1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:28,980 I'm going to dive into it this morning. Father in heaven, I just ask that you would be with us as we open your word, that as we walk through just these two short verses this morning, and as we see these great themes that spring from the beginning of this book of history, that you would encourage our hearts, that you would strengthen our souls, that you would inform our minds, and you would put us into action, seeking to follow you and to live for you. It is in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. 2 00:00:28,980 --> 00:00:43,980 So, I would start by saying we all have, I think, two types of friends. There are friends that you can take on a long road trip, and there are friends you can't. And just so that I'm clear, that doesn't mean that one friend is better than another friend. 3 00:00:43,980 --> 00:00:57,960 There are some people that you can road trip across the country with, and it's great, and there are some people that you don't want to spend an extended period of time in the car with. It's not bad, it's just simply the way it is. 4 00:00:57,960 --> 00:01:09,960 And the problem with this is you generally don't know whether your friend is a road trip with them. 5 00:01:09,960 --> 00:01:19,960 Three in the morning, and you've got friends in the front seat, friends in the back seat, and you're driving along, and your friend in the back seat, his girlfriend leans over and whispers something, 6 00:01:19,960 --> 00:01:26,940 and then he kind of sticks his head up between the seats and goes, "Hey, can you turn the music on and put on something a little more calmer so that 7 00:01:26,940 --> 00:01:33,940 she can get some rest?" And then your friend in the passenger seat turns around and goes, "What? Do you want us all to die?" 8 00:01:33,940 --> 00:01:40,940 Right? One of those is a road trip friend, right? And the other you abandon on the side of the road somewhere in the Ohio in 9 00:01:40,940 --> 00:01:48,940 wilderness along with his girlfriend, right? There are friends that you can travel with and friends that you can't. 10 00:01:48,940 --> 00:01:55,920 And it was my senior year of college, and a bunch of my buddies and one of the guys decided to bring his girlfriend, completely unrelated to 11 00:01:55,920 --> 00:02:04,920 the previous story, and we road trip from Missouri to Vermont. And there was one guy on this trip who thought it would be 12 00:02:04,920 --> 00:02:13,920 hilarious to, like, every 45 minutes do the "Are we there yet?" kind of thing, knowing good and well we weren't anywhere near 13 00:02:13,920 --> 00:02:20,920 yet. And it's one of those questions, "Are we there yet?" that maybe, at least in my mind, I think about all the time 14 00:02:20,920 --> 00:02:27,920 when I'm driving, right? I'm doing the math. Like, 400 miles, we've been driving for two hours at this speed, right? 15 00:02:27,920 --> 00:02:33,920 I'm always thinking about when are we going to get there, but it's not really polite. And it's just sit there and 16 00:02:33,920 --> 00:02:39,920 complain, "Are we there yet?" And so this guy was also sort of being, "Are we there yet?" And then partway through 17 00:02:39,920 --> 00:02:46,920 the state of New York, he falls asleep. And we make it through the rest of New York, and we go into Vermont, and 18 00:02:46,920 --> 00:02:51,920 he wakes up and sticks his head up and looks at the Vermont mountains and goes, "I thought 19 00:02:51,920 --> 00:02:54,920 they were supposed to be mountains. I just see a bunch of hills," and then promptly goes back 20 00:02:54,920 --> 00:03:01,920 to sleep, right? So two problems, right? Constantly, "Are we there yet?" But also, when you get there, 21 00:03:01,920 --> 00:03:09,920 it's like, "Oh, is this all there really is?" And as we come to the first part of the 22 00:03:09,920 --> 00:03:15,920 book of Samuel, right, this kind of sums up the beginning of the book of Samuel. 