1 Samuel 1:1-2:11: Pain Has a Purpose

1 Samuel 1:1-2:11: Pain Has a Purpose

This morning, we’re beginning a journey working through the book of 1 Samuel passage by passage. And the first passage we come to is 1 Samuel chapter 1 verse 1 through chapter 2 verse 11, so I’ll be reading a selection of verses from that passage. It says,

1 There was a certain man of Ramathaim-zophim of the hill country of Ephraim whose name was Elkanah…. 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. 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.”… 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.” 21 The man Elkanah and all his house went up to offer to the Lord the yearly sacrifice and to pay his vow. 22 But Hannah did not go up, for she said to her husband, “As soon as the child is weaned, I will bring him, so that he may appear in the presence of the Lord and dwell there forever.” 23 Elkanah her husband said to her, “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. 24 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, and she brought him to the house of the Lord at Shiloh. And the child was young. 25 Then they slaughtered the bull, and they brought the child to Eli. 26 And she said, “Oh, my lord! As you live, my lord, I am the woman who was standing here in your presence, praying to the Lord. 27 For this child I prayed, and the Lord has granted me my petition that I made to him. 28 Therefore I have lent him to the Lord. As long as he lives, he is lent to the Lord.” And he worshiped the Lord there…. 

May God bless the reading of his Word.

Let’s pray: Father, what a blessing it is to be gathered together around your Word with the opportunity to immerse ourselves in it this morning. We pray that your Spirit would be present and at work in our midst, causing the truths and teachings we encounter to find a place in our hearts. It’s in Jesus’ name we pray, amen.

Many people who are skeptical of God’s existence say that one reason they’re so skeptical is because they don’t understand how a God who’s both good and all-powerful could possibly allow the existence of so much suffering in this world. I appreciate the way one college student articulated this idea. She said, “I just don’t believe the God of Christianity exists. God allows terrible suffering in the world. So he might be either all-powerful but not good enough to end evil and suffering, or else he might be all-good but not powerful enough to end evil and suffering. Either way the all-good, all-powerful God of the Bible couldn’t exist.” 

Now, initially, that argument sounds very strong. However, the reason this college student’s argument is flawed is because it assumes that there isn’t any higher purpose for the evil and suffering in this world. Of course, a skeptical person might respond by giving several examples of horrific events such as genocides that have been carried out and natural disasters that have taken place and asking what “higher purpose” could possibly justify such horrific evils? 

Yet that response assumes that our inability to identify such a “higher purpose” must mean that there isn’t one. In other words, the skeptic is assuming that, if our finite minds can’t identify any higher purpose that could justify the profound suffering and evil in this world, there must not be any such purpose. 

Yet, as Tim Keller points out, that assumption places enormous faith in our cognitive abilities…which is quite ironic when you think about it. Because skeptical people often pride themselves in supposedly being guided by “facts” and “science” rather than by faith. Yet, the assumptions they often make—such as the one I just mentioned—place enormous faith in their own cognitive faculties. 

Keller then writes, “With time and perspective most of us can see good reasons for at least some of the tragedy and pain that occurs in life. Why couldn’t it be possible that, from God’s vantage point, there are good reasons for all of them? If you have a God great and transcendent enough to be mad at because he hasn’t stopped evil and suffering in the world, then you have (at the same moment) a God great and transcendent enough to have good reasons for allowing it to continue that you can’t know. Indeed, you can’t have it both ways.” 

In addition, we might ask, where did we even get this category of “evil” in the first place? If evolutionary theory is true, then what we call “evil” isn’t anything to worry about but is simply the perfectly normal outworking of the process of natural selection. The very fact that we’re troubled by “evil” and even think in the moral categories of “good” and “evil” in the first place points to God’s existence. 

Yet, returning to the idea that God has purposes for the suffering he allows in this world that often transcend our ability to comprehend, the Bible confirms that that’s absolutely the case. And a great example is what takes place in our main passage of Scripture this morning in the book of 1 Samuel. 

