Pleasure for Katrina and myself to spend time at Grace Church, Gibsonia. Always happy to preach for Jeff on the day that the clocks go forward. It wasn't until last night that I suddenly realized why he'd invited me. But I wonder if you would turn with me in your Bibles to 1 Samuel 1. According to the bulletin, it's on page 266 of the Bibles you find in the seats in front of you. First of all, though, let's ask the Lord's blessing upon the reading and the preaching of His Word. O Lord God and loving Heavenly Father, You are great and mighty and a sovereign God. You are infinite, eternal and unchangeable. You dwell in unapproachable light. The depths of Your being are a great, great mystery, far beyond our comprehension. And yet, O Lord, You have condescended to reveal Yourself to us in Your works of creation, in Your dealings with Your people Israel throughout the Old Testament, supremely, in the incarnation, life, death, resurrection, and ascension of your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Lord, as we come this morning to reflect upon deeds and acts of so many years ago, we would pray, O Lord, that you would take the lessons from your scripture and apply them with urgency to our hearts today. For we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Hear the word of the Lord. It was a certain man of Ramathayim, Zophim, of the hill country of Ephraim, whose name was Elkanah, the son of Jeroam, son of Elihu, son of Tohu, son of Zoph and Ephrathite. He had two wives. The name of the one was Hannah and the name of the other Peninnah. And Peninnah had children, but Hannah had no children. Now this man used to go up year by year from his city to worship and to sacrifice to the Lord of hosts at Shiloh, where the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were priests of the Lord. On the day when Elkanah sacrificed, he would give portions to Peninnah, his wife, and to all her sons and daughters. But to Hannah he gave a double portion, because he loved her, 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. So it went on year by year. As often as she went up to the house of the Lord, she used to provoke her. Therefore Hannah wept and would not eat. And Elkanah, her husband, said to her, Hannah, why do you weep? Why do you not eat? And why is your heart sad? Am I not more to you than ten sons? 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. She was deeply distressed and prayed to the Lord and wept bitterly. 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, 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. As she continued praying before the Lord, Eli observed her mouth. Hannah was speaking in her heart. Only her lips moved and her voice was not heard. Therefore, Eli took her to be a drunken woman. And Eli said to her, how long will you go on being drunk? Put your wine away from you. But Hannah answered, no, my Lord, I am a woman troubled in spirit. I've drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I've been pouring out my soul before the Lord. Do not regard your servant as a worthless woman, for all along I've been speaking out of my great anxiety and vexation. Then Eli answered, go in peace, and the God of Israel grant your petition that you have made to him. And she said, let your servant find favor in your eyes. Then the woman went her way and ate, and her face was no longer sad. They rose early in the morning and worshipped before the Lord. Then they went back to their house at Ramah. And Elkanah knew Hannah, his wife, and the Lord remembered her. And in due time, Hannah conceived and bore a son, and she called his name Samuel. For she said, I have asked for him from the Lord. The man Elkanah and all his house went up to offer to the Lord the early 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. Elkanah, her husband, said to her, do what seems best to you. Wait until you have weaned him. Only may the Lord establish his word. 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. And she brought him to the house of the Lord at Shiloh. And the child was young. 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 is 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. Therefore I have lent him to the Lord. As long as he lives, he is lent to the Lord, and he worshipped the Lord there." Praise God for his holy word. The Bible, of course, contains many great epic stories. Some of the most entertaining stories, I think, are in the Old Testament. The great epics of the foundation of Israel, And the story that is about to begin in 1 Samuel is one of the great cycles of the Old Testament. It's the story of the rise to power of the house of David. It occurs at a particularly interesting point in Israel's history that we'll speak about in a few moments. But I think, as well as providing us with great stories, the Bible also raises a challenge for us. Yes, these are great stories, like the Iliad or the Odyssey, like some of the great epics. Some of you are perhaps going to the cinema to see June 2 this week, one of the great science fiction epics of the day. We love entertaining grand stories. Question, of course, is what does this grand story say to us today? It deals with huge events. many, many years ago. To what extent does it speak to us today? Well, I hope in this sermon to explore something