has special significance for me, actually. It was about two years ago when it was out, and that's when our family was on a vacation in the Smokies. And on that family vacation, Susan and I took our first visit here. And we were also considering another church at the same time, and we interviewed there, or we went by there also. And I just remember sitting on a lake in the Smokies, and it was fall, it was November, And just considering the God who made all this is working out all things, including where to send my family. And I'm so glad he brought us here. Let's go to the Lord in prayer one more time. Father, we do thank you for that. You've made everything and we are just specks on a speck in a huge universe and yet, You love us like nothing else in creation. You know us each intimately and you are working all things for our good and that is amazing. We thank you for your word and we just pray that you would breathe life into our hearts through it. It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen. You can follow along in your worship programs. Right in the center, I have the scripture. We are in 1 Samuel 2. I gave you a lot of notes this week. That's not the outline. That's just some notes I thought would be interesting for cross-references or small group work. We're continuing our study in the book of 1 Samuel and with this woman, Hannah. spending two weeks on this dear saint of the Lord that teaches us so much. It's in a time in Israel's history that the Lord says every man was doing what was right in his own eyes. There was no king in Israel. And the story opens up with a man now named Elkanah, which means God is creator. And Hannah's name means grace. And it's at a time in Israel's history when we wonder where is creator God and where is his grace? There's another wife in the home, her name is Penina, and her name means the head. In other words, this odd marriage to two women represents Israel at the time who was supposed to be wed to their God of grace, creator God, instead they've made the gods of the nations their head. But God is about to do something new in Israel because Hannah cries out to the Lord, the God of grace. She has no children. She has no love really from her husband. She received no grace from the priest, but she goes to God in prayer and God gives her a son whom she names Samuel, Shemuel. His name means the name of God because the name of God will once again be found in the nation of Israel. Today in chapter two, as we open up, Hannah has raised the young boy and weaned him and she is giving him back to the Lord and now she will worship. Please listen as I read God's word. And Hannah prayed and said, my heart exalts in the Lord, my horn is exalted in the Lord. My mouth derides my enemies because I rejoice in your salvation. There is none holy like the Lord, for there is none beside you. There is no rock like our God. Talk no more so very proudly. Let not arrogance come from your mouth, for the Lord is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed. The bows of the mighty are broken, but the feeble bind on strength. Those who were full have hired themselves out for bread, but those who were hungry have ceased to hunger. For the barren has born seven, but she who has many children is forlorn. The Lord kills and brings to life. He brings down to Sheol and raises up. The Lord makes poor and makes rich. He brings low and He exalts. He raises up the poor from the dust and He lifts the needy from the ash heap to make them sit with princes. and inherit a seat of honor, for the pillars of the earth are the Lord's, and on them he has set his world. He will guard or keep the feet of his faithful ones, his saints, his holy ones, but the wicked shall be cut off in darkness, for not by might shall a man prevail. The adversaries of the Lord shall be broken to pieces, against them he will thunder in heaven, The Lord will judge the ends of the earth. He will give strength to his king and exalt the horn of his anointed. Then Elkanah went home to Ramah and the boy was ministering to the Lord in the presence of Eli the priest. And from verse 21, indeed the Lord visited Hannah and she conceived and bore three sons and two daughters and the boy Samuel grew in the presence of the Lord. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. I entitled this sermon, The Way of Hannah, or The Way of Grace, because that's what her name means. We see she lays out here sort of two categories. The proud and the faithful ones, and that word for faithful ones is just God's people, his holy ones, his saints. I've often heard that the opposite of love is not hate. That the opposite of love is actually indifference because to hate somebody, you actually have to have very strong feelings about them, but indifference means you don't care at all. I think there's some truth to that. But there's also a case that can be made that the opposite of love is actually pride. When you read 1 Corinthians 13, that great passage on love, if you take all the opposites of what it calls or considers to be love, you actually have a picture of pride. You know what I'm talking about, love is patient, love is kind, it is not boastful. Let's read it as the opposites. Pride is impatient. Pride is unkind. Pride is envious and boasts. It is arrogant and rude. Pride insists on its own way. It seeks its own interests over others. It is irritable and resentful. Pride excuses wrongdoings, takes joy in falsehood. Pride bears with self, believes in self, and hopes in self. Pride endures only with one Self. I just flipped all the words. I think you get a picture of what pride is. Additionally, we can say that pride seeks to hold up oneself at the expense of others or seeks to lower others to make oneself look better. It's pride that keeps the priest and the Levite from helping the beaten man in the parable of the Good