Hannah's Prayer: Reversal for the Lowly

So as I was introduced, we talked about like I was I'm from a church called Freedom House in Hamilton.

And now as we came into Acts 29, we came in through a different route.

We came in through the church in hard places kind of cohort.

Because when I typically go to my Sunday morning church where I pastor, it was a little different than when I came here.

Um weren't any syringes on the ground, anything like that.

Weren't people sleeping outside?

There's no one's shopping carts with everything they own waiting outside when we leave.

And so while that's really common at Freedom House, it's not so much common here.

But although we may contextually have a lot of things different experientially in our day-to-day, there are some things we have very, very much in common.

And one of those things is pain.

Pain and despair does not care about your zip code, your nationality, your social income.

It doesn't care about your political or national status.

Despair crosses all borders, crosses all boundaries, breaks down every wall.

You know, and we have a really good picture of that, right?

We just came out of a pandemic with COVID.

So we know what it is for something to just cross all barriers and affect everyone despite of where they live.

And it affects people in a way that maybe other things don't.

And so here's the thing how this usually looks is this.

So whether you're in the inner city or the suburbs, you come to a place where you realize that you are not as powerful as you think, that your wealth is not as strong as you think, that your ability, your wisdom is not as sufficient as you need it to be.

Last week, Pastor Justin preached about Elijah, right?

So how many of you know that if you were going tomorrow to find out if the test results from the doctor are cancer or not, all of a sudden you can pray like Elijah real easy, right?

If your kid has court tomorrow and is facing prison, you can pray really easy.

If you don't know if you're gonna be laid off in the job in which you've put the mortgage and the houses and all the future in the basket of that thing, you don't know if you're gonna be laid off, you can pray very easily, right?

You see, there's a thing about despair and need and suffering that pushes us to prayer like the day-to-day every just go along to get along, does it?

And what happens for a lot of us here and in the hard places of Jefferson, the neighborhood of Hamilton I'm from, is that despair drives us to see our need for God and maybe even to embrace God.

So we'll go to church, we'll start getting involved, we'll start reading our Bible, we'll start trying to change a few bad things and start doing a few good things, maybe.

But we see our need for God and we start seeking Him.

And in our seeking of Him and repenting, we begin to grow and life starts getting a little different and a little easier, maybe.

Maybe the depression that drove you to God is lightened.

Maybe the circumstance has changed, maybe he's blessed and provided for you in ways that which you've longed for and needed.

And instead of that pushing you to praise, it has pushed you towards trusting more in yourself.

So you get what you need from God, you get what you think God owes you or you deserve, and that passion for him, that desire for him begins to wane because, in reality, the thing you wanted from him, you've got.

And then you get that thing and you realize that thing is not the functional savior you thought it would be.

It does not complete you like it thought it would, it does not sustain you like you thought it would, it does not give you the joy you thought it would.

That glow and that shine of it doesn't last as long as you thought it would.

And so, what happens then?

You grow in despair again.

And then in your despair, you see that maybe I need God more than anything else.

And you so you have this cycle that instead of running to God to get your treasure because he's your treasure, you're running to God to get a treasure that's not him, and then you keep ending up surprised when it never works.

Friends, last Friday I was sitting in a homeless shelter in the neighborhood where we're at, and I sat for an hour and a half with a woman as she in a catatonic state had conversations with angels, with demons, with Eminem, Frosty the snowman, everybody in between.

I sat with her for an hour and a half to make sure she didn't leave to wander out to a neighborhood that would have consumed her alive.

She's barely even there, she's barely even talking, she's catatonic.

Friends, I've seen this woman in her right mind raise two kids, right?

I've seen her at the church praising God with all of her heart.

I've seen her go from despair to blessed to back to despair.

Because when God gave her the things that she wanted, when he gave her favor in her criminal case and she didn't go to prison, when she got her relationships restored with her kids and her family, when she got a job, when she got her mind put back together, it wasn't praise be to God, it was peace out, God.

I got this.

Only to find out she very, very, very much doesn't not got this.

And friends, you don't got this either.

I don't have this.

