Tag: hannah

1 SAMUEL #2. THE WOMAN WHO BELIEVED GOD WAS IN CONTROL

On By Pastor TomIn 1 Samuel, Old Testament, Podcast, Religion, Sermon, Uncategorized1 Comment
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The idea that God is in control raises many objections for some people, but even before her situation was totally changed, Hannah found peace, comfort and joy in the fact that God is entirely in control.

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1 SAMUEL #2. 1 SAMUEL 2:1-11

Not long ago, we were looking at various psalms. I said at the beginning of the series on the psalms that in every case where we know the author of a given psalm, it was written by a man. I want to make sure I was clear though, that there is still the possibility that some of the psalms were written by women, it’s just that we don’t know which ones might have been. However, here we have a psalm that we know for certain was written by a woman: Hannah, mother of Samuel.  I might call this particular psalm an example of “prophetic poetry.” Hannah is proclaiming God’s truth through poetic language, and there are several important truths to look at here. One reason I call it prophetic is because even though Hannah wrote this about her own life, in a big-picture kind of way, it reflects what God is doing, and will do, for the entire nation of Israel during the lifetime of her children and grandchildren.

When Hannah says, in verse 1 that her “horn is lifted by the Lord,” she is using pictorial language that would have been understood by the people of her time, but probably not by most modern readers. The horn was a symbol of strength, power and victory. So by saying this, she means that the Lord has given her strength, and victory.

No doubt Hannah was thinking of her husband’s second wife, Penninah, when she writes about her adversaries, or says things like: “Do not boast so proudly.” But the things she writes about could apply to the whole nation of Israel. The whole nation was poor and needy, seemingly neglected by God, at that time. Other nations dominated the Israelites, and were proud and boastful about their power. But God was about to give the Israelites strength and honor, in part, through Hannah’s son, Samuel. The mighty nations around them were about to be humbled, while the poor and needy Israelites would soon find themselves to be a dominant power in the region.

The heart of Hannah’s psalm is verses 6-9:

6 The LORD brings death and gives life;
He sends some to Sheol, and He raises others up.
7 The LORD brings poverty and gives wealth;
He humbles and He exalts.
8 He raises the poor from the dust
and lifts the needy from the garbage pile.
He seats them with noblemen
and gives them a throne of honor.
For the foundations of the earth are the LORD’S;
He has set the world on them.

1 SAMUEL 2:6-9

This is not just about Hannah’s life, nor even just the life of Israel. These verses declare an important truth that is often hard for us to get our heads around: God really is in control of everything.

Before we dive deeper into this, I want to make  sure to reiterate another biblical truth: human beings are responsible for their own actions. The Bible makes that very clear. We are held accountable for what we do. That is one reason we need Jesus: because every human being does sin, and break faith with God. We need forgiveness, and that forgiveness is found only through Jesus Christ. If we weren’t responsible for our own actions, we could not be considered accountable for our sins. But we are accountable for what we do, and since we all sin, that means we need Jesus.

22 God puts people right through their faith in Jesus Christ. God does this to all who believe in Christ, because there is no difference at all: 23 everyone has sinned and is far away from God’s saving presence. 24 But by the free gift of God’s grace all are put right with him through Christ Jesus, who sets them free. 25-26 God offered him, so that by his blood he should become the means by which people’s sins are forgiven through their faith in him.

(Romans 3:22-26, GNT)

Sometimes the Bible describes two truths that need to be held in tension with one another. On the one hand, we are responsible for our own actions. On the other hand, as Hannah tells us here, God is entirely in control.

I want to share two analogies to help us wrap our heads around this. The first comes from the laws of physics. In general at the level of our everyday experience, physical things are either particles, or waves. A particle is something with physical mass in a specific place. Think of a piece of wood. The wood is made up of a bunch of particles. They don’t move, and they weigh something – they have mass. For an example of a wave, think about sound. You don’t have “a piece of sound.” It doesn’t really weigh anything. Instead, sound is a wave that acts on the air ( or other medium) through which it travels, pushing it in wave patterns that act against our eardrums. So you have particles, or you have waves.

And yet, when you get to quantum physics, suddenly some things can act like both particles and waves, especially light. Light appears to be both a particle, and a wave. It doesn’t really make sense, but it’s true anyway. Both things are true. In the same way, the Bible describes two truths that seem in conflict: we are entirely responsible for our own free choices, and, at the same time, God is entirely in control.

Here’s another analogy. I write murder mysteries – I like to say I kill people for fun and profit (to be clear, I’m talking about making up stories where certain people die, not real killing). Early on I noticed that sometimes, as I was writing, I “realized” that my characters wanted to do and say things that I hadn’t originally planned for them. I have since found out from other writers that this is fairly normal.

