The Hope of Hannah

Show Notes

1 Samuel 1:1–20 (Listen)

The Birth of Samuel

1:1 There was a certain man of Ramathaim-zophim of the hill country of Ephraim whose name was Elkanah the son of Jeroham, son of Elihu, son of Tohu, son of Zuph, an Ephrathite. 2 He had two wives. The name of the one was Hannah, and the name of the other, Peninnah. And Peninnah had children, but Hannah had no children.

3 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 LORD. 4 On the day when Elkanah sacrificed, he would give portions to Peninnah his wife and to all her sons and daughters. 5 But to Hannah he gave a double portion, because he loved her, though the LORD had closed her womb.¹ 6 And her rival used to provoke her grievously to irritate her, because the LORD had closed her womb. 7 So it went on year by year. As often as she went up to the house of the LORD, she used to provoke her. Therefore Hannah wept and would not eat. 8 And Elkanah, her husband, said to her, “Hannah, why do you weep? And why do you not eat? And why is your heart sad? Am I not more to you than ten sons?”

9 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 LORD. 10 She was deeply distressed and prayed to the LORD and wept bitterly. 11 And she vowed a vow and said, “O LORD of hosts, if you will indeed look on the affliction of your servant and remember me and not forget your servant, but will give to your servant a son, then I will give him to the LORD all the days of his life, and no razor shall touch his head.”

12 As she continued praying before the LORD, Eli observed her mouth. 13 Hannah was speaking in her heart; only her lips moved, and her voice was not heard. Therefore Eli took her to be a drunken woman. 14 And Eli said to her, “How long will you go on being drunk? Put your wine away from you.” 15 But Hannah answered, “No, my lord, I am a woman troubled in spirit. I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I have been pouring out my soul before the LORD. 16 Do not regard your servant as a worthless woman, for all along I have been speaking out of my great anxiety and vexation.” 17 Then Eli answered, “Go in peace, and the God of Israel grant your petition that you have made to him.” 18 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.

19 They rose early in the morning and worshiped before the LORD; then they went back to their house at Ramah. And Elkanah knew Hannah his wife, and the LORD remembered her. 20 And in due time Hannah conceived and bore a son, and she called his name Samuel, for she said, “I have asked for him from the LORD.”²

Footnotes

[1] 1:5 Syriac; the meaning of the Hebrew is uncertain. Septuagint And, although he loved Hannah, he would give Hannah only one portion, because the Lord had closed her womb
[2] 1:20 Samuel sounds like the Hebrew for heard of God

(ESV)

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Redeemer exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.

Jeffrey Heine: 00:00

If you have a bible, I invite you to turn to first Samuel chapter 1. First Samuel chapter 1. It's also there in your worship guide. We are beginning a new series this morning on the gospel and the life of David. Jesus was born in the city of David.

Jeffrey Heine: 00:21

Jesus was called the son of David. Jesus will sit forever on the throne of David. So we cannot understand Jesus apart from understanding the life of David, which is why we're gonna be taking the next 6 months or so to walk through his life. And so we'll begin by looking at 1st and second Samuel, which is really a biography of David. But the way that Samuel begins, interestingly enough, is not by telling of the birth of David.

Jeffrey Heine: 00:51

Actually tells about the birth of the prophet who will then go and anoint David as king. It's an unusual beginning for a biography. And so if you would read with me, first Samuel chapter 1. And there's zero chance I get all these names right. I wanna go ahead and tell you that.

Jeffrey Heine: 01:12

There was a certain man of Ramatham Zophim of the hill country of Ephraim, whose name was Elkanah, the son of Jerohim, son of Elihu, son of Tohu, son of Zeph, an Ephrathite. He had 2 wives. The names of one was Hannah, and the name of the other Peninnah. And Peninnah had children, but Hannah had no children. 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 son, 2 sons of Eli, Hophni and Phineas, were priests of the Lord.