23 00:03:15,920 --> 00:03:25,920 Because since the beginning, there's been this thought of, "Are we there yet?" And we come to 24 00:03:25,920 --> 00:03:32,920 first Samuel, and we hear these words, and we go, "Is this how this book begins?" Right? 25 00:03:32,920 --> 00:03:38,920 This might be the most anticlimactic way of opening the book of the Bible, and a book that is 26 00:03:38,920 --> 00:03:44,920 ultimately filled with excitement. So much excitement so that in church, one of the books 27 00:03:44,920 --> 00:03:49,920 that I would read instead of listening was I'd go to the exciting parts of the Old Testament. Judges, 28 00:03:49,920 --> 00:03:56,920 and 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, Kings, sometimes Chronicles, and get those great stories. This story is remarkable. 29 00:03:56,920 --> 00:04:02,920 This history is remarkable. There's giants. There's a guy killing giants with a rock. There's battles. 30 00:04:02,920 --> 00:04:09,920 There's oaths. There's friendship. There's politics. There's political intrigue, and it begins like this. 31 00:04:09,920 --> 00:04:16,920 So we wake up from the back of the car and go, "This is how this great historical account begins." 32 00:04:16,920 --> 00:04:22,920 We're going to read these first two verses with a lot of names. Some hard to pronounce names. 33 00:04:22,920 --> 00:04:27,920 Also names that if you're about to have a baby, you may want to consider for your baby. 34 00:04:27,920 --> 00:04:33,920 There was a certain man of Rathiam Zophim, of the hill country of Ephraim, whose name was Elkanah, 35 00:04:33,920 --> 00:04:40,920 the son of Jehoram, son of Elihu, son of Tohu, son of Zoph, and Ephrathite. 36 00:04:40,920 --> 00:04:44,920 He had two wives. The name of one was Hannah, the name of the other Penaniah. 37 00:04:44,920 --> 00:04:50,920 And Penaniah had children, but Hannah had no children. 38 00:04:50,920 --> 00:04:59,920 We don't have to spend a lot of time observing our world to see how much brokenness truly exists. 39 00:04:59,920 --> 00:05:04,920 And a lot has happened between Genesis and 1 Samuel. 40 00:05:04,920 --> 00:05:09,920 There's been good, there's bad, there's the light of God's glory, the darkness of sin. 41 00:05:09,920 --> 00:05:12,920 He is longing for salvation. 42 00:05:12,920 --> 00:05:17,920 And despite the fact that we like to talk about the good old days, 43 00:05:17,920 --> 00:05:24,920 the reality is the brokenness we see in our world and the brokenness we see that begins in 1 Samuel 44 00:05:24,920 --> 00:05:31,920 goes all the way back to the book of Genesis, where God creates man and woman and he puts them in the garden. 45 00:05:31,920 --> 00:05:37,920 And rather than choosing to follow God, they choose to chase after their own desires. 46 00:05:37,920 --> 00:05:41,920 And in that sin, relationships are shattered. 47 00:05:41,920 --> 00:05:44,920 There's relationships shattered between mankind and God. 48 00:05:44,920 --> 00:05:48,920 And we run and we hide and we make excuses and we try to fix it. 49 00:05:48,920 --> 00:05:53,920 And none of that changes the fact that there is a broken relationship between man and God. 50 00:05:53,920 --> 00:05:59,920 But it also breaks relationships in families and in marriages and with our work. 51 00:05:59,920 --> 00:06:02,920 And in Genesis 3, work goes from something good and wonderful. 52 00:06:02,920 --> 00:06:05,920 And it's still good and wonderful, but it gets so much harder. 53 00:06:05,920 --> 00:06:10,920 And it's opposed by weeds and it becomes toil. 54 00:06:10,920 --> 00:06:14,920 And in the midst of God's judgment, he makes a promise. 55 00:06:14,920 --> 00:06:22,920 That one day, a child would be born to a woman who would set things right and who would crush the head of the serpent. 56 00:06:22,920 --> 00:06:29,920 And we can trace that story and that promise from Genesis chapter 3. 