Now, I’m the author, the only author of my books. No one in my books can do anything at all unless I write it. At the same time, I’ve realized if I want to write stories that ring true, I have to allow my characters to choose things that are consistent with the kind of people I’ve made them to be, and sometimes those things surprise me, or turn out to be different from what I had originally planned for them. In my first book, there are two main bad guys. I had plans for one of them to repent of his wrongdoing at the end. But when I got to that point in the story, I realized that the kind of man that he was, and the choices he had made up to that point meant that he would not really repent. He was too proud, for one thing. I could have made him repent, but it would have made a bad story. My readers would have known that I, as the author, intruded on the story and forced it. They would have sensed that the story did not reflect reality, that my characters were not real people, free to make real choices. Now, on the other hand, even when I allowed the character to choose a different path, I was the one writing it. He couldn’t have moved a muscle without me. But on the other hand, he “chose” something different from my original plan. The path he chose turned out worse for him than I wanted it to be.

So, what does this have to do with 1 Samuel 2:6-9? Human beings are truly morally free agents. We are responsible for what we do. But, at the same time, nothing that happens is out of God’s control. He allows us to do things that he wishes we would not do, but nothing in this world is ever out of his control. Both things are true at the same time.

All right, having established both of those truths, I want to, like Hannah, spend some time focusing on the truth that God is in control. I think most of us understand instinctively that human beings are free agents, responsible for the choices we make. But we often struggle to believe that even so, God is in control, and we can trust him. Some people think that if God is really in control, he must be some kind of monster, because so many horrible things happen in this life, and if he is in control, why can’t he stop them?

That kind of question is worth a whole book, not just a paragraph or two in the middle of a sermon. But I’ll offer two suggestions. First, because we human beings do, in fact, make free choices for a which we are responsible, we often make a big mess of things. For instance, God did not choose the Second World War. It was largely the choices made by leaders in Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan that made that happen (along with other choices by leaders in other countries). It’s true, God could have stopped it, but if so, he would have had to take away human free will. And when you take away human free will, you take away love.

The essence of love is that one has a choice to love, or not love. If you take away the choice to not love, then love itself is no longer real. But to not love a perfect, good God is ultimately to choose evil. Even indirect suffering, like sickness and death, is a result of the fact that the first humans chose to rebel against God. So my own intense chronic pain is the result of the fact that sin is in the world. It isn’t anyone’s fault in particular (unless maybe Adam and Eve’s) but it is a result of the fact that human beings as a race chose to not love God, and so corrupted not only human DNA, but the entire natural creation. In other words, it is not God’s direct doing. If all human beings had chosen to never forsake God, I wouldn’t be in pain, babies wouldn’t be born disabled, and human beings wouldn’t hurt one another. So if God brought an end to suffering by making it impossible to choose anything that leads to suffering, then he would also make it impossible to truly love.

The second thing is that the bible’s teaching that God is in control of everything is an invitation for us to trust him. When we respond to that invitation, and do, in fact, trust him, the result is often wonderful grace and comfort.

 I will have to stop writing this soon, and take a break, because it is becoming difficult to maintain focus through the intense pain that I am experiencing at this moment. Even with this level of pain, the knowledge that God is in control of my pain has brought me deep and wonderful comfort.

(I’ve had my break. In fact, it’s the next day now). Let’s start with the alternative. If God does not want my pain to continue, and yet it does continue (as it has), that would mean he is not all-powerful. It would mean that I am at the mercy of something stronger than God. It would mean that there are forces other than my own choice, that can take me away from God’s plan for my life, and keep me from his help. If God is not in control of my pain, we live in a horrific world where not even God can help us in our suffering. If God is not in control of my suffering, then I am utterly alone. Life is very difficult, and I am beyond God’s help. That is not a helpful, or comforting idea.

Now, someone might ask, “But Tom, if God could change someone’s terrible circumstances, and yet he doesn’t do it, doesn’t that make God cruel, or at the very least, uncaring?”

The thought behind that question often causes people to lose their faith. Thankfully, I didn’t experience my eight years of suffering until I had already experienced almost forty years of following God. So, I couldn’t abandon my faith over my suffering, because I already knew God too well. I have experienced too much, studied too much, thought too much, to convince myself that God isn’t real, or that he isn’t loving, or that he isn’t powerful. What I did have to learn is that I don’t know what God knows, and in many circumstances, I am simply not capable of comprehending why he might do something, or not do something. God’s control, even of my suffering invites me to trust him beyond my own understanding.

Little children don’t always know why their parents do things. Sometimes parents take their children to a cold room, where a stranger in a white coat stabs a needle into the child. How could loving parents do that? Are the parents not strong enough to protect their children from being stabbed with needles by strangers? Does this mean the parents don’t care about their children?

Sometimes, if the child is seriously ill, parents make their children go through far worse things than just being poked with needles. Childhood cancer and chemotherapy come to mind as examples of this. The children in those cases are often too young to really understand why they have to suffer in this way. Their only real hope of peace and comfort is to trust their parents; trust that their parents love them, and want the best for them, and are in fact, making sure that everything that happens is for their best good.

Hannah’s viewpoint was one of trust. Remember, at this point, she had borne Samuel, and then brought him to live apart from her. She had other children, but that was not until later. She wrote this psalm before everything turned out better for her. That’s trust! She learned, and gave us an example of, the kind of joy and peace that comes when we trust that God is in control of all things.

This is our best chance for peace and comfort as well. We often won’t understand why we, or our loved ones might have to suffer. But, I tell you, speaking from personal experience, the best path to peace and comfort is in admitting that I don’t know what God knows, and trusting that he loves me, even when I can’t understand what is happening.

If ever I begin to doubt that love, the best antidote is to look at Jesus. He literally went through hell for me, so I cannot doubt that I am indeed loved. That helps me trust in a God who is indeed in control. I pray you can do the same.

The Woman Who Wanted

On By Pastor TomIn Bible Teaching, Christianity, Church, Faith, Old Testament, Sermon, UncategorizedLeave a comment

mother

 

To listen to the sermon, click the play button:

 

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This is the first in a new series on the book of 1 Samuel. This is an exciting and interesting historical book, and many of the most famous bible stories come from it. It is always important to have a little background about a biblical book, so that we can understand it in context. The events recorded in 1 Samuel took place roughly three-thousand years ago.

This was a very unsettling time in the history of the people of Israel. It was roughly four-hundred years after the time of Moses and the Exodus. The Israelites certainly had their problems in the wilderness, but at the end of it all, they had entered the promised land as a united nation, under strong leadership. However, once they began to settle the land, they splintered back into a loose confederation of tribes. Worse, they ignored the Lord’s command to drive out and completely eliminate the pagan cultures around them in the land. What followed was a few hundred years of the darkest times in their history. They forgot God, and began to adopt the pagan practices of the peoples around them – the very people whom they were supposed to drive out. They were oppressed by those same people, and frequently various areas and tribes of Israel were almost slaves to other cultures. God did not forget them. He used the negative circumstances to remind them about Him. When they prayed for his help, He answered and saved them, but usually within a generation or so, they forgot Him again, and went back to a cycle of worshiping false gods, being oppressed by the surrounding people. Then they remembered God again, and asked for his help, and so the cycle continued. The people were ignorant of God, brutal, and divided. At the time recorded by 1 Samuel this had been going on for long, most people probably felt like this was just how life was. There was certainly no reason to hope or expect that anything could ever change and be permanently different.

The nation of Israel was supposed to be united by their common faith, and they were meant to function as a nation by following God, as they had during the Exodus. Because God was supposed to be the King, technically they were all free. But because they weren’t following the Lord, it wasn’t working. Instead of freedom, they generally alternated between chaos and oppression.

At the time that this particular historical record begins, the spiritual leadership was as bad as the rest of the country. Eli, the High Priest was short-sighted and a weak leader. His sons Hophni and Phineas were self serving – they took every opportunity to abuse the power they had over the people. None of them actively led the country from a position of faith in the Lord or obedience to Him.

1 Samuel 1:1-2:11 records how the Lord began to change all this, not just for a few years, or even just a generation but for the long term. It was an unlikely and surprising beginning. God didn’t call a hero to defeat the enemies of Israel (he had already done that many times over the past few hundred years, and it never lasted). He did not raise up someone to campaign for unity among the tribes. God did not lead anyone to go on a crusade to clean up corruption among the priests, or to start a movement to educate the ignorant children in the outlying areas. If Hollywood screenwriters were making a movie, any one of those choices might be their storyline.

But God did something different and unexpected. He began with a woman who just wanted to be a mother. Her name was Hannah. Her deepest desire was to have a child. She turned her desire over to the Lord, even while continuing to desperately want it. And the Lord pursued his goals through her life and those desires.

Hannah was married to a man named Elkanah. He had a second wife, called Peninnah. He almost certainly married Peninnah only because Hannah couldn’t have children. Chapter 1:5 and 1:8 record that Elkanah loved Hannah deeply. But in those days, having children was simply not considered optional. The culture considered it a curse from the Lord if a couple could not conceive. God blessed Adam and Eve and told them to be fruitful and multiply (Genesis 1:28). If someone could not do that, they figured it must mean that God’s blessing wasn’t on them. Besides that, children were the only source of “social security.” When someone got too old to work, he relied on his children to take care of him. Finally, having children ensured that the family name would continue, and be included among God’s people (Israel) for another generation.

All this is why a man like Elkanah, who seemed to have a genuine love for Hannah, would go the length of marrying a second woman just to have children. By the way, some folks say that the Old Testament endorses polygamy without reservation. That is not exactly true. It records that some men had many wives, and it does not condemn them, but it almost always also describes that situation in a negative light. This is true here also. Elkanah had two wives, and there was rivalry and jealousy and strife between them. This was true also of Jacob, even though his wives were sisters. Solomon, had hundreds of wives and scripture makes it clear that it was his downfall.

Anyway, Hannah’s lack of children meant several things to her. First, she thought it meant God somehow had something against her. It had led to the destruction of her married happiness and love with Elkanah. Finally, if Elkanah were die before she did, there would be no one to take care of her in old age. As we can see, the issue was both emotional and practical. There was deep hurt and pain wrapped up in Hannah’s barrenness, as well as practical concern about the future.

One year, when the family was at the annual worship pilgrimage, Hannah reached a breaking point. I love her attitude in 1:9-18. She is another one of those unsung heroines of the faith. I think what makes her so special is that she surrenders her desire to the Lord, while at the same time, she honestly acknowledges it. She tells Eli, the priest:

I am a woman with a broken heart. I haven’t had any wine or beer; I’ve been pouring out my heart before the Lord. Don’t think of me as a wicked woman; I’ve been praying from the depth of my anguish and resentment. (1 Samuel 1:15-16)

Many Christians in this day and age would encourage you to pursue your desire as if it was somehow holy just because you had it. They paint a picture of God as if he was there for the sole purpose of making your life comfortable and giving you anything you want. They preach a gospel of personal gain here and now. There are other Christians (though less common these days) who treat every personal desire as if it is evil; they suggest the only way to deal with any desire for anything personal is to get rid of it.

Hannah did not follow either path. She desired a child. She wasn’t going to pretend that she didn’t, and she wasn’t going to pretend that she thought her desire was wrong or sinful. She let God hear her anger, anguish and resentment. At the same time, as she asked God to fulfill her desire, she surrendered it back to him. Verses 10-11 in the message version record it this way:

Crushed in soul, Hannah prayed to God and cried and cried — inconsolably. Then she made a vow:

“Oh, God-of-the-Angel-Armies, If you’ll take a good, hard look at my pain, If you’ll quit neglecting me and go into action for me By giving me a son, I’ll give him completely, unreservedly to you. I’ll set him apart for a life of holy discipline.” (1 Sam 1:10-11)

Some people may look at this part of Hannah’s prayer as making a bargain with God. But I think it is a little different than that. Hannah will not let go of her desire. She’s asking for a son, not the strength to go on being barren. And yet, while not letting go, she does surrender that desire to God. It isn’t completely clear in the Message version of the bible, but what she is pledging is that when he is old enough, she will physically bring the child to the tent of meeting and he will stay there with the priests and serve the Lord. The child will not stay with Hannah or her family. In a sense, Hannah is saying, “I want to be a mother. But I also want to surrender to you. So if you do make me a mother, I will turn around and live as I was not a mother again. You will gain a child Lord, not me.” So, yes, in a sense it was a bargain. But I don’t see how else Hannah could both hold on to her desire and surrender it at the same time. It is this bravery and honesty that makes her a great woman of faith in my eyes.

To help us understand what Hannah did, I want to put in simplistic and shallow terms. It is as if you prayed, “Lord, please give me one million dollars. If you do, I will give all one million dollars to the church.” Now, looking at it that way, you may say, “What would be the point of that?” We see no point in that because our desire is either not real or not surrendered. If our desire isn’t real, then we don’t want one million dollars so badly that we’re willing to give it all up again just to say we did have it once. If it is isn’t surrendered, then we don’t want one million dollars unless we can keep some of it, or all of it.

Hannah’s desire was real, and it was truly surrendered. The result of that true and surrendered desire was a baby boy named Samuel. Because Hannah surrendered him to the Lord, the Lord was able to use him to change the course of Israel’s history.

The Lord needed both Hannah’s desire AND her surrender to do what he did through her. If she had kept the desire for a child, but did not give that up to the Lord, Samuel would not have been raised in the house of the Lord and become the greatest spiritual leader since Moses. If Hannah had not truly desired a child as deeply as she did, she probably would not have been driven to surrender him in the first place.

Israel was in a bad place spiritually and politically. Society was fractured, life was dangerous, people were ignorant. God did change everything for them. And he did it through a simple woman who was honest about her desire to be a mother while also surrendering that desire. That’s not how we expect Him to save society. But he often works in these unexpected ways.

So what about you? What are the deep desires of your heart? Are you willing to be honest about them? And are you willing to surrender them to the Lord at the same time? God needs people who are willing to follow in Hannah’s footsteps. I think the psalmist was talking about people like Hannah when he wrote:

Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart. (Ps 37:4, ESV)