From Brokenness to Blessedness
FROM BROKENNESS TO BLESSEDNESS
(God’s Answer to a Praying Mom)
1 Samuel 1:1-18
Introduction
Charles Haddon Spurgeon, when he was 15, wrote this letter to his Mom,
“Your birthday will now be doubly memorable, for on the third of May the boy for whom you have so often prayed, the boy of hopes and fears, your first-born, will join the visible Church of the redeemed on earth, and will bind himself doubly to the Lord his God, by open profession. You, my Mother, have been the great means in God’s hand of rendering me what I hope I am…You, by God’s blessing, prepared the way for the preached Word…I have any courage, if I feel prepared to follow my Savior, not only into the water, but should He call me, even into the fire, I love you as the preacher to my heart of such courage, as my praying, watching Mother.”
(Source: Tim Challies, Christian Men and Their Godly Mothers: Power of a Pleading Mom).
Never underestimate the power of prayer. Never underestimate the power of a pleading woman/mother. Prayer works. 1 Samuel 1 reminds of our need to pray (to fully depend on him). The Lord, our God, who is both great and gracious, powerful and personal, is pleased to use our prayers as he redeems his chosen ones and turns pain into praise, weeping into worship, barrenness/brokenness into blessedness/birth.
1 Samuel 1 it never ceases to amaze me. It’s fascinating, isn’t it? We are captivated by Hannah not simply because her story is compelling, but because she seems to possess something (or rather someone) we all want. The God who knows our pain, meets us in our pain and redeems our pain. The passage that we are going to study today, points to how God faithfully provides for his people (not only for Hannah). He will ultimately provide them a king – but before he does that, he will raise up a final, godly judge: Samuel. Just as the barren Hannah gives birth to a son who has been given to her by God, so the barren Israel will receive a King who has been chosen and anointed God. Today you will meet Hannah who pleads to God for the gift of a child and vows that she will commit him to the Lord’s service for all the days of his life, and God grants her petition (1:19-20).
Brief Background: As we begin our study of 1 Samuel 1, it will be important for you to remember the most immediate historical context for the narrative that is beginning to unfold. God’s people have been enduring the era of the Judges – a messy and dark season that has involved some positive deliverance…ALONG with much sin, idolatry and rebellion. It has become clear that God’s people need someone to lead them well in the areas of worship, obedience and covenant faithfulness to their God. In a way, the predicament that Hannah faces as a barren woman represents the predicament of Israel as a whole: God’s people suffer through the barrenness of leaderless chaos, spiritual darkness, and rampant wickedness (Source: John Nielson and Richard Phillips, REC)
I. Hannah’s HURT (A woman troubled in spirit, 1:15)
A. Hurt by her husband’s INSENSITIVITY (inability to ease her suffering). Out of genuine concern, he tries to ease her anguish and lighten her gloom. “Am I not more to you than ten sons?” Clearly his words focus more on himself than on empathy toward Hannah’s intense need.
B. Hurt by her rival’s INHUMANE treatment. Verse 6 says, Peninnah “provoked” her. The Hebrew word used it here means “to thunder” or “to roar” like a storm. This is the sort of word that would be used to describe being caught in a hurricane. Hannah’s emotions were thundering and roaring like a hurricane. The text even tells us that Peninnah’s harassment was continual. There was no relief for Hannah from the relentless reminders of her barrenness. To say that Hannah was a deeply distressed individual is an understatement. Verse 7 indicates that her depression is so intense that she even refused to eat. Hannah must have lied awake many nights in despair, feeling like a broken, hopeless failure.
C. Hurt by Eli’s INDIFFERENCE (lack of spiritual discernment). It’s painful when the people you look up to let you down. Eli showed lack of interest, concern and sympathy.
D. Hurt by her INABILITY to bear a child. There is the pain of Hannah bound up in her barren womb. She was barren. As devastating as that is today, in those days it was more distressing. According to the Jewish Talmud, a person without children was considered “as good as dead.” It was legitimate ground for divorce (Jewish Encyclopedia). The Israelites saw children as an essential part of a good life for 3 main reasons (A) As an agrarian society, the more children means more potential laborers, and the more workers, the greater the crops yield. The greater the yield, the greater the income. (B) Hannah lived in an age before social security and 410 (k). Children were retirement plan of the ancient world. (C) Having children was necessary for the survival of the nation (Source: John Woodhouse, Preaching the Word).
“Barrenness is an effective metaphor of hopelessness. There is no foreseeable future. There is no human power to invent a future (Walter Brueggeman, Genesis, 116).” She can’t have kids, practically, she has no significance, no life, and no hope.
Some of us here know the deepening darkness of enveloping hopelessness. Whether is it is from a loss of a loved one, debilitating illness, financial stress, personal battering, we know that awful/horrible feeling of helplessness and hopelessness. What do we do? (fatalism or forsake God or faith in God)
II. Hannah’s HEART
(I have been pouring my soul before the LORD…I have been speaking out of my great anxiety and vexation, 1:15)
Hannah’s misery peaked at Shiloh, the place where the Tabernacle (Tent of God) dwells (In the Israelite theocracy, it’s the residence inhabited by the divine King, it symbolizes God’s presence and rule). It was also in that place that Hannah reveals his deep heart loyalty.
Crisis, adversity, affliction, trouble, pain in life has a way of exposing our hearts. They reveal our deep heart loyalties When life falls apart, when push comes to shove, when adversity strikes, it can be revealing. It reveals the idols of our hearts.
Fixating on financial security – I trust you know that money has power. It provides security. It provides identity. It gives you options. But if we are not careful, money can fuel self-sufficiency.