57 00:06:29,920 --> 00:06:35,920 From the family of Adam and Eve and to Seth and through the family of Noah. 58 00:06:35,920 --> 00:06:45,920 Through times of darkness, through times of righteousness, through a flood to this place where we get to a town called Ur. 59 00:06:45,920 --> 00:06:48,920 And a man by the name of Abram. 60 00:06:48,920 --> 00:06:52,920 And God calls Abram out of his town. 61 00:06:52,920 --> 00:06:55,920 His name will later be changed to Abraham. 62 00:06:55,920 --> 00:07:00,920 And God will make a promise to Abraham. 63 00:07:00,920 --> 00:07:05,920 To take him to a place that he would make of him a great nation. 64 00:07:05,920 --> 00:07:13,920 And then this promise, in you all the families of the earth would be blessed. 65 00:07:13,920 --> 00:07:18,920 And we see this promise come through Abram, who would become Abraham. 66 00:07:18,920 --> 00:07:24,920 To his children, to Isaac, and to Jacob, through his family. 67 00:07:24,920 --> 00:07:31,920 From this family into Egypt, where initially, greeted as celebrities, become slaves, rescued by the power of God, 68 00:07:31,920 --> 00:07:34,920 brought through the Red Sea into the wilderness. 69 00:07:34,920 --> 00:07:42,920 They conquer the wilderness, and we think, "It's finally time." 70 00:07:42,920 --> 00:07:48,920 God's promise to crush the head of the serpent has been made to Abraham. 71 00:07:48,920 --> 00:07:54,920 His family is now a great nation. They've come to their home, and time will be good, and Joshua dies, 72 00:07:54,920 --> 00:07:57,920 and immediately the people begin to turn their back on God. 73 00:07:57,920 --> 00:08:04,920 And the entire book of Judges is this: that there's righteousness, there's a forgetting of who God is, 74 00:08:04,920 --> 00:08:11,920 there's a turning to idolatry and to pagan gods, followed by judgment, followed by righteousness, followed by forgetting, 75 00:08:11,920 --> 00:08:17,920 followed by turning to pagan gods, and the book of Judges is just a tire stuck in the mud. 76 00:08:17,920 --> 00:08:24,920 And this promise and this hope doesn't seem to be getting any closer. 77 00:08:24,920 --> 00:08:31,920 It's still not there yet. And we come to the beginning of Samuel. 78 00:08:31,920 --> 00:08:40,920 And not only are we not there yet, we find that this is not what we were really expecting. 79 00:08:40,920 --> 00:08:49,920 Because 1 Samuel opens in darkness. It opens with a spiritual and a moral darkness. 80 00:08:49,920 --> 00:08:55,920 And I would say this, that spiritual darkness always comes before moral darkness. 81 00:08:55,920 --> 00:08:59,920 Proverbs tells us that our heart is like a stream of water. 82 00:08:59,920 --> 00:09:03,920 And there's a rule, right? You're never downstream from the cows. 83 00:09:03,920 --> 00:09:09,920 And we understand this, right? Because what starts upstream comes downstream. 84 00:09:09,920 --> 00:09:13,920 A herd of cows always move upstream to get a drink. 85 00:09:13,920 --> 00:09:17,920 And what Proverbs said is your heart is upstream of everything. 86 00:09:17,920 --> 00:09:21,920 Your heart is upstream of your actions and of your words. 87 00:09:21,920 --> 00:09:25,920 Jesus will talk about this, "Out of the heart the mouth speaks." 88 00:09:25,920 --> 00:09:29,920 That if you struggle with your actions and with your words, 89 00:09:29,920 --> 00:09:33,920 that the solution ultimately is to take a look at your heart. 90 00:09:33,920 --> 00:09:38,920 And this time in Israel's history is marked by this phrase. 91 00:09:38,920 --> 00:09:46,920 There was a thing in Israel, and everyone did what he did in his own eyes. 92 00:09:46,920 --> 00:09:50,920 And rather than fixing their hearts on the goodness of God, what do they do? 93 00:09:50,920 --> 00:09:53,920 They fix it on whatever they want, mostly themselves. 94 00:09:53,920 --> 00:09:59,920 And their moral darkness becomes a symptom of a spiritual darkness. 95 00:09:59,920 --> 00:10:02,920 And as we move into 1 Samuel, we're going to see this is true. 96 00:10:02,920 --> 00:10:08,920 They'll treat the ark of the covenant of God as a good love charm. 