Samaritan. It is pride that keeps religious leaders in Jesus' time and in our own from hanging out with sinners and common people. It is pride that keeps the Pharisees and the scribes from submitting to Jesus Christ because that would mean they would have to relinquish the power they've gotten. It is pride that makes the lawyer in Luke's gospel come up to Jesus and ask him questions. It says, seeking to justify himself. It's pride that won't allow us in our relationships to seek forgiveness, to swallow our own pride, to bite our tongues with our spouses or other people. Won't allow us to reconcile. Kids, how are you with your pride when a sibling does something to you? Do you wanna get them back? Is it hard to not get them back? It's pride that keeps us from asking for forgiveness. Adults, we're no better. Is it hard to bite your tongue or swallow your pride? It's the hardest thing in the world. Wives look at the husbands and laugh. I saw you. It's pride that won't let us do what we learned in Philippians, which says, do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility, count others more important than yourselves. Don't look to your own interests, but look to the interests of others. It is pride why we can't do that. Verse three really summarizes the condition of all the other sort of things you see there. Talk no more so proudly, let not arrogance come from your mouth. Arrogance and pride. The text will also talk about the powerful and the rich and people who have things and plenty, but the real problem is the arrogance and the pride. In other words, the problem is not in having things, but in how we view those things and then hold those things out against others and how we have a calloused attitude toward others in our desire to keep those things that we're prideful in. The Bible speaks an awful lot about pride, it's a reflection of our hearts. James chapter four, verse four to six says, you adulterous people, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Verse six, Therefore, it says God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. God opposes the proud. He is against the proud. He holds himself out against them. I'd hate to have God against me. Psalm 94.4 says they pour out their arrogant words, all the evildoers boast. Psalm 75, five, I say to the boastful, do not boast. And to the wicked, do not lift up your horn. Do not lift up your horn on high or speak with a haughty neck. This combination of boastful and arrogance against and being the synonym for that is wickedness. The Bible calls the wicked people, those who are proud. There you saw a little bit about the horn. A few people I've spoken to this week about this text, they were interested in the horn. She says, my horn is exalted in the Lord. And since enough people asked me about this this week, I'll just go off on a side note. The horns of an animal show their power and their strength. Hannah here is saying, my power and my strength is in the Lord. And the prideful, like I read in Psalm 75, five, it says, do not lift up your horn on high and speak with a haughty neck. You could almost think of a buck like regal with its chest out and its horns up. Look at how great I am, pride. Psalm 5, five, the boastful shall not stand before your eyes. You hate evildoers. Once again, pride and boasting and arrogance being held up as evil, wickedness in the eyes of the Lord. Proverbs 21, verse two, every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the heart. Verse four, haughty eyes and a proud heart, the lamp of the wicked are sin. When you think of the major sins in the world and in scripture and all the wickedness that comes to mind, Gross immorality and we judge the world and we say, look at you sinners in the world. Where does pride and arrogance rank up there? With the sins. Terrible things that we see in the world. How do you rank boasting and pride and arrogance? I just explained to you that God's heart to it, calls it wickedness. It's pride and arrogance that make God stand against a person. It was pride in the garden why Adam and Eve ate the fruit so they can be as if they were God. The Bible ranks pride and boasting and arrogance up with the very most worst, most heinous sins. And in Romans chapter one, after speaking about all the gross immorality that we as Christians know is evil and we see it in our world around us, it says this in the list of sins. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. He just explained all those gross sexual and moral sins. Then he says, they were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice, full of envy, murder, deceit, strife. Their gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty and boastful. Inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, and ruthless. Arrogance, haughtiness, boastfulness. God puts up there with all those lists of sins. See, that's the way of the world, the powerful are prideful. Pride's in all of our hearts, and when you are in a position of power to either get the power or maintain the power, or just trying to seek to get over on somebody, your pride and your arrogance comes out. We see lots of words for this. Verse three, proud and arrogant. Verse four, mighty and powerful. Verse five, the plenty, the full, the halves, the rich. They hold up their horns, boast. against the cries of the feeble, verse four, the hungry, verse five, the bare and the empty, the poor and the needy, verse eight. They go unheard. Why is it the wicked seem to prosper and the meek and the powerless suffer? Like what's up with that? Like when you read the Proverbs, doesn't it make it sound like, you know, just live a good, honest, ethical life and be just and treat people correctly and everything's gonna be fine for you? And then we read the Psalms and we see often the humble are beaten down and the wicked prevail. It's an odd seeming