Samuel, Child of Prayer

"for this child I prayed..."

1 Samuel 1:27

The First Book of Samuel is the first of the great historical books of the Old Testament, tracing for us the history of the kingdom of Israel and Judah. God's people have taken possession of the promised land; the story of that possession is given to us in the Book of Joshua, and during the first years of their dwelling in the land of Canaan, God gave them judges to rule over them and to defend them from the enemies that faced them in the land of Canaan.

And when we come into this section of the Old Testament we come into the beginnings of the historical record of the way in which the children of Israel were consolidated as a kingdom in the promised land, and the way in which God raised up these great kings who were to feature so prominently in the Old Testament record.

But the books of the kings do not begin with a king. They begin with the record of Samuel, this great man of God and this great prophet of God who was to play such an important role and such a prominent part amongst God's people at this particular time.

The story of Samuel takes us to the northern territories of Ephraim, to a place called Ramathaim-zophim. In the New Testament, that place is called Arimathea, and it is prominent in the New Testament because Joseph of Arimathea came to do a particular service for Christ.

In Ramathaim-zophim in Ephraim, there was a particular household and a particular family, to whom our attention is drawn in this opening chapter of the firstbook of Samuel. We must look first at this family in which Samuel was reared and was so prominent in shaping and fashioning the course that his life was going to take. There are three characters around whom this opening narrative revolves: the father, Elkanah, the mother, Hannah, and the child, Samuel himself, who is devoted to the Lord by his mother, and at the close of the chapter we read of him that he worshipped the Lord in Shiloh.

Elkanah, the Father of Samuel

Elkanah was a Levite, and a godly man. He stands out as a light in the darkness; this was a dark, dark time in the experience of the people of God. That is hinted at in the Book of Ruth - it was the time of the judges, when every man did what was right in his own eyes, and where nothing mattered but the rule of Self, and where nothing featured in the lives and in the behaviour of men but their own self-interest, their own greed; absorbed with their own selves and with their own lives and desires and wishes and will. People forgot the higher will of God, the revealed will, the sovereign will of Jehovah. Every man, by and large, generally throughout the tribes of Israel did what he wanted himself to do, pursuing his own happiness and his own will.

If there is anything that makes the Word of God, and particularly these vast historical portions of the Old Testament relevant for the day and age in which we live, it is precisely this, that although the world has changed much over the hundreds of years since these words were written, the heart of man has not changed at all. Man is still absorbed in the pursuit of his own happiness and his own pleasure and his own will. What does it matter that God has spoken in his word, and has laid down commandments, and given us laws to obey and keep, and is calling us to attention in his own word? The world is saying to us that it is ours to live life to the full, in the pursuit of our own pleasures and aims.

You can trace every human life down the roads of human history and you can see the roads of this world's history littered with the broken lives of people who thought that life was all about glorifying self and living for self, and forgetting God. If you look in the Bible, and if you look at the world you will see that the moment you drive God out of your thoughts, and life and home, you are on the road to ruin. There were many homes throughout Israel in these days of the judges that were ruined because every man did what was right in his own eyes.

But Elkanah had the thought of God before his mind, at least when we meet him here at the beginning of this chapter. There are two things to which our attention is drawn about Elkanah. The first is the devotion of his family to the Lord. This man, verse three tells us, went up out of his city every year to worship and to sacrifice to the Lord of hosts in Shiloh. That was his habit, his regular, annual habit, to make the pilgrimage to Shiloh to worship the Lord of hosts there.

Interestingly, this is the first time in the Old Testament that God is described in this way, as the Lord of hosts. That name will be used time and again in the later portions of the Old Testament. But here, amid the darkness of Israel, there shines out the light of true religion and of genuine devotion, and it is lit in the heart and in the home of Elkanah. He has a fear of God in his heart; he has the thought of God before his mind. He knows who God is, and he knows what God is. And what he knows drives him to the place and to the pilgrimage that he makes to sacrifice to the Lord and to worship the Lord there in Shiloh. We can be sure that if he went every year to Shiloh to worship the Lord and to offer sacrifice there, then he worshipped God in his own home and in his own family at his own family altar too.