97 00:10:08,920 --> 00:10:12,920 They'll fix their eyes on other nations rather than on the goodness of God. 98 00:10:12,920 --> 00:10:15,920 We'll see, Eli the priest, he has two sons. 99 00:10:15,920 --> 00:10:21,920 And when you come to the tabernacle to sacrifice, part of the way the priests supported themselves and the family 100 00:10:21,920 --> 00:10:27,920 is that as that meat was sacrificed, they would reach in, grab some tongs out of the sacrifice, 101 00:10:27,920 --> 00:10:29,920 and that meat would be their meal to feed their family. 102 00:10:29,920 --> 00:10:33,920 But Eli's sons, they're corrupt, and they're in it for personal gain. 103 00:10:33,920 --> 00:10:38,920 And so as the animal is brought for the sacrifice, like before you sacrifice it, 104 00:10:38,920 --> 00:10:43,920 we'll take the ribeyes and the filet mignon, and then you can sacrifice it. 105 00:10:43,920 --> 00:10:48,920 Essentially shaking down people in the house of God for personal gain. 106 00:10:48,920 --> 00:10:51,920 Right? This is dark spiritually. 107 00:10:51,920 --> 00:10:56,920 God's people treating God like a good luck charm, looking to the nations rather than God. 108 00:10:56,920 --> 00:11:00,920 But there is also a darkness of disunity. 109 00:11:00,920 --> 00:11:05,920 Right? Israel is not yet this great nation, promised Abraham. 110 00:11:05,920 --> 00:11:10,920 Right? It's a disjointed group of tribes, and there's been conflict. 111 00:11:10,920 --> 00:11:16,920 It has almost been eliminated at the end of the book of Judges, which is... 112 00:11:16,920 --> 00:11:20,920 Samuel takes place in that same time period. 113 00:11:20,920 --> 00:11:27,920 There's disunity, and there's darkness, but also there's a darkness of fear. 114 00:11:27,920 --> 00:11:39,920 A nation called, with people called the Philistines, has begun to move in, and they have grown, and they've begun to expand their territory, and their sights are fixed on the people of God. 115 00:11:39,920 --> 00:11:48,920 And so as 1 Samuel begins, and we hear this short trilogy and description of this small family, we have a place that is filled with darkness. 116 00:11:48,920 --> 00:11:54,920 The darkness of sort of moral decay of sin and unfaithfulness to God. 117 00:11:54,920 --> 00:11:58,920 The darkness of disunity, where all of God's people are separated from the whole thing. 118 00:11:58,920 --> 00:12:03,920 And this darkness of fear, as the Philistines... 119 00:12:03,920 --> 00:12:08,920 I want you to understand that the darkness does not stay this way. 120 00:12:08,920 --> 00:12:17,920 And one of the great messages that we see about God is that into our darkest, most struggle-filled moments, He can bring light. 121 00:12:17,920 --> 00:12:22,920 And the book of 1 Samuel is no different. 122 00:12:22,920 --> 00:12:29,920 Let me just show you two places in the book of Samuel that point to how God brings darkness into light. 123 00:12:29,920 --> 00:12:37,920 In 1 Samuel chapter 4, the Ark of the Covenant has been used by the Israelites as a good luck charm as they go into battle. 124 00:12:37,920 --> 00:12:46,920 And what happens is, the Philistines take the Ark of the Covenant, and in Israel's eyes, God has now abandoned them. 125 00:12:46,920 --> 00:12:52,920 And it's their problem. And if they would have listened to God and obeyed Him, they would have been different. 126 00:12:52,920 --> 00:12:57,920 But a great brokenness and depression sweeps across the slate. 127 00:12:57,920 --> 00:13:02,920 One of Eli's daughters-in-law is having a baby. 128 00:13:02,920 --> 00:13:10,920 And because of the brokenness and the shock, people hear about the Ark of the Covenant being taken. 129 00:13:10,920 --> 00:13:16,920 And as she is having this child, she names him this. 130 00:13:16,920 --> 00:13:23,920 She named the child Ichabod, which means there is no glory, because the glory has departed from Israel. 