1 Samuel 1:1 introduces a man named Elkanah who had two wives. One was named Peninnah, who had borne numerous children, while the other was named Hannah, who hadn’t been able to bear any children. And in ancient culture, for a woman to be unable to bear children was a mark of great shame. It was one of the most painful and humiliating things that could happen to a woman. It was even thought that barrenness was God’s punishment on a woman for wrongs she had done. And that social stigma made the whole ordeal even more difficult for the woman. 

Yet, despite these cultural differences, I imagine many of us here today can identify—to at least some extent—with Hannah’s pain. Perhaps you yourself have felt—or are feeling—similar pain from an unfulfilled longing in your life. Maybe you long for a spouse, but, so far, God hasn’t provided one. Or maybe you long to see your children come to know the Lord, but they’ve now grown up and moved out and, so far, don’t seem to be very interested in God. Or maybe you’re currently in the midst of another situation that’s very difficult and very painful. There are so many ways in which our lives are often not what we want them to be. 

However, as we see here in 1 Samuel, God uses our pain to accomplish his purposes. That’s the main idea of this passage. God uses our pain to accomplish his purposes. So, let’s walk through some of the key portions of this passage together and see how exactly God does that in the life and through the circumstances of Hannah. 

Verses 1-3 introduce Elkanah and his two wives, Peninnah and Hannah, and tell us how they’d go up each year to the house of the Lord in Shiloh to worship the Lord and offer sacrifices. Verses 4-7 then elaborate on what those annual trips were like. It says, 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. 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. 

So, Hannah would have already felt a deep sense of grief and shame for not being able to bear children, and Peninnah actually went out of her way to make Hannah’s suffering even worse. By the way, that kind of behavior isn’t at all uncommon in the polygamous relationships recorded in the Bible. When the Bible describes polygamous relationships, it almost always includes details about how difficult and challenging such relationships were. So, even though the Bible records the practice of polygamy, it never affirms polygamy as a good thing and instead actually records ways in which polygamy was a bad thing and something that was contrary to God’s will for human relationships—as evidenced by the severe challenges and inherent dysfunctions of polygamous relationships—such as what we find recorded in these verses. And we’re told in verse 7 that, in response to Peninnah’s incessant taunting and cruelty, Hannah “wept and would not eat” during these annual trips. 

Verse 8 then records one particular occasion on which her husband Elkanah tried to comfort her by asking 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?” Now, I’m not claiming to be any expert on how to be sensitive to a woman’s feelings, but I’m pretty sure that’s not the best thing for a husband to say to his wife if she’s having fertility issues. Elkanah, it seems, had a lot of room to grow in the sensitivity department. 

We then read in verses 9-10, 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.

Now, something very important I’d like us to notice from these verses is, first of all, what Hannah didn’t do and how she didn’t respond to her painful circumstances. Even though verse 10 records that Hannah was “deeply distressed”—and had likely been distressed for numerous years—she didn’t allow herself to become bitter or resentful against the Lord. I imagine it would have been very easy for Hannah to allow feelings of bitterness or resentment to rise up in her heart and eventually overtake her, but she didn’t allow that to happen. And neither did she give herself over to a fatalistic mentality in which she simply resigned herself to what appeared to be her inevitable lot in life. 

Instead, Hannah allowed her painful circumstances to drive her to seek the Lord in prayer. Hannah responded to the profound pain and disappointment of her barrenness not with resentment nor with fatalism but rather with faith manifesting itself in prayer. 

And in verse 11, she asks the Lord to “look on the affliction of your servant.” In saying this, Hannah was actually using language reminiscent of what the Bible says about God’s response to the suffering of his people Israel during their Egyptian captivity. After God rescued the Israelites from their slavery in Egypt, they recall what God did for them in Deuteronomy 26:7-8, 7 Then we cried to the Lord, the God of our fathers, and the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. 8 And the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great deeds of terror, with signs and wonders. This exact same language is also used in Exodus 3:7 and Exodus 4:31.