Here is a man who is going against the pattern of the lifestyles around him, swimming against the stream, who is not ashamed to own Jehovah of hosts as his God and as his Lord and as the object of all his piety and devotion. And it cannot be easy to maintain the discipline of such devotion when the world around you is going in the opposite direction, when all around you people are doing what is right in their own eyes, and men go their own way, and take their families their own way, and set a bad example before their homes and in their communities. Here is a man who knows and honours and fears God, who is not ashamed to be different. He is prepared to stand against the current and against the tide and against the stream.

Does such devotion characterise our own lives and the lives of our own families and homes in a world that has sacrificed its honour at the altar of pleasure? Have we the fear of God before our eyes and in our hearts? That, says the Bible, is where true wisdom begins. It does not begin by doing everything that the world is doing. Is does not begin by thinking the way the world is thinking, by doing this or that simply to conform to the fashions of this world. No. The beginning of wisdom, says the Bible, is to begin with the fear of God in our hearts, to be devoted to Jehovah, and his cause, and his law, and his worship and his honour and his name, and his day, and his word and all that he says to us in the Scriptures. Is that what marks and shapes our lives, and the life of our families?

Or do we do things just because everybody else is doing them? Just because it's fashionable, and just because that's the way the world is thinking? The Bible is calling us to devotion to the Lord; it is man's primary aim - his chief end, as the Shorter Catechism puts it - to give glory to God, and then there will be enjoyment, life in all its fulness.

But the chapter also tells us of the division in Elkanah's family. Elkanah, we are told, for all his piety, and for all his devotion at this point, had married two wives. He was to pay a bitter price for his past unfaithfulness to God and to the commandments of God. It was not always so from the beginning. God said to Adam that he had provided one wife for him - 'therefore let a man leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and they will be one flesh', in an exclusive, devoted relationship into which no third party can enter at all. How desperately we need to call the world back to God's ideals of morality and ethics in this whole area of marriage! God said - let a man leave his parents and cleave to his wife. God built that arrangement into his commandments, and said, 'Do not commit adultery'; make sure that that marriage relationship and bond is cemented and exclusive, and it will provide a place for love to grow. It needs to be worked at, and it needs all your energy, and wisdom, and grace; but it reaps the benefits and the rewards of God's blessing.

If we are prepared to thumb our way through the Scriptures, we will see that there is no greater illustration used of the relationship between Jesus and his church than this one: the relationship that ought to be between a husband and a wife who are devoted to each other in the bonds of that great covenant union of marriage. God had made this one of his creation ordinances, and God had built it into one of his commandments, and had set it down there as a rule for the governing of the lives of men and of society. To have married more than one wife wreaked havoc in the life of Abraham, and in the life of Jacob, and in the life of Elkanah too.

It does not matter what form sin takes, or how sin is presented, or how you portray it, or where it is found - there can never be any good from breaking God's commandments. There was no good for Elkanah either in the breaking of God's commandments. The chapter seems to suggest that he had married Hannah first; and because the Lord had closed her womb and she could not have children, then he married Penninah also, from whom he had many sons and daughters. Perhaps he thought that having done this, perhaps knowing that others of the patriarchs had done it too, he would be satisfied and fulfilled.

There are many people in the world today that are rejecting God's way, looking to their own way to give fulfilment and meaning and purpose in life. What happens here? Elkanah, at some point in the past, had turned his back on God's clearly revealed will, and had married a second wife, and now his household is divided, and it is torn in two.

There is Hannah, on the one hand, without any children; Penninah, on the other hand, with many sons and many daughters, and Penninah is described as the adversary, the enemy of Hannah; she is provoking her, ridiculing her, scorning her because she had no children. Elkanah may have been devoted to the Lord here, but still the consequences of his sin and backsliding are with him. Sin casts a long shadow in a human life. To be sure, God washes every sin and every stain away, he separates his people from their sins as far as east is distant from the west; but there are many lives, many Christians who rejoice in the fulness of God's forgiveness, and yet who are still smarting under the consequences of their own sin and of their own backsliding. Elkanah had prepared a rod for himself that had beaten him many times.

The chapter tells us explicitly that Elkanah loved Hannah dearly, so much so that when they went to offer the sacrifice at Shiloh he offered 'a worthy portion', a special portion for Hannah. He came to her so tenderly - 'am I not better to you than ten sons?' Why is her heart not healed? No words can heal her wound or the division his own sin had brought in to the household and home.

Dare I say that there are homes everywhere where there is a division also. It is a division between those who love the Lord in these homes and those who do not. Christ himself said that he came to earth with a sword, a sword which would divide even the most intimate of relationships in this world, a sword of division that sets those who are his true people apart from those who are not. Is that division in our homes tonight? And if it is, what side are we on? Are we strangers to Christ, while our husband or wife is a lover of Christ? Are we without a Saviour when our parents have a Saviour? Do we know him, yet there are people in our home and family circle who do not know Christ? The very gospel itself that heals and that binds up, comes into human experience with a sword of division, and the great gospel question is - what side of that division are we on?

But there is something else here. Do you see how Satan rubs salt into the wounds of Hannah? when did Penninah ridicule her? When did she choose to taunt her with cruel words about her barrenness and her childlessness? It was when they went to Shiloh to worship! Every year they went to the house of God and Penninah provoked Hannah. She did not have respect enough even for the worship of God to give Hannah the opportunity to worship God and pour out her heart to God. No; even there, where Hannah ought to have enjoyed the peace and the blessing of God and the fellowship of God in his house - that's the time Penninah came with the knife and twisted it in her back, drove it deep into her soul. Human nature is a complex thing. Even sanctified human nature can be a complex thing. There are times when Satan can get in to our hearts and in our thinking and can plunge the knife in our backs not when we are out in the world but when we are in the very house of God itself.

Even our Lord knew what that was. Within the band of his own chosen disciples, who followed him with such devotion and such piety and with whom he shared so much, and to whom he revealed the purposes of God that took him to the cross, when Peter said to him 'Let this be far from you, Lord', what did Christ say? 'Get behind me Satan'. You see, we come to the house of God in order to worship, and in order to enjoy the blessing and communion and fellowship of God, in order that we will pour out our hearts and pray to God and leave the cares of the world behind, yet it only takes one cruel word, one word mis-spoken, like Penninah speaking to Hannah at Shiloh at the time of the offering, and the knife is twisted in our back in the very courts of God's house itself. The pain is all the more severe because it is has happened within the very sanctuary of Jehovah. Here is Hannah at the house of God and all she wants to do is pray. But Penninah is there ready to mock her because she has no children. The very house of comfort becomes a house of cruelty, and a place where she gets no comfort at all.

My Christian friend, how careful we ought to be in our relationships andin our conversations with one another, at every time, but particularly in the house of God. It is the wise Christian who knows that he can become so very easily a channel of Satan himself to turn the cruel knife in the back and in the very heart of God's chosen people. Little wonder the psalmist said 'Set a watch on my lips and keep my tongue'.

Well, here is Penninah mocking and taunting Hannah at the very time of the sacrifice.

Hannah, the Mother

Hannah was a great woman, a woman of great spirituality and grace. She has come with her husband to worship the Lord at Shiloh. She was loved by Jehovah and loved by Elkanah. But the Lord has shut her womb; she has no children. She is barren. She comes to the Lord weeping and grieving. She can only pray to God, as she says at the end of the chapter, for this child whom the Lord eventually gave her, for Samuel. There are three things about Hannah's prayer that are brought before us in this chapter.

This prayer grew out of Hannah' bitterness . It was out of a bitter portion that her prayer came. She was in bitterness of soul, and she prayed unto the Lord. She was not bitter against the Lord; no, she took her bitterness to the Lord, and the hardness of her lot and the bitterness of her Providence did not keep her from God; they only served to bring her closer and closer to Him.

Sometimes difficulties can come into our lives and sometimes hard providences can come into our cup, and sometimes we can find ourselves in bitterness of soul. But the great question for us is this - are these adverse circumstances and difficulties and trials going to drive us further from God or are they going to bring us closer to him? There are many people in whose lives the winds have blown contrary, and who have met with storms and trials along life's way, and it has turned them right off the thought of God. They have rebelled and they have said, 'If there is a God at all, how can he allow this or ordain that?'

But the child of God, like Hannah, comes to God in trial, and is not driven away from him in these trials. Out of the bitter portion that was hers she came and prayed to the Lord and wept sore. She mingled her prayers with her tears, and came a broken woman with a bitter providence and a bitter enemy, rubbing salt in her wound - but where can a person go when things are that bad? A person can only go to the Lord, and can only pour out their hearts to the Lord.

Still the Lord says 'Cast all your cares upon him, for he cares for you'. It may be that there are storms in our life, trials, difficulties that leave a bitter taste. Perhaps there are things that we pass through, things that God ordains for us along life's way which we still smart under. It may be that the wine of astonishment that he gave you to drink has still left its aftertaste on your lips, but I say tonight that there is a place where you can pour out your heart even with the tears flowing down your face - in bitterness of soul Hannah prayed to the Lord. It was her bitterness that gave birth to her prayer, and that sent her crying Heavenward.

Notice also her behaviour in the house of God. Hannah came to the Lord and she wept and she vowed a vow: if God would give her a male child she would devote that child to God all the days of his life and no razor would come on his head. It was going further than the law demanded of Levite children. He would be a Levite too, and these things would be in his life for a little while, but Hannah says 'if I get this child he will be a Levite and a Nazarite all the days of his life.

What happened? She continued praying before the Lord, and Eli noticed her mouth. Pay attention to this - here is a woman praying, and she is saying nothing audibly. Yet her words are written here in God's book. Do you not think that there is something wonderful there? Eli did not know what was in her prayer, but God knew what was in her prayer, and God wrote it down on the pages of the Bible so that we would know what was in her prayer. Nobody else knew. Nobody in the temple precincts heard these words, because these words were uttered in her heart, and although her lips moved, there was no sound at all. She was praying in the secret of her soul to her God in Heaven, and God marked every single word that Hannah uttered in her heart. God marks every word of the prayers of all his people. Perhaps there is nothing audible; perhaps no-one can hear anything we say, but there is an ear in heaven that is not heavy to hear, and there is a God in Heaven whose eyes are on his people.

O, Hannah, you are being tossed and afflicted, and Penninah is mocking you, and now Eli is going to turn the knife too, but God is marking you, and God's eye is on you, and God's ear is to you, and God is reading your heart. What does God see, and read and hear in our hearts? He is reading our mind and thoughts and heart every bit as much as he read the heart of Hannah. Every heart he knows. Every prayer he hears. Every thought he registers and remembers and writes down, as he writes the prayer of Hannah.

And along came Eli. He was master of the Temple courts, and he noticed Hannah. He saw her there in the corner as her lips moved, but he could hear no prayer. So Eli conluded that she was drunk. We must always remember that the facts of a situation do not always convey the truth of a situation. The facts were these: Hannah was in the temple, on her knees, her lips moving, but there was no voice. And immediately Eli jumped to the conclusion that Hannah had been taking strong drink, and was now under its influence. Eli decided that tis was no devotion, but a drunken stupor on the floor of the temple, and that she was a disgrace to organised religion in the land of Israel. 'How long will you be drunken?' he says. It's so easy to do - to jump from the facts of a situation as they appear to us, to the wrong conclusion entirely. 'Put away your wine'.

What a great pity that Eli had not said that to his own sons when he was so ready to say it to Hannah! These two men he had reared to be priests in the temple, and yet who were fit for nothing in the service of the Lord. Hophni and Phinehas were in that work to get out of it for themselves as much as they could; what a pity Eli had not said to them "Put away your wine!" twenty years ago. With them he had reason to say it; with Hannah he had none. What a pity he had not said it to himself, as events would unfold through the course of 1 Samuel.

But you see, it is an interesting mark of human nature that people are ready to say to others what they will not say to themselves, and what they will not even say to their own families. What a pity that Eli had not said to his own sons what he was so ready now to say to Hannah, the woman of God - "You're drunken - put away your wine!" Nothing could have been further from the truth. It's the great hallmark of the worldly ecclesiastic that he can be so ready to condemn in his congregation what he will not condemn in his own home. It is the snare of being so absorbed with the outward form of a religion that we will allow our own sons to sin with impunity, and yet say to the godly woman 'Put away your wine!'. It's so absurd. Never, ever come to a conclusion on the facts of a situation until you know the truth of that situation.

Where is Hannah going to go now? Penninah is mocking her, and now even the priest thinks she is a drunkard. 'No, my lord, I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink.' All I've done is poured out my soul to the Lord. People may miscall us and misunderstand us, and do this or say that, or may jump to this conclusion or that conclusion, but I tell you this: I would rather have a congregation of men and women pouring their souls out to God and the world thinking we were drunkards than for us to have a religion that was content only with an outward form. The outward kernel of all of our religion is nothing at all in comparison to the reality of the religion of our heart. Do we know what it is to pour out our heart to the Lord? That is the test of the reality of our religion

The writer tells us of Hannah's bitterness and Hannah's behaviour; we also read here of Hannah's blessing. 'Count not thine handmaid a daughter of Belial,' she says, 'for out of the abundance of my complaint and grief have I spoken'. Eli, realising what he had done and realising what he had said, said to her "Go in peace. The God of Israel grant thee thy petition that thou hast asked'. And in these great words of benediction, knowing that her prayer had been received in the court of Heaven with the blessing of the priest upon her, she said, 'Let thine handmaid receive grace,'. Now notice this - 'she was no more sorrowful'. She was still childless, she had still been miscalled, still suffered this great injustice in the courts of God's house; but her prayer had gone to Heaven and the blessing had been pronounced on her by the priest, and she was no more sad.

This was the beginning of Hannah's blessing. It was not simply that nine months later Samuel was born; it was that here, as she left the temple, whatever people thought of her, and said of her, she knew that she had the blessing of the priest of the Lord, and she was sad no more. Do we know what it is to have the blessing of God in his priest, the Lord Jesus Christ? To say with Paul, 'I reckon that the sufferings of this present time - whatever I suffer in church or out of church, whatever people say of me, however people treat me, I reckon that these sufferings are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is above and that is to come in the experience of God's people'? Our light affliction is but for a moment, and with the blessing of God upon us in Jesus Christ it is possible for us to triumph over all our adversities and over all our adversaries. And Hannah went home, still without a child, but with the blessing of God in her heart, and with a changed face. And the radiance of God's presence and fellowship and communion shone through, so that amid such darkness and such a hard portion to rejoice in the God who carried her burden with her, and who had drawn near to her along the way.

It really is the supreme test of our Christian profession that we are able to say in the midst of the most adverse circumstances of life, 'I have learned to be content', not to be bowled under by the waves of darkness and depression, but to rise with the peace of God and the blessing of God in our hearts, because we have cast all our burdens upon us, and we know that he cares for us. Do we know where to go when the winds of this life blow up in our face and the storm comes and Satan comes our way even through the Lord's people themselves; do we know what it is to have poured out our heart to the Lord, and I am no more sad? That is the blessing that lasts, that enriches and that brings life into a wilting soul. What about us, in our home, in our life, in our family, in our circumstances - do we know the God of the covenant to be with us, as he was with Elkanah in his home and particularly with Hannah in her life?

© Iain D. Campbell 2001