of that relative to the story of this young woman, Hannah, who will play such a pivotal role in the beginning of this great cycle within the Old Testament. First of all, it's important to notice that the story takes place really at a time of national crisis. And the national crisis is going to continue for some time. The immediate prior history of Israel, the book of Samuel, is told for us in the book of Judges. And the book of Judges, towards the end, there's a little refrain that's used a number of times. And that is, in those days, there was no king in Israel, and everyone did what was right in his own sight. And that's both a historical statement, it's telling us that the events of the book of Judges take place before the establishment of the kingdom, but it's also indicating a moral crisis. Because, strictly speaking, there is a king in Israel in the time of the Judges. The king is the Lord. We know that because when the people demand a king in a few chapters time in Samuel, the Lord makes the point that the people in demanding a king are actually rejecting Him. What is made explicit there is implicit in the Book of Judges. And if you read the Book of Judges, of course, you'll see that those last few chapters contain some catastrophic stories. The corruption of a family, the corruption of a tribe, a terrible assault and murder, and then civil war. So the nation is in crisis at this point. The priesthood. is also in crisis. You don't pick it up so much in chapter one, but in subsequent chapters we'll come to realize that the family of Eli, these are bad people. These are wicked people. The priesthood is in the grip of a very, very corrupt dynasty. We'll also learn that the nation is under threat from a serious foreign power. Philistines appear in the book of Judges, but suddenly, in 1 Samuel, they are a major power, threatening the very existence of Israel. So the first thing I'd want to say is that there's a sense in which, yeah, this is a very alien world. A very alien world. But it's also a world that I think many of us can see analogies with today. We live in a world where Everybody does what is right in their own eyes. We live in a world where power seems to be held by some very corrupt dynasties. We live in a world where there are wars and rumors of wars from powerful foreign powers. So there's a sense in which, of course, Israel is a unique world. These are God's special people. But their world is not so different to ours that we cannot perhaps understand the kind of anxieties and distresses that everyday Israelites would have experienced at this point. So we have a national problem. We also have, I think, a personal problem that many of us, perhaps all of us, can identify with on some level. The story begins in a very modest way, really. with the tale of this woman Hannah. And this woman Hannah tragically cannot have children. That's not an uncommon problem even today. And it's clearly a source of distress for this woman. One can imagine not being able to have children was then as now a source of emotional distress. for many women who suffer from it. For Hannah, of course, living at the time she did, there's an added level of social shame. Rightly or wrongly, this is a very patriarchal society we're dealing with, and rightly or wrongly in a patriarchal society, women were often judged, their value was judged by whether they could produce children. So Hannah has an extra layer of shame, not only the emotional frustration, but also the shame, and a shame that's exacerbated by the fact that her husband has two wives, one of whom seems to be remarkably fertile, remarkably productive, and very aware of her remarkable productivity because she likes to rub the face of the rival wife in it at every opportunity. puzzling, perhaps, or what pinches a little bit, is that we're told this is from the Lord. The text pulls no punches. We have this poor woman suffering personal pain, social shame, domestic trouble, and we're told that the underlying condition that causes this, her infertility, comes from the Lord. And that pinches a little, doesn't it? Here, the Bible is telling us that this personal tragedy is actually part of God's grand plan. What the book of Job lays out in very dramatic poetry, we see here in a sort of very personal clipped form in the first chapter. Her husband loves her dearly. What's interesting, of course, is that Hannah's problem is not unconnected to the national problem. What we're going to see in this first few chapters in Samuel is how the personal problem and the national problem are really pretty closely related. And the solutions are going to be very closely related as well. Israel is in a serious state of moral decline. And the Lord describes in Deuteronomy, the book of Deuteronomy, the book of the Covenant, What blessing will look like for the people of Israel? He says this, you should be blessed above all peoples. There shall not be male or female barren among you or among your livestock. So we might say the Lord is setting out there a kind of a way of gauging at this point in Israel's history, a way of gauging the state of the nation. Fertility will characterize the nation. And now the narrative focuses upon this barren woman. We might say that the barrenness of the nation is kind of summed up and exemplified in