Samuel: Hanna's Unlikely Story of Redemption
Tom Shrader launches a series through 1 and 2 Samuel by introducing the series title 'So You Really Want a King?', framing Israel's desire for a king as a question every believer must answer personally about Christ's lordship. Using Hannah's story in 1 Samuel 1, he traces how God deliberately closed her womb so that His power and compassion could be displayed, drawing parallels to the blind man in John 9 and Lazarus in John 11. He closes by showing a video blog from atheist Penn Jillette reflecting on being witnessed to, challenging the congregation to consider whether genuine belief in the gospel should compel them to share it with the people they care about.
“God's tendency is to make our total inability His starting point; our hopelessness and helplessness, no barrier to His work — indeed, our utter incapacity is often the prop He delights to use in His next act.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Samuel
Recorded: 2009 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 40 min
Themes: redemption, suffering, prayer, evangelism, lordship, hope, barrenness, sharing faith, struggling with unanswered prayer, feeling forgotten by God, woman longing for children, new believer, doubting God's plan, parent, searching for purpose in pain, afraid to share faith
Scripture: 1 Samuel 1:1-20, 1 Samuel 1:5, 1 Samuel 1:6, 1 Samuel 1:10-11, 1 Samuel 1:12, 1 Samuel 1:18-19, Judges 21:25, Genesis 11:30, Psalm 6:8, Luke 1:30, Luke 1:34, Luke 1:37, Luke 18:18-27, John 9, John 11
Theological Themes: sovereignty of God, providence, theodicy, why God allows suffering, christology, Christ as king, missiology, witness
Full Transcript
Introduction
Open your Bibles, if you would, to the book of 1 Samuel. If you don't have a Bible, raise your hand — both here in the chapel and over in the conference center — and the guys will give you a copy of the Old and New Testament. If you get a Bible from us, it's page 202 that you want to turn to as we start what I think is going to be a great study.
Someone the other day asked me how long it will take us to study 1 and 2 Samuel, and I was just offended by the question. I went on Luke's website and he has the first twelve or fifteen weeks all mapped out, and I am so envious of that. I just don't work that way very well. So it will take us as long as God wants us to do it — or until I get tired of it. We'll be in this for a while.
This is a little bit of a different study. Tim and the guys have been really encouraging me, and I mean that sincerely, because this is a little bit out of my comfort zone. I'm more of a New Testament guy — not that I'm intimidated by the Old Testament necessarily, but the teaching is hard for me. I've just never been good at grabbing the narratives and pulling them out, especially not when I have a time frame. So as you think to pray about things, one of the things you can pray for is me in the midst of this. The guys have been really encouraging and supportive, and that means a ton. They challenge me too, and I love that. It will be good — it will be good for us as a church.
The World of 1 Samuel
1 Samuel and 2 Samuel — authors unknown, though surely Samuel gets some recognition in this. We'll spend a good amount of time here, and as I said, I'm not sure exactly how long. The books span about a hundred years. Israel has moved from slavery, through wandering, and is now in the promised land.
If you want to get a sense of what's going on in Israel at this point, turn left maybe two pages to the end of the book of Judges — Judges chapter 21, verse 25. That verse gives you the backdrop you need to understand. It reads: "In those days there was no king in Israel and everyone did what was right in his own eyes." There is spiritual, moral, and behavioral anarchy in the land.
That may not be terribly unlike the time you and I live in, where everybody is encouraged not just to do their own thing, but also to believe that their own thing is okay to do. Those are actually two different things. You can say, "Do your own thing — I encourage your freedom" — and still leave room for conscience, for some restraint that pulls a person back. But when you say, "Do your own thing and it is okay," that is very different.
You live at a time when people are largely doing what is right in their own eyes, even in spiritual matters. You have almost certainly had the experience of sitting down with someone you know, sharing with them how God has invaded your life, changed your heart, and brought you to where you are — and after they listen, their response is something like, "I am so glad you have found something that works for you." That is not really the issue. It is not even primarily a question of whether it works. Sometimes people will go further and say, "I am happy you found something that is true for you." And that gets us to the heart of the matter — the idea that truth is a relative term. What makes this make-or-break for us is whether this is *the* truth. And if it is, it becomes compelling to the way we live.
