Hannah's Hope Lay in Her Suffering (a sermon)

Charles Spurgeon said:
“There are circumstances of constitution, education, and surroundings which render it difficult for some very excellent persons to be cheerful: they are predestined to be known by such a name as this- “A woman of a sorrowful spirit.”

He was speaking about Hannah.
Most of us Church goin’ folk often hear about Hannah every few Mother’s Day that goes by. She is often lauded as one of the spiritual heroines that the Bible speaks about. And with good reason. She was a woman marked with emotional pain. Pain that caused her not to eat. And what was that pain?
Peer pressure. It’s that simple. Pressure from a rival wife and the canon of societal norms that existed in her day. But I’m getting a little ahead of my self.
It was still the times of the Judges. Israel had been in the promised land for many years and were constantly going through the cycle of obedience, contentment, egoism, rebellion, discipline (in the form of oppression), brokenness, rescue, and back to obedience where the cycle would start all over again. The book of Judges uses the story of the lives of a few select people to tell of God’s patience and mercy for the nation as a whole. Samuel switches gears and gets back to focusing on the details of a few people before the line of the kings begin.
Now, all of this is stemming from Genesis 3:15,
And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel."
This is the verse that kicks off all of redemptive history. The first instance of the Gospel. The foretelling of Christ defeating Satan at Calvary and three days later at a borrowed tomb. Hannah was a major player in this role.

She was married to a man named Elkanah. He had one other wife than Hannah, Peninnah. This was the first of Hannah’s afflictions. Peninnah would taunt and ridicule Hannah because Hannah couldn’t get pregnant. This was a big deal in this culture. Women were expected to do two things: 1) Have a husband, and 2) Have as many children as possible. Hard to understand in our liberated society. Also hard to comprehend is polygamy. It was a norm, and although God allowed it as he did other things due to the hardness of people’s hearts, it wasn’t his perfect ideal for a family that glorifies His name. A wise man said to a Sultan once, “First, learn to live with 2 tigresses, and then expect to live happily with two wives.” Brilliant idea! There is a natural urge to be the only apple of your spouse’s eye. That is why adultery hurts the other partner so badly. Hannah was viewed as the competition with Peninnah, so Peninnah exploited Hannah’s “disgrace” to hurt her emotionally.
If we stopped with the end of verse 2, “. . . but Hannah had no children,” then we would be lost and hopeless. No reason, no logic, no purpose to her pain, just naturalism and survival of the fittest would be the only thing to cling to. And as we’ve seen over the years, that offers no joy, only impending doom. But the writer says something that makes us sit up and take notice in verse 5.
When the time for yearly sacrifice would come around, Elkanah would go to Shiloh to sacrifice. He gave portions of the sacrifice to Peninnah and all her sons and daughters. But, to Hannah, he would give a double portion, because he loved her and saw she was upset at her condition. Verse 5 says, “but to Hannah he would give a double portion, for he loved Hannah, (now here’s the hope!) but the LORD had closed her womb.” Why would I call that hope? Doesn’t it seem illogical to go beyond an evolutionistic view of “that’s just the way things are” to saying there is hope in the statement that God caused this affliction? I mean, if that’s just the way things are then there’s no one to blame and we can come to terms with pain and suffering. Just accept it. Turn that frown upside down! NO!!! It’s fatalistic in its very meaning! But if there is a loving and merciful God who has been showing His love to His people all through the books of Genesis and Exodus and Joshua and Ruth and Judges, then there is a reason to it! We can lift up our faces and say, “God is God and I am not! He loves those He has redeemed for His own and gives them strength and grace through trying times so that He gets the glory for it!” God predetermined Hannah’s story! It wasn’t an accident. He barren so that through her a prophet would come to anoint a fore shadow of the first born of God which is Christ! But again, I get ahead of myself.
Verses 6-7 say that Peninnah would “provoke her bitterly” every time when she would go up to Shiloh “to the house of the LORD.” Hannah would go to worship and here comes her adversary. I can’t help but think of Sunday mornings when we go to corporately worship our God and our Adversary stirs things up in our lives in order to get our minds and hearts off of the very means of grace God provides for His people.
It made Hannah cry and she became so sick, she couldn’t eat. Have you ever had such grief that your body shuts down? The days seem short and the nights eternal. I have. I went through a two week period years ago, when I couldn’t eat or sleep. I lost 20 pounds in that 2 week period. Well, Elkanah tried to do the noble thing and comfort his wife. He did the typical “guy” thing, “Well, honey, ain’t I good enough?” We try ladies, we try. We’re just too egocentric to stop and think that this may be a bigger problem than we can fix. But notice Hannah’s effort to try and make her husband feel better in verse 9. Verse 8 says that Elkanah asked her why she was crying and not eating and not sleeping. Then he asks her if wasn’t he better than 10 kids. So, she eats and drinks and goes to the place where true comfort is found. The presence of God. Ladies, let this be a lesson to you. As well intentioned as we may be, we’re still dunder heads. Your only comfort is found in God. Only he can understand exactly what you’re feeling. Hannah didn’t scream and shout, “You just don’t understand!” She simply ate, drank and ran to God.
Verses 10-18, I think, are the heart of the chapter. Verse 10 says that she was still greatly distressed and was crying bitterly. But in that moment, she made a vow. Vows were very serious especially when made at the temple. It is a very, very, very dangerous thing to make a vow to God that you don’t intend to keep. Especially at the place that represented His presence. I hear people tell me all day every day, “Sure, I’ll be there at such and such a time to look at that vehicle and if something comes up, then I’ll call you.” They never show and they never call. “If you can get me this car for this amount, I’ll drive it home now.” I make phone calls to the banks to get the interest rate down, I argue with my managers to come down on the price, I call wholesalers to get more money for their trade ins. “Congrats, Mr. Customer, you win. You’re at the price/payment you want to be at! Just initial here and I’ll get the car cleaned up for you.”
“Well, I’ve got to talk to my wife first, but I’ll let you know tomorrow.” Tomorrow comes and goes and not a peep. People make promises and vows they never intend to keep. It doesn’t matter if they’re talking with a greasy used car salesman or if they’re talking with the Pope. There’s probably some leniency breaking a promise to a car salesman, but make no mistake about it, it’s scary and dangerous to lie to God. Just ask Ananias and Saphira.
Hannah had no plans to break her vow. If God would grant her a child to remove her shame, then she would offer the child to God as a Nazarite. This was a special vow people took to separate themselves to God. It was marked by never cutting your hair, never touching a dead body (even if it was a relative), and never drinking fermented drinks. I love the fact that Hannah was giving her gift back to God. It’s not enough to pray, Lord get me out of debt. But maybe it’s something different to say God get me out of debt and I’ll give my debt payments back to you, plus my tithe. Do you see the difference?
Hannah was praying by moving her lips, but not saying anything out loud. Eli, the chief priest whose sons were very wicked, thought she was drunk and told her to put a cork back on the wine bag. How often do we see people honestly expressing their sorrow to God in church and judge them. “She shouldn’t be raising her hands! All he does is cry!” Now, I’m not an advocate of emotionalism. That is getting a crowd crying and weeping or shouting out of guilt or a “motivational pep speech” like you’re at a football rally. But, folks, every time the pastor gets up here and passionately preaches God wrath, justice, forgiveness, or mercy, he’s trying to get us emotional. God wants our emotions, He just wants to go through our heads with correct doctrine that produces humility first. If your head isn’t in the game in worship and it’s just your emotions, then a quick lunch at the Chinese buffet can change how you feel within just a few hours. But if our mentality to God’s word changes, then how we act will change which will produce different emotions in regard to our actions, because we now know in our heads that the actions or attitudes are wrong or right. Does that make sense? It’s like what Paul talked about the Law. He would have never known what sin was and how to feel about it if someone hadn’t written the Law. Once the Law got into people’s heads, then it changed how they felt about the things they had been doing. So learn by Hannah’s example, pour out your heart to God. But do it honestly. There was honesty in Hannah’s sorrow. She didn’t water it down or decide to “pull herself up by her own boot straps” to make the “most out of a bad situation. She was hurting and she was honest about before God.
She was also honest with Eli. If I’m having a bad day, then people know it. Mostly by my face. I’ve never been able to hide my emotions because I wear it on my face. People see it. Then they ask, “Are you ok?” I realize I’ve been caught, so I say, “Oh yeah, I’m fine, just thinking.” Hannah laid it on the table to her spiritual leader. “I am a woman oppressed in spirit.” The word ‘oppressed’ in Hebrew comes from a root word that means “to be hard, severe, or fierce.” There was a fierceness in Hannah’s suffering. In the 1960’s, the African American community was fighting for their civil rights and against the oppression of the laws of the land. A lot of you remember that time. Since I wasn’t even a thought then, I can’t even imagine the tension that existed. Having talked with some of the leaders of that movement here in Birmingham and speaking with many people from both sides, I can feel, if that’s the right word to use, the frustration of being oppressed from someone else. There is a sense of that in Hannah’s use of that word. That there was no way out of this misery and heartache. There are worse heartaches though. I believe that the loss of a child would be far greater than the absence of one. We can all probably think of a dozen scenarios that would be worse than Hannah’s, perhaps some of you have been through worse. But it’s the fact of her distress, not necessarily the cause.
Evidently, this caused Eli to shut up, because all he said was basically go in peace and I hope God grants your request. I don’t know how to argue Hannah’s reaction. All the text says is that she left, ate, and was no longer sad. I say I don’t know how to argue it because I don’t know if it was God alone who caused her not to be sad or if it was God working through Eli’s simple reply that lifted her countenance. The text doesn’t tell us. We just know that her sorrow was replaced with peace. Her suffering with at least contentment.
So. I had a Bible professor that once told me when you’re speaking on a text, at the end, all the audience is asking is, “So what?” What does all this mean and how does it apply to our walk with God? The rest of the story, as Paul Harvey would say, is that She had a baby, Samuel, and fulfilled her vow to God by giving him to God to serve at the Temple under Eli. But, let me see if I can offer some application.

1) Our suffering as a believer is never in vain. Hannah’s wasn’t, Christ’s certainly wasn’t, and neither is yours’. Are you suffering? Are you going through heartache? How do you deal with it? By coming to an understanding that God has a purpose for the suffering. By knowing in your head that God is to be praised in the midnight because He is still God in the midnight and letting that truth affect your emotions. In other words, it’s all about God and not us. It’s His Glory that is at stake in this world and it will not be compromised. That doesn’t mean “putting on a happy face” and “thinking positively.” It means being honest with God. If you’re angry, tell Him you’re angry. If you’re sad, tell Him you’re sad. Then ask him for forgiveness for making it about you and ask Him to give you a passion for His Glory that surpasses your own circumstances.
2) The place to unload your burdens is at the place of worship. For us, that means here with other believers where God specially manifests His presence. It doesn’t mean that you can’t do this at home or in the car or on a lunch break. In fact, it’s good to focus on God at these places including what you’re going through. But, God has designed Sunday mornings as a place where we draw nourishment from his spiritual body manifested in physical bodies corporately worshipping Him. It’s a means of Grace, so why wouldn’t you use it.
3) Be careful in your distress that you don’t make vow or promise you don’t mean to keep. We’re prone to negotiate with God. “God if you’ll just, then I’ll. . .” A guy I went to high school went that partied a lot, had a brain aneurysm a year or so after we graduated. He told everyone how he’d changed his life and was going to live for God now. Within a year he was back to where he was in high school. I’m not sure what his current status is right now, but my point is we want out of the pain so bad, we’re willing to say anything to relieve the pressure, because we’re emotionally overloaded. Do not do this! If you make a vow, keep it!