So, in verse 11 of our main passage, when Hannah asks God to “look on [her] affliction,” she was undoubtedly thinking about how God had rescued the Israelites from Egypt and was asking him to do for her something similar to what he’d previously done for the Israelite nation. In other words, Hannah had faith that God would show himself powerful in her present circumstances because of how God had already shown himself powerful in the past when he rescued his people from their slavery.

Similarly, those of us who are Christians can be confident that God will show himself powerful in our lives presently because of how he’s already shown himself powerful in rescuing us from our sin. After all, if God’s already met our greatest need—the need for eternal salvation—how much more can we count on him to meet all of the earthly needs we have? As Romans 8:32 says so well, speaking of God, “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” 

God’s faithfulness to meet our greatest need of eternal salvation—even though it came at such a high price—should give us incredible confidence that he’ll likewise meet all of the other needs we have. Now, as we’ll discuss in a few moments, God may not always do this in exactly the way we’re thinking, but we can absolutely count on God to show himself powerful in one way or another in whatever circumstances we’re facing, according to his infinite wisdom. And it’s the gospel itself—the message of Jesus—that gives us this confidence. 

So, whenever we face a difficult situation, we have a choice to make. Will we allow that situation to cause us to lose sight of God, or will we, like Hannah, respond to that trial in faith and allow it to drive us to our knees in prayer? 

In addition, as we see in verse 11, Hannah not only prays but also makes a vow. She says, “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.” Now, it’s difficult to identify a modern-day parallel to this, but, basically, back in Old Testament times, people could dedicate themselves or their children to the service of God by taking what Numbers chapter 6 describes as a “Nazirite” vow. Usually, this vow was only temporary rather than permanent. Yet, in our main passage, Hannah says that, if God gives her a son, she’ll dedicate him to God as a Nazirite “all the days of his life.” By the way, the statement she makes about “no razor…touch[ing] his head” was one of the biblical requirements for the Nazirite vow.  

After that, verses 12-18 record a rather awkward exchange between Hannah and the priest Eli in which Eli sees her silently praying and initially mistakes her for a drunken woman. We then read about Hannah and her family’s return home in verses 19-20: 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.”

So, God heard Hannah’s prayer and enabled her to conceive and bear a son, whom she named “Samuel.” What a wonderful reminder that God hears the prayers of his people. And, to make it personal, he hears our prayers and promises to answer them. We saw a couple of weeks ago the many promises in the New Testament about God answering our prayers. 

Now, as I mentioned earlier, I do think it’s important to understand that God may not always answer our prayers in exactly the manner we’re initially thinking he will. In his infinite wisdom and goodness, God will sometimes answer our prayers in ways we aren’t expecting and give us not what we asked for but something even better than what we asked for. And that still counts as an answer to prayer. 

For example, if my kids ask me to go to the playground and I instead take them to Kennywood, I don’t think they’re going to be disappointed. Considering the cost of Kennywood, I certainly hope not. So, even though a trip to Kennywood isn’t what they asked for, it’s something even better. And I believe that’s the sense in which God answers our prayers. He either gives us what we ask for or something even better—perhaps, we might say, what we would have asked for if we knew everything God knows and possessed the wisdom he possesses. 

Yet, here in verses 19-20, God does give Hannah exactly what she asks for. And after she weans the child, she follows through with her vow and dedicates Samuel to the Lord. Verses 24-25 record her traveling once again to Shiloh, offering some rather costly sacrifices, and bringing the boy Samuel to Eli, the priest. We then read in verses 26-28, 26 And she said, “Oh, my lord! As you live, my lord, I am the woman who was standing here in your presence, praying to the Lord. 27 For this child I prayed, and the Lord has granted me my petition that I made to him. 28 Therefore I have lent him to the Lord. As long as he lives, he is lent to the Lord.” And he worshiped the Lord there. 

Now, think about how unimaginably difficult it must have been for Hannah to give her only son over to Eli after trying for so many years to conceive. Yet Hannah nevertheless keeps her vow and gives Samuel to Eli so he can be raised in the temple and devoted to God’s service. By the way, I just want to emphasize again that the Old Testament provisions for Nazirite vows are no longer in effect. So, even if you have a frustrating day with your kids, please don’t drop them off to us here at the church building. We don’t desire to raise them for you and will therefore promptly return them to your home. 

Then, after Hannah gives Samuel over into the care of Eli at the temple, she praises God in 1 Samuel 2:1-10 and speaks quite eloquently of God’s powerful intervention on behalf of those who are weak. Verse 11 then tells us, “Then Elkanah went home to Ramah. And the boy [Samuel] was ministering to the Lord in the presence of Eli the priest.” And as we’ll see as we journey through the book of 1 Samuel in the upcoming weeks, Samuel is going to play a major role in Israel’s history. God’s going to use Samuel in a mighty way to provide the leadership and stability for his people that were so desperately needed. 

So, think about what’s taken place. God allowed an ordinary woman named Hannah to have difficulty conceiving so that she’d be driven to pray and to devote the son God would eventually give her to the service of God in the temple. God would then raise Samuel up in that environment to do mighty things and to provide godly leadership for the entire nation. Even though Hannah never could have imagined what God was up to as she struggled to conceive, God was nevertheless accomplishing his purposes the whole time.  

And the best part for us is that God’s still doing that very same thing in and through our circumstances today. He’s using our pain to accomplish his purposes. And there are plenty of ways in which God does that, but let me just give you three of them. Three ways God uses the painful experiences we go through to accomplish his purposes. 

First, God uses them to break us of our self-sufficiency. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 1:8-9, 8 For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. 9 Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. So, the afflictions Paul and his companions experienced in Asia were so extreme that they led them to “despair of life itself.” But those afflictions had a purpose, and that purpose was to teach Paul and his companions to rely not on themselves but on God. 

In some ways, it’s similar to boot camp. Although I’ve never been through boot camp personally, I’ve been told by numerous people who have that the primary purpose of boot camp isn’t so much to provide training for skills like shooting or hand-to-hand combat—although that’s part of it. Instead, the primary purpose of boot camp is to bring you to your breaking point—to put you through experiences like endless drills and sleep deprivation and drill sergeants yelling in your face that are designed to break you of all the things that will get in the way of you being a good soldier. Similarly, God allows us to experience trials in our lives that are designed—at least in part—to break us of various things that stand in the way of our godliness—such as self-sufficiency. 

In addition, a second way God uses trials in our lives is to bring us close to him. In our main passage, Hannah’s unfulfilled longing for a child drove her to seek God in prayer. And that’s not accidental. God allows us to experience difficult things so that we’ll be driven to fervently seek him in prayer and develop a closer relationship with him than we’d otherwise have. And I can tell you from experience that that is indeed the way it works. The seasons of greatest difficulty in my life have also been the seasons of the greatest intimacy and the sweetest fellowship with God. In the memorable words of Vance Havner, trials leave us “shipwrecked on God” and “stranded on omnipotence.” And that’s not a bad place to be. 

Then, finally, God uses painful experiences to sanctify—or purify—our desires. When life is easy for a long period of time, we naturally get a little too attached to earthly cares and comforts and delights. So, in his mercy, God puts us through what I guess you could call a spiritual detox of sorts. He weans us off of those earthly cares and comforts and delights so that our hearts are set on him and on things that have eternal significance. In our main passage, it wasn’t until Hannah felt the deep pain of being barren and that she was willing to devote her future child to the Lord. That prolonged trial of barrenness had a sanctifying effect on her heart. 

Also, in the book of Lamentations, as the prophet Jeremiah is sitting in the ashes and rubble of the fallen Jerusalem, he talks about how great his afflictions are. That’s why the book’s called “Lamentations.” He’s lamenting about the tragedy that’s just taken place. Yet, in the middle of his lamenting, he writes this in Lamentations 3:22-24, 22 The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; 23 they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. 24 “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.” 

Don’t you just love that phrase, “The Lord is my portion”? Trials have a way of reminding us of just how true that is. As many of the things that we typically delight in are stripped away from us, we hopefully begin to realize that those things aren’t essential to our joy. As long as we have Jesus, we have all that we need to have real fullness and joy and satisfaction. As I once heard it phrased, Jesus plus nothing equals everything. Jesus plus nothing equals everything. Have you gotten there yet? Can you say with Jeremiah, “The Lord is my portion”? 

So, that’s a third way God uses trials—to sanctify our desires. When we begin to desire as primary various earthly things that God designed to be secondary, God uses trials to purify the desires of our heart just as fire purifies gold. 

Yet at the same time, it’s also important to understand that these effects of trials that I’ve just outlined aren’t automatic. In order for trials to have a beneficial effect on us, we have to respond to them in an appropriate way. So, having identified three ways God uses painful experiences in our lives, let me now suggest three ways we should respond to those experiences. 

First, as we see clearly exemplified by Hannah in 1 Samuel 1, depend upon God in prayer. Depend upon God in prayer. As Paul tells us in Philippians 4:6, “[D]o not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”

Then, second, surrender to God’s will. You know, one thing I’ve noticed about myself is that I really like being in control. A few months ago, I was scheduled to fly into Pittsburgh from Reagan National Airport in D.C. on a Saturday evening. But right after we had boarded the plane for Pittsburgh, the pilot announced that one of the flight attendant phones wasn’t working. And he said that, since it would be at least three hours before they could fix it, we would need to de-plane and wait in the seating area for three hours at the gate. But I really didn’t want to do that. I had church in the morning and wanted to make sure I got home at a reasonable hour.  

So, I immediately got on my phone, rented a car, and proceeded to exit the secure area of the airport. But, not even two minutes after I exited the secure area, I received a notification on my phone that the airline had actually found a replacement plane and that it was now boarding. Of course, there was obviously no way I could make it all the way through security and back to the gate in time, so let’s just say it was a very long drive in that rental car back to Pittsburgh. Let me tell you that there are few things more frustrating than sitting in D.C. traffic looking up at the sky and imaging the airplane bound for Pittsburgh that I should have been on flying right over my head. Now, there was a certain logic to what I did. However, I do think a big part of why I made that fateful decision to rent a car—and why I made that decision so quickly—was because I simply like to be in control. 

And I think that’s true of just about all of us. We like to be in control of our circumstances. And one reason we find the trials in our lives to be so difficult is that they make it clear that we’re not in control. Yet let me encourage you to embrace that fact that you’re not in control and instead surrender to God’s will. 

And the reason we can surrender to God’s will and entrust our circumstances and our lives to him is because God’s shown beyond any shadow of a doubt that he loves us and cares for us. And the way he’s done that is through Jesus. When we were helplessly enslaved by our sin and hopelessly condemned in our sin, God came to our rescue. He sent his own Son Jesus to come to this earth as a man, life a perfectly sinless life, and die on the cross to pay for our sins. That means Jesus suffered the penalty for our sins on the cross so that we wouldn’t have to suffer that penalty in hell. He acted as our substitute and made atonement for our sins. Jesus was then triumphantly raised from the dead with the result that everyone who puts their trust exclusively in him for rescue will indeed be forgiven of their sins, brought into a relationship with God, and receive the gift of eternal life in heaven. 

So, how can we know that God really has our best interests at heart? How can we know that he really loves us and cares for us? It’s because of what he’s done in the gospel to save us. The gospel is definitive proof of God’s love and should therefore make it clear to us that we really can trust God enough to surrender to his will in the midst of any situation we’ll ever face. 

Then, finally, a third response is to rejoice in the unchanging realities of the gospel. Sometimes, our tendency is to allow our trials to eclipse or block out our view of the gospel. Basically, we become so absorbed in the difficulty we’re experiencing that we all but forget about the glorious things God’s done for us in the gospel. 

Yet part of what’s so wonderful about being a Christian is that we still have reason to rejoice even in the midst of earthly suffering. We have an eternal hope in and through Jesus that transcends whatever temporary circumstances we might be facing. So, let me encourage you to remember that and to rejoice in that transcendent hope.