the life of this poor woman. Loneliness. Her loneliness and despair is an individual tragedy. but it's part and parcel of the national tragedy as well. Let's look then at her response. Here she is, trapped in this very bleak situation. Notice her response. Well, first of all, there's the geographical location that's significant. The temple at Shiloh. Now, of course, remember your chronology, remember your history here. Language of temple is used, but this isn't the temple that we think of in Jerusalem. It's at Shiloh. It would have been a much more modest affair. Temple in Jerusalem is a generation or two away. That will be constructed by Solomon at the peak of his powers. So we're thinking of something much more humble here. And yet, and yet, we're thinking of something that fulfills the same function. This is where the Ark of the Covenant is. The Ark that's going to have a very interesting history, of course, in the first few chapters of the book of Samuel when it falls into the hands of the Philistines. But this is the place where the Ark is set. What is the Ark? Well, the Ark is the place where God dwells with his people. The Ark is the place where God is present with his people. Now, the obvious response to that is, well, isn't God present everywhere? To which the answer on one level is yes. Well, God is present in Shiloh here. He's also present in South America. He's also present in Antarctica. God is always present everywhere. And yet, there's a special presence in the Ark of the Covenant. The Ark of the Covenant is the place of sacrifice. The Ark of the Covenant is where God meets with his people. We're told, of course, when Moses goes to the tent of meeting, that's where God speaks to Moses face to face as a man speaks to his friend. There's an intimacy there. We know that in the way we use the language of presence in everyday life. There's a difference when you're sitting at home talking to your wife. than when you're, say, I don't know, standing on a train in the subway in New York next to somebody. You might be just as physically close and present to that person, but there's a sense in which the presence when you're talking face-to-face with somebody, that's a different kind of presence. That's a richer, deeper kind of presence. She's gone to the place where God is present with His people according to His promise. And that's very important. God is present in the Ark of the Covenant according to His promise. This is where God has revealed Himself to be, we might say, a certain kind of God towards His people. Great things happen in the sanctuary. Psalm 73. It'd be patronizing to say, I'm sure you're familiar with Psalm 73. I'm sure you sing it regularly. Psalm 73, that great psalm when the psalmist is struggling with, you know, the rich live to be the rich and the wicked live very long and they die peaceful deaths. The good die young. It's so distressing. I almost stumbled until he says, I went to the sanctuary till I went to this place. And then the end became clear to me. In other words, this is a special place where a better handle, we might say, on God's purposes can be obtained. So the first thing to do, notice, is she goes to a place of spiritual intimacy where God has made certain promises. Her prayer, notice her prayer, is rooted in Revelation. O Lord of hosts, If you will indeed look on the affliction of your servant and remember me and not forget your servant, 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." Notice what she's talking about here. She talks about the Lord of hosts. She uses the covenant name. She refers to the idea of the Nazarite, the person who specially committed to the Lord by vow for a certain period of time, maybe in this case for life. She's deeply grounded in God's covenant revelation. She goes to the place of the covenant and she prays a prayer of the covenant here. Notice also she calls upon God to look upon her. Language of sight is interesting. She knows that the way God deals with his people often is that he sees them. Think of the burning bush. When God reveals himself as the Lord to Moses, the Lord says this, I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and heard their cry because of their taskmasters. Exodus 4, the very next chapter, we hear this after Moses and Aaron report to the leaders of Israel what they've seen. And the people believed when they heard that the Lord had visited the people of Israel and that He had seen their affliction. They bowed their heads and worshipped. She calls upon the Lord to look upon her, to see her in her affliction. She knows this God. She knows about Him. She knows the kind of language, we might say, that appeals to this God when she prays to Him. And what is she doing? She is praying to God in the way that we should all pray to the Lord. She asks God to act consistently with who He has revealed Himself to be. There is no sin or shame in calling upon God to be the God that He has revealed Himself to be. That is the foundational dynamic for all biblical prayer. Notice, and this I think is culturally interesting, notice Eli's response. He sees this woman, her mouth moving, apparently talking to herself, and he assumes she's drunk. That tells you a lot about Israelite culture. When I was small, you know, if you went into town and somebody was walking towards you, talking to themselves, you crossed the road to avoid them. They were clearly a lunatic. Today, I see that all the time and I just assume the person's on a phone. I use the kind of cultural practices and framework that I've absorbed and internalized to understand the behavior that I see. where Eli defaults. He sees somebody mumbling to themselves in the temple, and he assumes they're drunk. That tells you a lot about the culture. But Eli, his default reaction to this is to see her as drunk. Of course, that is not the case at all. What she's doing is she is praying as we should all pray, calling on God to act in accordance with his character as revealed in his word." Notice then, we've seen the place, we've looked at the prayer, look at the divine response. Divine response ironically comes through Eli. I think, you know, Eli's sons are wicked. Eli strikes me as a weak man rather than a wicked man. I don't think he's in the same moral league as his sons. Eli is just a bit of, he's wet. He's a bit of a waste of space on that front. And yet the divine response comes through him, and it transforms Hannah. She said, "'Let your servant find favor in your eyes.' And the woman went away, and her face was no longer sad. She'd cast her cares upon the Lord. Eli indicated that her prayer was going to be answered, and her life is transformed." Question, of course, is, well, What lesson should we draw from that? Is this an example of what to do if you cannot have children? Well, on one level, yes, one would want to say. Certainly, if that is the burden, it is perfectly legitimate to call out to the Lord and ask for relief from that. But what this passage is not telling us is that That's always going to be answered in the affirmative by the Lord. The story of Hannah is the story of Hannah, but the Lord's answer to her prayer is really his answer to the crisis of the nation. We might ask this question, if the Lord had not given her a child, could he still be said to have lovingly answered her prayer? On one level, in the short term, we might say no. He did not deal with what she saw as her immediate problem. But in the long term, I think we would say yes. God would still be the same God of the covenant promises of Deuteronomy. And He's still going to bring around the deliverance of Israel. There were probably many barren women in Israel in those days. Many of them probably went to the temple and called out to the Lord to relieve them from their suffering. Hannah is the only one of whom we know that he gave a positive answer to. Why does he positively answer Anna? Because the answer to her prayer is the answer to the people's need. The birth of Samuel has tremendous personal significance for Hannah. But the birth of Samuel is far more significant for the nation. Samuel will be the man who brings David to the throne. Growing up in England, one of the great treats of my childhood was we lived for a while in the Midlands. And if you ever go to England, I think the greatest medieval castle in the world is in a place called Warwick, Warwick Castle. And in English history, there's a great baron of the late Middle Ages, Warwick the Kingmaker. He was a powerful military lord who could have been king. But he never made himself king. He made other people king. It's a kind of Samuel figure. Samuel is the kingmaker. Hannah's problem is pressing and urgent for her. But the big problem that the Lord is solving here is not Hannah's problem. It's the nation's problem. The coming of the Christ will be the ultimate answer to Hannah's prayer. The coming of Samuel is the immediate answer to the nation's need. The thing about it, it's why I asked Chris to read Mary's song from Luke's gospel. I haven't got time to cover Hannah's song today. God willing, if I come again to preach, we'll look at 1 Samuel 2 and we'll look at Hannah's song. But there are some great parallels between Hannah's song and Mary's song, so-called Magnificat, in the New Testament. The story of Christ, of course, is very similar to the story of Samuel. Samuel's story starts with a barren woman miraculously conceiving. The story of the Christ, in some ways, begins with Elizabeth, a barren woman, miraculously conceiving John the Baptist. What will John the Baptist do? Well, as Samuel brings David to the throne, John the Baptist will prepare the way for the great king, the Lord Jesus Christ. And notice, too, And Creus already alluded to this in his exposition of the psalm. Notice how weakness characterizes both situations as well. Humility. The Lord is using weak vessels, both in the Old and the New Testament, to bring about amazing results. Hannah is the weakest of wives, and she will be used for such glorious purposes. And notice that the gloriousness of what happens to her does not make her proud. In fact, as we shall see next time, her song is pervaded with humility. She knows that what's happened to her is all of grace. She has been exalted, not because she is an intrinsically great person, but because the Lord delights to exalt the weak and the humble. It will be the same with Mary. That's where the peril in the songs take place. Commentators debate whether Mary is drawing on Hannah's prayer or not. I think she probably is. Mary seems a godly young woman who would have known her scriptures. Her