Living On A Prayer

 October 18 2020

1 Samuel 1,2:1-10

         My youngest sister, Becky is married to John and they and when they were first married, Becky and John, like a lot of young couples, wanted to have a family. Unfortunately, they found that they had fertility issues which made having children of their own very difficult. We prayed for them and hoped that they might find an answer.They sought out the best medical help, fertility clinics all to no avail. So, they decided to adopt and that too was not without difficulty. Several times the child they were going to do adopt was at the last minute kept by their birth mother. Needless to say they grew very frustrated. Finally, they began to look at adopting from a foreign country and they ended up adopting two children from and orphanage from South Korea, a little girl they named Leah and a little boy named Max. Leah is now sixteen, a junior in high school and Max is fifteen, a sophomore in high school. They are just two really terrific kids, both run cross country, both very polite, wonderful children.

         Now, anytime I think about Leah and Max I can’t help but get choked up because of how Becky and John through their choice to adopt from South Korea have forever transformed the lives of Leah and Max. Where once they lived in an orphanage without much hope, now they are part of the American Dream. They have a great home, a mother and father who love them, they are part of a greater family with grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins all who love them dearly. And Becky and John have taken them to church where Leah and Max have been baptized and are growing in their faith. While it was very sad that Becky and John could bot have children naturally, it is not hard to see how God took their situation and used it to give a new life to two children living in South Korea.In a sense God answered their prayers for a family only he did in a way that none of us could imagine and God answered their prayer in a way that he could bring about faith in two young people who may not have had an opportunity to ever know him. 

         I couldn’t help but think of my sister and brother-in-law when I meditated on the story of Hannah. The desire to have a family is a timeless longing for every generation and it is no different now than it was then. What makes Hannah’s story so tragic is that on top of her grief of being unable to have children she also lived in a society that had no sympathy for women who were barren. This cruelty is voiced by the first wife of Hannah’s husband, Peninnah. Now, what is interesting is that Peninnah could give Hannah no sympathy even though as our story tells us they went often to Shiloh to worship and sacrifice to God. I guess Peninnah was no different than people today who also worship God but end up being no different because of the experience. It seems that the pull and influence of the culture that surrounds us has a greater influence on some people, an influence that is hard for even the worship of God to change. The reason why this is is that the society we live in just like the society Peninnah lived in has a culture grounded in the power of the flesh. This means that the strongest, the fastest, the smartest and the most fertile lord it over those who find themselves on the short end of the stick. Now, while these abilities of the flesh seem to make some people out to be greater than others, to give some people bragging rights, the truth is that this boasting of physical greatness is really done simply to cover up what every knows deep down and that is all of us are vulnerable. All of us are subject to being hurt at any given moment, all of us have experienced brokenness at one point or another and no matter how great some people think they are, the truth all of us have to face is that none of us get out of here alive. Rather than than facing the reality of our existence, some people would just make believe that by focusing on their supposed greatness they can forget their underlying weakness if only for a while.

         This weakness of our flesh is most pronounced in our inability to do the good that we know we should do. Peninnah’s cruelty towards Hannah displayed her weakness not her strength. Even though Peninnah was able to have children while Hannah was not, she was unable or unwilling to show Hannah some much need sympathy. As our story tells us, Peninnah grievously irritated Hannah, not just once but year after year, especially when they went up to Shiloh to worship God. Peninnah obviously felt that her fertility was a sign of God’s favor and Hannah’s infertility was a sign that God’s goodness did not shine upon her.  This is how the flesh can twist the blessings of God around and use them in cruel and mean ways to harm others instead of using those blessings to be a blessing to others. As Paul describes the problem of living by the flesh in the seventh chapter of Romans, “I know no good thing dwells in me, that is in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.” This describes every person who lives apart from God, who lives without the Holy Spirit’s power. So we can understand that if the society we live in today just like the society Peninnah and Hannah lived in thousands of years ago, is made up of people unable to do the good they know they should do, then of course the result is going to be a cruel and violent world. This world is what Peninnah represents in our story.

         Hannah, on the other hand, represents those who have felt the brunt of this world’s cruelty and who in their weakness turn to God to find their strength. These are people who are honest about their vulnerability and weakness because they know that this forces them to rely solely upon God and his power. This is what Hannah did when she was distressed by her inability to have children turned to God in prayer. Her prayer was more importantly a vow, an oath where she told God, “O, Lord of hosts, if you will look on the affliction of your servant and remember me and not forget your servant, but will give 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.”  Now the language Hannah uses gives us clues that help us go deeper into what is going on here. Hannah calls herself a servant of the Lord. Many times when we read of how someone calls themselves a servant of the Lord people will often miss the significance and importance of this understanding. What is missed is that being a servant is something God desires of all who love him. We know this to be true from what we read in Deuteronomy, the sixth chapter, the thirteenth verse where we read, “It is the Lord your God you shall fear. Him you shall serve and by his name you you shall swear.” These three expectations that God has for those who love him, give us a thumbnail sketch of the life that differs from a life lived in the power of the flesh. This, I believe is what is signified by Hannahs understanding that she was a servant of God, that it was God alone whom she would serve. The word we translate as servant in our verse from Deuteronomy is the same word elsewhere translated as being priest, a servant of God’s in his house of worship. This underlying aspect of worship helps us to figure out the first expectation for those who love God which is that it is God whom we are to fear. Now, it would be easy to make a snap judgment and say that this means that we are to be afraid of God, to understand fear as meaning that God should scare us. This understanding kind of contradicts the whole idea that we are to love God with all of our heart, with love of our soul or life and with all that God has given to us. I mean just how are we to love with God with all that we are on one hand and on the other know God as being the one who scares and frightens us. It just a nonsensical idea. No, what we have to understand is that in the Hebrew language the word “fear” can have many meanings. If we look at other places in scripture where this word we translate as fear is used this meaning starts to become very evident. In Leviticus, the nineteenth chapter we are told that we are to revere our mothers and our fathers and to keep the Sabbath. The word used for revere is the exact same word translated as “fear” in the expectations God has for us. In the book of Joshua, in the fourth chapter, we read how God had exalted Joshua so that the people of Israel revered Joshua just as they revered Moses. In this scripture passage it wouldn’t make much sense to say that the people feared Joshua and Moses. So, we can see from just these few examples that reverence is a good way to translate what is otherwise translated as fear. To revere someone is to be in awe of them, to respect them. We revere God and respect him because we know that God is the Creator and sustainer of our world. More importantly, we know that God created us, that we are fearfully and wonderfully made and it is the very hands of God who has knitted us together in our mothers womb. So, our reverence of God is a reverence based on the realization that God is the origin of our life, our reverence then is a reverence of the sacredness of life. Life is not something maintained by our own strength, the so called strength of our flesh but rather life is gift given to us by God. It is his breath, his Spirit which is our life.It is this understanding that is the reason for our worship of God, the reason we find God worthy of all of our love because we know that it is out of his love that we are now alive. The people of Israel called this understanding that we know God as our Creator and sustainer of not only all of creation but our life specifically as being the faith known as emunah faith. This faith as we are told in Proverbs the beginning of wisdom. In other word this is where we begin our faith journey.

         Well, it is not hard to understand that if we revere God, if we know that he is the Creator and sustainer of life that we will also know that all we can be to him is a servant. If God has created our life and has given and sustained our life it would just seem odd to then take this life and use it for our glory instead of wanting to use this life for the glory of God. This is the understanding Hannah must have had when she prayed as a servant of God. The years of worship there at the tabernacle at Shilo had created in her emunah faith, a faith which knows God as the Creator of all and the one who sustains all. In light of this knowledge Hannah also knew that she was a servant of God. This was a servanthood molded after the priests who served at the tabernacle, those who offered up sacrifices on behalf of the people who came to worship. Hannah obviously understood her service to God in this same way because of her willingness to give her firstborn son to work forever in the tabernacle. This sacrifice was equivalent to the offering of the first fruits required every year from the people of Israel.Hannah understood that the first of everything belonged to God as an act of faith that if God received the first portion than he would abundantly provide more after that.

         It is Hannahs giving of her first born as a first fruit offering to God which demonstrates the deepening of her faith in God. While the people of Israel understood that people begin their faith journey with emunah faith, a faith in God as the the Creator and sustainer of the universe,  they also knew that this emunah  faith was only the beginning of a faith journey.  Emunah faith, a state of understanding about God, was to lead to bitachon faith, a state where we trust God. Bitachon faith is a confidence that the underlying reality in which we live is good because we know the God who created it is a good God. Bitachon faith is saying that we are relying upon God to watch over us and protect us. This is the faith where we take our burden, just like Hannah took what was weighing her down, and we place it in the hands of God. To do this means that we know that God loves us more than we love ourselves. It is knowing that God knows what is best for our own good. It is the faith that knows God always has my best interest at heart.

         It may be difficult for us to see the connection between bitachon faith and the third expectation God has for those who love him which is that we are to swear by his name. However, if you think what it means to swear by something we can begin to see that it means that we are stating that we have confidence in that which we swear by. To say that we swear by the name of God then means that we place the utmost confidence in the name of God. The name of God is the essence of who God is, it is his unchangeable nature, his glory. In the thirty fourth chapter of Exodus we read of how God revealed that he is a God who is merciful and gracious, a God who is slow to anger, a God who is abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness keeping steadfast love for thousands forgiving iniquity, sins and transgressions but who by no means will clear the guilty…” This is God’s unchanging character, his name and it is this name, this is what we can have absolute confidence in. This name is the reason we can trust God. This does not mean that everything we pray for we are going to receive but rather that whatever comes we can be certain that the God who is merciful and gracious, the God abounding with steadfast love and faithfulness has a reason for what he is doing.

         Hannah, in her prayer, showed that she had bitachon faith, a confidence in the name of the Lord. She was trusting in the God of mercy and grace a God of steadfast love and faithfulness to be the God who would look upon her affliction and remember her, the one God had created. Hannah laid her burdens in his arms knowing that this was the God who had her best interests at heart. As she knew the faithfulness of God she in turn would be faithful to him, vowing to not withhold her firstborn but rather she would give him up to be a priest of God. Our scripture tells us that Hannah prayed from her heart, that she spoke no words but prayed instead praying a prayer that was beyond words, a prayer of the yearning of the very depths of her soul. The high priest who saw her thought she was drunk but Hannah put him in his place explaining that she was not drunk just very troubled in her soul. She further told him to not regard your servant as a worthless woman for she had been speaking out of great anxiety and vexation. This was quite bold of her to speak to him like this, a boldness that perhaps came from the spirit of boldness, the Holy Spirit. In fulfilling what God expects of those who love him, being a person who has a deep reverence for God, a person who considers themselves a servant of God, a person who has confidence in the name of God, this was the kind of person that Hannah was. She was living the life God expects of all who love him. This life Paul would later call the life of the Spirit, a life characterized by boldness. This is how Hannah prayed, with boldness because of her certainty that God had heard her prayer. The result we are told is that as she went her way that the sadness on Hannah’s face was gone replaced by the joy of the Lord.

         Well, God answered Hannah’s prayer and she conceived and had a son Samuel which means “I have asked for him from the Lord”. And as soon as Samuel was old enough, Hannah took him to the tabernacle where he would live and serve before God the rest of his life.  Samuel would become one of the greatest prophets that Israel had ever known, the prophet who anointed first, Saul to be king over Israel and then later, Samuel anointed David to be the king of Israel.

         As we think of David being king over Israel it is not hard to have out thoughts turn to Jesus who was a king in the lineage of David. Jesus is the one who met those same expectations that Hannah met. As we read in the fifth chapter of John Jesus knew of his Father’s love for him, and he knew that his life had been granted to him by his Heavenly Father. Jesus also told his disciples that he did not come to be served but to to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. And Jesus had confidence in His Heavenly Father, praying not my will but your will be done, going to the cross trusting that his Heavenly Father was the one who gives life to the dead and brings into existence those things which do not exist.  Three days later when Jesus stepped out of the grave the power of this faith of Jesus was seen by all the world. When Jesus ascended to his Fathers side in glory the Holy Spirit was given without measure to all who come to Jesus so that through the Spirit all can, like Hannah, revere and worship God, serve God to his glory and have exceeding confidence in God’s goodness allowing them to pray boldly just as Hannah did so long ago. This is the way that a world living in the power of the flesh can witness in us the greater power of a life that God expects. Amen