contradiction in the scripture. What is it about that? Well, Proverbs tells us how the world ought to be, should be ethical and humble. And if you live that way, you should live a good and prosperous life. and the wicked and the prideful should not prevail, but the Psalms show the reality of a fallen world where there's oppression. And the meek and the powerless and the humble actually are the ones that are suffering. They're beaten down. If you don't know what I'm talking about, if you're not familiar with the Proverbs and the Psalms or the prophetic books, Proverbs 10.2, treasures gained by wickedness do not profit. He that being God, he thwarts the craving of the wicked. That's God. Yet Psalm 73 says, I was envious of the arrogant because I saw that they were prospering. The wicked prosper. Why is that? If Proverbs 10 says they do not profit. Jeremiah 12, why does the way of the wicked prosper? And why do all the treacherous thrive? He's asking the question. Job 21, why do the wicked live, reach old age, and grow mighty in power, and their offspring are established in their presence and their descendants before their eyes? The wicked seem to do better in life than the humble. Their houses are safe from fear, and no rod of God is upon them. There's no judgment for the wicked. It's in Job. Yet Proverbs says, the Lord tears down the house of the proud, and Job said, Their houses are built up. It's a crazy backwards world. It doesn't work the way it was intended. And people like Hannah are crying out. Where are you, God? Is your hand too short to fix this problem? There are people who self-exalt and there are people who God exalts. That's what she says and sees. She reflects on how God visited her in her trial, as she cried out to the Lord in this, that we saw last week, and then she gets the child and she remembers, God does know me. More than the fact that she got what she asked for, she experienced the peace of Christ, the peace of God, as soon as she prayed, before she was ever granted her wish. She reflects on this God and says, even though things are not always right in this world and they're often backwards, God is a God of justice and he does bring justice. Verse three, the Lord is a God of knowledge and by him actions are weighed. In other words, it's very difficult in today's climate and the world in general, but think about today, like to get to the bottom of truth in any situation. But yet God is the one who can weigh actions and motives. And then verse 10. The adversaries of the Lord shall be broken to pieces. Against them he will thunder in heaven. The Lord will judge the ends of the earth. He will do this. And as Hannah had prayed and got remembrance that God knows her and he loves her, and although things are not the way they're supposed to be, it was a glimpse to her of the God of her namesake, her name being Hannah, that being Grace. He is a God of grace that knows and loves his people. And as she reflected on that and what he did for her, and then you see as this song goes on, she realizes, wait a minute, that's the way God has always worked in history. He hears the cries of his people. He lifts them up, breaks the necks of their oppressors, And although the situation might seem dark and dim, he hears you and he knows you. And while it might not be made right on your timeline, she prayed for many, many, many years. God is a God of grace and a God who is faithful to his promises and they will be made right in the future. And that's what verse 10 speaks of. God will do those things. And so like verse Psalm 121 says, I lift up my eyes to the hills. Where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord who made the heavens and the earth. It's like verse two, there is none holy like the Lord. There is none besides you, no rock like our God. Verse eight, for the pillars of the earth are the Lord's and on them he has set the world. This God who made everything and is in control of everything will judge in righteousness and he knows us. So she considered again how God works in her life and then she reflected this is the character and the very nature of God to do this, to look on the cries of the humble who cry out to him in faith She realizes she had nothing to offer. She's not mighty, she's not rich. There's nothing for her to boast in. Yet God has lifted her up. God has looked on her. She rejoices, verse one, in the God of her salvation. She didn't self-save. God gave her a child. Actually, the reason I included verse 21 there, And she conceived and bore three sons and two daughters. And this is basically a whole chapter after Samuel was already born. And then it says, and Samuel grew in the presence of the Lord. So God gave her six children. She's had Samuel for a number of years. This passage, verse 21 comes after next week's section. And there's just reminding you about Hannah. Oh, by the way, God gave Hannah what she really wanted, this child. Hannah, as a, Acknowledgement that this child could only come from God, gives the child back to God and God keeps giving her and blessing her more. It's the way of grace. Six children to the barren. But yet verse five says the barren has born seven. What is that about? Well, seven is the number of fullness and completion. In other words, her soul is filled up. But the text is telling us also that she actually had six children. So six is very close to seven. What's going on there? See, I think scripture is calling on us to anticipate more. The God of the Bible writing every one of the books, knowing exactly how they'd be constructed and put together, one unified story. Hannah. saying the barren has born seven, God giving her six children, and yet it anticipates the next time in scripture that we'll meet a Hannah. Actually, in the New Testament, she is called Anna because in the Greek, in that construction of that word, the H is