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Advent Productions

Benjamin Ng

One Woman’s Promise

Father in Heaven, we thank you for this time to come and study your Word again.

We thank you, Lord, for your watch care over us.

And Father, even now we are pleading for the blessing of your Holy Spirit to be poured upon us as you inspired those words with your spirit.

May you inspire our hearts and minds, give us receptive minds to understand, and especially wisdom to know how to apply these words to our lives today.

Thank you, O Lord, for we pray in Jesus' name.

And we are continuing our study series on the early kings where we are studying about the first 3 kings of the Israelites.

But before we get there, we're still looking at a bit more of a background, and the title of our study today is 1 Woman's Promise.

And today in particular, we're going to be looking at Samuel the prophet.

Samuel was born in a time when the children of Israel had gone into apostasy.

They had left the Lord and they'd fallen back into wickedness and idolatry.

In Judges 21 and verse 25, the Bible says, In those days there was no king in Israel.

Every man did that which was right in his own eyes.

People were doing what they wanted to do.

They were worshipping what they wanted to worship.

Every idol and foreign god out there was on their list, except the true God which had led them into the Promised Land.

People had departed from being faithful to God.

And so with that, this is the circumstances of which Samuel is born into.

This is a situation of the nation of Israel at that time.

But now let's go over to 1 Samuel 1 and we're reading verses 1 and 2.

We're looking at the background of the birth of Samuel.

Now there was a certain man of Ramathzeh Zophim of Mount Ephraim And his name was Elkanah, the son of Jeroham, the son of Elihu, the son of Tohu, the son of Zoph, an Ephrathite.

The name of the 1 was Hannah and the name of the other, Penina.

And Penina had children, but Hannah had no children.

Elkanah, he had 2 wives, Hannah and Penina.

And Hannah would be the 1 that would eventually be the mother of Samuel, but at the beginning, here we read that she actually could not have kids at all.

And friends, in those days, if you could not have children, it was looked upon as almost a curse from God.

You must have been a bad person for God to quote-unquote punish you this way.

But of course we know that's not true today.

However, Elkanah, he tries his best as a husband to show how much he still loved Hannah, even though she couldn't have kids.

Let's keep reading verses 3 through 5 of 1 Samuel chapter 1.

And when the time was that Alcana offered, he gave to Penina his wife and to all her sons and daughters, portions.

But unto Hannah he gave a worthy portion, for he loved Hannah, but the Lord had shut up her wound." So when he went up to sacrifice there, you know, Alcanah, he would give portions to all his wives and his children, but it says there that to Hannah, he would give a worthy portion, probably the biggest portion of all of them.

He loved her very much and he himself was sad to see that she could not have children and that she was probably already feeling down as well.

What else put more stress and pressure and brought more sadness upon Hannah?

Let's keep reading in 1st Samuel chapter 1 verses 6 and 7.

And her adversary also provoked her saw, for to make her fret, because the Lord had shut up her womb.

And as he did so year by year, when she went up to the house of the Lord, so she provoked her, Therefore she wept and did not eat.

Now who was this adversary that was poking at her, that was making her life miserable?

It was the other wife of Elkanah, it was Penina.

She mocked her and she made fun of her because she could not have kids.

And so it just made the whole situation much, much worse.

The fact that the other wife could have children and she could not, it just made things worse already by the situation itself, but for that other wife to keep poking at her and making mockery of her, it just made it so distressing.

She must have been wondering what was wrong with her and why had the Lord done such a thing to her for things to happen to her like this.

But Alcana, he would do his very best, as a good husband would, to console his wife in this situation.

You see, in 1 Samuel 1, verse 8, we read, Then Elkanah said to her, Hannah, why weepest thou?

You know, when we read this verse and Alkana at the end there says, hey, aren't I better than 10 sons and any children you could ever have.

You know, Elkanah was just a typical man.

He just did not understand the distress of his wife.

He's trying to console her with words or whatever it is, but it just seems like he just doesn't get it.

And so even though he's trying to help, it doesn't make the situation any better.

So as they're up there for the sacrifice, the yearly sacrifice, in her distress, what does Hannah decide to do?

1 Samuel 1 verses 9-10 So Hannah rose up after they had eaten in Shiloh, and after they had drunk.

Now Eli the priest sat upon a seat by a post of the temple of the Lord.

And she was in bitterness of soul and prayed unto the Lord and wept sore.

She learned to bring her bitterness to God.

She learned to bring her problem, her burden to God.

Though she could not have a child though, it did not make her bitter against God.

She did not let the circumstance that she was going through affect her devotion and her love towards God.

She would learn to bring this whole situation to God in prayer.

And so even though she was going through this difficult time, and yes the Bible did say that God had closed up her womb And God takes responsibility in a sense for that.

She's going through this difficult time and she's weeping, she's crying, she's carrying this heavy burden.

She's not complaining to Him and blaming Him.

She's just asking for comfort, for something, for help.

And you know friends, how often when we go through difficulties in life and circumstances that are not so pleasant to us, often it pushes us further away from God rather than closer to Him, doesn't it?

Many times we become angry at God, who is the innocent party, rather than bringing our distress to Him.

Friends, what do you do when things don't go the way you intended or planned?

Do you find yourself getting angry at God?

Do you decide then to skip church or skip your devotion and you don't feel like it because of this situation or the circumstance that you're going through?

Do we become more unfaithful to God because He doesn't answer our prayers or He doesn't give us what our hearts desire and you know we maybe we've been healthy, we've been living right, we've been faithful, we've been going to church, we've been doing all these things and yet somehow God does not bless me with a child and we begin to wonder God why?

And sometimes we're tempted to think in our minds, what's the use anyways?

And many times, because of situations that don't go the way we want it and the way we planned, we give up on God.

It changes our action towards Him and our thoughts towards Him and our devotion towards Him.

And so often Satan, he brings in trials and temptations into our lives and we become worse rather than better.

We backslide, we fall away from God rather than clinging tighter to Him.

But this was not the case with Hannah, that even though she was going through such a bitter trial, she couldn't have any children, and then the other wife could, and not just that, but to make things worse, that other wife was poking at her, making fun of her, making a mockery of her, telling her that she must have been some evil person and done something really bad for such a thing to happen to her.

One Woman’s Promise

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