Sermon text: 1 Samuel 1:1–2:11
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
At the time of Judges — think 1350 BC to 950 BC — the book of Judges tells us that everybody did what was right in his own eyes. Yet in the midst of the resulting chaos and conflict and idolatry, there was always a small faithful remnant. Among the faithful was a Hebrew woman by the name of Hannah. Through her, God would restore the priesthood, provide a judge and a prophet who would rule justly and fairly according to the law of Moses and the prophets, and this prophet and priest would call people to repentance and to believe the promise of a Messiah who was to come.
The first verse of the Samuel story, 1 Samuel 1:1, establishes the Levitical line of Elkanah the husband to Hannah, and therefore Samuel’s ultimate Levitical lineage. Hannah had been married for years to Elkanah but had remained without child. At that time, women who could not bear children were ostracized. They were mocked. They were looked upon as people that God was punishing for some sin, known or unknown, to the people. It wasn’t enough that she was mocked by people outside her home: her husband decided to fix the problem by taking a second wife, a cruel woman, Peninnah, who mistreated and mocked Hannah for her inability to conceive and to bear a son to Elkanah.
Hannah’s clueless husband, intending to try to make her feel better — I don’t know if that’s ever happened to you, ladies, or not — but he was a bit feckless about it. He said to her in verse 8: “Hannah, why do you weep? And why do you not eat? And why is your heart sad? Am I not more to you than ten sons?” That was supposed to fix the problem. Although the Bible doesn’t tell us, it’s not hard to imagine the conflicting emotions that were pouring, tearing apart Hannah: her disappointment, her anger, her jealousy at her now co-wife, the retribution, and all the other feelings over the years began to pile up.
Yet Hannah didn’t try to sort through them on her own. She dumped the whole mess on the doorstep of God at the tabernacle — literally at the very entrance of the tabernacle. We’re told in the opening verses of 1 Samuel 1 that it was Elkanah’s custom to take him and his family up to the tabernacle once a year for a yearly sacrifice to the LORD and to worship the LORD of hosts annually at Shiloh. The temple hadn’t been built yet in Jerusalem, so the tabernacle had been set up on some permanent foundations in the city of Shiloh. And there the people would come and worship in the tabernacle, the temple, the house of God.
And each year Elkanah and his family made that journey there. Hannah also worshiped. And on this trip, she would tell the priest there named Eli — another feckless man in the story — what her plight was. She had gone up a year earlier to the tabernacle, and there she poured her heart out at the entrance of the tabernacle, crying unto the LORD God, begging Him for the birth of a son. But Eli the priest — he thought she was a drunk and a vagrant and a wanderer, and so he tried to drive her off. But she eventually was able to explain to him the plight of her circumstances.
And in verse 11 she vowed a vow and said to the LORD: “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.”
The LORD God heard Hannah’s prayer and ultimately granted her her request: a son. This morning’s Old Testament lesson picks up there. After she had begged the LORD at the temple for a son, He had granted the request, and now she was going to go back to offer Him thanks and praise for the birth of her son.
“The man Elkanah and all his house went up to offer to the LORD the yearly sacrifice and to pay his vow. But Hannah did not go up, for she said to her husband, ‘As soon as the child is weaned, I will bring him, so that he may appear in the presence of the LORD and dwell there forever.’” Elkanah, her husband, finally said something smart. He said, “Do what seems best to you.”
Think about that. A mother’s greatest desire is to bear a child, a son. And this son she would give back to the LORD in service of the tabernacle, the temple of God. In great gratitude, she would go to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and give to Him a son that she would only see now once a year for the rest of his life and of her life. For this act of devotion, Hannah has gone down in history — rightfully so — as one of the greatest examples of true Christian faith and true Christian gratitude to the LORD God, Yahweh Elohim.
This she did after years of public and personal insult, mockery, and conflict. Hannah showed us what it meant to be a faithful woman or man of God: that even in the midst of the greatest struggle and emotional conflict, she would choose to honor her vow and to give her only begotten son into the LORD God’s service. Jesus taught us, saying, “To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also.” Well, that’s essentially what, in fact, Hannah had done.
There were other voices — including probably the ones in our head — that have told us that we’ve turned the cheek enough over the years and it’s our time to strike. But she wouldn’t strike out against those who mocked her. She wouldn’t strike out against those who ridiculed her, who impugned her name and her reputation. She simply, in true Christian faith and devotion, continued on toward the goal of the tabernacle — despite wrongly being shamed, despite painful conflicts, despite the emptiness she felt as a wife and a mother. Hannah did not forsake her God or the faith. She modeled it. As a matter of fact, she sought comfort from God in His house at Shiloh. She didn’t fake a happiness she did not have. She went to worship and let the tears flow.
And when the priest Eli saw her, he added insult to injury and tried to drive her away from the very house of the LORD. When he finally spoke a word of blessing, she received it as a word from God Himself: a binding promise. Kind of like in the stand: “And by the command, I forgive you all your sins.” It’s a binding promise. It doesn’t come from the pastor. It’s from the LORD God who is absolving you in the words being spoken. So also the words of Eli — a very, very bad priest, by the way, but still speaking the word of God — God honored His word, and she conceived and bore a son.
“In the LORD’s house 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.” That’s her first trick: she went, she poured her heart out to God, she told the priest what happened. The priest spoke words — whether he meant them or not, we have no idea — but the LORD God honored His pledge, and she bore a son.