Now, our despair and our leaving God for treasures that are apart from God may not look like psychosis and catatonic states with crisis called for us.

No, what that may look like is us drinking more, binging more, lying more, working more, building more, crafting more, trying to do more things by our own hands so that we can alleviate the despair or dig into the cognitive dissonance that the thing we've bedded our life upon is not God.

Friends, my main point for us today is this: our response to pain reveals the object of our faith.

Our response to our pain reveals the object of our faith.

Before jumping into the account of Hannah, I want to jump into the uh the backdrop upon which this account happens.

We uh before Advent for the last year or so at Freedom House, we've been preaching through the book of Judges.

A lot of time when I tell people I'm preaching through the book of Judges, they give me really weird looks.

Because if you've ever read read the book of Judges, you know why.

So the summary of the book of Judges, just to give you like a glimpse and a snapshot of the culture and the life that Hannah is in.

So the book of Judges starts after the God has delivered his people, brought them into Canaan, into the promised land, and Joshua, the successor to Moses, has died.

And the book of Judges 1-1 says this after the death of Joshua, the people of Israel inquired of the Lord, who shall go up first for us against the Canaanites to fight against them?

See this picture of God's people.

What are they doing?

They are seeking God together corporately, they are asking for his wisdom, they are asking for his will, they are asking for his provision, they are asking for him to fight for them because they know they cannot fight this battle in and of themselves.

They are trusting God, they are seeking God.

This is a just intrinsically God word, God-focused people.

And God answers them.

God says, Judah is gonna go before you and he's gonna fight these enemies.

And then Caleb he says this he says, Whoever goes and leads, I'm gonna give my wife to.

Now I know arranged marriages may not be a thing now and maybe frowned on all that, but in that time, hear what you have saying, you have Caleb, a faithful, godly man who gives his godly daughter to another faithful, godly man named Athnil.

Athnil says, Hey, I love God, I love my people, I think I'll marry her, so let's fight.

And he's a faithful judge, he is a deliverer that God raises up.

And then his he, so Caleb gives his daughter to Athnil.

His daughter goes to Caleb and says, Hey, won't you bless us?

And he says, I'll give you some land.

Here's some land and springs and water and all of these things.

So here at the beginning of Judges, you have godly men treating their godly daughters well.

You have godly marriages and provision and all of these things.

It is a beautiful picture of when the people of God are trusting God and walking in his ways.

But unfortunately, it does not end that way.

From there on, it's a continual spiral into syncretism, apostasy, and idolatry.

So, syncretism is the name we probably we probably use all the time.

Think of the cheesy boy bands from the 90s in sync.

Uh, what did they do?

They would dance together, do their choreograph things and stuff like that.

So they're in sync, they're in step with one another.

The people of God were not being the people of God, lights in darkness, holy and peculiar unto the Lord, but no, they were living like the rest of the culture around them.

So think about this.

When God brought them into Canaan and He says, Hey, you're supposed to put their people to death, they said, No, no, no.

Hey, I think we'll put them to work, God, because that's easier for us.

When he says, smash their idols, they said, No, no, no.

We'll think we'll worship you alongside them.

They're in sync with the culture around them instead of being peculiar from it.

Apostasy.

Apostasy we call today hashtag deconstruction, right?

This is apostasy.

They turned from God, they were the people of God, and then they said, Hey, we want to worship Baal, or we want to worship this, or we want to worship, and they worship about 20, 30 different gods all through the book of Judges.

And then also it just brings them into idolatry, which is essentially worshiping anything other than God.

And when God wants to judge this people, he doesn't give them weak soldiers, he doesn't give them disease, he doesn't just exile them, which he does.

When God wanted to judge his people, he gives them weak leaders.

And let's look at these leaders that we have throughout the judges because there's this downward spiral and trajectory towards all of these things I just listed.

So Barak.

So there's a few good judges.

You got Athnial, then you got Ehud.

I gotta talk about Ehud.

He was a left-handed man, the son, but his name means the son of my right hand.

And so he stabbed this really, really fat dude.

I ain't body shaming nobody.

That's the Bible says.

Now don't get Lizzo on me, nothing like that.

But he takes this sword, stabs this oppressor of Israel so deep in the stomach, his fat overcomes and like just his arm comes out and the sword stays, you know, like a bad operation, kills this dude.

That's an awesome story.

Um, and so so it starts off really well, and then it gets to the end.

And then here's some of the, as we're going along, here's some of the judges and deliverers that Israel had.

Barack.

Barack was a coward.

Barak said to Deborah, I'm not gonna go unless you go with me.

And it wasn't because she had a word from the Lord, it was because he was a coward.

Gideon was also a coward, as we all know.

And hey, brace yourself if you name your kid Gideon, because it's about to get real uh regretful here.

Uh Gideon, though, after the 300 and the fleeces and all those things, what does he do?

He goes on a revenge tour that everyone who didn't do what he asked them to do, he was like, Oh, hey, remember that time I asked if you're if I could hang out?

You said no?

Guess I'm skinning you alive today.

And he did like he does that several times.

He is a vengeful, spiteful man who was once a coward.

He gets a little bit of power and vengeance goes to his mind, and then he says to them, the people are like, Gideon, we want you to be our king.

And Gideon says, No, I won't be your king, God will be your king.

And then he names his kid Abimelech.

You know what the name Abimelech means?

My dad is king.

He's a hypocrite, he's acting, he's uh he's vengeful, he's all these things.

You have cute kids, don't name them Gideon.

Um, it's kind of like also, I don't know if this it's kind of a little tangent, like doing your kids' nursery in like Noah's Ark is really weird too.

Like lots of dead bodies, lots of horrid smell, judgment on the whole earth.

Hey, but there's koala bears, whatever.

Um, and so first service thing, get that one, that was for you guys.

And so then, so Gideon does all that, and then he had he tries to live like a king, he has numerous wives and tries to have as many kids as possible.

Why?

Because he's trying to establish himself as a monarchy, he's hypocritical, he's lying, he's ultra-political in a bad sense.

So then he has this kid, Abemelech, who said, My dad is king.

Now, when you name your kid, my dad is king, they may feel a little entitled and privileged, right?

This dude does this.

He goes to the temple of Baal Barath, and the temple of Baal Barath means Baal is Lord, so they're trying to worship God Yahweh as the pagans worship their God, syncretism.

So he goes to this place and they essentially say, Hey, we'll fund you being king if you do what we do.

So they gave him money.

He uses that money from that temple to hire hitmen to kill his 70 brothers.

This is treacherous, right?

He's not even a deliverer, he's a self-appointed king, and he rules tyrantly, not as a deliverer that God appointed, but as a uh as a tyrant who oppresses the people.

And then one day, as he's going after this place, this unnamed woman picks up this millstone, throws it off a tower, and crushes his head.

Crushes his head.

This unnamed woman crushes this tyrant king's head.

And with his last words, as a skull must have been in parts or whatever, he says to his friend, he says to the guy there, stab me with a sword unless someone thinks I was killed by a woman.

Thousands of years later, here we are in Mason talking about him being killed with a woman, by a woman.

It didn't work.

But that's who we had.

We had several polygamous judges.

Polygamy was there, a part of the culture, but it wasn't because God had ordained that, but because they had so been in synced with the culture around them that it didn't impact even their marriages and their families and their home units.

We have Japh.

Japh is a judge who he says, God, if you give me this victory, I'll give you whatever comes out of my door first when I get home.

I'll sacrifice to you.

And so, like a pagan, he blames his daughter and said, You've caused me great woe instead of like you said something stupid, and he could have repented of this vow, but he doesn't.

It's like a syncretist pagan, he ties his living daughter up to an altar and burns her alive.

God never prescribes anything like that.

And then we see Samson.

Samson is a foolish, lust-driven man, and he leads for 20 years, and at the end of those 20 years, he is still a foolish, lust-driven, sinful man.

Friends, titles and fame and none of those things are gonna change us.

And then after the judges, we see Micah's house renting a Levite priest to try to legitimize his own selfish pagan worship, and then we see the account of a concubine who is raped all night long by several people, and then on the porch of her man, she he chops her up into 13 pieces and mails her out.

This is how far the people have gone from the promises of God.

This has been the descent of God's people from Judges 1-1.

Where God, who's gonna fight for us, who's gonna go for us?

God, how are you to like, you know what?

God's barely even mentioned, and we're killing our daughters.

We go from Caleb's daughter being treated well and loved, having a godly husband and a godly father, to this.

And this is the backdrop to which we're gonna talk about today, lands.

Now, if you're like me, men, you're married.

Um, some of you aren't, pray God bring you that to you.

Um, but if you're like me and you're married, you probably one day went and got an engagement ring, right?

And when they gave, when you went to search for that engagement ring, they didn't just hold the diamond up like this in the palm of their hand, right?

They didn't do that.

What'd they do?

They got that nice smooth piece of black velvet and they put it on that glass.

See, I've only been married seven years, so it's still uh a little fresh in my mind.

And they put that diamond on that black velvet, right?

Because what does that black velvet do?

It makes that that diamond pop.

It makes those lights and those colors and those cuts just jump out at you and one make you spend a ridiculous amount of money because the diamond's awesome and you love her.

You know what I'm saying?

And so here you are.

Friends, the darkness of this background is gonna make the redemptive work of God in the life of Hannah pop to us today.

And so, Hannah.

Hannah is a woman who is married to a man who is married to two wives.

And again, this isn't that something God ever prescribes or uh condones, but this is the scripture uh commenting and addressing the culture where they're at.

The people of God had been so in sync with the world that here they are in polygamy.

And Hannah's husband loves her greatly, but she has no children, she's barren.

Now, the other wife, Panaya, the husband doesn't love her as much, but she has kids after kids after kids after kids.

And yearly they would go to the temple in Shiloh, or they would go to the tabernacle in Shiloh, and they would worship there, and Panaya would provoke her year after year for her barrenness, would ridicule her, take shots at her.

And so Hannah Hannah Hannah here struggling with her barrenness, struggling with her brokenness, struggling with all of these.

Her husband loves her, and her husband tries.

He says to her, Aren't I better to you than 10 sons?

And no, you're not.

And so here's the thing we see in that.

This is kind of a parenthesis.

Like, spouses, you don't have to complete your spouse.

God completes their your spouse.

You don't have that burden upon you.

I can never complete my wife, only God can do that.

And my wife can't complete me, only God can do that.

So I don't love her and seek and serve her, hoping she completes me in return.

I seek her and love her and pursue her out of the completion I already have in Christ.

Does that make sense?

Close parentheses there.

But she's crying, she's dying inside.

She's in a place that is broken, a culture that is sinful.

God has all but been forgotten, but though acknowledged in just passive, trite little routines, but not for her.

One day she goes to the temple and she starts praying and pouring her heart out before God.

While she's pouring her heart out before God, she's not saying a word.

And Eli, the priest, he's a decent priest, but he's got some horrible sons.

That Hannah's son is going to judge him and his sons later.

But he looks at her and says, Woman, you're drunk.

Why'd you come in here half in the bag?

My words, not his.

Friends, this priest doesn't even recognize passionate prayer.

The man who is supposed to lead the people of God unto the truth of God doesn't even know for what it is for a person to seek God in desperation.

And he calls her drunk.

And she says, I'm not drunk.

That's you suppose.

I'm pouring my heart out before this before God.

And he says, Go be blessed.

God's given you what you asked for.

So she goes and she's with her husband, and he gives them a child.

Which leads us to my first point, friends.

Hannah treasures God above all else.

See, the text that was read for us earlier describes her song of praise.

The child has been born, the child has been weaned, and the child has been given to the Eli the priest to serve God at the temple.

Her song of praise, though, begins with making much of the person and glory of God, not in boasting in our child and blessing.

She doesn't have God provide for her, then forget about him.

Let me ask us, friends, what pushes us and provokes us to praise and adoration and worship of God?

When was the last time that we woke up with our health and our home and our family and our children, our jobs and all the things that we have?

And our first thought was, Praise be to the Lord.

All good and perfect gifts come from Him.

When was the last time we remembered that we were lost and dead in our sin?

But Christ in His love provided for us a means of escape, taking the wrath that we deserved, earning our righteousness, forgiving us.

When was the last time we thought about that and it moved us to open our mouths and lift our voice and praise to God?

When was the last time we sat with our kids and looked into their beautiful eyes and saw that God was the provider of all things and He had answered our prayers and praised Him?

When was the last time we got to the end of a day and we realized that everything that could have gone wrong didn't?

And it didn't, not because we're great, but because God is.

Friends, we are so prone to be like my friend I talked to at that at Surf City.

We get what we need from God, and our first reaction is of course, God gave that to me.

I'm me.

That's the way it's supposed to go, right?

If I do the things I'm supposed to do, I say the things I'm supposed to say, I live the way I'm supposed to live.

There's supposed to be some action and result that follows that, but friends, that's not the case.

Everything you have is a gift from God.

When was the last time you praised Him for it?

When was the last time that provoked you to say that all I have is from God?

Whether it be the house you live in or Christ's righteousness that covers you, you didn't earn a bit of it.

Well, I worked hard.

You worked hard, yes, at the job God gave you, with the health that God gave you, with the mind that God gave you, with the hands that God gave you, with the you didn't do God gave you all of that.

When was the last time that caused you to bubble up in praise and adoration for Him?

See, friends, she displays treasure in God by obeying God with the child.

She says to God, if you give me this child, I will give him to you to serve you.

Now, a couple things there.

We may look at that and be like, oh, she's trying to manipulate.

There's some prosperity gospel madness going on here, but that's not the thing.

Because of who her husband was, this kid would have been a Levite.

So he was given over to the service of God anyway.

And to say that God, what you give me, I will use for your glory, that's not a special prayer.

That's basic, right?

Shouldn't that be how we're living with everything?

If everything we have is a gift from God, then everything should be used in response to that gift to give him glory.

Not some special case when a barren woman has a baby.

But everything that we've been given has been given to us by God for the glory of God.

Everything, our life, our breath, our time, our relationships, our money, our clothes, our shoes, our today and our tomorrow, if he would be so gracious.

All of that is to God and for God.

Her life, our life follows our treasure.

And she displays treasure in God by obeying him.

And your life follows what you treasure.

Jesus says it like this: out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.

He says that where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Friends, your seat, your body may be in the church, but your heart in the world.

And the atheist can sit on the Sunday morning service, Sunday after Sunday, and never praise God.

Though the Christian will sit, hear the glory of God, hear the truth of the gospel, and be provoked to praise and worship Him because they know that that was the price that was paid for their salvation.

Friends, may the gospel and the truth and all that God has done for us, may it never grow stale or cold to us.

But friends, she trusts in God in barrenness and motherhood.

Her hope is not in her circumstances, but in God Himself.

Friends, where have you forgotten God where He has provided for you?

Where has the things that God has given you become so common in your life that you no longer have that heart full of thanksgiving and worship in response to him because of them?

And where's your love or obedience to God tethered to circumstances instead of him?

Hannah doesn't say, I'm gonna start trusting you and worshiping you and seeking you when I get a child.

It's because she trusts and seeks and worships God, period, for who he is, that she seeks him and then gets a child as a result of that.

Friends, where your obedience or love or worship to God is tethered to whatever he gives you or doesn't take from you.

That thing is your God, not God himself.

Are you out if God takes your children?

Are you out if you get laid off tomorrow?

Are you out if the house burns down?

Are you out if a loved one dies or your spouse leaves you?

Friends, how we respond to our suffering and pain really reveals where our true faith and hope lies.

My second point is this Christ exalts the humble for the glory of his name.

In verses 3 through 10, we talk about the barren having children and the weak being strong and the poor being rich.

Friends, her count of life with Paniah set up the contrast of strong and the weak.

You have a barren woman, and you have a woman with plenty of kids.

And then you have her song breaking out into that the kingdom of God is not like the world because God reverses the strong with the weak.

Friends, we're all the weak in here.