131 00:13:23,920 --> 00:13:32,920 Because the Ark of God had been captured, and because of her father-in-law and husband, both who had died upon hearing this news. 132 00:13:32,920 --> 00:13:39,920 And so she has this baby, and she says, "I'm going to name him Darkness." There's no hope, there's no glory, there's nothing. 133 00:13:39,920 --> 00:13:48,920 And sometimes for us, life feels that way. It feels like it's crashing in on us, and we count up our losses, and we look to the future, and it's dark. 134 00:13:48,920 --> 00:13:54,920 And just like this lady, we're saying, "There's no hope, there's no light, there's no glory." 135 00:13:54,920 --> 00:14:04,920 So she names her child Ichabod, but here is the reality. God takes us from being Ichabods to Ebeneezers. 136 00:14:04,920 --> 00:14:11,920 In 1 Samuel 7, Samuel will take a memorial stone, and he'll set it up between me and men. 137 00:14:11,920 --> 00:14:22,920 And he's going to say, as he dedicates this stone, "Till now the Lord has helped us, and the Pharisees were subdued, and did not enter the territory of Israel. 138 00:14:22,920 --> 00:14:29,920 And the hand of the Lord was against the Philistines all the days of Samuel." 139 00:14:29,920 --> 00:14:38,920 Samuel will name this stone Ebenezer. If you sang old hymns, "Here I raise my Ebenezer," it just means stone of help. 140 00:14:38,920 --> 00:14:55,920 That in just those seven chapters, God takes the darkness and the hopelessness, and he moves us all the way from Ichabod to Ebenezer. 141 00:14:55,920 --> 00:15:05,920 Right? From darkness into the fact that God helps and bring light. Let's take just a brief look at this text this morning. 142 00:15:05,920 --> 00:15:09,920 I'm going to read it again. It's a very quiet beginning in this book. 143 00:15:09,920 --> 00:15:21,920 There was a certain man of Ramathim, Zophim, of the hill country of Ephraim, whose name was Elkanah, son of Jehoram, son of Elihu, son of Toha, son of Zuth and Ephrathite. 144 00:15:21,920 --> 00:15:32,920 Somebody from the area of Bethlehem. He had two wives. The name of one was Hannah, the other name of the other was Penaniah, and Penaniah had children, but Hannah had no children. 145 00:15:32,920 --> 00:15:45,920 And as this book opens, we find an unknown family in a tiny little town. And more than that, this family is broken, it's dysfunctional, and it's hurting. 146 00:15:45,920 --> 00:15:51,920 We'll talk about that more next week, but for now, take my word for it. Family is filled with hurt. 147 00:15:51,920 --> 00:15:59,920 And in a book that is so exciting and filled with such great heroes, why does it begin so quietly and so humbly? 148 00:15:59,920 --> 00:16:10,920 And one of the great treasures in texts like this is that you can see things more clearly when you're going slow than driving 90 miles an hour. 149 00:16:10,920 --> 00:16:16,920 We've experienced this. When we go as fast as we can, we miss things. 150 00:16:16,920 --> 00:16:21,920 And as we come to 1 Samuel, it starts so quietly and so humbly. 151 00:16:21,920 --> 00:16:30,920 It forces us to stop for a minute and say, "What is happening in this text? What is going on?" 152 00:16:30,920 --> 00:16:38,920 And one of the great treasures in this text is that it forces us to slow down and to see what God is telling us. 153 00:16:38,920 --> 00:16:43,920 And it's such a humble beginning. We don't know much about this town. We don't know much about this family. 154 00:16:43,920 --> 00:16:50,920 Right? There's four tribes mentioned with three locations. We don't have a lot of clarity about this family. 155 00:16:50,920 --> 00:16:55,920 Although there's possibly a reference in Chronicles. 156 00:16:55,920 --> 00:17:02,920 We don't really understand the genealogical line. We don't understand why it's there. 157 00:17:02,920 --> 00:17:12,920 But what we see is that God chooses families that are small, in small towns, and unknown. 158 00:17:12,920 --> 00:17:17,920 And He does something wonderful in His power through them. 159 00:17:17,920 --> 00:17:26,920 Right? There is a humility that begins this book. And it's a humility that extends throughout Samuel. 160 00:17:26,920 --> 00:17:30,920 Right? It's not just a humble family. It's a hurting family. 161 00:17:30,920 --> 00:17:33,920 Elkanah, it says, has two wives. 162 00:17:33,920 --> 00:17:37,920 And what the Bible is doing is recording the truth of the situation. 163 00:17:37,920 --> 00:17:44,920 Right? Biblically, polygamy, having more than one wife, is frequently recorded. 164 00:17:44,920 --> 00:17:52,920 But those records in the Bible always lead to brokenness and hurt, because it is not God's design for marriage. 165 00:17:52,920 --> 00:17:56,920 It leads to heartache and brokenness, and that's what happens in this family. 166 00:17:56,920 --> 00:18:04,920 And one of the great truths that's often hidden in the background of Samuel, because of the excitement surrounding the events, 167 00:18:04,920 --> 00:18:13,920 is that God takes and lifts up humble people from Hannah, to Saul, who hid him, to David, who was the last born, 168 00:18:13,920 --> 00:18:18,920 and so unimportant that when they have a big family dinner, they leave him with the sheep. 169 00:18:18,920 --> 00:18:22,920 God gives grace to the humble. 170 00:18:22,920 --> 00:18:29,920 Hannah will actually say this, "Talk no more loudly. Let not arrogance come from your mouth, 171 00:18:29,920 --> 00:18:35,920 for the Lord is a God of knowledge, and by him our actions wait." 172 00:18:35,920 --> 00:18:42,920 The quietness of this humble beginning, God calls us to evaluate our hearts. 173 00:18:42,920 --> 00:18:47,920 Almost immediately, the book of 1 Samuel turns to our hearts. 174 00:18:47,920 --> 00:18:54,920 We'll see Hannah's heartbreak in verse 8. She's praying in her heart in verse 13. 175 00:18:54,920 --> 00:19:03,920 The center of the heart is the theme that is sort of woven through every one of these chapters. 176 00:19:03,920 --> 00:19:09,920 From Hannah, to the promise of a priest that would follow God's heart, to the rejection of Saul where he says, 177 00:19:09,920 --> 00:19:13,920 "I'm coming with a man after my own heart," to the anointing of David. 178 00:19:13,920 --> 00:19:17,920 And it's an incredibly famous verse that you probably know. 179 00:19:17,920 --> 00:19:25,920 When Samuel goes, and Jesse brings out all of his sons, and they're strong, and they look like they'd be great kings, 180 00:19:25,920 --> 00:19:29,920 and he rejects everyone, and Samuel says, "God, why are you rejecting them?" 181 00:19:29,920 --> 00:19:37,920 Do you remember what God says to Samuel? "Man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart." 182 00:19:37,920 --> 00:19:46,920 It's a theme that runs through this book. The humble and those whose hearts are fixed on God, right? 183 00:19:46,920 --> 00:19:54,920 It's a call to humility, to put our hope and trust in God and not in ourselves, to evaluate our hearts, 184 00:19:54,920 --> 00:20:02,920 the fact our heart has on our actions. There's no going through the motions with God. 185 00:20:02,920 --> 00:20:11,920 One of the things that happens as we begin in Samuel is we see that God's people have a desperate need. 186 00:20:11,920 --> 00:20:17,920 And it's not the issue that they think it is, but it's their relationship with God. 187 00:20:17,920 --> 00:20:23,920 You see, they need God to speak to them. They need to hear a word from God. 188 00:20:23,920 --> 00:20:26,920 They need someone who can deliver to them a message from God. 189 00:20:26,920 --> 00:20:32,920 They need someone who can stand and minister in the house of God to stand between the people and God. 190 00:20:32,920 --> 00:20:37,920 And they need someone who can lead the people of God. 191 00:20:37,920 --> 00:20:45,920 And in the birth of Samuel, we find Samuel coming as a prophet through whom God speaks. 192 00:20:45,920 --> 00:20:56,920 Psalm 99:6 puts him in the category of Aaron and his sons as a priest who stands between the people and God. 193 00:20:56,920 --> 00:21:03,920 Samuel leads Israel, not quite the same as a king, but in the same manner. 