Jesus Christ, Our Risen and Better High Priest

ReCAST Church of Mattawan

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Good morning. One of the great things that I know that's already taken place today is that the place that I come from each

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Sunday morning, we gather with the pastors and the elders, and we routinely pray for the things that will take place at our own church.

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And we regularly pray for churches throughout the area, and then, of course, throughout the country.

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And so they may not pray for you by name, but I have regularly thought of you guys and prayed for you, even in the

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Sundays far preceding this, obviously because it's family, so I have to pray for Don. But far, far beyond that, because of the gospel link that we share in partnership.

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And so I actually know that my brothers have prayed for you this morning, and that there are some who will continue to do so, and so I think it's good and it's right for us to come and ask

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God to help us, and then we'll jump in here together. Father, thank you that you welcome our prayers, that it's such an informative thing for us to come and to acknowledge that we need you.

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We know this because we recognize our inadequacies, but so often we're prone to think that we can just give it our best go and do our best and things will be just fine.

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And so we come humbly today and ask, Father, that for the Lord Jesus Christ's sake, not for anyone else's sake, but for His alone, that the

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Holy Spirit would come and be our teacher today. You know that we come from various places with a whole variety of things that have taken place this past week, some glad things, some sad things, and only you can come and meet us where we are.

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And so we pray that the Spirit would do that, that you would come and conduct, as it's sometimes called, the divine dialogue between the

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Spirit of God and the souls of each of us. And so we ask, Lord, that you would do that today for Jesus' sake, amen.

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I remember it was Easter weekend 2002, Beth and I had been living in the Cleveland area for just a few months, and it was that Easter Sunday morning that I had made my way into the church, new customs, new practices, having grown up in Michigan, but I said, that's okay, here we go.

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And I remember I walked in the door, and I was greeted by a man who was familiar to me, and as I walked in, he immediately rushed up to me, and he said, he has risen.

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And he stared at me, obviously he was waiting for me to respond, and I just stared at him, and I was a little put off by his enthusiasm, because it's still pretty early in the morning, but more than that,

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I was very unsettled by the fact that he was going, and? And we had this awkward moment together, and I can't remember exactly what

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I said, but I think it was something terribly pathetic, like, um, yup. And so we sort of had this moment.

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Thankfully, as the course of the morning went on, there were other people who said, he has risen, and then I heard other people go, he has risen indeed, and then

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I was like, oh, that's what this is all about. I had honestly never encountered this before, and so it was a good learning moment for me.

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And as I thought about that, I said, what a great little phrase. Seven simple words, exchanged between two

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Christian people, to go, hey, I know we know this, but let me just state the obvious to you this morning, that Jesus Christ has conquered sin and death, and particularly so as we come upon this time of the calendar year, as we look to Easter.

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Each Sunday is actually an occasion for us to remember the resurrection, but particularly so today.

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In fact, we can never actually preach too much, think too much, study too much, consider too much the fact that redemption has been accomplished for us by the

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Lord Jesus Christ. But we can have the tendency to think too little about his ongoing ascension for us.

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His ongoing work of interceding before the Father on behalf of sinful Christians. The ongoing fact that he intercedes before the

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Father, that he identifies with our heartache, with our sadness, with the difficulties of life.

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I hope that you got a sense of that richness in the passage that was read for us from Hebrews. Here is

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Jesus, that for the Christian, Jesus is the risen King, our better and high priest.

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And so this morning, I want to look at that together with you through the lens of 1 Samuel 1. It may seem like a rather strange place, and I'm not trying to be tricky or slick, but it's been said before that a well -told story is a powerful teacher.

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And I think the narrative that unfolds for us in 1 Samuel 1 is just that. It's God's word, of course, that is powerful, and what we're going to do is we're going to meet a woman called

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Hannah, who has a greatly saddened heart, and then encounter a

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God who tenderly intervened in her distress. So I'll read from 1 Samuel 1. If you'd like the page number in your

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Bibles, thank you, 195, go team, we'll read as follows.