silent, but we meet a Hannah in Luke's gospel. Do you remember her? Chapter two, verses 36 to 38, she too is barren and a widow for the majority of her life. And she too is worshiping and waiting and longing at the temple, the house of the Lord, just like the original Hannah. When the actual God's anointed that this Hannah mentions in verse 10 comes to the temple, Jesus Christ presented at the temple, the same way the first Hannah presented Samuel. And Hannah, this prophetess in the New Testament, holds up the baby Jesus and just rejoices in the Lord and tells everybody about him. In other words, the first Hannah anticipates a future Hannah that will actually see the coming Messiah that she foretells here in verse 10. He will give strength to his king and exalt the horn of his Anointed, the word anointed is the word Mashiach or Messiah. In the New Testament, it's the word Christ. It's the foretold one that the Old Testament kept foretelling all the way back to Genesis three, through every book in the Old Testament, up to the fulfillment of who this would be in Jesus Christ. God is a God of grace. She prayed for one child. He gave her six with the promise of a future one. But that's what grace is. You overflow, you get what you don't deserve. And not only do you get what you don't deserve, a free gift, you get it in abundance like Ephesians 3. Not to him who was able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think. according to the power at work within us, that being the spirit. Or other translations say, to him who does exceedingly abundantly more than we can imagine. You pray for one thing and you get overflowing grace in your life. As I've said last week, women who can't conceive in the Bible called barrenness, they anticipate something, that God is about to show up in a big way for his people. And so last week we looked and we saw how Hannah's not being able to conceive, but then having this child and giving him the Nazarite vow. And this child, Samuel, will present God's anointed, first Saul who'll be rejected, then David whose line will continue forever, anticipates Elizabeth. Another woman who can't conceive, but then miraculously conceives a child who will also have a Nazarite vow, John the Baptist, who will baptize, i.e. anoint Jesus Christ, the greater son of David, the true anointed of God. Hannah's looking at her own story and realizing this is a part of the big story. The idea that Creator God, who upholds the pillars of the earth, the foundations of creation, like, if you are in Christ, you are a part of the story. And every time he does something in your life, something worthy of a redemption song, a song of salvation, song is, it's a reminder that this is who God is, this is how God works and has worked, and this is how he's going to work to fulfillment. When you look around and you see injustice in the world, you say, where's God? Why is not judgment coming to the wicked? It will. But that doesn't make us proud because we remember that we were once wicked. Remember, he calls the prideful and those who boast in our arrogance, wicked. We think wicked means something else. She thinks forward to the coming Messiah, the anointed. In the immediate context, we'll see that in the book of Samuel, they're gonna anoint kings. But the ultimate judgment that she's talking about from the Lord, the Lord will judge the ends of the earth, comes through Jesus Christ, God's final anointed, the one that all the kings were moving toward. And when Jesus hits the scene, in Isaiah 40, This is what was foretold. This is what we're seeing in our text today, this idea where the high get taken low and the low get raised high. And so we see this in Isaiah 40, for instance. Comfort my people, speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry to her that her warfare has ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the Lord's hand double for all her sins. It's done. A voice cries in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord. Make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up and every mountain shall be made low. And the uneven ground shall become level and rough places a plain. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed. Mountains going low, valleys coming high. The prideful being made low, the meek and the humble being elevated in Christ. John the Baptist came foretelling this. A voice crying, one in the wilderness, quoting from that. Make straight your paths. When Jesus came, he came preaching. We remember the Beatitudes. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. There's no room for pride in there. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. How do you get pure in heart? Can you make your heart pure? Blessed are the persecuted for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Luke 18, in the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, he told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and treated others with contempt. Is that not the definition of pride and arrogance? Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. And the Pharisee by himself prayed thus, God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all I get. That's boasting, that's arrogance. But the tax collector standing far off would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, beat his breast saying, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. I tell you this man went down to his house justified rather than the other for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled and whoever humbles himself will be exalted and mountains will be made low and valleys will come high because Jesus Christ is the great corrective in history. And this is not based on pride, it's based on grace. It's based on grace. He is the Messiah. the anointed one, the one who brings salvation, the one who does this, the one who hears the cries of powerless people that can't hold anything out before God except cling to his cross. We see that she has made a distinction between two groups of people, symbolically the poor and the rich, those who have, those who don't have, the powerless, the powerful, But as I told you, really it goes back to that category of the prideful and the arrogant. And I bolded in your bulletin verse nine. He will keep a guard the feet of his saints, but the wicked shall be cut off in darkness. Now who are the wicked? Those are the prideful. I showed you in scripture there, that's always a synonym. Those who boast are the wicked. But who are the faithful ones? And I parentheses the faithful ones, and I put the word saints there. I did that for a reason, because what's the word faithful mean? If you think about the word faithful, how would you define it? Most likely you're going to works, to diligence, somebody who is diligent to do. It's what we think of, it's wrong. What do you get when you put the word full on a word in English? What's the root of the word faithful? It's faith. A faithful one is one who is full of faith. But somehow we think, well, that person is faithful when they're diligent. That's not what in the parable of the talents, what the worthless servant is called, who was diligent to save his, Master's gift. See, faithfulness is acting in faith. When you add the word full to another word, it means it's a person who embodies the characteristics of this. And yes, it'll manifest itself in diligence, because you are acting in faith. That's Hebrews 11, the hall of faith. By faith, this person did this. By faith, this person did that. That's James chapter two. That's the book of Galatians. None of your legalism matters. The only thing that matters is faith expressing itself in love. Faith expresses itself. How? In love, which I said is the opposite of pride. If the minute you think or I think that God has done something to me because I am faithful and we define faithfulness as my work for God, that now he will do this for me, we've just gone to the way of the world. That's the way of pride. So when we think of faithfulness, we need to be thinking of one who is full of faith, who does things in faith. Hannah didn't come to God, like I said last week, she brought her sacrifice, but she didn't just leave it as a sacrifice. She went and poured out her heart to God. She could have just dropped her sacrifice off and then said, well, I was faithful to leave a sacrifice. God will now do for me. That's the way of karma. That's not the way of grace. The way of grace acknowledges that anything we have that is good in our lives we don't deserve, and it's a gift. And we get to enjoy all those gifts that we have, like our families and our jobs and material things that we have. We even get to enjoy those because of that, the cross behind the shade there. Because otherwise we're just heaping judgment on ourselves. That word there in the Hebrew is a word that means God's people. So I'm not sure why the ESV translated faithful ones, but God's people are God's faithful ones. It's also the word for holy ones, the word for saints. I've often heard Christians, as I said, refer to faithfulness as sort of our diligence. I'm missing a page. We're gonna see how this is gonna go. How could that be? Oh, there it is. Your faithfulness means you are living, acting, breathing in faith. You are full of faith. Faith receives grace. What does Ephesians say? You have been saved by grace through Faith. Faith is the mechanism by which you receive grace. Hannah's name meaning grace. She prays in faith, she gets what her name means. But that's not quid pro quo. That's not God gave her something because she prayed. That's being connected to the source. Faith. God gives her a heart of faith and then he sees her faith. Romans 1, the righteousness of God that we get comes by faith for faith. God gives us faith to believe we get Christ's righteousness, and then as we stay connected to the vine, we get more grace to have more faith, to get more grace to have more faith, until we go to be with him. Faith receives grace. It says, the text says that he will guard the feet, which is the word for keep. He's the one keeping us. He's the one guarding us from straying away from this. That is why you could be sure that you are going to still have faith. It's the perseverance of the saints. He is holding onto you. John chapter six, you guys know it. Jesus says, I am the bread of life. By the way, Hannah said he feeds the hungry, right? The hungry are no longer hunger. Verse five, those who were hungry have ceased to hunger. Jesus says, I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. He's talking to the Jews here. I say that to you, but you have seen me and you do not believe. Faith, the word for belief is faith. All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out, for I have come down from heaven not to do my will, but the will of whom who sent. And what is the will of God who sent Jesus? What is the will of the Father who sent the Son? And this is the will of Him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all He has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes, has faith, should have eternal life, and I will raise Him up on the last day. If you believe in the inerrancy of Scripture, you must take that logic for what it says. You get belief because God has willed it. You believe you are given to Christ and he will hold on to you and he will not let go of you. Romans 8, if God is for us, who can be against us? That's the summary of Romans 8 explanation of this whole thing. He who foreknew you will glorify you. If God is for you, who can be against you? Nobody can rip you out of Jesus' hands. This is grace. This is the acknowledgement of it. It's absolutely the opposite of boasting because we cannot boast in it. In