194 00:21:03,920 --> 00:21:12,920 The picture of all of these Old Testament roles of prophet, priest, and king and leader are found in what is about to happen. 195 00:21:12,920 --> 00:21:16,920 And Samuel, while he's not a king, he is a leader and he will anoint the first king. 196 00:21:16,920 --> 00:21:20,920 And it is through his life that hope begins to be restored. 197 00:21:20,920 --> 00:21:27,920 And in this quiet, humble beginning, we see Hannah in her humility and her heartbreak. 198 00:21:27,920 --> 00:21:32,920 She begins to join the ranks of some of the greatest women in the Bible. 199 00:21:32,920 --> 00:21:39,920 Like those who came before her, specifically Sarah, the mother of Israel, and Rachel, the mother of Joseph. 200 00:21:39,920 --> 00:21:42,920 She struggles to bear a child. 201 00:21:42,920 --> 00:21:53,920 And as Samuel is born in this miraculous, God-empowered, God-appointed prayer, she sings a song of joy. 202 00:21:53,920 --> 00:22:05,920 And her song of joy is going to point us to another woman in another small town who sings about a pregnancy she doesn't think is possible. 203 00:22:05,920 --> 00:22:11,920 And although their songs carry different words, they carry the same heart. 204 00:22:11,920 --> 00:22:17,920 Hannah sings in chapter 2, "My heart exalts in the Lord." 205 00:22:17,920 --> 00:22:24,920 A thousand years later, another woman will sing, "My soul magnifies the Lord." 206 00:22:24,920 --> 00:22:30,920 Hannah will sing about how God exalts the humble and raises up the poor and the broken. 207 00:22:30,920 --> 00:22:40,920 And a thousand years later and a little further north, another woman will sing, "He looks on the humble estate of his servant." 208 00:22:40,920 --> 00:22:45,920 "And generations will call me blessed because he has done things for me." 209 00:22:45,920 --> 00:22:51,920 And Hannah sings about how God brings the hungry, and the song that comes later, 210 00:22:51,920 --> 00:22:56,920 another woman sings that God is the one who fills the hungry with good things. 211 00:22:56,920 --> 00:23:06,920 And in the darkness of Israel, God sends Hannah, a child, who comes as a prophet and a priest and a judge and almost king. 212 00:23:06,920 --> 00:23:16,920 And we get this glimpse of light. A thousand years later, Mary, the mother of Jesus, sings. 213 00:23:16,920 --> 00:23:23,920 And God sends Israel, but for all people in all nations. 214 00:23:23,920 --> 00:23:28,920 The one who would stand as the true prophet and the true priest and the true king. 215 00:23:28,920 --> 00:23:34,920 And in him, the darkness is overcome by the light and salvation is accomplished. 216 00:23:34,920 --> 00:23:43,920 And now, because of Jesus, we too can sing. Our hope, our salvation, and our future is secure. 217 00:23:43,920 --> 00:23:48,920 I want you to understand that God is the one who brings light into darkness. 218 00:23:48,920 --> 00:23:56,920 And there is no darkness that is too deep or too dark. There is no distance that is too far. 219 00:23:56,920 --> 00:24:03,920 There is no situation that is too big for the power of God to come and to make a difference. 220 00:24:03,920 --> 00:24:15,920 This story isn't just about Samuel. It's about another who would come and who would save and shepherd and minister to God's people. 221 00:24:15,920 --> 00:24:26,920 And while it's a story of Israel and Samuel, it's also a story of Jesus and us. Let's pray. 222 00:24:26,920 --> 00:24:37,920 Father, may our souls magnify you. May we see how you lift the humble, how you fill the hungry with good things. 223 00:24:37,920 --> 00:24:44,920 That in the darkness and brokenness of these small, humble beginnings, may you call us to evaluate our hearts. 224 00:24:44,920 --> 00:24:51,920 Help us to see that you are the God who changes and transforms, and the one who brings light. 225 00:24:51,920 --> 00:24:55,920 It is in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.