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There was a certain man of Ramathim, Zophim, of the hill country of Ephraim, whose name was

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Elkanah, the son of Jerome, son of Elihu, son of Tohu, son of Zuth, and Ephraite.

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He had two wives. The name of the one was Hannah and the other, Paninah. And Paninah had children, but Hannah had no children.

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Now this man used to go up year by year from his city to worship and to sacrifice to the Lord of Hosts at Shiloh, where the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were priests of the

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Lord. On the day when Elkanah sacrificed, he would give portions to Paninah, his wife, and to all her sons and daughters.

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But to Hannah, he gave a double portion, because he loved her, though the Lord had closed her womb.

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And her rival used to provoke her grievously to irritate her, because the Lord had closed her womb.

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So it went on year by year. As often as she went up to the house of the

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Lord, she used to provoke her. Therefore, Hannah wept and would not eat. And Elkanah, her husband, said to her,

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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?

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After they had eaten and drunk in Shiloh, Hannah rose. Now Eli, the priest, was sitting on the seat beside the doorpost of the temple of the

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Lord. She was deeply distressed and prayed to the Lord and wept bitterly. And she vowed a vow and said,

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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

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I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life, and no razor shall touch his head. As she continued praying before the

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Lord, Eli observed her mouth. Hannah was speaking in her heart. Only her lips moved and her voice was not heard.

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Therefore, Eli took her to be a drunken woman. And Eli said to her, How long will you go on being drunk?

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Put your wine away from you. But Hannah answered, No, my Lord, I am a woman troubled in spirit.

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I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I have been pouring out my soul before the Lord. Do not regard your servant as a worthless woman.

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For all along I have been speaking out of my great anxiety and vexation.

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Then Eli answered, Go in peace, and the Lord God of Israel grant your petition that you have made to him.

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And she said, Let your servant find favor in your eyes. Then the woman went her way and ate, and her face was no longer sad.

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They rose early in the morning and worshiped before the Lord, and they went back to their house at Ramah. And Elkanah knew Hannah, his wife, and the

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Lord remembered her. And in due time, Hannah conceived and bore a son, and she called his name Samuel.

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For he said, I have asked for him from the Lord. The man Elkanah and all his house went up to offer to the

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Lord the yearly sacrifice and to pay his vow. But Hannah did not go up. She said to her husband, As soon as the child is weaned,

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I will bring him up, so that he may appear in the presence of the Lord and dwell there forever. Elkanah, her husband, said to her,

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Do what seems best to you. Wait until you have weaned him. Only may the Lord establish his word. So the woman remained and nursed her son until she weaned him.

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And when she had weaned him, she took him up with her, along with a three -year -old bull, an ephah of flour, and a skin of wine.

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And she brought him to the house of the Lord at Shiloh. And the child was young. Then they slaughtered the bull, and they brought the child to Eli.

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And she said, O my Lord, as you live, my Lord, I am the woman who is standing here in your presence praying to the

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

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Therefore, I have lent him to the Lord. As long as he lives, he is lent to the Lord. And he worshiped the

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Lord there. Amen. Well, in this story, we see there are really three main people who will frame this study for us.

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There will be Alcanna, and then we'll look at Hannah, and then just very briefly at the end we'll look at Samuel.

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So let's begin with Alcanna, and you'll notice in verses one through eight that Alcanna was an admirable man with a complex family.

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He's an admirable man for a complex family, with a complex family. And some of you picked up on the complexities, so start there.

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The complexity is this, verse two. He's a man with two wives. Now, of course, that immediately gets our cultural sensitivities.

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We go, oh boy, what in the world is going on here? Who's this guest speaker doing these things? Well, it helps to make note of the fact that these events are taking place in 1100

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BC. We're in the Middle East, geographically. And having many wives was an everyday fact in Israelite society in those days, but it still wasn't what

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God had prescribed for them. He had laid out clearly for his people, Genesis chapter two, that one man and one woman were to come together, but they had begun to pursue different practices.

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And if you will, it's actually Alcanna being doubly married that led to his great family complexities.

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It's a good reminder to us that everything that's reported for us in the Bible isn't necessarily recommended for us to follow.

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Just to be clear, this is not one of those practices to follow. And so he is a man with a complex situation.

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But he's a good man. You see in verse three that he's a worshiper of the God of Israel, as each year he would take his family on a 15 mile trip from the hills of Ephraim where he lived to a little place called

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Shiloh. And these are the earliest days of religious practice for God's people. There's no permanent structure where they would go to participate in the worship of God, so off to Shiloh they would go.

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You can probably imagine what it's like to take an annual family trip together, if not just stir up your memory banks, particularly if you have little ones, all of the planning that has to take place.

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Did you get enough food? What are we going to do when we hit mile five after all we've been walking along? We're not taking cars to deal with some of the boredom.

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Of course, inevitably, the fact that you get about a mile from home, the little one among the group would realize that he left his stuffed rhino at home, and so you would go back, get all these things all over again, you start back on your trip.

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I would imagine, maybe in a less creative sense, that this is what it means for Alcanna to take his family, and to go, no, this is of great importance to us, we'll sacrifice to make it happen, this will be a priority for us and our family, and Alcanna led his family annually on this trip, and while that seems rather ordinary, it was quite unusual, because for God's people, this is one of the darkest seasons of life for the

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Israelites. The book of Judges, which is just two to the left of 1 Samuel, it chronologically intercedes with 1

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Samuel, and it's in those pages that we understand that things are just at a bad place. The last verse in the book of Judges actually helps us understand what it's like when

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Alcanna steps onto the scene, 21 -25. There's no king in Israel, and everybody does right in their own eyes.

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If you want to see how disturbing that is when that happens, you can read those final few pages of Judges, and you go, this is absolutely terrible, and what's taking place in Judges is that the people continue to turn their back on God, so they follow

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God for a while, and then they forget about Him and turn their back on Him, and what happens is they get into trouble, so another nation comes and attacks them, or there's great sin that's a part of the nation, and so they go, oh

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Lord, we've messed this thing up, and they cry out for help, so God raises up a judge, a short -term leader to come and to help them, and so this judge comes in, you know,

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Simeon, Gideon, Deborah, others like this, to come and deliver them, and the people follow the judge, God saves them, and then they turn back toward God, and then just a short time later, what happens, of course, they go, hey

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God, thanks for helping us, but we've got other things we're going to do, and there's this cycle. You can read it through the book of Judges, it just goes over and over and over.

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Instead of actually spiraling upward in progress, it just descends, terribly so, into a progressive deterioration.

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This is what it's like when we come upon 1 Samuel 1, and we meet this godly man,

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Alcannah, doing probably what was quite unusual for the day. It made me think that biblical leadership is probably often lonely.

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I don't imagine that there are other guys going, Alcannah, we love what you're doing, now the conversations would be, why are you going through all the hassle for this?

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Why does Shiloh, have you been to Shiloh? It's like going to the middle of Kalamazoo, outside the edge of Kalamazoo, where there's nothing there, except maybe some people that might be nice, but what is that, why are you doing this?

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He said, no, this is what we must do, and so, onward to Shiloh they went.

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And this complexity, this family who didn't get along, and you can just picture this scene there, because it's actually this annual trip to Shiloh, which would provide new opportunity for Paninah to dig into Hannah just a little bit more, because part of the religious practice was that Alcannah, he would give a portion of food to each of the family members, so he would go to Paninah, he'd go, here's for you, and then he'd go to Paninah's son, and then to Paninah's other son, and then to Paninah's daughter, and then to Paninah's other daughter, and then he'd get to Hannah.

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But there is no one else who sits with Hannah, and you can just see the smug look that Paninah would shoot across the table at Hannah and go, oh, that's right, you don't have anyone else that Alcannah will give food to.

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Oh, I forgot, you don't actually have any children. I just haven't thought of that since last year. I'm really sorry for your circumstances.

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Did you see all the children that I have that God has given to me? What's wrong with you, Hannah? Why don't you enjoy these things, too?

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And it's Hannah's barrenness that led to her being vulnerable to ridicule.

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And of course, the old adage that we know that sticks and stones, well, it falls short again, because words actually do hurt.

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And Hannah here has been affected physically. She's got a loss of appetite. She's affected emotionally.

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You could say there's just a pervasive sadness about her life every time this meal comes about.

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And it began to affect others, because Hannah, he has this wife who can't get pregnant, and he can't seem to console.

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And there's no question, you saw it here, as to why childlessness was the case for Hannah. We're told twice in these verses that it was the

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Lord who had closed her womb. God, the giver, the sustainer of life, had chosen for a time to withhold from her the privileges of motherhood.

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But Alcannah, he does everything he can to try and comfort her. I love this guy.

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Verse 5, he says, oh, let me see if I can make her heart glad. I'll try and give her an expensive gift. And so he gives her a giant slab of meat.

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He goes, I hope this makes you happy. And of course, you go, well, that's a little unusual. And granted, it's not going to make the top 10 gifts of thoughtfulness for us.

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But for them, it was a genuine expression and a gift of love. Didn't help, though.

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So he tries to console her with his words. It's actually a series of rhetorical questions.

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Why do you weep? Why don't you eat? Don't I mean so much to you, perhaps even more than 10 sons?

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I really like Alcannah. He's doing everything possible. His intentions are good, but he's unable to enter into the hurt.

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And what we're going to see, and especially if you have time to read beyond 1 Samuel 1, is this. We see here in Hannah's life that God often grows godliness through difficulty, that God often grows godliness through hardship, that God often grows godliness through sadness.

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And it's not just contained here. It's what the Hebrew writers works out for us so strongly in Hebrews chapter 12, verses 7 through 11, which says this.

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Because God loves those who are his own, he actually disciplines us. He trains us. He stretches us.

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He takes us through hard stretches so that we might share in his holiness, so that we might come to places that we never thought we could be on our own.

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But when he comes into our weakness and brings his strength, he brings us to places that we never would have discovered about his character and his love for us.

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I was remembering this because I recently read a biography by an old dead guy. Most of them are that way,

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I suppose. Charles Simeon. He was a minister in the 18th century in the

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United Kingdom. And he was appointed to be pastor of this church. And you go, oh, that's a really nice thing.

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Except the church that he was appointed to, the people were not happy to have him at all. They didn't like this guy one bit.

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And for 10 years, they made his life just absolutely miserable. And so they tell one instance about how they made things so difficult for him.

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In the church there, they had the classic pews that were lined up. And then there were also doors on the end of the pews.

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And so what would happen is that families would come. They would sit in the same pews each week. Not a lot has changed in human culture,

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I suppose. But because the people were so unhappy to have him, what the families did is that they came in on the

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Sundays. And instead of sitting in the pews themselves, they closed the doors and locked them so that no one could sit there.

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But there were people within the community who were hungry for the gospel. And so they would come to hear Simeon. And they would come in.

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There's no place to sit. And so Simeon, being a rather resourceful guy, he says, OK, well, that's OK. And so he goes.

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And out of his own pocket, he buys additional seats. And they take up all these seats. And they line them all the way throughout the auditorium and the aisleway so people have a place to sit.

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And then the people who are part of the congregation are still so unhappy to have him, they take all of the chairs. And they throw them outside the church building so that no one can use them.

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I mean, you talk about a passive -aggressive group of people here. This is who this man has been called to, not for one year, not for five years.

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For 10 years, he put up with this stuff. Actually, it was even more than just putting up.

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He wrote this wonderful letter to a friend. And he said, essentially, that he's able to keep his head in hardship because he knew that's what a

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Christian should expect. He wrote this. God knew the real desire of my heart.

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He knew that I only wished to fulfill his will as a minister to the congregation. I told him 1 ,000 times over that I did not appreciate persecution, for I considered it the lot of all who would live godly in Christ Jesus.

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Being a Christian didn't make him immune from difficulty. And in fact, it was actually the 10 -year challenge of that appointment that made him a better equipped, a more godly and gospel minister to that congregation.

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And he went on to have wonderful years of fruitfulness. So now turn your minds back to Hannah.

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In spite of her infertility, maybe actually because of her infertility,

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Hannah was becoming a woman of rich faith. It comes out in the expressions of her prayer.

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You can read all the more that she says in chapter 2 when she pours out her heart before the Lord in pen.

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There's this wonderful depth of language to her prayer. She's actually, if we had time, she's portrayed as one of the most godly women in the

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Old Testament. So we've got Alcanna. He's an admirable man with a complex family.

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And now secondly, the person that we meet here is this, Hannah. She's a godly woman with a sad heart, verses 9 through 20.

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A godly woman with a sad heart. And it's her sadness that led her to pray.

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Because it's mealtime again. Things have just finished up at the meal. And she decides that she can take it no more.

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And she heads off to the temple, where she weeps bitterly and she prays to God.

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Look at what she calls him in verse 11. She calls him the Lord of Hosts.

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It's a name that could be translated as the Lord Almighty, the one who has dominion over everything, the one who has unmatched authority.

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And she brings all of her sadness, all of her vexation, all of her troubles, all of her burdens, and she bows before the greatest authority, the one in heaven who reigns over all things, and she prays.

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But why? Why would she do that? If God is, after all, the

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Lord Almighty, the orchestrator of every event in life, then shouldn't she just passively sit back and go, hey, you're

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God, I'm not, so I guess I'll go with whatever you bring across my path? Or maybe there's another line that she could take to herself.

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She goes, well, if you're the one who actually has control over everything, if you have dominion, and if you've saddled me with such sadness, then actually

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I want nothing to do with you. Because that could also be a legitimate line for her to take. Either to go,

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I guess I don't have any control of this, or you're God, and I don't really want anything to do with you. Those are the two choices that either leaves her being helpless and lost in her troubles, or brazen and alone and blindly independent.

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But thankfully, the Bible gives us another way to approach the mystery of God's sovereignty and our very real sorrow.

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It's what Paul writes. He hits that very pinnacle in Romans chapter 8, verse 28, when he says this as a great encouragement for God's people.

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He says that for those who love God, who have been called to him, who count themselves in Christ, all things are working together for their good.

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It means that there are no accidents in God's plan for you. Now, you may not understand everything in this very moment.

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Actually, we won't understand everything in this very moment. But think about it. As we think about Easter, which of Jesus' followers would have thought to themselves on the day that he was crucified, oh, yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me.

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I know we've been waiting for the Messiah to come in to lead us and to deliver us from the hands of these Romans. They're so oppressive. They're taking the best of us.

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So yeah, why don't we go ahead and crucify that guy up on the cross? After all, if he's the leader, let's just put an end to it right here. None of them thought it was the case.

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They all flattened shame. They were disappointed. They all went off by themselves. But the

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Lord had bigger and better plans that were beyond human understanding.

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That's what it means, that I can entrust myself to a God who perhaps knows things that are better for life than me than what

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I would choose, but in a way that's wrapped up in tenderness and love. Because when we have a grand view of God, this actually presses us.

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It encourages us. It gives us strength to press on in faith, to trust in his character, that God's way too wise to make mistakes, that he's way too loving to be cruel in his dealings with you.

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And amazingly so, he actually welcomes us to bring to him all of our sorrows and sadness.

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That's why Hannah goes in all of her distress, and she prays to the Lord. And she makes a vow.

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She says, Lord, if you will grant me the gift of a child, I'll actually give him back to you to serve among God's people, the

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Israelites. And you get that statement about no razor cutting his hair. That's not some ancient fashion trick or something like that.

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It's intended to be a picture that he would belong to the Lord in a special way, the Nazarite vow that he was special, that he was different.

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And Hannah prays from the very depths of her heart, so much so that her lips are moving without the words being understood.

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And her prayer is terribly misunderstood by Eli, because he's over sitting off at the doorpost, and he looks upon the situation.

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And he mistakes her piety for needed sobriety. And he goes, hey, woman, what are you doing here?

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And she quickly clarifies the situation with her own little wordplay of her own that comes out in the English. She goes, I haven't been pouring myself too many strong drinks.

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I've been pouring myself out before the Lord. Don't think of me in such bad ways. And I imagine

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Eli would have gone, awkward moment number two of the day here for me. And to his credit, he makes a pretty decent recovery in the conversation.

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And he says to her that he too hopes for God's best for her and the gift of a child. Who is this

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Eli guy? Well, he's a priest in ancient Israel. But wouldn't it be fair to say that he's a rather disappointing example for us?

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He's basically like an old school pastor. Well, that's the best they have to offer. And first Samuel 1 is this guy.

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Well, that's rather disappointing. Yeah, it's even more than that. He had some real character issues.

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Because if you read the rest of 1 Samuel, you'll find out that his responsibilities as a leader fell short in the way that his own two sons ministered with him.

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Hophni and Phinis, they were terribly corrupt guys. And God came and put the finger right back on Eli's chest and said, you've missed your responsibilities here in dealing with your own son.

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He's disappointing because he lost focus, but also because on purpose, he's actually supposed to make us want something more.

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I had a friend who is, I have a friend, who is a graphic designer. And in the responsibilities that I have at Parkside, we were working together on a project.

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And so I was telling him about the things that we're trying to communicate in this upcoming piece. And so he sat and he listened.

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And he had, some of you are artists, and he had his little sketchbook. And he's sketching all these things out. He was writing down ideas.

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And so I just glanced, and I looked over what he was doing, and I was just thoroughly unimpressed.

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Because I said, well, these are just pencil sketchings. There's no depth to it.

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There's no warmth. And then I started feeling very insecure. I'm going, am I explaining myself clearly? Are we having a communication conversation here, or am

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I just way off here? And so I said, well, what am I going to do? And so we finish up the conversation, and then he went away for a time.

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And then he came back after the project was completing, and he presented something before us that was stunning and powerful.

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And as I flipped through the pages of this little printed communication piece, it drew me into the stories that were being told within it.

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And I said, oh, I get it now. And the picture of Eli and first Samuel 1 is like the pencil sketches in the designer's notebook.

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The early ideas of what will be presented in the later pages of the Bible in a full and perfect and beautiful picture.

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Everything we've been singing of this morning. Jesus Christ, our high priest. Jesus Christ, the risen king.

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And it's all starting to unfold here in these early pages that we come upon. So in the Old Testament, the priest

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Eli here, he'd have to humbly stand before God and the people as a mediator or as an advocate.

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And offering sacrifice was central to his role. It was bloody, it was gross, it was dirty to help the people realize sin is a very big deal.

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But God is willing to graciously forgive those who come and seek it from him. And so Eli facilitates that process for the people.

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And then when we come to the New Testament, we begin to see that all the functions of the priests like Eli are ultimately pointing forward to and fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

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He is the great priest who is superior to the Old Testament priests.

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Eli, he misses the cue in his intervention for Hannah.

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Jesus Christ, the second member of the Trinity tenderly intervenes and sympathizes with the troubles and heartaches of God's people, and he does so perfectly.

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Because in his role as priest, Jesus is actually different from all the other man -made religions and their ideas about God.

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Practically every religion sees God in a harsh or in a disinterested way.

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Jesus, Jesus, is the only God who gets off his throne and enters into our fallen and crooked world.

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Unlike Eli, who sat at the doorpost and went, oh, I wonder what's going on over there. Jesus humbly came into this world to feel what we feel, to face what we face while remaining completely sinless.

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That's why the momentum is picking up in Hebrews chapter four when it's going, are you beginning to see what this means?

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Because we're told that Jesus' ministry as our priest didn't actually end with his return to heaven, rather this.

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Jesus is alive today, and he ministers to us as a high priest who intercedes before us before God the

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Father. This means that Jesus actually knows us, that he loves us, that he cares for us, that he's aware of everything in life that troubles us.

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He knows this about us, and at this very moment, he's interceding before the Father with all of our sufferings, with all of our needs, and our sins, in a prayerful and a loving way as our high priest.

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Are you seeing how short the care is met in 1

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Samuel one? Eli, he misunderstands the situation. Alcannah actually gets it, but can't do anything about it.

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But Jesus is our sympathetic high priest. He's sympathetic to our temptations, to our weaknesses, to our sufferings, to our sickness, to our disappointment, to our pain, to our mournings, to our brokenness, to our betrayal, to our sadness.

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Sympathetic like no one else can be. And at this very moment, in our time of need, we can actually run to Jesus, our sympathetic high priest who lives to serve us, who lives to give us grace and mercy to help us in our time of need to go,

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I don't know how I'm gonna get through all this, and go, now you're at the place where you need to be to begin to discover how much

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I am for you. And this is who Jesus is. But there's actually a catch.

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This tender intervention of Jesus, it extends only to those who are his own, only to those who are

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Christ's followers. And how you get included in that group happens by looking at another aspect of Jesus' role as our priest, in that the offering of his life as an atonement for sins.

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Eli, he'd have to go and symbolically sacrifice animals for us as a sin offering. But as the great priest,

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Jesus' sacrifice was superior because it was his blood that was shed for forgiveness.

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He lived without error so that we could be counted righteous. Let me ask you just straightforwardly, have you ever trusted and looked to Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins?

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This is far different than having an eclectic spiritual framework where you sort of give a polite nod to Jesus because it's

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Easter Sunday. It's far, far different from that. Have you believed, trusted, clung to Jesus' life given for yours?

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Have you sought forgiveness for your sins? Have you stopped trying to find satisfaction and happiness in people and things?

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Have you realized and admitted actually you have a terribly rebellious heart that I have a terribly rebellious heart?

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Have you seen this to be true about yourself and turned from it? Have you made

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Jesus your Savior and Lord? Today is the great celebration of the fact that he is Savior and Lord.

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Is he your Savior and Lord? Because it's only when the deepest struggles and the deepest problems of our hearts are dealt with in relationship to God and our sin and rebellion that our hearts are then able to be set at peace.

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And then we can actually be made glad and live life in the way that he's intended. So now, turn the corner back to Hannah.

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And let's see here, too, that her sad heart was actually made glad because of this, that although Eli, on this day, was less than stellar in terms of how he dealt with Hannah, God actually used him.

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He sets her heart at ease, and she heads back from her encounter with Eli back to the tent in Shiloh for the night.

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The next morning, both she, Alcannah, the whole family, they get up, they go and worship the Lord once more. And how different this occasion must have been.

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She came to Shiloh with great burdens, but she leaves with a heart uplifted and elevated. And then something takes place.

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The text tells us that her heart was changed, that her face was no longer sad. But when does the change take place?

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Not when you think. Look, the change takes place before the news of the baby, before they head back home, before Alcannah knew her again.

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Her, she had sought God and found that his grace was going to be sufficient for her, even if she didn't get the answers that she most deeply longed for from him.

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Her sad heart was made glad, not because she was pregnant, but because God was sufficient, even if he didn't answer the prayers in the way that she longed for.

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She was satisfied in him. He was going to be enough. Friends, I say to you,

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I don't know where you are, but some of you need to hear that again. He will be enough for you.

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And her sad heart was made glad. So they worship as a family.

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They pack up their gear. They head back home. And lo and behold, verse 20, the news comes that God chose to graciously answer her prayers.

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And you get this wonderful little phrase that the Lord remembered her. Of course the Lord remembered her.

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He doesn't forget his people. The next thing you know, Hannah's uploading pictures to Shutterfly to send out the birth announcements.

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Alcon, he's trying not to freak out about the price, but hey, what are you going to do? It's costly and it's getting him a little up in arms. But they send out the thing and the baby boy is born.

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And his name is Samuel. I have asked from him, from the Lord. And we get this unique look into an ancient family with such a relatable experience.

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Alcon, an admirable man with a complex family. Hannah, a godly woman with a sad heart.

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And very briefly, Samuel, a young boy with an important future.

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Now granted, he's more passively involved in these verses in the storyline. It really still focuses on Alcon and Hannah.

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But what's taking place in the storyline is setting the stage for Samuel's important role.

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And we note this, that he was lent back when he was old enough. We get some really practical matters that take place.

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Alcon would come around the next year and go, okay, we're going down to Shiloh. And Hannah said, hey, I need to stay here for a couple more years until Samuel's weaned.

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And Alcon says, hey, that's great. Just make sure when the time has come that we go and proceed from here. And that happens.

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And so they take little Samuel, a young boy, probably about three at that point. They take him back to Shiloh with some offerings that would have been part of the sacrifice, bowls and flour and wine.

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And then Hannah bumps into Eli. I wonder how that conversation went.

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Hey, Eli, do you remember me? I was here a couple of years ago. You thought I was the drunk lady, but I wasn't actually that.

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And Eli goes, no, no, I remember who you are. We don't need to rehearse the details here. And I won't ever forget that. And then she says to him, hey, look what the

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Lord has done. Look what the Lord has done. So simple. I prayed,

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God answered, he gave. And now we're keeping our word that we made to you that day.

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And we actually wanna give this little boy back to you to serve alongside you, Eli, as a minister among God's people.

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They would come and see him annually. Of course, she would bring the little outfit for him. So you can imagine he's five. She brings him a five tee, he's six.

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You know, it should be a small, but he sprouted up a little bit more. So now he's in like a size medium, you know, in this great exchange that would happen every year.

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But he no longer lived at home. He now had a new place inside this city of Shiloh, this little town of Shiloh where he would serve.

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And you know what's amazing? Is that Samuel was in the right place for God's big plan.

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But nobody would have even understood it. Akana, Hannah, Eli, they didn't have the faintest view of it, we only actually have the clarity by being able to look back over time and go, do you see the way that God orchestrated all of those events?

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Because what's happening among God's people is this, is that the role of judges, Samson, I almost said

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Delilah, the judge, Samson and Gideon and others, the role of the judges is beginning to fade out.

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It's no longer gonna be anywhere. In fact, Samuel is actually gonna be the last great judge. And so what's gonna happen in place of the absence of this leadership?

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The rise of the kings, a new way for God, for the people to begin to relate to God.

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And who do you think is gonna be in place to anoint the nation's first king, Saul? Samuel, he doesn't even know it yet.

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The people need a king and Samuel is God's servant to get them there. And then eventually, of course, after Saul fumbles and stumbles,

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David becomes an even greater king. And then there's a fella behind David, who is a son of his, who will be an even greater king.

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He's sometimes called the king of kings, the Lord Jesus Christ. And the line that gets us to him ties back to an old story about a woman who's sad, but she's godly.

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And she presses on and believes in God's faithfulness to his people. And she comes to understand that he actually knows her, that he actually understands her heartache like no one else, and that he will be enough for her.

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His grace for her will be sufficient for the circumstances of her troubled life.

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And so today we actually say to one another, let us draw near to this very same

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God and find grace and find mercy to help us in our time of need.

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Why can we do that? Because he is risen, he is risen indeed.

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Let's pray. Father, we stand in awe of the way that this

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Bible all just interplaced together so wonderfully. From the dawn of time, you knew that Jesus would come to be our redeemer.

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And today we celebrate that anew in a fresh way, not because things have changed, because you are unchanging and true, but because grace is such an unbelievable story.

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And so we ask, Lord, that you would draw our hearts near to that, particularly as we come and as we share this simple meal together, that we would see in it the simplicity of all that we need in Christ.