Romans 3.27, Paul says, what becomes of boasting that it is disincluded or not included or excluded by the law of faith? In Philippians, we learn Paul saying, all my past accomplishments that I was so proud in and I used to boast in, I count as rubbish, because it was keeping me from knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord. In 2 Corinthians, Paul says multiple times, what will I boast in? Not my accomplishments, I will boast in my weakness. Because when I am weak, then I am strong, because Christ Jesus' strength, His horns are exalted, not our own. The way of faith says with Hannah in verse one, I am delivered by you, Lord. I rejoice in your salvation. There's no rock like our God. No rock like our God. What an awesome verse. Reminds me of Zechariah 4. Six and seven. Then he said to me, this is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel, not by might nor by power, but by my spirit, says the Lord of hosts. Who are you, O great mountain, before me? You shall become a plain. Again, the high place is being made low. And he shall bring forward the top stone amid shouts of grace, grace to it. Or grace from the beginning to grace to the end. For not by might shall man prevail. That was verse nine. Verse two, there is no rock like our God. Ephesians 2.20 says the church is built on the foundation of the apostles with Christ himself being the cornerstone. 1 Peter 2, Acts 4 all tell you the cornerstone that was rejected was Jesus Christ. 1 Corinthians 10 tells us that the rock that was struck in the wilderness by which living waters flew, it says, and the rock was Christ. I couldn't tell you how many times the word rock is used for God in the Old Testament, and then it's applied to Jesus Christ in the New Testament. No more significantly than in the Synoptic Gospels, Matthew 16, for instance. Who do people say that I am? This is Matthew 16, verse 13. Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah or other prophets like Jeremiah. But who do you say that I am? Simon Peter said, you are the anointed one. You are the Christ, but that's what that is. You are the Christ, the son of the living God. We know from the gospels, we know from scripture that to be called the son of God was to be God. That's why he says the Jews wanted to kill him because claiming God as his father, he was claiming equality with God. You are the anointed one. You are the Christ, the son of the living God. Jesus says, blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my father who is in heaven. And I tell you, this. You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." It's a play on words there. You guys probably know Peter is Petros, and rock is Petra, and they say, well, there's a difference between those two because we don't want to say Peter's supposed to be the Pope. whatever's going on in the Greek with the two words, Peter just says, you are the Christ, the son of the living God. Jesus does make a wordplay between Peter's name of rock, but he says on this rock, not on you, on what rock? On the proclamation that you are the Messiah, the anointed one, the Christ, the son of the living God. And here Hannah anticipates that. He will give strength to his king and exalt the horn of his Christ. That's what the word anointed mean. English is anointed, Hebrew is Mashiach or Messiah, Greek is Christos or Christ. It's all pointing to Jesus, all of this. Grace isn't about who has or who can do, it goes to the undeserving. That's what this song is saying. It's not to those who have, it's not to the powerful, it's not to, it goes to the undeserving, those who don't have. It's the way of grace, the way of Hannah. Verse one, the way of grace rejoices in the holy God of our salvation. Verse two, the way of grace clings to the rock, which is Jesus Christ. and stands on the rock, which is Christ. Not on shifting ground of our own pride and arrogance and accomplishments. We stand on Christ and Christ alone. He is the solid rock on which we stand. Verse nine recognizes while that she's standing on the rock of God by faith, she is guarded, safe and secure and will persevere to the end. Jesus got you in the palm of his hand, that's grace. The way of grace is acknowledging that. And the way of grace looks to the coming of the promised eternal King, God's anointed Messiah, who will come in glory. Way of grace, when we see injustice in this world that goes on judged, we remember that the greatest act of injustice was suffered by the Messiah, the anointed, that's supposed to make all things new and right again. He lived a life that you and I fail to live and died the death that we deserve to die so that we can get forgiveness and be given that which we don't deserve. See, the way of grace acknowledges that. They'd even know the injustices in the world that this King is reigning will bring judgment and justice. We saw that in Philippians 4, every knee will bow, or two, every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. It freezes up not to judge others because God will be the judge. So the way of grace then freezes up to love others. We can love one another because we would want to share the grace that we have that we know that we don't deserve with a dying and lost world. This is the way of grace, not the way of the world, which is the way of pride. This is the way of Hannah. May grace overflow in your lives, men of you. Let's pray. Father in heaven, thank you for this dear saint, this dear woman of faith who came to you with nothing to offer except that you desire that you would know her. That's what she says. Do not forget me, Lord. And you didn't, and you do know her. Help us, Lord, to be on the path of faith and the way of grace, not on the path of pride and power. It's only by your son Jesus' name that we can do this. He is our solid rock. We cling to him. It's in his name we pray, amen.