1 Samuel 4:18 • A Mother's Prayer
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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)
As we prepare for a message for mothers, let's look at 1 Samuel chapter 1. 1 Samuel chapter 1, as we will be looking at verses 4 through 20 today.
In your grace Bibles, that's page 225. 1 Samuel chapter 1, it's a different time.
A man goes up to the temple to pray with his two wives. I think it's a different time. Anybody? No.
But one of them has no children, and she prays desperately for one.
It's different times, but in many ways the same time.
Verse 4, 1 Samuel 1, "On the day when Alcanis sacrificed, he would give portions to Panina, his wife, and to all her sons and daughters.
But to Anna 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 Alcania her husband said to her, "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?"
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."
And 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'm a woman troubled in spirit.
I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I have been pouring out my soul before the Lord.
Do not regard your servant as a worthless woman, for all along I have 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 in worship 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, which means "Hurd of God."
For she said, "I have asked for him from the Lord."
Let's pray together.
Heavenly Father, for some here, this prayer is not foreign, but deep and dear and present.
And for others, we wonder how it can even apply to us.
But you have called us to pray for the children of your church, to be part of that great mission of our God, to not only bring life into this world, but to the next.
And so in the ministry of a woman who longed to see your hand, we pray that you would yet speak to our hearts.
In Jesus' name, amen.
One of the scenes from the many Steven Spielberg movies that I love and hate the most, there are no words spoken.
The scene shows a woman coming through a farmhouse screen door, a woman looking a lot like my grandmother from her younger pictures.
And she stands on the porch to shield her eyes from the sun and to try to identify the car that is coming through the fields and then up the long dirt driveway to the farmhouse that still looks a lot like my grandparents' farmhouse.
And as she watches, suddenly her knees give way.
She rests her body weight on one arm and her hand goes to her mouth to stop the sobs
because she knows what's coming.
She sees that there is a military insignia on the car coming up the driveway, and in the middle of the afternoon that can only mean one thing, the sun that she has given to her nation has given his life for his nation, and she is about to be told.
We don't really sense the magnitude of the gift until we sense the magnitude of the pain of the loss.
And the same is true here in this passage from 1 Samuel. We so easily read, "Here's a woman who prayed for a baby, she got a baby, and do not recognize she will give that child up for the purposes of God. And we do not sense the magnitude of the gift until we sense the magnitude of the pain. And we may gain just some measure of it by considering how we love and hate this day."
Yeah, it's Mother's Day. And so it's fun to praise mothers. We all have one or had one.
And even in stating it that way, we begin to sense the potential pain in a day that's meant to bring us celebration. Some have lost a mother.
Some have never had the mother that they should have had.
Some have never become the mother that they wished to be. Some have never had the children they hoped would come to be.
And some of the children have never become what we hoped they would.
When we talk about Mother's Day, we somehow plumb right in the same moment to the depth of the relationships that are dearest and most difficult for us.
We know the celebration and we know the pain, and somehow we understand what this prayer of Hannah is meant to express to us. Because what she is doing is praying, "Lord, fix this emptiness for which I ache.
Give me some sense of a purpose that is greater than my pain."
And in doing so, she is fixing our eyes on the faith that actually can allow us to learn what it means to drown pain in a purpose of God so that we can find peace, even when the pain is real. In order for us to find peace in pain, to actually be able to drown the pain in purpose, we have to believe that God actually hears our prayers. He's not deaf.
And secondly, that He is really working, that there is some purpose beyond the earthly things that we can see.
And that is all in this prayer of Hannah, as she is teaching us in a mother's prayer what it means to have pain drown in purpose.
What prayers actually allow that to happen? First, prayers that simply pour our pain before God's heart. Verse 15 says it so clearly, right at the end, while she's being accused of Eli of drunken words, she instead says at the end of verse 15, "I have been pouring out my soul before the Lord." The word "soul" is the Hebrew "nefesh," which actually talk about the essence of one's being, the very life breath in us. "I have been pouring out the very essence of my heart to God."
And even that is a privilege, to believe that we could take what is deepest in us and put our heart before God's heart, even if it's pain there. We know the cause of the pain. I mean, it's obvious she's without a child. And though this is an account of thousands of years ago, it is a very present pain. I mean, if the statisticians are correct, one in six of the married couples of our own culture will not be able to have a natural child.
We know the pain. We know it can be aggravated by a culture. In this culture, which is Jewish, the reason you needed to have children is they're part of your labor force if you were a family in an agrarian culture. They were part of your defense.
They were necessary for your legacy.
But perhaps nothing is more evident to us of what it meant than verse 16 as Hannah responding to Eli says, "Do not regard your servant as a worthless woman."
Something deep in her is saying, "By having children I have, I have worth."
And the aggravation of her heart is made more grievous by the taunting of her rival. Apparently, she's not been able to have a child as she's the first wife to Elkanah. And so he marries another baby machine, one who will actually give him the legacy that he needs. He still loves Hannah. And Panina recognizing it taunts Hannah year after year. You've got no children.
It's painful and it hurts, and we understand the taunts. If you cannot have children, what taunts you? Others, children.
The sounds on a playground.
Seeing a stroller on the street, diaper commercials, it all taunts you. I can't have that.
I remember as a young man speaking to my mom one time when she was working at a women's shelter and kind of in my male practicality saying, "I don't get it." So many of the young women in the shelter have children. Why is that? I mean, they don't have the financial means. Children just going to complicate their lives. It's going to be so hard on them. Why do they have children? My mom, because you really do not get it, young man.
To create a life to love and that will love you back is one of life's most powerful compulsions.
To have somebody that says, "I'm worthwhile," and to give them worth by my own love.
The press of the heart for that. And it comes out in all kinds of twisted ways. We have children sometimes to fix a marriage.
We have children to hold a man.
We have children to give ourselves meaning and worth.
We understand it.
A family like ours where so many have struggled with issues of infertility, have experienced loss.
You understand this deep, deep, profound pain.
No child.
What does that say about me? What does it do to my life? What does it do to my future, to my hopes, to my love, to my heart? And the degree of her pain just is on the page before us if we will see it. She will not eat, verse 7. And her husband with kind of his clumsy comfort says, "I'll give you a double portion of the sacrifice."
It's a peace offering that he's taking in. The peace offering is part is consumed upon the altar. Part is given to the priest. But then the family participates and he gives her a double portion, which in the Hebrew says he's actually giving her a double nose.
You get two snouts of a lamb. Feel better now?
Or the clumsiest thing of all? Remember verse 8?
Right at the end.
"Hannah, am I not more to you than ten sons?"
Men, wrong answer.
Why are you hurting? Am I not more important to you than...not the way to go. And she will not be comforted.
She cannot even find the words to express her pain when she prays.
Her mouth moves, but her heart is speaking before God as though the words themselves are deeper than can be expressed in human language.
But nothing is more indicative of the desperation and the hurt than verse 11. Right toward the end as this awful vow is made.
"Lord, give to your servant a son and I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life and no razor shall touch his head. Give me a child and I'll give him back to you.
He'll be yours every day, every inch of him, every hair on his head.
Just give me a child, I'll give him back."
And you get a sense of this desperation of wanting so much to have this child that she would do absolutely anything to have the longing of her heart. And as desperate as that image, as great as the pain on display, what we're meant to see right at the same moment is the prayer that is at least the beginning of the waning of the pain.
She prays.
All the pain is there, but she has the privilege of putting her heart before God. "I'm pouring out my soul before the Lord." And she actually believes that can be done as though the Lord, the mighty God, the Lord of Hosts will actually hear her.
We're so used to that language, the Lord of Hosts, because we sing so regularly, "A mighty fortress is our God of Martin Luther." And that phrase in there, "Lord, sabbath his name," is the remembrance of the Lord of Hosts. He is the one who has charge of the armies of heaven and earth. He is the mighty God. He is sovereign and powerful. He's the Lord of Hosts. The language occurs in this chapter the very first time in the whole Bible, and it's actually rarely used.
We see it for the first time in verse 3 where we're told that Elkanah, or her husband, went to the temple to worship the Lord of Hosts.
And later she prays to that Lord of Hosts.
For husbands, for men, for fathers, an important lesson that it's his own God that he has led her to seek. His example, his worship is guiding, leading her in all of her desperation to the one to whom she can turn.
And even though she believes he is the Lord of Hosts, he is the mighty God. She believes that she can call out to him in all of her pain and hurt, and there's something in us that needs to know that.
My hurt, my pain is not beneath my God.
He is not deaf to my cries. His power is not so great that I am insignificant to him. I can call out to him.
I can remember as a first year college student in a town that I did not know, having left a church, a congregation where I had lots of support and a lot of people surrounding, I can remember getting that letter from my mother saying that she was probably going to leave my father.
And in getting that letter and not having people supporting around me and being in a new situation and being in a university where I was no longer the smartest people, there were a lot of smart people around me, and everything that had given me significance had fallen away. My family, my church, my fellowship, my brain supposedly, all those things away. And I can remember just kind of walking out on the shores of Lake Michigan one night among the rocky shores and just at one point just kind of falling down and crying.
And even in my pain, having somehow words of a Sunday school teacher long ago penetrate my consciousness, "Tell it to the Lord, he will listen."
Not solving all the problems, no immediate answer how it's going to be fixed, but through the years I can see God working in my family in wonderful, marvelous ways. But just in that moment to believe deeply and profoundly this truth, the Lord of hosts,
the one who brings heaven and earth together by the power of His majesty, that God will listen to you.
You can pour out your soul, your very life's essence, the pain of it, and He'll listen.
And as we pour out that prayer, we're not just pouring our pain before the Lord's heart, we're actually putting the problem before the power of God. He is the Lord of hosts. And you recognize all Hannah is doing is she's just praying for this little near effect.
God just opened my womb. Just give me a baby.
It is a reminder, of course, that we have the right to approach heaven with life-rendering prayers.
God bring life to my womb. God give life to my child.
God bring life. And we continue to pray those prayers as Christian moms and parents in so many dimensions, not just praying that a child would come.
We pray for eternal life for our children.
God give them life with you.
We pray, God, put a hedge about them so that what comes into their lives does not separate them from you. God, give them a Christian spouse. We've tried to pray so regularly for all of our children through all their growing up years, not just wait till the moment that they're dating someone we don't approve of, but all their lives pray, "Lord, give them someone who loves you so that ultimately this child that we love so much will find someone whose heart's resonance is with you, that they will not be separated at the very depth of their soul, but they will find union with someone who loves you as much and dearly, and this growth in Christ will be deep and dear to them because you are working in them." God, give them what they need to know true life with you even as you give them life in this world. We have the privilege of life-giving prayers, and that's the near effect of Hannah, but greater things are happening.
By the end of this chapter, you recognize the child who actually comes is named Samuel,
which just means in its essence, heard of God. God heard her, but the name Samuel means something too. You can't identify their particulars. You know that's somebody important in the Bible. And what's happened is all that Hannah has been doing is praying for a son, but God has such a big plan for this prayer.
This Samuel is the last of the judges and the first of the prophets who will anoint the kings of Israel, including David, at the beginning of the Davidic line from whom Jesus will come to be the Savior of the world.
He is praying, "Lord, open my womb to a son."
And God is opening the world to the birth of a Savior in His plan and His time by the same prayer. It's this remarkable unfolding of God, the Lord of hosts, saying, "I will not only hear your prayer, but I am working earth and eternity for purposes beyond your imagining." It's just so amazing. She is alone. She is mocked. She is troubled. She is accused. She feels worthless herself. And God takes that prayer of that person on her knees without even the words to be able to express all that she wants and with these groanings too deep, too utter.
He is working a salvation plan for the whole world.
I mean, it's just incredible to believe that God would allow us that kind of prayer, that remarkable thing that we would pray for earthly things, but He would be working eternal things.
Evening is a little film in which a woman who is older and dying is allowed to view her life through a series of flashbacks.
And in one of those flashbacks, she sees herself as a young mom working hard, scurrying about the kitchen, trying to get dinner ready. And she's got a husband and two little girls and the 10-year-old at some point while mom's trying to fix dinner says, "Mommy, I need you."
"Sweetie, what do you need?"
"Barbie's clothes won't fit."
"Okay, honey, I'll help in a minute." "Mommy, I need you right now." And just at that moment, the husband comes into the kitchen with the 4-year-old in his arms.
You are going to have to make her stop banging on that xylophone thing of hers while I'm trying to get work done.
While I'm trying to fix dinner, while I'm under a deadline.
And he plops the child in her arms as the tears well in her eyes and the 10-year-old says it again, "Mommy, I need you."
Why angel?
"Barbie will be late."
Late for what?
"Everything.
She'll be late for everything if you don't help."
And somehow the words sink in and sting in just the right way.
That the mother turns away from the stove, wipes her hands, looks at the 4-year-old and begins to sing a lullaby.
I see the moon and the moon sees me.
God bless the moon and God bless me.
God looked down from up above and He picked you out for me to love.
He picked you out from all the rest because He knew I'd love you the very best.
A little lullaby with a deep truth that the Lord of hosts, the sovereign of heaven and earth has worked in such a way in the lives of we who parent children to have all time, all generations, all possibilities take particular children and to put them into our lives for eternal purposes.
And there's a near effect that we are called upon for that child to take care of all kinds of one, picked from all eternity and all geography for our families in that time and in that moment.
The children with special needs and the children with special talents, the adored and the abandoned,
the long anticipated and the lovingly adopted, the easy to love and the hard to love, those desperate for love, those delightful to love, all specially chosen as God from all eternity has been on a mission.
It's an eternal mission that takes an earthly child and puts that child in an earthly home for eternal purposes. And when you begin to believe that, that somehow this Lord of hosts has worked to bring our lives into His mission for an eternal soul, it's just incredible to think what God has called us to be and to do.
I think of it as I hear Nancy Frantz and you have to just get her to tell the story because it can be so much more powerful than the way I tell it as they were claiming their children in Zambia and at one particular airport gate and official was there denying them entry because they didn't have the right papers. And at some point Nancy said, "We are on a mission from God to save these children and you cannot stop us." And Carrie standing at the gate and Nancy's already heading toward the plane.
To believe profoundly, I'm on a mission from God with this child regardless of their abilities or inabilities, what God is teaching them, my neighbors, the world, what God is teaching my own heart, I'm not sure at all. But this I know, the Lord of hosts is doing eternal things with this child in our lives. And some of you know it's actually in the most difficult moments of our children that we actually get on our knees and discover the reality of a God who is listening to us and desiring to be changing us in our world as well as our children's world.
All of that because from all things He selected this child for us as He knows is intended. And the reality then is there not just a near effect for that child, there is an eternal effect as the mothering that is occurring is not just for this immediate biological child, it's for so much more that God intends. We echo that truth as we as a church, whenever a child is baptized in this church and at some point we ask you to say amen or to raise your hand, that you will also seek to live a life before this child and pray for this child so that early in life they will know the reality of salvation by the Lord Jesus Christ.
It's not just the physical mother, it's not just the adopted mother, it's the mother church,
it's God calling us the bride of Christ. Every single one of us participating in the mothering of the children of the kingdom of eternity.
And that's our privilege and that's our right and that's the goodness of what we perceive. So that when you see these children up here singing, you know, trying to remember the words, you know, sometimes falling asleep while they're standing here.
And we can chuckle and laugh and say, "Isn't that cute and isn't that sweet?" But whether it's the grace kids or in a few weeks the graduating seniors that what we recognize we can do as the privilege of a church is I pray for the life-giving power of God in this child's life. I remember that what this church is being called to do is to be that mother of the children of the kingdom.
And every single one of us has that great privilege, not just for the near effect in our families, but for the far effect in all that God is doing. We are finding peace sometimes in our deprivation where we only can pray for other's children, sometimes finding peace and seeing as we mother and mentor and disciple other children, not even our own, but our own children too. And see how other parents are called when we sometimes lose credibility with our children to be the parents for the moment.
And all this is part of God's great plan of a church mothering through the many for the sake of its children. How do we actually pray that way? Hannah is teaching us. We trust God's care beyond what we can see.
It's not maybe obvious to us. Verses 17 and 18 simply after she is prayed she seems to have confidence that God is going to answer her prayer.
Eli answers in verse 17, "Go in peace and the God of Israel grant your petition that you have made to Him." Verse 18 she said, "Let your servant find favor in her eyes." Then the woman went her way in 8 and her face was no longer sad. Oh, she's going to get a baby. Great.
Too easy. Too quick.
Because verse 19 hasn't happened yet.
Verse 19, "They rose early in the morning and worshiped before the Lord.
Then they went back to their house at Ramah and Elkanah knew Hannah his wife and the Lord remembered her." Do you see something very special?
Her countenance changed before her condition changed.
She hasn't even known her husband yet, but she is having confidence in the care of God.
"I've put this into the hands of the Lord of hosts." Oh, but Eli promised you. Eli? What do you remember about Eli?
I mean, this was one of the unfaithful priests.
This was one that raised bad children that turned away from God toward the end of his life that suffered for lack of faithfulness.
She's not trusting Eli.
She's trusting Lord Sabaoth.
The Lord of hosts. And so we begin to recognize we have the opportunity to begin to bury the pain in the care of God, to put things in his hands, and to believe that that in itself is part of our great path to peace.
But even that's not the end. I mean, we can just say, "Well, ultimately, she got her son, so, well, of course she's at peace. Of course she's fine." No, that's not the end of the story.
She does get her child, but then she gives him to the Lord according to her promise.
The child comes and then she loses the child almost as quick. I'm not sure which is harder, not to have the child or to have the child and then to give him up.
There is still great cause of pain here.
Some of its release may be in verse 28.
As she is speaking of what she will do with Samuel, Hannah says, "Therefore I have lent him to the Lord.
As long as he lives, he is lent to the Lord."
We know that terminology. It seems a little strange here in the Scriptures that you give something to someone, but you retain ultimate possession.
As though she is sensing, "Even as I lose this child, I'm not eternally, fully, really lost this child." For those among us who have lost children, there is wonderful deep truth here.
As God is reminding us that the child that we have lost is not eternally lost, that when Christ comes, so will come those who have slept in him.
That we will see them again, that there is return and this existence that we have lived without those children will be like the blink of an eye compared to the eternity that we shall have with those who love the Lord and are with us forever united more fully than we can possibly even imagine in this day and age.
But God is doing that profound work, and the reason that Hannah seems to trust it, not just the care of God, but the power of God, is evident in the next chapter which is known as Hannah's song, in which even after the loss of her son, she sings of the Lord of hosts.
Key is verse 10 in chapter 2, where right at the end of this wonderful song, which by the way is echoed in Mary's song, the Magnificat, when she knows that Christ is coming. That in this wonderful song of Hannah, right toward the end, verse 10, halfway through she says, "The Lord will judge the ends of the earth. He will give strength to His King and exalt the power of His anointed."
Do you remember how that word is translated in the New Testament? The word anointed is the word Christ.
He will send His Messiah. "Yes, yes, I give Him my son," says Hannah, "but He will give me His Son."
And the reality of the eternal blessing of the Messiah who will come is what enables her to face her earthly pain with peace.
This is the Lord's Sabbath. This is the Lord of eternal things. I have turned my child over to Him who will give His child for me.
And that great understanding that we turn earthly things over to God, but He is working eternal things, is where our peace ultimately lies. And that's not just something long ago and far away.
Last night, Kathy and I got back from England after a couple of weeks of ministering to hundreds of pastors at the Proclamation Trust that was there.
And as I was there, I met one of the sons of this church, Robert Kenny, who is the international director of the Simeon Trust, having seminars for pastors across this country and in other nations as well.
And I began to recognize what's happened. There were people in this church who prayed for an earthly child, and God was working an eternal plan to take the message of salvation, the necessity of salvation, the power of His Word to many more. And as I'm flying home and I'm thinking about that reality that the Kennies just had one child here, but as a church prayed and nurtured and multiplied the message of the gospel, what God was doing was building an eternal kingdom through earthly prayers. So as I think about not only the struggle of a single family to wonder about God's purpose and ways, I begin to think of all the families in this church who have prayed for an earthly child, and that child has gone into ministry for eternal purposes.
Now I'm just thinking of this on the plane, so I may miss somebody, but you just listen to this list.
The Kennies, the Learnids, the Kluffensteins, the Allens, the Berkels, the Franses, the Indresses, the Hatfields, the Petersons, the Vanneys, the Flins, the Mastons, the Cordeses, the Berxtrons, the Borlins, the Freyr's, the Freyr's, the Frederick's, the Livingstone's. And if I'd forgotten you, I was on the plane and I was jet-lagged. I'm sorry.
We're just watching these little kids sing, and there are children here who will be doing eternal things, if not in ministries, in the way in which their lives touch a colleague or a friend or a neighbor, in the arts, in business, whether it's in medicine, whether it's in service to the church.
We are parenting, we are mothering the children who are the leaders of the kingdom, and God has marvelously used you already.
Our job is to recognize, even when we face the pain of our own loss, the pain of our own emptiness, the pain of our own struggles, to believe as we are submitting our prayers to the Lord of Hosts that our earthly prayers are being used for eternal purposes, and so we find peace.
My God is working.
Lord Sabaoth His name. He is the Lord of Hosts, and He's using mothers and dads and the bride of Christ, His church,
to mother for eternity.
Praise God.
Lord Sabaoth His name. Father, so work in our hearts that we would perceive the eternal realities of earthly prayers.
When we pray for our children and the children among us, the children that are ours by birth, and the children that are ours by plan, grant us to pray a mother's prayer and believe that our God who sent His Son for us is at work for eternity.
This we ask in Jesus' name. Amen.