song is shaped by the song of Hannah, it seems to me. Hannah's response is worship. Worship in humility. Mary's response to the coming of the Christ is worship. and worship in humility. So what might we say as applications of this passage then to us today? Numerous things. First of all, to return to the question of whether if Hannah's prayer had not been answered, the Lord would have been indicating that he didn't care for her, I think one thing we need to grasp is this. God's apparent silence should never be construed as God's indifference. I had a friend recently whose wife suddenly went into a coma last July. She'd had some illnesses over the last few years. She went into a coma in July. They're in England, but on Thanksgiving Day, she passed. And he made a comment to me that he'd prayed for 10 things during her illness and the Lord had declined nine of them. The only prayer he'd answered was that she would pass peacefully. The question is, was the Lord silent in that situation? No, I think not. I think the problem we face as human beings, and it's an understandable problem, is we see the world in front of our noses. We see the world with us at the center. And we have to do that in many ways to fulfill our responsibilities to other people. I'm not saying that that's a sinful thing to do at all. We have to take care of the world in terms of where we are placed in it. The problem, though, then, is that we can end up judging God's answers to our prayers in terms of just what we see in front of our nose. The great blessing that Hannah enjoys is this. It's that the answer to her problem happens to coincide with the answer to the nation's problem. When we pray to the Lord in times of pain and agony and the Lord seems silent, we need to remind ourselves that that is not because the Lord is silent or absent. It's because the Lord sees the big picture and however hard it can be for us to handle that, he does all things right and perfectly. for the church. Secondly, I think we need to realize that Christ's kingdom is characterized by weakness. We live at a time in our culture where cultural Christianity is vanishing very fast. And there are many problems associated with that. I've seen some conservative Christians rejoicing in the death of cultural Christianity. And I know what they're getting at. I think they're trying to say that now we'll know what true Christianity is. On the other hand, as cultural Christianity disappears, it has to be said the world gets a worse place. You see things in the high street you would never have seen 25 years ago. It's harder to protect your kids. Cultural Christianity disappears. The danger, though, in such a situation is this, that we can become very angry and start to think that the way to win things back are the ways of the world. Well, the Lord's kingdom is not like that. The Lord's way is to take a vulnerable broken young woman like Hannah and use her to be the vessel to bring the house of David into power in Israel. The Lord's way is to use an elderly barren woman like Elizabeth and allow her to conceive John the Baptist. A young teenage unmarried woman like Mary to conceive the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord's way is for the Lord Jesus Christ, not to seize kingly power, as so many of those people did as he rode into Jerusalem. Not to seize worldly power, but to die on a cross and to triumph not over against death, but through death. We need to remember that today. Martin Luther, Luther was always more long-winded than many reformed people tended to be. And when Martin Luther in 1539 is outlining the marks of the church, he outlines seven of them, not the two or three that sort of characterize Reformed thinking on the whole. But one of them is the cross. The church, he says, is marked by the cross. What does he mean by that? He says, the church is marked by outward weakness and suffering, for that is the way that God brings about his kingdom on earth. And thirdly, what should our response to all this be? Worship. When Hannah encounters the Lord, she is humbled and exalted. Exalted in her humility, we might say. And she responds with worship. She leaves the temple that day transformed because she has cast her cares upon the Lord. It's very interesting that a lot of historic Christian liturgies, the Anglican liturgy, the Orthodox liturgy, the Catholic liturgy, that the evening worship ends with people singing the nunc dimittis, now let your servant depart in peace. Why? Because the idea of gathering in worship is casting your cares upon the Lord. Each Sunday we come together to what? To worship, to cast our cares upon the Lord, to be reminded of the greatness of God and the greatness of his purposes. we leave with peace because we have met with the living God. Let us pray. Lord God and loving Heavenly Father, we ask that the example of Hannah and even more, Lord, the example of the Lord Jesus Christ in the New Testament might strike deep roots in our heart that we would know that you are a covenant faithful God who does all things well and wisely. And we pray, O Lord, that you would teach us that our weakness is an opportunity for humility, but also an opportunity for praising the God whose strength is made perfect in weakness. For we ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen.