Hearts of Kings - Samuel 01: Hannah

Hear now the word of the true and living God, first Samuel two, verses one through ten.

And Hannah prayed and said, My heart exalts in the Lord, my horn is exalted in the Lord, my mouth derides my enemies, because I rejoice in your salvation.

There is none holy like the Lord, for there is none beside you.

There is no rock like our God.

Talk no more so very proudly.

Let not arrogance come from your mouth, for the Lord is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed.

The bows of the mighty are broken, but the feeble bind on strength.

Those who are full have hired themselves out for bread, but those who are hungry have ceased to hunger.

The barren has borne seven, but she who has many children is forlorn.

The Lord kills and brings to life.

He brings down to Shaol and raises up.

The Lord makes poor and makes rich.

He brings low and he exalts.

He raises up the poor from the dust.

He lifts the needy from the ash heap, to make them sit with princes, and inherit a seat of honor.

For the pillars of the earth are the Lord's, and on them he has set the world.

He will guard the feet of his faithful ones, but the wicked shall be cut off in darkness, for not by might shall a man prevail.

The adversaries of the Lord shall be broken to pieces.

Against them he will thunder in heaven.

The Lord will judge the ends of the earth, he will give strength to his king and exalt the horn of his anointed.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Hello.

Good morning.

All right.

It's this thing.

I'm convinced there's something going wrong with our little pack thing.

Um thank you all so much for joining us this morning.

Uh welcome to Redemption Church Denver.

I've got a great announcement to make that I'm really excited about making, which involves Krista, who is up here.

Um but before I make that announcement, we're sitting too far apart.

So let's all stand up and we'll gather together as densely as we possibly can.

Like we want to form a black hole because of our density.

Uh, we'll gather right down here in these front uh couple rows.

We'll form a uh singularity.

That's our goal.

And if you feel like you may be on the event horizon, then you probably are, and we're too far away.

Yeah, so bring it in.

Bring it in for the real thing.

Feel free to stand and bring it down.

Bring it down.

Yeah, bring it, bringing it down.

That's right.

We've got some seats right in here.

This uh area is a total void.

Uh so uh close to a singularity, getting close.

All right.

If there's an empty seat in front of you, you're too far away.

We're good.

All right.

The uh I got a thumbs up from somebody with an empty seat in front of them like, alright, dude, move on.

Welcome to church this morning.

Thanks for joining.

Uh we uh uh yeah, so gather close together.

One of the reasons that we do that is so that you can get to know each other.

Here's a great story that is reinforcing me doing this every week, which by the way, if you're wondering what phase of this we're in for doing this, where it when you say something, it's funny.

And then you say it again and it's funny, but it's a little less funny, and then you say it again and it's not funny at all, and you're over it.

That's the Sunday we're on now.

And then you say it one more time and it's like, I can't believe you're still saying this.

And then you say it again, and it's like, okay, it's starting to get funny again.

And then you and then you say it for like the seventh time, and it's like, okay, it's just funny that you're saying it.

And then everybody's laughing again.

So that we're going through that same rhythm, except this isn't a a joke so much as it is moving your seats.

Um, but in case you were wondering why is it annoying this week, that's why.

That's the Sunday that we're in.

Um so uh welcome to church.

Uh great announcement that I'm really excited about making.

So uh one of uh the uh current board members who's currently on what we're calling the founding board, it's sort of the temporary unofficial elder board while we're moving towards our first elder board as a church.

Uh uh, and it one of those members, his name is Jarrett Henson, he's right down front.

You can see him, I can see him from here.

Uh uh, and I were talking on the phone and we are discussing the future, where we're headed as a church, things that we can do to put ourselves in positions to be moving forward in in ways that we feel called to as a church.

And it Jarrett has been on staff with us for before me.

I think you've like hired me.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Um he sounds so enthused.

And uh he uh has been really our central admin.

Like if anything has happened, uh it he's had his hand on it in some way.

And um uh we were we were discussing, and we're we were like, you know what would make a huge difference is if we were able to bring on someone who could act as a more day-to-day admin, and Jarrett could move back into a more uh uh, you know, handling our giving, handling our insurance, our employment, these sort of back-end things that make us function as an organization.

And we don't have the budget to bring someone else on.

And so Jarrett says, what if you cut my salary in half?

And I step back to this position, and then we can bring someone on to fill that central administrative role.

Can you handle that?

Have you ever met someone who said that sentence before?

What if you cut my salary in half?

It's unbelievable.

I was just I've just been so impressed and overjoyed.

And so, anyway, that created space for us as an organization to be able to bring on someone who was no decision at all for us, uh, which is Krista, who's standing here, uh thankfully.

Yeah, okay.

We'll hug.

Um so this is Krista Copeland.

If you don't know her, uh you likely will.

Uh and uh she's going to be our central admin.

Uh I describe Krista as my boss.

Um I could really use a boss, and so we hired one to uh keep Zach and I on task and make sure things are really rolling here.

Um so this is just going to create so much uh uh space for Zach and I to be focused on the things we feel like we need to be focused on, and more than that, just accelerating us into things we aren't even able to do yet.

Uh if you've joined a redemption group already, it's probably because of Krista.

Um so anyway, wanted to bring you in on that news.

It's really exciting.

Um so let's give uh Krista a round of applause.

A welcome.

Okay, yeah, that's it.

Thank you.

Um great.

All right, so that was our first announcement.

So I'm like so excited about that.

Uh also, we've made an update to our app.

How many of you are are utilizing the app for the reading plan?

Great, that's awesome.

That's about what our numbers show.

Um, it's been so exciting talking with people who are getting time in the Word through following along with this reading plan that we're doing as a church.

You can find it right in the app, just tap Bible, and it's right in there.

We added a tab that we're calling practices.

And right now it only has one thing in it.

But the purpose of this tab is to accumulate things that we're doing together as a church to grow closer to each other in the Lord.

And so this will ultimately become a sort of repository of tools that you can utilize together or alone for your own for your own spiritual growth.

We really want to be equipping you with these things.

And so, what we're focusing on right now is simple discipline of reading scripture, being in the word and reading scripture.

And so, to help assist that, we have linked in the practices tab to a uh commentary on the scripture reading plan that we are doing.

And it's a daily commentary, it's written by a Canadian theologian named D.A.

Carson, who's an excellent uh uh biblical scholar, and he uh wrote a commentary to go along with our reading plan.

So we've linked to that in the practices tab on the app.

So when you're reading through, uh it adds some great depth to the scripture that you're engaging with and can make a lot of the things in there that might seem inaccessible at first can make them really understandable, which is our hope.

That these truths become understandable to us and incorporated into our lives.

So uh wanted to give you a heads up about that.

You can check that out.

The um the study is called For the Love of God, which is a hilarious name for something.

Um, because it sounds like an exclamation.

All right, and uh I'm we have a lot of announcements today.

Going forward uh today marks the uh beginning of our two-week signup period for redemption groups.

So uh we had on Friday we met with all of our redemption group leaders, kind of laid out what these groups are going to entail for this year.

You're basically going to be tracking along with the scripture that we are going through in our sermon series.

You're gonna be able to follow up on those with a group of people, a small group, meeting in each other's homes.

So we've got about 70 people signed up for redemption groups currently.

We really recommend joining because as a church, we keep things pretty simple.

There's really only two ways to be involved here, and that's gathering large and gathering small.

We gather large together on Sunday mornings to worship together, and we gather small throughout the week in each other's homes in redemption groups.

So sign up is live.

You can do that just by going to the app and uh clicking on groups, and then click join a group.

And you can scan, find the group closest to you, and sign up, and then you will be contacted shortly by Krista.

Um, so that's available.

Group signups will last until Sunday the 27th, and then groups will start that week, the week of Sunday the 27th.

They meet every other week and will run until May.

So this is our spring semester of groups.

Okay, so yay, redemption group signups.

And uh last but not least deserves to mention the uh Long Underwear fundraiser that we do to make a bulk donation of Long Underwear to the Denver Rescue Mission is uh still active.

We're doing this through the month of January.

So feel free to go ahead and give to that.

All right.

Now, enough with the announcements.

Let's pray and get into the text.

Holy Father.

Everything that we want to do this morning.

Only you can do.

Father, we ask that you would do that this morning.

That you would show us yourself in your word that we might know you.

Lord, we lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

This is the first week in our new series, which is called Heart of Kings.

And in it, we're going to be doing three character studies: a character study of Samuel, a character study of Saul and David.

And as we look at these throughout the books of 1st and 2nd Samuel, what we see is a political drama that unfolds for the Israelites.

But every turning point of this political drama doesn't have to do with the strategy of the leader, it doesn't have to do with their charisma or political ability or ability in policy.

It has to do with the condition of their hearts.

And so what we're going to be looking at is what do their hearts say about our hearts, these fundamental aspects of our being.

And if it's true what the Bible says, that everything we do flows from our hearts, then what can we learn about having a heart that is properly positioned before the Lord?

Well, our story starts not with any of those people, not with Samuel or Saul or David, but with a woman named Hannah.

Hannah is married to a man named El Cana, and El Kana is also married to another woman named Paninna.

Hannah, El Cana, and Paninna.

Paninna had children with El Cana.

Hannah had no children.

Can you feel the plot of the story taking shape?

Each year the family would make a pilgrimage.

It was sort of the highlight of their year, and they would go to a town called Shiloh, where there was a temple, and they would make their annual sacrifice to the Lord.

And during this pilgrimage, Paninna would almost always attack Hannah and deride Hannah because Hannah didn't have children.

When they would go to make the sacrifice, Alcana would give to Paninna the portion to sacrifice for her and for her children.

And then when it came time to give Hannah a portion, he would give her a double portion as compared to what he gave to Paninna.

And that's, the text says, because he loved Hannah.

And that disproportionality of love between his two wives, it becomes toxic in their relationship.

You see, the Bible doesn't explicitly condemn their polygamy, but it shows us in the details of their lives enough to see that it was not going well.

And so when Hannah receives this double portion, Paninna derides Hannah.

And what happens is they receive a meal.

When you provide a sacrifice at the temple, you are given part of your thanksgiving offering back.

And the intention of that is you go and you have this animal offering that's now been cooked by the priest.

There's kind of like temples back then kind of think Benihana.

And you get your food back and after the priest has cooked it, and you go and you have a family meal.

And so this is actually kind of a relatable thing.

This is like their Christmas, you know, or Thanksgiving.

The family gathers together annually and they have this meal together.

And at the meal, Hannah can't eat.

She's so disturbed, she's so anxious, she's so hurt by being in this family that she feels like she's not even really a part of.

Her husband, uh, well, this is what the text says.

In 1 Samuel 1, verses 7 and 8 says, So it went on year by year.

1 Samuel 1:7

As often as she went up to the house of the Lord, she used to provoke her.

Paninna used to provoke Hannah.

Therefore, Hannah wept and would not eat.

And El Cana, 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?

Ever the comforter.

Look at this husband who doesn't get it at all.

And just thinks it's about him.

Like, your problem is you don't realize how great I am.

That wasn't her problem.

So they consume the meal.

Hannah remains uncomforted.

She's ha she's being ridiculed by the other spouse in her family, and she is being misunderstood by a narcissistic husband.

And so Hannah leaves the table, the meal is uneaten, she's sad, and she bitterly weeps before the Lord at the temple.

She's crying at the temple in such a way that the high priest, whose name was Eli, actually comes to her and says, What are you drunk?

You come to our temple drunk like this?

Which shows two things.

It shows that Hannah was surrounded by men who did not understand.

And the conditions that the temple had fallen into, such that drunkenly showing up to it was something that Eli dealt with commonly.

And as she's praying and pouring her soul out before the Lord, which is what she describes as what she's doing, in the midst of it, she makes this vow.

And she says this in her prayer, 1 Samuel 1, 11.

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.

See, she makes this plea and she makes this vow.

She says, Lord, look on my affliction, and the very thing that you could give me to help this affliction, I'll give it right back to you.

The son that it seems would set me free, Lord, I'm vowing in the midst of my brokenness, it's yours.

He's yours.

The son who she has, who she ultimately has, his name is Samuel.

And Samuel, when he is born, she gives him to the temple and he rescues the Israelites from the hands of their oppressors.

They live under peace under Samuel.

By her son, thousands are saved.

This week, we're just gonna look at Hannah's story.

It's inspirational on all accounts.

It's the story of an answered prayer.

What we're gonna look at is how Hannah prays.

That is what her prayer is and how that affects her heart.

And then we're going to look at Hannah's gift, which is following the point in the story where she actually returns to the temple with her newly weaned son and gives him over to the temple forever.

And then finally, we're going to look at Hannah's hope.

Hannah's hope is demonstrated in the scripture that Sebastian read this morning, which is the prayer that Hannah says when she gives over her son Samuel to the temple.

And that prayer becomes the prophetic outline for this whole history of Israel that we're looking at.

This all really starts with this woman, this barren woman, heartbroken in front of a temple.

That's where our story begins.

So first, let's look at Hannah's prayer.

In 1 Samuel 1.10, it says, She was deeply distressed and prayed to the Lord and wept bitterly.

Some of you know firsthand the distress of wanting children and being unable to bear them.

And so I realized just with this story, I know for many of you that this story in particular was a sort of balm during that time.

Or it can be.

And so I understand that I'm on sacred ground here.

And this is not something that I need to explain to many of you.

But for the rest of us, it's it's helpful to sort of cultivate our empathy and our imaginations to look in at this moment where and see Hannah's depth of isolation that she's experiencing.

For her, her contribution to the family would have been her son's.

And although Al Cana did seem as though he didn't exactly view it that way.

Way, Hannah seemed to really feel it that way.

Such that when she's sitting there with the family gathered together, it's really two separate families.

As Paninna, the other wife, is deriding her and saying, you're bringing this sadness into this time that should be a celebration.

If you weren't here, we could actually experience the joy that we are desiring as a family.

You're the one who takes that away.

You're the problem here.

And Hannah has this.

Hannah experiences that and she feels that sadness, and so she takes it before the Lord and she prays and she weeps bitterly before him.

See, this is the real, this is real life for a Christian.

Where we see God has given us this desire for a thing that we could prove in the Word is a good thing.

It's a good thing to desire children.

It's a good thing.

And Hannah has that desire, and she can see how this one thing that God could give her would answer this main struggle in her life.

And yet God isn't giving it.

So we're forced into this question.

Why?

Why does God see this good thing that would solve so many issues in this person's life who he cares about, who is otherwise alone, who sees no other way out, and God doesn't give it?

When we encounter that problem in our own lives, because we aren't getting out of debt, because we aren't able to have children, because the move to Denver didn't fill my life with the adventure I expected it to, whatever it may be.

When God isn't providing that one thing that we thought would make all of life click into place, we often answer it in two ways.

I think the first way is by limiting God and his power.

I was listening to a sermon a couple weeks ago, and at a church, I like to listen to their sermons occasionally, and he uh there was a guest speaker, nothing against guest speakers, but this one was really bad, and he was describing how we've mixed up our theology in saying that God is in control of everything.

And what we need to remember is that because God has incorporated free will into the world, that uh the bad things that are happening in our life are just attributable to Satan.

So what we do is we try and limit God in the way that he's operating in our lives.

We sort of let God off the hook and say, it isn't really you that's withholding this from me.

And once I get myself in line to have enough faith or to uh take advantage of my circumstances in a new way, or to get these bad people out of my life and bring some good people into my life, whatever it may be, whatever superstitious tactic trick that you're going to lean on in order to work your circumstances out for you, you're going to do because God, once he's limited in his power, is no longer useful to you.

Now, if you're a more mature Christian, then you may move on to number two, and you'll say something like, Look, I know God's in control of everything.

Saying God is in control of everything is like saying A equals A.

It's it's just it's almost the same sentence.

God means he's in control of everything.

It's what the word means.

And so I know that God is the one who's keeping me from this, and because I know that, I'm just gonna try and settle this pain in my heart on my own.

And instead of being driven towards prayer, I'm going to consider he's in control of everything anyway.

So I have no real reason to pray.

I'll just sort of sit in this stoically, literally sometimes, stoically.

Hannah does neither of those things.

Hannah doesn't limit God in his power, and she doesn't use his power as an excuse to avoid what she's feeling about the situation.

Instead, she takes her pain and her bitterness that she feels, and she goes right to the Lord.

Openly, vulnerably, praying to the Lord in bitterness and anxiety and vexation, she prays to the Lord, knowing that it is the Lord who has closed her womb.

Twice the text says that.

In verses five and in verse seven, it says, For the Lord had closed her womb.

So what does she do?

She goes to the Lord in this brutal place, she pours herself out before God, and she makes this vow in the midst of it.

We're going to return to her prayer right now, and I'll read it again.

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.

When she comes to God in this position, she doesn't start by saying, God, look at the look at look at how faithful I've been year by year.

And I've shown up and I've gone through this with the family, and I haven't stopped making sacrifices.

So therefore, give me a son.

She doesn't go to God and say, Look, uh, I'm not mad.

I know you have your reasons, I know all things work together for good to those who love God.

So I'm not, look, you do what you want.

You live in the heavens, you do what you want.

Uh, but could you give me a son?

That's not the way she advocates for herself before God.

She doesn't theologize her emotions away or the real pain of the situation that she's in.

She doesn't remove that through some theological jujitsu.

She bears it before the Lord, honestly, humbles her heart before the Lord.

And she says, Lord of hosts, if you will indeed look on the affliction of your servant and remember me and not forget your servant.

So what she's saying is, Lord, will you help me?

Because I'm pitiful.

I'm afflicted.

I can't help myself.

Lord, if there is any hope for me in this, it's just because you remember me.

That's it.

She pours herself out in that way and she makes herself dependent on whether or not God intimately cares for her.

That's what she's trusting in.

She says, God, I'm gonna I'm gonna pour myself out before you because I think you care for me.

Because you'd look at a small, tiny person like me who's afflicted, and you'd remember.

And in that, she turns loose this request.

And the very thing that she asks for God, she gives right back to him.

Say, Lord, if you were to give me a son, I know that he would just be yours.

And to show that I would know that, I'm going to make a vow to you.

If you give him to me, I'll give him right back to the temple for a lifetime of service.

You do it's called a Nazirite vow, his hair wouldn't ever be cut, which we're trying with my son.

50-50 reviews.

See, the way that she prays, she doesn't get herself right theologically and then go to God.

She goes to him humbly and broken.

And in that, God sorts her out.

See, that's the approach that we take.

When we're looking to live in ways that are honoring to God, we go to him humbly, with the brokenness that really is in our hearts, honestly, with what's really there, with what's really there.

We don't wait to pray until our motivations become as pure as we can imagine.

We go to God with our mixed motivations on stage and we say, sort these out.

Because this is all yours anyway.

And my only hope in this is that you care for me.

And so that's the approach that she takes.

The chief priest Eli, he approaches her and he's like, What are you drunk?

And she's like, I'm not drunk, I'm pouring out my soul, and he's like, I'm sorry.

And he says, It may whatever you've prayed for happen.

May the Lord hear you as you pour out your soul.

And she said, This is 1 Samuel 1.18, let your servant find favor in your eyes.

Then the woman went her way and ate, and her face was no longer sad.

You see, receiving the child, the thing that she thought would make her face no longer sad, that's not what made her face no longer sad.

Bearing her heart before the Lord, seeing that he cared and saw her affliction, that's what changed her heart.

God changes her heart, he heals her even before he gives her the child.

All of a sudden, this one thing that she thought would fix everything, in the presence of God, bearing herself as she was, she was really able to see.

God was able to show her in her heart.

That one thing isn't really the one thing.

That one thing is only that God knows and cares for you.

That you belong to Him.

That's our only hope.

And in the vulnerability of her prayer, she presents that.

And so she returns to her family.

She eats.

The joy has returned to her heart.

And her and El Cana know each other in the biblical sense.

And uh she conceives and she bears Samuel.

And she discusses it with El Cana and she shares, look, I made this vow, and El Kana, her husband, says, Yeah, we we need to honor that vow.

And so she waits until the child is weaned.

And at that point she goes to the temple.

And let's go ahead and look at her gift that she makes, Hannah's offering.

First Samuel 1, 26 to 28, says, And she said, O my Lord, as you live, my Lord, I am the woman who was standing here in your presence, praying to the Lord.

For this child I prayed, and the Lord has granted me my petition that I made to him.

Therefore I have lent him to the Lord as long as he lives.

He is lent to the Lord.

And so she leaves him there, at the temple, to be raised by the high priest Eli, and his life would be dedicated to the Lord.

Now, just in case we get into our minds that uh you know this would afford him some educational opportunities that he wouldn't have gotten back in Bethlehem, which is where they're from.

Coincidence.

And that's called Bible study right there.

And they uh uh that's where Jesus was born.

And I totally lost my spot.

Okay.

Just in case we get this sense that he would have some better opportunity than he would have in the small town that they were from, uh, this temple that she drops Samuel off at is in bad shape.

Eli's sons were in charge of it and they were terrible.

They were uh they were drunks, they were literally uh sleeping with other women in the temple courts.

They had desecrated the sacredness of this space that was open for all to come and meet with God, and it was denied.

This is a terrible place to drop off your kid if you want them to lead a life that really is dedicated to the Lord.

Now, Samuel ultimately, we know he overcomes those circumstances, not by anything great in him, but because God calls him out of it.

God fathers him through that terrible place and makes him up into this ruler who blesses his people deeply.

But Hannah couldn't have known that when she was dropping him off.

When she was dropping him off, she knew just what was there.

And that was this is not a good place to leave my son.

And yet, I made a vow to the Lord.

And I have this hope that when I leave him here, there is a good in this that I can't see now.

And she expresses that hope in that final prayer.

So let's look at what Hannah's hope is.

We're just gonna look at two verses in this prayer because it's a long one.

We're gonna look at verse one and verse 10, the opening verse and the closing verse.

And she begins right after dropping him off.

And you'd think that right after she dropped off her son, her prayer this time, when she finally leaves him, would look like her first prayer, despondent, broken in front of the temple, and it doesn't.

It's the opposite.

She says, My heart exalts in the Lord.

My horn is exalted in the Lord.

It's a way of saying, My all my strength is made great in the Lord.

My mouth derides my enemies because I rejoice in your salvation.

Her hope is on display in this prayer.

And this prayer becomes the foundational prayer for what happens throughout the rest of the book.

This becomes a foundational prophecy for the entire age of kings of Israel.

But it also does more than that.

Because Hannah in this prayer, she looks forward to something that no one had looked forward to before.

You can see it because she is the first one to use this language that she closes out her prayer with.

She says in 1 Samuel 2.10 that God will give strength to his king and exalt the horn of his anointed.

Now, Samuel, her son, if you look kind of in our heart logo, uh Samuel's little logo right there, this was the one that he cared, this was on his business card.

He uh uh it's a drop of oil.

And that's because Samuel is the one who will do the anointing of the kings.

Who God will say, look, you go anoint Saul, he will be the king, and then God will come back to Samuel again and say, I've rejected Saul for some reasons that we'll see.

And it now go anoint David.

And so the kingship really passes through this anointed one.

But there's some more in this phrase of his anointed.

Because literally that word is translated the Messiah.

And so in this, she is looking forward through this prayer of giving her son towards a Messiah, not just towards her son Samuel, but towards a messiah.

While Samuel may save thousands, she's looking forward to one who would bring a whole new creation.

Her prayer is often compared to another prayer of an unknown Hebrew woman.

Who, just as Hannah's heart exalts in the Lord, this other woman, her heart magnifies the Lord.

It's a prayer that we we call it the magnificat.

And it's Mary.

She's praying this prayer right after she's informed that what will be conceived in her, which is Jesus.

And what we see and why this message so matters is what's been why this story of Hannah has been preserved like this, is because what we see in Hannah, in her making this vow to the Lord and delivering her son to the temple, we see the very heart of God reflected in her.

Because what does God do with his son?

He sends him to a temple.

A temple that was full of a terrible, terrible corruption.

Not the place that you would send your son if you wanted him to grow up in a godly way.

And God sends it not at the risk that the son may be lost, but he sends Jesus knowing that this temple he's sending him into will kill him.

And he will be lost.

But in this hope that at Jesus' sacrifice, thousands, millions, billions would be saved.

Seeing that character in God, seeing that God operates towards Hannah, towards his people in this way where he cares for the afflicted, even to the cost of his own son.

That allows us to pray like Hannah prays.

As I've been thinking about this text, it hit me last night and before I had an opportunity to change the PowerPoint, that this is like this perfect summary of this verse in 1 Peter.

And it's 1 Peter chapter 5, verses 6 and 7.

1 Peter 5:6

And it says, humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him because he cares for you.

So what does Hannah do?

She humbles herself under the mighty hand of God.

That's a terrifying thing to do.

That's coming under a hand that can easily crush you.

That's putting under it the very things of your soul that you think if I lose this, it's over.

There is nothing more left of me.

Peter says, put those under God's mighty hand, the one who easily could crush them.

Humble yourself there, so that at the proper time God may exalt you.

And then how do we do that?

How do we humble ourselves under God's mighty hand?

That's why this verse, it's broken up in verses, but it's one sentence.

It says, casting, casting.

The reason that verb is conjugated that way is because it's saying that's when you're casting, what you're doing is what I just described.

You are humbling yourself under the mighty hand of God when you're casting your anxieties on him.

And what's your motivation?

Why do you know that you can cast your anxieties on him?

It's because he cares for you.

It's because you consider in your heart this fact.

The fact that you can know that God cares for you, then you can humble yourself.

Then you might experience his exaltation.

It's very odd.

It's very odd to think that our humility is best expressed when we consider that God cares for me.

This is theologically simple, dead simple.

God cares for you.

This taking place in your heart is like what we saw in Hannah, full of a deep anxiety and vexation.

And those are the things that God calls us to carry to Him.

So it's from this heart of Hannah that we see the incredible care of God demonstrated.

In this position, this sort of method that we'll see guiding the whole rest of our series, which is that God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.

When our hearts are humble before him, trusting that he cares, who knows what may be saved because of the suffering that he has us in.

So with that, let's take a question.

Does there ever come a point where we should stop asking God for good things that we desire?

Marriage, children, health, etc.

If the answer for so long seems to be no?

If Hannah is anything, she is a lesson in persistence in prayer.

And then if she's something else, she's a lesson that the prayer itself is where our hearts change.

I have a friend who's a pastor down in Boulder.

They don't wear shoes and they're all hippies and stuff.

I'm just kidding.

It's I just like to make fun of Boulder.

They dress just like us.

And he says that we only change in two ways.

We change by prayer and by suffering.

And none of us pray enough.

And what we see in Hannah, and what's key to remember in her, is that her heart didn't change because she received the child.

Her heart changed because she bore it before the Lord, trusting that he cared for her.

And God, like a like a fine surgeon, right?

He carves out this area of her heart that didn't belong to him, and he makes it belong to him.

And through that, incredible glory is worked through her life.

And so is there a time to stop praying when you stop desiring it?

Because at that point, you would no longer need to authentically be bringing it before the Lord.

God is the surgeon.

God is the one who orients our hearts.

And so the question isn't: do I pray until I get what I want?

No, we're looking at the wrong outcome.

You could get what you want and it could be terrible.

You pray so that your heart would be cultivated and made and refined by the Lord.

You pray to humble yourself before Him because He cares for you.

So I wish I could offer a timeline.

Paul says that he prayed for the thorn in his flesh to be removed three times, and he was denied, and so he stopped.

He got his answer.

If you get an answer that clearly, three times, then stop.

I've never experienced that.

But I have experienced my heart being changed in prayer.

So go to him, trusting that he cares for you.

And if you doubt it, look at the temple he sent his son into, that you might be saved.

Okay.

As we take our communion, we have an open communion here, which means you don't need to be a member of our church.

If you're a Christian, partake with us.

And when we take communion today, I want you to take some time and sort of meditate on this in your heart and consider what is it that you aren't humbling before the Lord?

What is it that you aren't laying under his mighty hand?

And how does that show that you don't trust that he cares for you?

Let that be examined.

Place that before the Lord.

And pray that you might see that he does.

And so you can humble yourself.

Okay, let's pray.

Father, I just think of the hymn.

How deep the Father's love for us, how vast beyond all measure, that he would give his only son to make a wretch his treasure.

Lord, this incredible gift that you have given is reflected in the hearts of your people like in Hannah, that we might see it in these tangible ways that are relatable.

Father, I pray that we would not, that we would not leave the heart of your gospel that you showed your love to us in giving your son.

And that that would become such a core of us, that there would be nothing in our lives that we wouldn't desire to lay before you.

Because we have such a deep trust and conviction of your care for us.

Father, if we look at your gospel and we don't conclude that, then we haven't truly seen it.

Lord, open our eyes that we might see it truly.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.