In all that Hannah has done so far, she has governed her life by her faith. But the greatest test of all was the one to come the following year. Promises are easy to make, but we all know sometimes they are very, very hard to keep. We’ve been on both ends of that stick. We’ve made promises that we couldn’t keep. We’ve made promises that for legitimate reasons we couldn’t keep. We’ve made promises that we simply forsook outright. We’ve all been disappointed when we had promises made to us and those promises were also broken.
Despite whatever desire and emotions that were pulling at Hannah, when the time came, the boy was weaned, and Hannah brought a bull — the most expensive sacrifice you could offer — some flour and wine, and headed off to the tabernacle. The last thing she grabbed was the hand of her little son in answer to her prayers, and she went off to the temple to worship.
This, by the way, should put everybody in mind of Abraham and Isaac and going up on the mountain to offer the son as a sacrifice unto the LORD. But as difficult as it was to give away her son, she vowed: “Oh, my lord! As you live, my lord, I am the woman who was standing here in your presence, praying to the LORD. For this child I prayed, and the LORD has granted me my petition that I made to him. Therefore I have lent him to the LORD. As long as he lives, he is lent to the LORD.” And he worshiped the LORD there — he, meaning Samuel.
From then on, she would only see her son once a year at Passover when she’d go up to the temple to worship. A woman of faith, faithfulness, and gratitude. Today we can’t even get Christian parents to take baptismal vows seriously. Today the church plays with the verbiage of the vows — Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier — anything but Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Today parents baptize and rarely show up and darken the door of another church again. Today we can’t even get confirmands to take seriously their confirmation vows throughout life, where they pledged themselves to the doctrine of the apostolic faith, the teachings of the prophets, and worship regularly within a faithful congregation.
God’s promise not only brought Hannah personal joy — in fulfilling His promise to Hannah, and Hannah fulfilling her promise to the LORD God — God poured out blessings on His people. Her son Samuel grew to become a faithful priest, a fair judge, a true prophet who called and led the people of Israel to repentance and to true faith. But there’s still more. God used Samuel to establish the eternal kingdom of David, through whom God would provide us with our prophet, priest, and king.
The time of the judges was a very, very dark time. Instead of looking for God’s word and God’s law and gospel for guidance — then as now — most people did what was right in their own eyes, created their own religions, their own moral codes, their own ways of speaking. And the priest Eli was supposed to be the priest of Israel: a fair and impartial judge, a man who would lead them in true faith in anticipation of the promised Messiah. He was supposed to be the faithful leader of Israel, to judge rightly, and to call people by the gospel. But he’d grown old and lazy. He also raised evil sons who took his place as priests and judges in Israel. They were faithless and wicked leaders of the people, and the days grew darker.
It was a dark time in the history of Israel. But there was a flickering light in the heart and mind of Hannah. In faith, she came to the LORD’s house and prayed for a son, who she would give back to the LORD to become His servant, to take the place of evil priests and rulers and administer the law justly. God used her faithfulness to provide for all, to make way for the ultimate promise — the promise He gave all the way back there in Genesis chapter 3.
Hannah is but one faithful link in a long chain that stretched all the way back to Eve in the Garden of Eden and all the way forward to the Virgin Mary in the annunciation. Samuel grew to be a priest, a judge, and a true prophet who would anoint King David over the people of Israel and establish the monarchy of David’s son forever.
Hannah had faith. But faith never existed in a vacuum. Faith always has an object. People talk about faith in faith — it’s empty, if it’s faith in faith. But Hannah kept her vow, believing God’s word that He would keep His vow to us. After Adam and Eve allowed sinful corruption into God’s perfect creation, God vowed that He would raise up a prophet, a priest, and a king from the womb of the woman who would be born to undo all the damage that Adam and Eve had done. And as Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden, God sacrificed an animal, covered Adam and Eve with skins of innocent animals, and those garments would be a reminder to Adam and Eve of their sinful state now in the world and before the LORD God who had created them.
For the same reason, Hannah took a bull to be slaughtered in the very house of God — God’s house, not hers. And as Hannah gave her little son to live and to serve in God’s house, God the Father gave His eternal Son into human flesh. God kept His vow when His innocent Lamb was led to slaughter by sinful and evil priests and men. By Christ Jesus — Jesus’s death — the sins of the whole world had been taken away. By His resurrection, the gates to paradise were reopened to all who believe.
The world desperately needs faithful people, and we’re called to be faithful people. And as people who, one, trust in the LORD Jesus, and two, abide to the best of our ability to His faithful work. The world desperately needs people of faith. When we bring our burdens to the house. When pastors speak the words of God given to them to speak. When children are brought to be baptized and raised in the church. When parents and sponsors vow to pray for them and to raise them in true Christian faith. When we remember our sins and the awful price God paid to forgive us. When our faith is nourished by the fruits of the cross and by the living Word of God in spoken and written form. When we go out into the world and we let our lights shine by turning the other cheek or explaining to people the hope that is within us. When we pray for all people according to their needs. When we support the work of church with our offerings and our labor. Then, like Hannah, we are people of faith who are being faithful to that which God has said and done.
None of these things will save you by their own merit. Jesus does that. That’s why your sins are forgiven: because He, God, made a promise, kept a promise, and is currently fulfilling the remaining promises to you and to me and to the whole Christian Church. For He has promised you a glorious and eternal mansion, an everlasting life without sin, without tears, without mocking, without shame. It is true: we are people of faith. And by God’s great grace, we are people who are faithful. Amen.
May the peace that surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.