You may have never experienced homelessness, you may have never experienced addiction, you may have never been an orphan, you may have never been jobless, you may have never been psychotic or any of those things, but friend, you have all been dead in your sin.

You have all been slaved by the flesh.

You have all been unable to save yourself.

You have all been guilty before a righteous God, you have all been lost in need of a savior.

So all of us, no matter what our circumstances have been or not been, all of us know what it is to be weak.

Friend, Psalm 23 says, He will set a table before us in the presence of our enemies.

You do realize you were on the opposite side of that table at one point, right?

You were the enemies on the other side who King Jesus has brought near to himself.

We are the weak.

So don't look at the downcast, the lady with the shopping cart talking to herself and thinking she's weak, no, we're weak.

Friends, the the scariest part isn't that our our our wickedness gets judged, the scariest part is that our righteousness is as of but filthy rags, right?

We are the weak, we are the broken, we have been dead, but in Christ Jesus, his life, death, and resurrection, now we have been given peace with God.

Now we have been given freedom.

Now we have been given newness of life.

Now we have been given reconciliation, now we have been filled with the Holy Spirit, covered in his righteousness, sons and daughters forever.

We were not always that, we did not earn that, or we did not deserve that.

We were the poor who have been made rich, we are the weak who have been made strong, we are the broken who have been healed, we are the people of God who have been saved by God for his glory and praise.

Friends, her suffering is what drives her to seek God.

Eli, though the priest, like much of her our current situation, doesn't even recognize the desperation for God.

In fact, in today's time in America and things like that, just coming to church every Sunday makes you a radical.

Things that were assumed in the 90s are now like radical Christianity.

Oh, you mean like you like you go to church and you're faithful to your spouse?

Yeah.

You don't have sex before?

No, no.

Wow, that's crazy.

It's not actually.

It's the way the people of God are supposed to live.

But because of the same syncretism, we think that same way.

Friends, not everybody around you may recognize what it means for you to be desperate for God, but God recognizes it and he loves it.

He calls us to bombard the throne of grace for help in time of need.

He wants us in our pain to not mask it with self-help, self-time, self-anything, but to own our weakness and let that weakness push us to our strength, which is Christ Himself.

You don't need to drink more, binge more, work more, any of those things more.

What you need is to get alone before God and to realize He is the one who exalts the lowly, He is the one who gives strength to the weak because He is the strength to the weak, and we are the weak, and He is our strength, church.

Christ exalts the humble for what?

So we can have the American dream.

No, so we can glorify His name.

Friends, I'm afraid most of the church doesn't even think about the glory of God in their day-to-day lives anymore.

AW Tozer once said this: Christians don't tell lies, they sing them.

Did we sing about all glory to God, yet the glory of God, the weightiness of God, obedience to God, seeking God doesn't even cross our minds in the day-to-day.

Lord, may we repent of that if that is us.

And maybe we're Eli, but we can leave Hannah.

By God's grace.

My last point is this our suffering is never just about our suffering.

Our suffering is never just about our suffering.

If we were to be honest, she says some things here that are pretty grand for a woman just having a baby, right?

Women get pregnant all the time, you know.

But here she is singing this song, talking about God's made the look the weak strong and the song.

Like, whoa, whoa, hey lady, people have kids all the time.

But friends, she's worshiping God, and she knew God was doing something, even if she didn't know it was as grand as it was.

Friends, she has a baby, not just a baby, but a prophet, a Nazarite, a judge, Samuel.

And not only does she have this kid, she goes on to have five more kids.

And then she sings there in the Latin, she says, The Lord will establish his throne.

But what do we hear about judges?

There is no king in Israel, right?

But she's gonna have a baby named Samuel, and Samuel's gonna be raised up, and he's going to anoint a man named David.

David to be what?

King.

And through his descendants, there's going to be one born of a virgin, the son of David, Jesus Christ the Lord, King of kings and Lord of Lords.

And he will sit upon what?

The throne of David for all eternity.

Friends, her suffering wasn't just about her suffering.

Her suffering and praise and subsequent praise to God for his answer gave language to the song of Mary we hear hundreds and hundreds of years later as she meets with Elizabeth and John the Baptist leaps in her womb.

That this unnamed, unknown woman, mouthing praise to God at an altar by a lukewarm, apathetic priest, would be the prototype for the mother of God.

Not in the Catholic sense, you know what I'm saying?

Jesus is God, right?

Mother of God, okay, get me.

But inform this no name, unknown lady.

And her barrenness cries out to God.

And we're reading about it, we're being encouraged about it.

Friends, your suffering is not just about your suffering.

As we treasure God in suffering, we are declaring to the church, the world, and at times even our own hearts, that He and He alone is the object of our faith and worship.

Friends, if you're going, if you're into this time, and you're grieving, you're mourning, you're depressed, you're broken, you're feeling the weightiness of the effects of the fall, or the consequences of your own sin, or the consequences of other sin, or whatever the other sin, whatever the case may be.

Here's what the world tells us to do, and here's at times what even the church has told us to do to put on the fake face, to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and pretend it's okay.

Don't do that.

Don't do that.

What I say every Sunday, our vision and mission at Freedom House is that because of the person and work of Christ, we've been made free to know God, we've been made free to be known by God and one another.

Friends, in your suffering, the glory of God is displayed because his persevering love is seen by all.

His faithfulness is seen by all.

His love is seen by all.

So as you come into the covenant community, and instead of putting on the fake face, you open your soul to trusted men and women who love God and love you.

They see God's faithfulness in your life and it encourages and builds them up as well.

They see the hand of God, that what we read about, that what we hear about, that what we preach about is not just lofty talk for sermons and Facebook posts, but it's for the real trenches of the day-to-day life.

And one another sees the faithfulness of God in the sufferings of one another.

The world sees that as you do not forsake the church, you do not forsake Christ at the first bit of hardship or turmoil, or somebody disagrees with you, or God forbid you get triggered.

But as you persevere and trust Christ, and you say, though I may have lost everything, he is still good.

Spouse may have died, child may have died, parent may have died, job may be lost, but praise be to God, I still have the greatest treasure of all treasures.

I have God Himself.

Though you take everything from me, you cannot take Him.

And because of that, I have reason to rejoice.

Because of that, I have reason to be glad.

Because of that, I have reason to go, because of that, I have reason to praise.

You can take everything from me, including my very life, but you cannot take my salvation.

Does the world see within us a church, men and women in our day-to-day lives, not just here, not just on the Facebook and the hashtags and the Insta stories, but on the hard Monday mornings when everything's going wrong, not the perfect people, but the God people who love and cling to Him in all things.

And friends, even our own hearts at times.

Justin can't be your favorite pastor, preacher.

Matt Chandler can't be your favorite preacher.

You gotta be your favorite preacher.

Because there's gonna be times ain't gonna be Justin, ain't gonna be Rick, ain't gonna be any of the 17 Jordans you got here.

None of them are gonna be there.

But you know it's gonna be you and God.

And you gotta be able to look yourself in that mirror, like the psalmist did, and say, Why are you downcast?

Oh my soul.

He's talking to himself.

So it's gonna be days where everything's falling apart, or at least even it feels like it's falling apart, even if it's not.

So whether the struggle is going on around you or within you, you gotta know, like Hannah knew that God is faithful.

And you gotta remind yourself of that.

It's not over, it's not done, that's not all you're gonna be, that's not all that's gonna happen.

God is faithful, you're not wasting your time, you're not wasting your life.

God is worthy of your obedience, and you gotta remind yourself of that in those times where it feels like obedience and praise is profiting you nothing.

Friends, our suffering is never just about our suffering, our suffering is about the glory of God in all things, and in her suffering, she leaned into a faithful God who she knew was faithful, and she trusted in his goodness and character, and he provided for her.

Friends, God hears our prayers and he is for us.

So in our times of pain, in our times of despair, it will reveal the object of our faith.

So may we be a people who treasure God above all else.

May we remember that Christ exalts the humble for his glory and not ours.

And may we remember that our suffering is never just about our suffering, but about his glory and our good.

Let's pray.