So You Really Want a King?
That is exactly the backdrop as we open 1 Samuel. A king is about to come into the land. The ideal was this: a king would be established and appointed by God, living in submission to God, understanding of God, and then becoming His agent in ministering to the people. They would live in a very distinct and very different way.
We spent some time trying to come up with a title for this series, and I am really bad at that. My title was "Lessons from 1 and 2 Samuel." I thought that was fine. I was quickly informed it was not catchy enough, not edgy enough. I said, "Well, that's about the best I have." Then I suggested "God versus Man — God Wins," and they told me the first one was better than that. Tim brought in something about the kingdom, and we went back and forth. Eventually we landed on a title I was neutral about at first, but have come to really like: *So You Really Want a King?*
That title has obvious application to the nation of Israel, because they are going to beg — we want a king, we want a king, we want a king. But it also has huge ramifications for you and me. If all we do is conduct an academic exercise about Saul and David and Samuel and a few ancillary characters, if all we come away with is a better understanding of ancient history, well, I suppose that has some value — but it is not a big enough reason for us to study it. We want to fast-forward it to our own lives and ask: so do you really want a king? If you are going to say Jesus is Lord, do you really want to live that way? Are you willing to say Jesus is my Lord, and let that influence not just Sunday, but all of your life?
God's Reign Over All of Life
One of the books someone in our group is reading carries an idea that really struck me: our instinct is to segment church to Sunday. But what God is saying is there is no segmentation, segregation, or separation between the secular and the sacred. We take God's reign in our life not just on Sunday when we are here.
In fact, taking Sunday too seriously — and cut me some slack on the terms — could actually be a problem. You could be one of those people who is here almost all day long: enduring the service, working in a kid's classroom, directing traffic, counting money, doing communion prep. We even have a group of people who blow me away — they are here in the morning, then they come back at night, typically to serve. And that kind of commitment can become so complete in your mind that you say, "I gave on Sunday. I am done."
If you want Him as King, then He reigns twenty-four seven. He affects everything that I do. He affects the way that I live and the way that I think. He transforms me so that I have a converted heart and a transformed mind, and it results in a radical, supernatural life — I do not live like I used to live anymore.
A Personal Illustration: Living with Integrity in the World
I did something last week that was really — I had a blast. A little intimidating, but a blast. I emailed and cold-called a woman I went to high school with who is living here in the valley. I knew her maybe just a little in high school, but her bio in our 40th high school reunion mailing caught my attention, so I reached out and said I would love to meet with her for an hour or so.
All the way out there I was nervous — genuinely nervous. I wanted to talk with her, and I was professionally curious about what she was doing. But as we started to talk about those days from her perspective, I was just overwhelmed by a sense of how sinful and wretched I am. She shared how she had gotten into her current position in the business world and how along the way she had to make a very difficult ethical decision that essentially cost her a job. And I thought: that is what God has called us to do.
One of the guys in our group made a point the other day that really landed. He said there is something that may be a bigger indication of where we are as a country than even 9/11 — and that is the fall of Enron. The CEO was a man who called himself an evangelical Christian, yet somehow was able to divorce in his mind what was happening during the week from going to church on Sunday. So the question returns: do you really want a King?
Do You Really Want a King?
That is the question I have to ask myself. Do I really want this Jesus as Lord for something other than heaven? I know I want Him for that. But do I want Him to reign over the way I actually live? And that is really the story of the nation of Israel.
In this part of the story, Samuel becomes the prophet and kingmaker. Saul is the first king — the people's choice, not God's choice. Then comes God's choice, the one who follows him: David. When we begin to read this story, it is important for us to ask ourselves the "so what" of it.
One of the commentators writes this: "If in reading historical books our purpose is to reconstruct the events as they happened, we miss the truth and power of the narrative. The historian assumes the reality of certain key occurrences in the actual historic events, and it would be impossible to read the books without rightly considering history. But the narratives — and they are narratives — are more than history, but not less than history. That is, they place before us an interpretation of God's mighty acts and their implications in our lives. The interpretation is as important as the events themselves."
Israel said, "We want a king," and God said, "If you want a king, he should be a king who reigns over you, and you therefore are a distinctive, different nation." And now they are realizing they are not sure that is the kind of king they want. So you have to ask yourself: is that the kind of king you want? The real King of Israel is the one true God. The real King of those of us who would say Jesus is Lord is indeed that one true God.
God Is the Main Character
This book, as with all of Scripture, is filled with stories, and we can be distracted into thinking — as I just illustrated — that the main characters are Samuel and Saul and David. In reality, the main character is God Himself. God intervenes in the lives of these people. God calls us to say: if you are going to be His child or His servant, then you are going to live in this world with an otherworldly mindset.
Let me say one more thing by way of introduction. One of the aspects of Scripture that I love is that it never glosses over the sin of the characters. We are always trying to figure out whether Washington really chopped down the cherry tree, or whether Lincoln really said this or that — all sorts of fables surround our historical figures. None of that here.
Quoting from one of the authors: "There is no glamour in the Bible's representation of sin. The wage of sin is death, and stamped across the pages of First Samuel is this truth: sin does not work. Its pleasures and advantages are temporary and illusionary. Only the righteousness of God remains."
God's Tendency to Begin with Our Inability
Bears fruit. Saul clings to his sin and he perishes. Israel's history is our history. Israel's future is our reality. Against this backdrop of anarchy, we pick up this story, and our desire is to understand it enough to apply it to our lives.
In the first verse of 1 Samuel chapter one, you are introduced to what the Bible calls a certain man, Elkanah. He has two wives, introduced to us in verse two: Hannah and Peninnah. The distinction between the two is that Peninnah had children and Hannah did not.
Now, immediately to the Jew who would read or hear this story, they would perhaps — as you just did — reflect back to Abraham and Sarah. In Genesis chapter 11, verse 30, we are told Sarah continued barren; she had no children. Rebecca was married twenty years before she had children. And if we fast forward into the New Testament, we meet very early the character of Elizabeth, who had been old and barren for many years, childless. In all three instances, God intervenes, and they give birth to men who become significant in God's plan of how He works in our lives.
Hannah is barren. Let me read to you from one of the authors: "Hannah, therefore, shares a fellowship of barrenness. God's tendency is to make our total inability His starting point, our hopelessness and helplessness no barrier to His work. Indeed, our utter incapacity is often the prop He delights to use in His next act." She is in trouble — in her mind she is barren and there is nothing she can do about it.
Nothing Is Impossible with God
As I read through this, what I try to do is make little notes along the way, oftentimes exploring not just application, but whether it makes me think of anything else — anyone else, any other section of Scripture. When I hear that Hannah is barren and I begin to work through the implications of that, knowing enough of the story to know God is going to intervene, it flips me right to the New Testament, to Luke chapter one, verse thirty-seven.
Hold your place in 1 Samuel and turn to the gospel of Luke — to the story of a young girl, not an older woman, a teenager in her early teens, who has just been visited by the angel Gabriel. When he greeted her, Luke chapter one, verse thirty, he told her, "Don't be afraid, you have found favor with God. You are going to conceive and have a baby." And in Luke chapter one, verse thirty-four comes the very first questioning of the virgin birth: Mary said, "How can this be? I am a virgin." The angel goes on to explain this will be by the Holy Spirit, and then summarizes all of it in Luke chapter one, verse thirty-seven: "For nothing is impossible with God."
I think of that not just in a physical sense, but in a spiritual sense. Turn a little further to the right, to Luke chapter 18, verse 18 — a story also written in the gospel of Mark chapter ten and Matthew chapter nineteen. A certain ruler came to Jesus and said, "Good teacher, what should I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus begins to unpack it and ends with the commandments: keep them. The young man says in verse twenty-one, "All these things I have kept from my youth." Jesus said keep the commandments; the man said, been there, done that. And Jesus said, "You lack one thing still — sell all your possessions, distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Come and follow Me."
Now look at the man's response in verse twenty-three. I have underlined two words and will emphasize them as I read it: "But when he heard these things, he became very sad, for he was extremely rich." He is very sad. This is not good news to him.
What Jesus Is Really Saying to the Rich Young Ruler
Let us make sure what this is not saying. Jesus is not teaching salvation by philanthropy. He is not teaching that if you have something you must liquidate it and give it away. What Jesus is doing is responding to the man's comment, "I have already kept all these commandments." And Jesus is essentially saying, what was that first one again? Oh yes — you shall have no other gods before Me. So you need to get rid of this stuff, not because that was the path to salvation for the man, but because that was the thing standing in the way. How do we know? Because he was very sad. Why? Because he was very rich, and he had no intention of giving any of it away. And he walked away very sad at that moment.
Jesus looked at him and said, "How hard it is for those who are wealthy to enter the kingdom of God. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." Now, there has been all sorts of explanation written about that — there is supposedly a place called the eye of the needle where a camel gets down on its knees and squeezes through. No. It is a needle, in and out. It is not working. It is a needle and a camel, and that is what He is teaching.
When they heard this, they said, "If that is true, then who can be saved?" There is a whole reaction within the culture — those are the rich guys, the religious guys, the ones who have it all figured out. And Jesus said, "The things that are impossible with people are possible with God." Here is the message of all of Scripture, and it is the lesson right in front of us as we go back to 1 Samuel: Hannah learns very quickly that God is the God of the impossible.
Hannah's Prayer in Her Distress
Drop down to 1 Samuel chapter one, verse ten. This has been building and building to the point where she is greatly distressed, and she prayed to the Lord and wept bitterly. This is too big. This is overwhelming her. It is beyond her. That is what I mean when I talk about prayer — we'll
Hannah's Womb and God's Sovereign Purpose
When I pray, I am inevitably saying, "This is bigger than me, but not bigger than You." If that were not true, there would be no point in the prayer. There is all sorts of humiliation within that culture associated with Hannah not being able to have a child. Why did she not conceive? The answer is in verse five and six — it is repeated: the Lord closed her womb. You do not have to wonder. This was not a biological problem. God intervened. God stopped it.
Elkanah had taken two wives, and the order and sequence would indicate that Hannah was first. Perhaps it was because she could not conceive that Peninnah came along, and now there are all these children. The Scripture implies, and even speaks of it directly, that day by day Hannah is mocked. They make fun of her. It overwhelms her to the point where she cries out to God.
Why would God close her womb? I am not saying I have the specific answer, but I think it is very similar to what we see twice in John's Gospel. In John chapter nine, the disciples ask about the blind man: was he blind because he sinned, or because his parents sinned? That was the conventional wisdom of the day. Jesus said it was neither — "but it was so the works of God might be displayed in him." I am very comfortable thinking God caused that blindness. He certainly could have taken it away, and ultimately does, but not until the proper time.
In John chapter eleven, word comes to Jesus from Mary and Martha: "Lord, behold, he whom you love is sick." That is Lazarus, and in fact he is going to die. Jesus heard this and said, "This sickness is not to an end of death, but to the glory of God so that the Son of God may be glorified by it." Why would God close Hannah's womb? So that three thousand years later we would be sitting here looking at this as a beautiful picture of the power of God — that He is in control, and that He loves her deeply even in the midst of this, and uses her life in a significant way.
She is weeping bitterly, literally in bitterness of soul. Psalm 6:8 tells us the Lord hears the sound of our weeping. Scripture references this same thought across a whole range of human experiences — the loss of a child, the loss of a loved one, personal suffering. In each case, the indication is that relief comes not from an individual but from the divine. There is nowhere else to go. And that is exactly what happens to Hannah. She prays.
Five Assumptions in Hannah's Prayer
Look at verse ten. She is greatly distressed, weeping bitterly, and she made a vow and said, "O Lord of hosts, if indeed You look on the affliction of Your maidservant and remember me and not forget Your maidservant, but You will give Your maidservant a son, then I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life and a razor shall never come upon his head." I want to take five or six minutes and walk through five assumptions I see embedded in this prayer.