Treating people like “saviors” – Our DELIVERER does not occupy a seat in the White House, on the supreme court, nor sit in the boardroom of a company – he seats on his throne and he rules over all. (Illustration: Our own season of lament)
Presuming Divine Favor – The final potential idol relates to the assumption of the blessing of God.
What do your patterns of sin in the midst of life’s difficulties expose about your deep heart loyalties? Your response to challenges exposes the idols that have a powerful grip on your heart.
Hannah is telling us that the days of her trouble were days of prayer, and that’s a great lesson for us. Our days of trouble should be days of prayer.
Hannah knew what the narrator has told us twice, that it was the “Lord who had closed Hannah’s womb.” This knowledge led Hannah to act in a way different from both her husband and her rival. Hannah “prayed to the Lord.”
Hannah’s deep distress leads to prolonged, earnest prayer. Hannah’s prayer (1:12-18) reveals her conscious, intimate relationship with God. Hannah is a woman of prayer. Indeed, she is the first and only woman in the Bible “to utter a formal, spoken prayer, and have her prayer quoted for us to read” (Tremper Longmann, 1 Samuel). Hannah’s prayer is a form of lament. As she brings the troubles of her heart before God in prayer, her emotional turmoil is evident as “she wept bitterly” (Lit., “wept weeping,” intensified verbal expression)
A. The Place to Start is a Broken Heart
B. The Place to See is on Bended Knees
Prayer starts when begin to ask and it deepens when we move from asking to communing. Look at the elements of Hannah’s prayer. There is Adoration, Admission (calls herself a servant 3x; 1:11), Acceptance of God’s unlimited power to intervene in life, Acknowledgement that life’s supreme purpose is the glory of God (the blessings that we have are from him and for him).
III. Hannah’s HOPE (God’s covenant faithfulness)
When Hannah asked God to “look on [her] affliction,” she was echoing the language of God’s dealings with Israel (Exod. 3:7; 4:31; Deut. 26:7; Neh. 9:9). The exodus from Egypt, that historic act by which God redeemed his people and brought them to himself to be his people. Listen how this prayer of Hannah alludes to Exodus “I have surely seen the affliction of my people…; when they heard that the Lord had seen their affliction, they bowed their heads and worshipped…; the Lord saw our affliction…; You saw the affliction of our fathers in Egypt.” The words in italic represent the same Hebrew words translated “look” and “affliction” in 1 Samuel 1:11. Hannah begged God to do what God had done for Israel in the days of Moses.
This is the hope that Hannah communicates to us. It’s a hope that we can’t obtain by ourselves (the world is unable to attain by itself). It’s the hope of the gospel that allows us not only to endure but to rejoice in the midst of suffering.
So, what is God’s answer to Hannah’s prayer? GOD HIMSELF!!!
Hannah “went her way and ate, and her face was no longer sad” (v. 18, ESV). She rejoiced before she received a son. Hannah’s joy is no longer on obtaining a son. Hannah’s joy is now found in God, the God of her salvation (2:1 – this will help us to understand what she prayed for). This discovery anchors her soul to a rock that quiets the storms of her heart (2:2).
We might expect the order her to be: Hannah prays, Hannah gets pregnant, and Hannah is joyful, and the storms of her life dissipate. But something different appears in the story. Hannah prays, Hannah is joyful and Hannah gets pregnant.
John Woodhouse states, “The order of events is not empty. Hannah found joy and deep faith as she found her deepest needs met in God.” Faith-filled Hannah has found a source of joy and security greater than her hope of sons: GOD HIMSELF! (Preaching the Word)
Many of us can identify with Hannah in both her HURT and HOPE.
Why I individually suffer? I don’t know. Sometimes we suffer because we sin. Sometimes we suffer because of issues that are known only to God. Remember Romans 8:28. And what is God’s good for us? Conformity (to Christ), not comfortability.
Gospel-Centered Application
I was asked by someone a few weeks ago, “What has God been teaching you recently?” My answer was that God is teaching me to be helpless and needy before him in prayer. I think that’s the biggest thing that God has taught me/us (short testimony). I’m sure that it’s the same thing for our ministry - that the most important way that we have served our God has been as we’ve sat with empty hands, recognizing our helplessness, pleading for God to do something in his Kingdom, for our church. And he has done something (the Lord has done wonderful things) and he will continue to do something until he brings everything into consummation when our resurrected and ascended Messiah returns.
A. Let me encourage you to trust. Our professor at Westminster, Dr. John Currie often puts it, trials are the opportunities for God's people to “turn theology into biography.”
B. Let me encourage you to give thanks. God is in control and sovereignly rules over all things. You are his beloved children. Your life, your time, your health, your studies, and your callings are all in his fully trustworthy care. Take time to thank him and to rejoice in this Good News - (The gospel is) that Jesus Christ was forsaken for us. Jesus’ death on the cross took on our barrenness, our brokenness, and our hopelessness. He was forsaken so we would never have to be. When we approach the cross, we find that all that has been defeated, once and for all. We still experience barrenness and brokenness in this life; but because of Jesus, we can face them, knowing that God is for us. God has not abandoned us in our hour of darkness. He is present in that hour, working all things for good. If we have placed faith in the cross, we can be assured that we are not, and never can be, forsaken.
The answer to suffering is always in the Gospel. In Jesus Christ, there is always an assurance that even in the darkest of places, “He loves me because Jesus died for me, shed his blood for me, and rose for me, and that can never be taken away.” Give him thanks that are due him. Give him praise that is due him. Rejoice in the Lord.
-Dr. Jerome David