On one occasion, Peter hears this. He somewhat believes it, but he comes to the point he's not sure, what am I supposed to do next?
[00:24:49] And we read in John chapter 21 that Peter says, I'm going fishing.
[00:24:55] So he gets in the boat, goes out on the middle of the lake, and he's not catching anything. And early in the morning, there's someone on the shore that says to him, caught any fish?
[00:25:07] Peter said, no.
[00:25:09] He said, well, put the net over on the right side. And so they put the net over on the other side.
[00:25:15] It was almost like the fish are attracted to that net and they catch hundreds of fish.
[00:25:21] Peter turns around and he says, it's the Lord.
[00:25:25] And he puts on his outer garment that he had taken off to go fishing. And he starts sloshing all the way to the shore. And he comes there. And here Jesus has this breakfast of fish and bread already prepared for him.
[00:25:41] The dialogue continues. And Jesus says to Peter, peter, here's what I want you to do. I want you to feed my sheep.
[00:25:50] I want you to feed my lambs.
[00:25:52] Earlier in the Gospel of Matthew, he says to his apostles, in your going, I want you to make disciples of all nations. This is what life is all about, following the resurrection. This is what I want you to do.
[00:26:08] So he takes Peter and all of the apostles in their disappointment, in their broken dreams, and begins to incorporate them into the perfect plan of King Jesus.
[00:26:20] Another passage, Romans 8, 28, 29, it says, for we know that God works all things for good.
[00:26:33] And he goes on to say in verse 29, he's doing this because those he foreknew he also predestined.
[00:26:40] Here's the key phrase, so that they might be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ.
[00:26:47] What Paul is saying in that passage is that God is using everything, even the things that you and I identify as bad things.
[00:26:55] God is using them to bring us along and to incorporate those things into his kingdom plans.
[00:27:04] Scripture consistently teaches this principle over and over and over again.
[00:27:10] First question, okay, why should I believe it? It's the testimony of Scripture.
[00:27:15] Second question that we have is, what are we talking about when the preacher says, hey, God is doing all of these things to incorporate it into a kingdom plan. But what is God's kingdom plan? This is very important because a lot of times what you and I do, we talk about Our plans, God, please bless my plans.
[00:27:36] God. This is what I want to do this week. Please bless what I want to do this week.
[00:27:41] But God has kingdom plans and he wants his followers to be part of that.
[00:27:48] So to be part of a kingdom plan, first of all means for us to come under the rule and reign of King Jesus.
[00:27:57] On one hand, I believe that the literal kingdom is still in the future, but there's a sense in which the kingdom exists right now.
[00:28:05] Jesus is the king.
[00:28:08] Now here's how this works. In Colossians 1, 13, 14, it says, for we have been delivered from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of his dear Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
[00:28:23] So there was a time, if you were a Christian, a time when you lived in the domain of darkness. You lived under the rule and reign of Satan.
[00:28:32] And then Jesus comes along through the ministry of the Holy Spirit, through the ministry of the Word, and brings you to faith in Jesus.
[00:28:39] So now you come under the rule and reign of Jesus, who is the king of the kingdom.
[00:28:46] To be part of his kingdom plans means I come under. I do whatever Jesus asked me to do, not what I want to do, what necessarily my plans are. I come under what Jesus wants me to do. Time out doesn't mean you don't make plans, doesn't mean that you can have plans for all sorts of things. And yes, you should bring those plans to the Lord, but the King has the right to change those plans along the way because he's incorporating us into his kingdom plans. Here's the other thing about coming into the kingdom plans of Jesus.
[00:29:20] That passage In Romans, chapter 8, verses 28 and 29, it says, so that we might be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ.
[00:29:32] Everything that happens in your life and in my life, God is using to make us more and more like Jesus.
[00:29:43] If you're like me, you don't always like that, like the things that we encounter. And yet God is allowing those things. Jesus is using those things to weave his image, to craft his image into our lives so that every day from here into eternity, we become more and more like Jesus.
[00:30:05] God is really real and he is incorporating our disappointments into his kingdom plans.
[00:30:15] Why should I believe that consistent, overwhelming testimony of Scripture?
[00:30:21] What does that mean? It means I come under his rule and reign so that I can become more and more like Jesus.
[00:30:27] Third question.
[00:30:28] How then should we respond to this thing that God is incorporating our disappointments into his kingdom? How should we respond? What should we do?
[00:30:38] There's probably a hundred things that we could do. But I'm just going to mention three that I see modeled in this scripture. Here's the first one.
[00:30:45] You and I, if our disappointments are part of God's kingdom plans, then one of the things we're going to want to do, we're going to want to keep on doing the basics. And here's why I say that. If you go back to chapter one, and it's mentioned three times in this chapter, it says, every year Elkanah went up to Shiloh. That's where the tabernacle was at that point in time. So every year he would go up. And the question is, why did he do that?
[00:31:15] He did it because the law of God said, this is what you're supposed to do. God had called his people to sacrifice to him in worship and in praise and in thanksgiving for God's great deliverance.
[00:31:28] So Elkanah was doing. He was obeying what God had asked him to do. He was continuing on with the basics.
[00:31:35] And somewhere he thought, if I continue with these basics, the spirit of God is going to nourish my soul.
[00:31:44] About three weeks ago, my wife and I were part of a family camp in northern Michigan off of Lake Superior. And I had the privilege of speaking at that camp.
[00:31:56] Here's what happened three times a day. 8:00am A bell range.
[00:32:02] Noontime, a bell rang.
[00:32:04] 5:30, a bell rang. And that bell meant, dinner's ready, food's going to be presented. You can go and get the food. The children would run every time the bell rang. Some of us, we'd walk a little bit slower, and we'd get to the dining room because we knew that our bodies needed nourishment.
[00:32:24] There's some things that we don't always get excited to do it, but we do it over and over. We consume food, and we also need to consume some other things.
[00:32:34] We need to be part of worship together on a regular basis because God feeds us through our worship and praise of Him.
[00:32:42] We need to take in the scriptures on a regular basis because God feeds us through the scriptures. We need to be in fellowship with one another because God feeds us and nurtures us through that fellowship.
[00:32:55] What I'm trying to tell you is this is God is going to incorporate us and our disappointments into those kingdom plans when we keep going back to the basic things that he calls us to do.
[00:33:08] Second thing that we can do, we also need to cry out.
[00:33:15] Here's why I say that. This is what Hannah did. This is what Hannah models for us. I want you to notice that different from me? Maybe different from you.
[00:33:24] Hannah never seems to have doubt in God.
[00:33:28] And she keeps coming back to talk to God over and over and over again. Look at verse nine.
[00:33:35] After they had eaten and drunk in Shiloh, Hannah rose.
[00:33:41] And following that statement, she stands up and she goes to pray. She goes to the tabernacle.
[00:33:47] Verse 10.
[00:33:48] She was deeply distressed and prayed.
[00:33:51] Look at verse 11. And she vowed, avowed, and she talks to the Lord. She prays to the Lord.
[00:33:58] Go down to verse 12. And it says, and she continued praying before the Lord.
[00:34:03] Eli initially rebukes her because he thinks that she's drunk. And she says to him, no, I'm not drunk. I've been pouring out my heart, my soul, my anxiety to the Lord.
[00:34:15] You look at Hannah and you see her as a praying woman. Even when things are difficult. She does it over and over and over again. She cries out to the Lord.
[00:34:27] Our family was part of a church a number of years ago, and it's a wonderful church. I remember a lot of things. One of the things I remember is that following every worship service, people would go to the back, to the foyer, and they would talk, like what you do on a Sunday morning, morning. And some people would go outside on a beautiful day like today. And so there's this large porch in front of the church. People would go out. I remember this one family. They had a little girl. Why do we remember things like this? This is a number of years ago. I remember a little girl, and she had a pretty little white dress on. She had white shoes. And she came out with her parents, and she went over to the railing and she went down the steps. I think there were about five or six steps. She went down the step, one by one. She gets to the bottom step and she jumps, as if I've accomplished something great at this point.
[00:35:17] She goes out on the sidewalk and she kind of looks around and she sees the parking lot. And she starts to run towards the parking lot, got halfway down that sidewalk, and plop, she falls down.
[00:35:31] I think everybody in the church saw it that day.
[00:35:34] And they wonder what's going to happen next. And she lifts her head up and she said, daddy, Daddy.
[00:35:45] Would it surprise you if I told you that Father ran down those steps, ran up to his little daughter, picked her up, held onto her, brushed off her knees, and he did it because he loved her.
[00:35:58] And can you imagine? Your Heavenly Father loves you even more.
[00:36:06] Even more.
[00:36:09] So when you're in the midst of a disappointment, not only do you need to keep going back to the Basics. But you also need to cry out to God, hear me, oh God, hear me in terms of what I'm experiencing. Third thing that you and I need to do is that we also need to offer up.
[00:36:26] Hannah says, lord, if you hear my vow, I'm going to, if you give me a son, I'm going to give this son back to you. And that's exactly what happened.
[00:36:35] Says whenever he was weaned, probably somewhere around the ages of five or six, she takes this son, along with a three year old bull, Ephah of flour, skin of wine, by the way, things that were very, very expensive in that culture of that day, and she brings them up to the tabernacle, probably presented them to Eli and says, here's my sacrifice, here's my offering, here's my son.
[00:36:59] Notice the last line in verse 28.
[00:37:02] And it said, he worshiped the Lord there.
[00:37:08] The author doesn't tell us who the he is.
[00:37:11] Is that Elkanah Eli?
[00:37:16] I'm persuaded that it was Samuel because Samuel had been discipled by his mother for probably five or six years.
[00:37:26] And she said to him, son, I made a vow to the Lord and one day I'm going to have to give you back to the Lord and you're going to be serving at the tabernacle. But let me tell you what you're doing. You're going to be doing an honorable thing.
[00:37:37] You're going to be worshiping the Lord every day of your life, and you're going to be teaching others to do the same.
[00:37:45] When you offer up, you're worshiping God, in fact, I'm going to ask you right now to do something. As I said, I don't know what you brought with you to this service today.
[00:38:01] Some.
[00:38:03] Some I'm sure have brought great grief and great disappointment.
[00:38:10] I'm going to ask you in the quietness of your own mind simply to say, lord, here I am, here's my disappointment. I give it to you.
[00:38:18] And then as you do that, in the quietness of your own mind, we're going to ask you to worship in a moment. We're going to worship in communion, we're going to worship in singing. And I'm going to ask you to join in, even if you don't understand everything that God is doing, but offer up to the God who's really real and who is incorporating your disappointments, my disappointments, into his kingdom plan.
[00:38:49] And maybe God is allowing that disappointment in your life because he wants you to know that he loves you and wants you to know that you need a savior.
[00:38:59] And God has even provided you with a savior. His name is Jesus.
[00:39:04] If you've never trusted this morning, this day, would you trust Jesus as the Lord and Savior of your life?
[00:39:15] Heavenly Father, thank you for teaching us. Holy Spirit, continue to remind us of this truth over and over and over again.
[00:39:27] Be glorified in our lives as you take our disappointments and use them to transform our very lives. For we pray this in Jesus name, Amen.