Jeffrey Heine: 01:52

On the day where when Elkanah sacrificed, he would give portions to Peninnah, his wife, and to all her sons and daughters. But to Hannah, he gave a double portion because he loved her, though the lord had closed her womb. And her rival used to provoke her grievously to irritate her because the lord had closed her womb. So it went on year by year. As often as she went up to the house of the Lord, she used to provoke her.

Jeffrey Heine: 02:23

Therefore Hannah wept and would not eat. And Elkanah her husband said to her, Hannah, why do you weep? Why do you not eat? And why is your heart sad? Am I not more to you than 10 sons?

Jeffrey Heine: 02:38

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 Lord. She was deeply distressed and prayed to the Lord and wept bitterly. And she vowed a vow and said, oh Lord of hosts, if you will indeed look on the affliction of your servant and remember me and not forget your servant, but will give to your servant a son, then I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life and no razor shall touch his head. As she continued praying before the lord, Eli observed her mouth.

Jeffrey Heine: 03:18

Hannah was speaking in her heart. Only her lips moved and her voice was not heard. Therefore, Eli took her to be a drunken woman. And Eli said to her, how long will you go on being drunk? But you're wide away from you.

Jeffrey Heine: 03:34

But Hannah answered, no, my lord. I'm a woman troubled in spirit. 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. For all along, I have been speaking out of my great anxiety and vexation.

Jeffrey Heine: 03:55

Then Eli answered, go in peace. And the God of Israel grant your petition that you have made to him. 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. They rose early in the morning and worshiped before the Lord.

Jeffrey Heine: 04:17

Then they went back to their house at Ramah. And Elkanah knew Hannah, his wife, and the Lord remembered her. And in due time, Hannah conceived and bore a son, and she called his name Samuel, for she said, I have asked for him from the Lord. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Jeffrey Heine: 04:36

You would pray with me. Father, we ask that in this moment, you would speak to us through your word. Thank you for preserving this story for us that we might be reading it in this moment, that we might be shaped by it, that, ultimately, we might hear from you, Jesus. So I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore. But, Lord, may your words remain and may they change us.

Jeffrey Heine: 05:04

We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. So you would expect a biography of David to start with a birth story of David, which is actually something you will never be given. You'll be given every other aspect of his life, but not his birth. Instead, what we are given is a story about a barren woman pleading with the Lord to have a son.

Jeffrey Heine: 05:33

It's an unusual beginning, isn't it? I mean, why would why would he want to begin the story of David this way? And can I just say, I'm not entirely sure? My best guess is this, I think the author wants to show us in this story that what Hannah here is seeking in a deeply personal level is what Israel is seeking now at a national level. Israel is coming out of, at the time of judges, 400 years of misery, 400 years of fruitlessness.

Jeffrey Heine: 06:10

One might describe Israel as being barren. They were not a great nation. They were nobodies compared to all the nations that were around them. They have produced so little fruit after And so they're longing for change. They're longing for someone to come, perhaps a king to come, and to make them a great nation.

Jeffrey Heine: 06:43

And so the longing of Hannah, I think, is the longing of Israel. It's the longing to no longer be barren. The story begins here by telling us that there was a man named Elkanah who had 2 wives, which should immediately make you think, uh-oh. I have no idea where where sexuality and marriage is is going in our culture. But anyone who ever points to the bible and says, see, like even, even the bible supports, you know, polygamy and and not traditional marriage there.

Jeffrey Heine: 07:14

You haven't read the Bible because, yes, polygamy is all through the old testament. And it is never presented positively. Christ our God is very clear in His word about marriage and so every time you see this polygamous relationships in the Old Testament, it always ends in disaster. And this is certainly no exception here. Elkanah's wives were named Hannah and Peninnah.

Jeffrey Heine: 07:40

And notice how they're introduced. Penina, well, she had all the children. Hannah did not have children. Hannah was barren. And she'd apparently been barren for a while.

Jeffrey Heine: 07:55

And and infertility is is painful in our culture. But back in this culture at this time, infertility was absolutely devastating. Robert Alter who is a Jewish and Hebrew scholar out at Berkeley, you're gonna hear me reference him a number of times in the coming months. He says that in this culture, a woman had only one great avenue to living a fulfilled life, And that was through bearing sons. This woman's purpose in life at this time was to bear sons.

Jeffrey Heine: 08:29

And there was enormous pressure on her to do so. You needed sons to work the fields. You needed sons to take care of you in your old age. You know, there weren't any 401 ks plans then. You needed sons to go and fight for your tribe and to join the army.

Jeffrey Heine: 08:46

Sons were absolutely essential. And so those who produce sons, the women who did this, were the cultural heroes of their day. And the ones who couldn't, well, even the Talmud said that they were as good as dead. They were useless. They were nothing more than a drain on society and that is exactly how Hannah feels.

Jeffrey Heine: 09:10

Drained. Dead. This is certainly her infertility what is what led Elkanah to get another wife to find someone who could produce. To make things worse, we read that Peninnah used to provoke Hannah. Even described as being her rival.

Jeffrey Heine: 09:33

Once again, polygamy, bad idea. And actually, the the main way that Hannah was provoked by Peninnah was was when they would get in the car and they would go off to family worship. I mean imagine that, as a family heading to worship and that is when you would begin to irritate one another, has long early roots in church history. We read that every year, they'd make a pilgrimage to Shiloh. They would go and make sacrifices as a family.

Jeffrey Heine: 10:04

And it's here that Penina would just kinda needle Hannah. It doesn't take much imagination to kind of picture the events. I'm sure Penina was subtle in how she did it. After all, they're going to worship, so she can't be overtly nasty. But you could say things like, Hannah, I since you don't have your hands full, would you mind helping me pack the minivan?

Jeffrey Heine: 10:30

I'm having a hard time getting all the pack and plays in there. Oh, and and and when you're done with that, you're such a dear. Could you maybe help me put the cooler in? The doctor said, I'm not supposed to lift heavy things in my 3rd trimester. And this cooler seems to be getting heavier every year, doesn't it?

Jeffrey Heine: 10:52

You know, next year, we're probably just gonna have to buy one of those sprinter vans, in order to accommodate the family. Or or maybe we could just start taking 2 cars. Can you just You could picture it. Just just the needling. And those comments begin to put Hannah in a tailspin.

Jeffrey Heine: 11:10

The word irritate there, it's actually a soft translation because the word means to thunder or to roar. Every other time that word is used in the Hebrew bible, it is used to describe a physical storm. Hannah's soul is raging. Her soul's in storming. It's in turmoil.

Jeffrey Heine: 11:33

And like a hurricane, it begins spiraling out of control, spiraling down into a deep deep depression. She's described now as weeping all of the time. She loses her appetite. She won't eat. Her husband is at a loss as to what to do.

Jeffrey Heine: 11:49

I'm sure they went to go see counselors. I'm sure they went to see all sorts of different types of doctors. He doesn't know what to do and so he, you know, he does what a lot of people do. He just starts stuffing her depression with food. He literally was like, here, have a double portion of mashed potatoes.

Jeffrey Heine: 12:05

He is at a loss as what to do as a husband. And wouldn't you have loved to just see Hannah's face when he's like, why are you sad? And he's like, why am I sad? And as he's throwing mashed potatoes on her plate, seeing Penina's smirk. Can any of you relate to Hannah?

Jeffrey Heine: 12:29

Do you have a storm of some unmet desire that's been brewing in you. And maybe you wouldn't describe it, you know, as a hurricane right now or even a storm, but certainly the winds of that unmet desire have started picking up speed. Any of you have any paninas in your life? Those regular irritating reminders of how you don't measure up, of how much better someone else's life is compared to yours. All of us have those.

Jeffrey Heine: 13:07

Do you know what the name Penina actually means in Hebrew? Instagram. That's how you can transliterate her name in, in English. It's Instagram. If you're longing, you know, for more adventure, you're longing for more fun than everyday, Penina is going to show you a picture from her, you know, exotic vacation she has taken.

Jeffrey Heine: 13:39

If you're longing for a better body, well she is gonna post a picture of her at the beach. If you're longing to be married, well she's going to post the picture of her and her husband at their anniversary looking so happy. If you're longing to be pregnant, she's gonna be posting those Easter pics where the whole family is dressed up looking perfect. And every time you see that, it's just gonna be like this this little knife going in you. And the thing is, you don't want to feel that way.

Jeffrey Heine: 14:13

You actually want to be happy for those people. You really do. You don't want to hurt and have that bitterness, but it's there. Every one of those posts that you see and that wound that you feel, it's revealing that you actually have this little hole in your heart. And that's the you need to be healed there.

Jeffrey Heine: 14:34

And the truth is that hole in your heart is not gonna be filled by whatever you are longing for. I know you think that's what I need to fill it. That is not gonna fulfill the longing in your heart. Because once you get that one thing, that one thing you absolutely must have and you get it, you're immediately gonna be thinking, now what else must I have? So for those of you who are in high school, you might be longing to get a good ACT score so you could get into the college of your dreams.

Jeffrey Heine: 15:12

Once you finally get to that college, you're gonna have this deep longing to get into the fraternity or to the sorority of your dreams. And be overly excited when you get in or overly devastated when you don't. And then you're going to have a deep longing to go on dates or to perhaps get married. And then that longing is gonna be for you to have a career, to have a gorgeous house, and of course have all the kids. And then of course, have to remodel the house like all of your neighbors are doing.

Jeffrey Heine: 15:45

And then you need that to have the vacations and even more exotic vacations after you keep seeing all the posts of what your friends are doing. And of course, you're gonna long for your kids now to excel academically. And then you really wanna be able to put those signs in your yard with their jersey number on it. You so want to be like every like, now my child does this too. And then of course, you long for them to go off to college where they can repeat all of your longings and the ways that you tried to satisfy them.

Jeffrey Heine: 16:24

And it goes on and on and on. None of those desires that I mentioned are bad. Not one of them. None of them are bad desire. They they could be good desires, but when a good desire becomes a ultimate desire, it will destroy you.

Jeffrey Heine: 16:43

When it becomes a, this is all I could think about desire. Or I absolutely must have this desire. Or this is where I am always daydreaming about desire. When it becomes those things, then your soul is gonna forever be raging. There's gonna be a storm in there.

Jeffrey Heine: 17:00

And you wonder why you have that kind of reaction to the paninas of the world. In verse 8, Elkanah tries to comfort her by saying, Hannah, why are you weeping? Once again, he's clueless. I mean, come on. Why are you weeping?

Jeffrey Heine: 17:16

Why are you not eating? Am I not more to you than 10 sons? Now I've talked about this in the past. I've brought out this verse. Ilkana, he's obviously cares for Hannah.

Jeffrey Heine: 17:33

He's trying to comfort her, But what he is doing is just giving her a false hope. He's basically telling her this. Hannah, don't build your life around having kids. Instead, build your life around my love for you. He is just telling her to transfer her idolatry.

Jeffrey Heine: 17:57

Transfer I know this has failed you. Transfer it over here, but He will someday fail her. Elkanahir represents the way our culture tries to solve life's problems. Just build your life on another idol. And you just keep on building it on other idols, other idols, and other idols.

Jeffrey Heine: 18:16

But all of them will fail you. O'Connor does here what, a writer named Ernest Becker calls the romantic solution. I've referred to Ernest Becker over the years. He's an atheist scholar, was an atheist scholar, who wrote a phenomenal book called The Denial of Death. I'm waiting for at least 5 of you to read it so we could discuss it.