The first assumption is that she assumes God cares. Does He? Absolutely He does. Does He care about what is happening in your life? Yes. That is why Paul says to pray about everything. God is not distant. He is not like those pagan gods who were always removed, always angry. He is not the God of the Bette Midler song — a distant God watching from afar. He is intimately involved in your life.
The second assumption is that God can do something about it. There would be no reason to pray to Him if He were impotent in the matter. The whole point in praying is that He both cares and can act. We see this tension played out in discussions about salvation. Some people get very confused in their theology because they would say salvation is totally dependent upon man's free will, yet they then pray to God to save someone. They think like an Arminian but pray like a Calvinist, to use those terms. It is irrational, is it not? The only reason I am praying for God to save someone is because He can save them.
The third assumption is that she understands her position. In verse eleven, I have drawn a box around the word "maidservant" — it appears three times. She recognizes who she really is. She is not coming to God demanding something. She is not coming feeling she is owed something. She is coming as a servant before the King, pouring her heart out. She has an accurate view of who He is. She understands that God owes her absolutely nothing, and that He is nonetheless capable of relieving this enormous burden on her and blessing her in an extraordinary way she does not deserve at all. But she entreats and begs God to do it.
The fourth assumption is that she understands there may be a cost for her. She makes a vow: God, if You give me this blessing, I will give him back to You. I will confess there is a degree of awkwardness here — is this a bribe? Is she saying, "God, if You do this, then I will do that"? I do not think that is what is going on. I think what she understands is that this would be a tremendous gift from God, and she intends to steward it well. This is a very hard thing to work through, and if you do not feel —
Bringing Sweat Equity to God
Even in the Christian life, we bring what I would call sweat equity — there is something that we do. It doesn't commit God to us; it is a result of our love for Him, because we love Him and are more obedient and live this way. Oftentimes He blesses it and uses it in some phenomenal way, though it does not obligate Him.
Hannah's Freedom in Prayer
The fifth thing is that Hannah feels very free in expressing herself. Look at verse 12: "It came about that she continued to pray before the Lord." Eli is watching her, and she was speaking in her heart. Whatever was going on, his conclusion was that she was drunk. There is a freedom of expression here that I am afraid we sometimes retard as we grow closer to God — this freedom to go before Him.
I hope your prayer life exhibits itself much this way, with passion, earnestness, and honesty. There would be no reason to go before the Lord with a heart that is hiding anything. If there is emotion, sentiment, or feeling toward Him, there is no reason to hide it from Him. He already knows it.
She pours out this prayer and then encounters the high priest, who completely misses what is going on and completely misdiagnoses the whole situation. She is in the midst of suffering and pain — caused by God, since He is the one who closed the womb. Sometimes we are afraid to say that, as though we have to preserve His reputation, but His reputation is not at stake.
She is suffering, but here is the deal: there is always a reason. John White writes this: "Personal suffering is never meaningless for a child of God. You may not know why you suffer, but your suffering may seem to be too painful to bear. Under such circumstances, you must always bring your suffering to Him." And she brings it to Him.
Hannah's Prayer Answered
Verse 18 tells us what she said in prayer: "Let your maidservant find favor in your sight." Then the woman went away and ate, and was no longer sad. They arose the next morning, they worshiped, and verse 19 tells us that Elkanah had relations with Hannah. The Lord remembered her, and it came about in due time that Hannah conceived and gave birth to a son. She named him Samuel, saying, "Because I have asked of the Lord."
The rest of chapter one recounts the process of her weaning this child and presenting him to God — an amazing story. We do not know exactly what the name Samuel means, though it carries some variation of "heard of God" or "name of God." God gives her this wonderful blessing, and that is where chapter one ends. Chapter two begins with "Then Hannah prayed," and that is where we will pick up next week.
A Lesson from an Unlikely Source
I receive a great many emails, as most of you do, with all sorts of attachments — some I never open, and most are deleted fairly quickly. But someone sent me a video this week that I want to share. Many of you are familiar with Penn and Teller. The tall one is Penn Jillette, and Penn is a very honest man who does a great deal of blogging and video blogging. What he is responding to in this video is the fact that after one of his shows, someone came up to him and shared the gospel. The clip is five minutes and eleven seconds.
That is pretty interesting. There are a thousand little lessons in there. On the surface, and perhaps least important of all, Penn mentions three times that the man looked him right in the eyes. But the phrase that obviously captures attention is this: "How much do you have to hate somebody to not proselytize them? How much do you have to hate somebody to believe there is everlasting life and not tell them?"
After the first service, someone came up and suggested it is not really a matter of hate — that we are so in love with ourselves, or we are embarrassed, or it is more apathy. My fear is that if we begin to parse all of those words, we will miss the point. Introducing those qualifications into the conversation weakens that moment.
The Courage to Live What We Believe
Here is what Penn is saying, and it is incredibly true coming from a man who does not believe: if you believe this, you ought to have enough courage to live it out. I am not talking about going to Penn and Teller's show and sharing the gospel with Penn personally, or cold-calling strangers for Jesus. It would seem that among the people in your office, your sphere of influence, your clients — there is a process here.
I am not saying there is only one method. Clearly the approach Penn described — where a stranger simply says, "I don't know you, here are some numbers, call me" — has Penn thinking. But for most of us, in its very simplest form, it is about making the invisible God visible and speaking the truth boldly to the people we desperately care about.
These are the people we say we love so much, the people we are scared to death for. And yet we hold back, afraid that interjecting the name of Jesus into the conversation might ruin the relationship.
A Heart for the Lost
Penn Jillette, the atheist, makes a striking point: if you truly believe someone is headed toward eternal destruction and you say nothing, then you don't really care for them that much. He puts it plainly — if you believed a truck was about to hit someone, you would knock them out of the way. The same urgency should apply to the gospel.
Here is an illustration I return to often, and I apologize if it has become repetitive, but I find it genuinely powerful. Over the last four and a half years, Susan and I have received all sorts of cards, letters, notes, juicers, vitamins, and remedies from people saying, "I know you're sick — have you tried this?" Those gestures are wonderful, and the last thing I would do is diminish them. I am grateful for every one of them.
What strikes me, though, is that those same people — people who would go out of their way to send a juicer to someone they barely know — would not speak to someone they know well about Christ. That is exactly what Penn is getting at. His words are worth reading directly: "How much do you have to hate somebody to not proselytize them? How much do you have to hate somebody to believe that there's everlasting life and it's possible, but not tell them about it? If you had a doctor who knew the cure and withheld it from a patient — medical malpractice, lawsuits, jail."
And this is not about curing a physical ailment in a body that will ultimately deteriorate anyway. This is a far greater and more eternal issue than that.
Do You Really Want a King?
My intention in bringing all of this together is to ask you to sit with it. Let it settle. Begin to pray — maybe just as earnestly as Hannah prayed for relief in her distress. Perhaps you have something comparable to that in your own life right now, and you are earnestly beseeching God. That is good. Do it.
But I would add something to that prayer list, something I am actively trying to keep fresh in my own mind: "God, give me a heart and an understanding for people who don't know You. Do I even care enough to share?" That is a significant question. All of these things flow together when I say I want a king — when I say Jesus is Lord.
So we come back to the foundational question: do you really want a king? Do you really understand who He is? I hope you do. Living in His kingdom is the only place to live — not just in eternity, not just in heaven, but here on earth as well.
One of our ongoing prayers among the leadership team, the pastors, and the staff here at East Valley Bible Church is that we become a church that lives this out seven days a week — that we truly make the invisible God visible. That each of us would be living in such a distinctive way, even when it is uncomfortable, that people around us notice something and ask, "Tell me — how is it with you?" And when those opportunities come, we take advantage of them.
We will pick up chapter two next week.
Closing Prayer
Father, help us see this truth and let it transform our lives. We thank You for what You have done in both services today. God, we know there are people here who are rejoicing, and there are people here who are weeping. Just as Hannah was deeply troubled and distressed — if not outwardly, then inwardly — I pray You would move those people to allow us, the pastors and staff here at the front of the room, to pray with them.
God, thank You for this incredible truth. Give us a heart for You — and that means a heart for the things You value: Your Word, people, and the lost. Deepen our love and understanding for You. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen.