Our Sermons

Bible Passage: 1 Samuel 1:21-28
Pastor: Pastor Schlicht
Sermon Date:  May 24, 2020

What do you sacrifice for? In this time of the Coronavirus, much has been sacrificed in order to keep our hospitals from overflowing and flattening the curve. This weekend, specifically we honor the men and women in our armed forces who are or were willing to sacrifice many things–even their lives–for the greater good of preserving the freedoms of our nation. We all make sacrifices. We choose a certain path in life and sacrifice lesser opportunities. We set our minds on a goal and sacrifice lesser joys in order to attain what we have our mind set on. We all make sacrifices, but the question remains, “What do you sacrifice for?” You may want to lose weight, and so you sacrifice tasty food and comfort in order to do so. You may want to become proficient at playing an instrument so you sacrifice time and money through practice and lessons. You may want a relationship to work so you sacrifice some personal freedoms and make that person a priority. What do you sacrifice for? Unfortunately, sometimes our goals aren’t that honorable. You might have an end goal in life of having a lot of money, but what are you willing to sacrifice for that? Your marriage? A relationship with your children? We might have a desire to be well-liked and accepted by everyone, but what are we willing to sacrifice for that? Our values Our faith? 

What we have before us here in 1 Samuel is an end goal in Hannah’s heart that makes all the difference when it comes to sacrifice. Let us look at her example of faith and apply the question personally, “What do you sacrifice for?”

To understand our text we have to first understand that this is part of a larger account. You see, we’re told right away that Hannah’s husband Elkanah had two wives. Now, perhaps you’ve noticed that this comes up a number of times in the Old Testament and perhaps you’ve struggled a bit with these polygamous marriages that we see in the Bible. But if you ever come away from one of these texts and think that God is condoning polygamy, you’re not reading it. Every time that it comes up we see it bring incredible disaster and hardship and problems to families. This is one of those times. I just finished a Bible study on the Christian Conscience over zoom and in the last lesson we talked about how a culture can often blind people’s consciences. Elkanah was a faithful believer, but he had a serious blindness to his sin of polygamy because of it’s normality in the ancient world. His sin led to great hardship, specifically for his wife Hannah.

Hannah could not have children, Peninnah, his other wife, could. So, she taunts and ridicules Hannah and Hannah is devastated. She weeps, she can’t eat, she’s crying all the time. Now, why is Hannah so devastated? At this time both family and society depended on women having children. First, the more children you had, the more money you had. More children meant more workers the family had in the field. The more workers, the greater prosperity you enjoyed. Secondly, the more children you had, the greater chances you could live into old age with some degree of comfort. They, of course, didn’t have social security or 401ks, so older people were cared for by their children. And lastly, your country needed a lot of children because the more children the country had the more people it had, the more people, the greater the army. If your army was larger than the enemy, it was more likely that you would win. So, women who had children were viewed as heroes, they were patriots.

Not being able to have children was essentially equal to hopelessness. Ancient commentators talk about women feeling cursed because of their inability to bear children. It meant no foreseeable future for your family, for yourself, or for your nation. And that’s what Peninnah reminded Hannah of over and over again.  To them in that culture having a family was the ultimate thing. But every culture has a value system, it does this to something, it makes something the ultimate thing so that if you don’t have it, you’re nothing, you’re worthless. Perhaps today it’s achievement, prosperity, or being considered mature in a secular sense– if you don’t have it, you’re considered less and not important.

So this was Hannah’s burden. So what did she do? Once, while the family was at Shiloh—where the tabernacle was, the house of God, Hannah made a resolution. She went to the tabernacle, prayed to the Lord and made a vow that if the Lord should give her a son, she would give her son to the Lord to serve him for his whole life. Should the Lord give her a son, she would give her son to be a non-Levitical priest, a Nazirite. This meant that her son would live in God’s house from the time he was very little. Now, at first, it seems like she’s making some kind of a deal with God: Give me a son and I’ll give him to you. That would still be making having a child the ultimate thing and God just a means to that end. But that’s not what Hannah did. 

You see, timing is important here. Right after she made this vow to the Lord, she went home, she ate, and she was no longer downcast. In other words, she had peace. And If it was a bargain she was making with God it would have gone like this: prayer, pregnancy, and then peace. But it doesn’t work that way. She has peace before she gets pregnant. And she promises to give her son to the Lord. That means she wouldn’t have a son to show off to all the people, he wouldn’t be there–he’d be at the tabernacle. That means she wouldn’t have a son so that the family could prosper, the son would be doing the Lord’s work. That means she wouldn’t have a son to guarantee some financial security in her old age because he’s gone, he’s dedicated to service in God’s house.

And so the Lord in his wisdom chose to open Hannah’s womb. He gave her a son whom she named Samuel which means “God has heard”. And because a baby would be a burden to Eli and the other priests at Shiloh, Hannah is given a few precious years to be with her baby at home. The age of weaning was about 3 years. How those years must have flown by. But soon it is time for the annual pilgrimage to Shiloh again.  Can you picture it? Elkanah is leading a massive 3-year-old bull–which would have been a huge sacrifice for a farmer, but Hannah is bringing the larger sacrifice. She is leading a little 3-year-old boy hand in hand to give him to the Lord. And when she finally does give him to Eli to serve in the temple, she doesn’t resent God. She praises him! Her words of praise in chapter start with the words, “My heart rejoices in the Lord.” She certainly would miss her son fiercely, I can’t even imagine. In fact, we hear later that every year when she and Elkanah came back to sacrifice she would bring a little robe she made for Samuel. But she rejoices in this sacrifice!

How could she do that? How could she give up her son? Well, this is what changed in Hannah—she says, “I’m not going to rest my heart in what society says, I’m not going to rest my heart in culture or in my husband’s love or in the desire to have a child, I’m going to rest my heart in the Lord, I’m putting my hope in God.” God wasn’t the means to her goal of having a child, having a child was her opportunity to glorify the Lord. 

What about you? Do you have a prayer like Hannah? Do you have a hole in your life that you want desperately to be filled? Has God become just the means to the end of having whatever it is your heart is really desiring? Are you willing to dedicate your job, your career, your family, your prized possessions to the service of the Lord? Are we willing to say, “Lord, thank you for this job you’ve given me, the material blessings you give me through it, may I use it for your glory?” Are we willing to say, “Lord, thank you for the family you’ve given me, may I honor and glorify you with how I direct them.”  “Lord, thank you for this body of mine, thank you for my abilities, may I glorify you with all that I am?” Fix your eyes on God’s kingdom and his glory. Fix your eyes not on what is seen, but what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

My friends, it may be hard to imagine making the sacrifice of Hannah to God. But your God knows what it is like to sacrifice a Son. For our sake, Jesus, God’s only Son, wasn’t just given to the work of the Lord, he was sacrificed literally on a cross. In the garden of Gethsemane Jesus prayed, “Lord, your will not mine be done.”  And he kept God’s plan of salvation first and foremost—even above his own life. He did so in your place and mine for all the times we’ve selfishly made other things more important than God and his work.  Why? Because in the heart of God is a love so great, so boundless, so amazing that the greater good to God is having you and me forever.

Perhaps you’re discontent because of some hole in your life right now or perhaps you’re tempted to be controlled by the value system of the society, culture, and world that we live in—as if money, things, relationships are the ultimate goal that you should sacrifice everything else for. But don’t focus on what is seen. Realize what Hannah realized: In Christ you have all the significance, worth, and love you’ll ever need. And since you have him you can sacrifice all the lesser things for the greater goal of sharing his love and doing his work. 

Do you know what happened to Hannah after she gave up Samuel? The Lord gave her five more children. “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” The Lord will take care of us. May we sacrifice with rejoicing.