Jeffrey Heine: 18:39

We've got 2. But but the basis of the book is this. Death is so horrible because the lights just literally go out. It's a depressing book. Remember, he's an atheist.

Jeffrey Heine: 18:55

He says, but the thought of that is so horrible, we can't live with it. So we spend our entire lives trying to deny the doom that is coming to us. And he says, one of the ways that we do this is by coming up with a romantic solution to this up this this horror that will one day hit us. A romantic solution is how we try to find meaning in our meaningless lives. And and he he writes this, for an atheist, boy he's so spot on.

Jeffrey Heine: 19:30

The love partner becomes the divine ideal within which to fulfill one's own life. What is it that we want when we elevate a love partner to this position? We want redemption, nothing less. We want to be rid of our faults, of our feelings of nothingness. The problem is no human relationship can bear the burden of godhood.

Jeffrey Heine: 20:00

And he's right. Romantic love will not save you. Your boyfriend, your girlfriend, your spouse cannot bear the weight that you're placing on them, nor can your children, nor can your career, nor can your political party. Whatever it is that you are putting the weight of meaning of your life upon, it cannot bear that weight. Only God can.

Jeffrey Heine: 20:33

After elkana gives that comfort, let my love be enough for you. There's actually this decisive shift with Hannah here. It kinda says, I am I not worth more than 10 sons? She could have clapped back. This is probably what I would have done.

Jeffrey Heine: 20:50

She could have clapped back. Well, is not my love to you worth more than 10 sons? Because apparently not. You ain't got another wife. And then she could have dropped the mic and just walked out of the room.

Jeffrey Heine: 21:03

But she's not me. She doesn't lash out in bitterness towards her husband or or Penina. Notice she never responds to them. She never says a word to them. What she does is she goes to the Lord with her bitterness.

Jeffrey Heine: 21:20

She takes her bitterness to the Lord. She just pours it out before Him and then she walks away a completely different person. She walks away with a healed heart. In verse 9, we read that after they had eaten and drunk in Shiloh, Hannah rose. Once again, Robert Alter, he says, in this rising here, it's not just she stood up.

Jeffrey Heine: 21:45

In Hebrew, this is meaning she is now taking a decisive action. She's gonna do something about the situation she is in. And what she does is she's gonna go to the Lord and she's gonna pray this thing out. And she's transformed. When she is done praying, all of that inner storming is gone.

Jeffrey Heine: 22:06

It says that she is no longer sad. How can we pray to where it has that effect? Well let's look at how she prays. There's 2 important things about how she prays here. And I think if you wanna be transformed, into how Hannah was transformed, you need to understand these.

Jeffrey Heine: 22:28

The first is this. She she is emotionally real with the Lord. In verse 10, we read that in her deep distress, she goes to the Lord and she wept bitterly before Him. She doesn't try to hide her feelings. She doesn't try to clean them up or polish them or put a bow on them.

Jeffrey Heine: 22:48

She just falls apart before the Lord and weeps bitterly before Him. As a matter of fact, she was like so ugly in her crying. You know, you've seen the ugly tears. You know, we're like, there's the sweet tears and then there's like, oh my gosh tears. Eli thought she was drunk by how she was praying.

Jeffrey Heine: 23:07

She is falling apart before the Lord. When you go to God in prayer, be honest about how you feel. Don't try to hide your brokenness. Don't try to hide your anger, your bitterness, your if you're fearful, He knows all those things anyway. Lay it out before Him.

Jeffrey Heine: 23:31

So she's emotionally real and then we notice that she is theologically real. Verse 10. She calls God the Lord of hosts, the Lord of the armies of heaven, essentially. He's the Lord with all the power. So she understands His transcendent power and that He can change her life.

Jeffrey Heine: 23:51

But she doesn't just recognize His power, she actually assumes something about His character. When she asks the Lord to look upon her and her affliction And he does. And he does. So she puts these two things together. God is all powerful, Yet, God also cares for emotional wreck nobody's like me.

Jeffrey Heine: 24:27

And when she puts those things together, she says, Therefore, anything that I have been denied can't be anything that I actually need, because God has given me everything that I actually need. A powerful and caring God will always give his children what they need. And so those things, when they come together, they transform her. And then this leads her to pray for a son. But the way she prays for a son now and the reason she wants a son now is completely different than the reason she wanted a son earlier.

Jeffrey Heine: 25:08

Notice in verse 11, she prays, if you will give to your servant a son, then I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life and no razor shall touch his head. Now first, this seems like she's bargaining with God. You give me something. I give you a little something. Really, you know, you give me what I really really want.

Jeffrey Heine: 25:35

And then I'll vaguely, you know, give you something back. How many of you have ever tried to bargain with God and prayed that way? I have. I remember the first time I ever did that. I'm sure I did it many times.

Jeffrey Heine: 25:50

But the my most vivid memory was, I was young. We're taking the family vacation. 3 weeks in a car driving all the way around the US with 3 kids in the back seat of a car. This is no mini man. And we were actually going through Vegas.

Jeffrey Heine: 26:07

And we stopped at Vegas, and I think we went to the circus casino there. And I remember they had a go kart on display. And you could, like, put your name in for a raffle to get the go kart. It's, like, the first time I really remember praying. And so, I I mean, I filled out my info and I put it in and I said, Lord, if you will give me this go kart, I will use it for your glory.

Jeffrey Heine: 26:39

And I don't even know what that meant. You know? But but I I was I will use it somehow. I will use it for your glory, but really, I just want the go kart, and I'll vaguely say I'm gonna use it for glory. And for some reason, God in his infinite wisdom decided not to give me that go kart, and denied himself all the glory that could have come from it.

Jeffrey Heine: 27:01

But don't we do that with God all the time? God, give me this, and then we vaguely say how we're gonna give it back to Him. God, give me this job, and I'll be more generous. God, give me this beautiful home, and I'll use it for your glory. God, get me into this country club, or get me into this sorority or whatever it is and I'll be sure to witness for you.

Jeffrey Heine: 27:30

We vaguely give these like promises to God if you'll give us what we really want. That's not what's happening here. When she says, and no razor shall touch his head, she is putting money where her mouth is when she says, I will give him to you all his days. She is literally going to give her son away. You see in Numbers chapter 6, we read that if you were not a Levite, but you wanted to become a priest, you could do it by taking, a Nazarite vow.

Jeffrey Heine: 28:06

And to take the Nazarite vow, you would vow to never cut your hair. And if you made that vow, you would then go off to live among the priests and you could become a priest. And so when Hannah praises, she is saying that she will physically give her child away to live among the priests, which means that all the previous reasons she wanted of child no longer apply to her. Because she will not be able to like sit down and read books to her child and feel his affection. She's not gonna be able to you know, to walk her child down to the to the park and let everybody see her with her son.

Jeffrey Heine: 28:44

She's not gonna be able to to put the signs in her yard with his jersey number or to take the pictures of prom. Her son's not gonna grow up and be able to provide for her in her old age. She's not gonna receive any of those benefits and and those are the reasons why she wanted a child earlier. But now she's saying, child God, before I wanted a child for me, but now I want a child for you. I want a child for your service.

Jeffrey Heine: 29:13

Her entire heart's motivation has changed here. God has met all the previous needs that she had in wanting a child. You can actually see this also by the way that she responds after she prays. We do not read that she prays and then gets pregnant and then walks away no longer sad. She prays.

Jeffrey Heine: 29:40

She is no longer sad and then she gets pregnant. Her peace and her joy come way before her pregnancy. She is transformed after her time of prayer. For those of you whose souls are in turmoil, wouldn't you love to have such peace? A peace no matter what life throws your way, a peace even when you feel barren.

Jeffrey Heine: 30:12

The Lord freely gives us this. I know that some of you might feel that God has forgotten you. At least, when you look at your life, and you're like, there doesn't seem to be a master plan when I look at my life. It just seems to be pretty chaotic and it doesn't really seem to be going anywhere. And so, like, if there is God, He's forgotten about me.

Jeffrey Heine: 30:38

But God has not forgotten about you. He has not forgotten about you and your pain, just like He didn't forget about Hannah and her pain. God was actually wanting Hannah to remember Him, not the other way around. He had no need to be reminded to remember her. He brought this pain in her life so that she might remember Him and to seek Him for healing.

Jeffrey Heine: 31:07

The prophet Isaiah, he would tell later this. He says in Isaiah 49, can a woman forget her nursing child? Couldn't even imagine that. Could she forget and have no compassion on the son of her womb? Can't even imagine that.

Jeffrey Heine: 31:25

But he goes on to say, even these these may forget, but I will never forget you. Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands. You are continually before me. God tells us he has literally engraved us on the palms of his hand, which he did in his son Jesus. Ultimately, you find that this is where Hannah's hope goes.

Jeffrey Heine: 31:57

In chapter 2, she breaks out into song. If you could just feel the joy in her song and and she actually ends it's there in your worship guide, is the song of Hannah. Look how she ends this song. Verse 10, that second part of it, The Lord will judge the ends of the earth. He will give strength to his king.

Jeffrey Heine: 32:18

He will exalt the horn of his anointed. Now what is crazy about this is remember there are no kings yet. This is a prophetic moment that Hannah has. And what she is realizing is in order for there to be true joy and true lifting up and true peace, God's gonna have to send a king. In that word, he will exalt the horn or the strength of his anointed.

Jeffrey Heine: 32:44

The word anointed is the word messiah. The Messiah will come and do this. And we see ultimately where her hope and her joy lies. She was looking forward. We get to look backwards.

Jeffrey Heine: 32:58

And we get to see Jesus when he was exalted on the cross. We get to see Jesus when we were literally engraved on his hands. We will never be forsaken because Jesus was actually forsaken for us. Jesus went to the depths of hell so that we will only know the bliss and the joys of heaven forever. And it's to him that we turn.

Jeffrey Heine: 33:28

And that's what brings us here to this table. Like I mentioned before, God will not forget us. But he knows that we are forgetful people. And so he actually gave us a tangible way of remembering him. On the night that Jesus was betrayed, he took bread and he broke it.

Jeffrey Heine: 33:55

And he said, this is my body given for you. He took the cup and he said, this wine is my blood for the forgiveness of sins. And as often as we take these things, we remember him. That's what we're gonna do this morning is remember him. We're going to take communion this way.

Jeffrey Heine: 34:17

We're going to have 4 stations up here. If you would come forward using these center aisles and just break off a piece of bread and dip it in the wine, and it's, nonalcoholic wine. As you do so, you'll hear the words, this is the body of Christ given for you. This is his blood shed for you. And then after you take, you're you're free to stay up here and pray if you want to.

Jeffrey Heine: 34:40

Perhaps, like Hannah, there needs to be a decisive action on your part and you need to go to the Lord and bear out your soul, you're welcome to stay up here and pray or you could return to your seat using these outer aisles. And we're gonna begin with the balcony and with those who are in the overflow rooms, if y'all would come first. But first, let me pray for us. Father, we thank you for remembering. We have never been out of your mind.

Jeffrey Heine: 35:10

You say, how could you ever forget us? You've engraved us on your hands. But, Lord, forgive us for forgetting you. So I pray that in this moment, we would remember. We would remember your power and we would remember how much you love and care for us and how we see those things beautifully demonstrated in the in the life and the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Jeffrey Heine: 35:35

So come commune with us in this moment. We pray this in your name. Amen.