“God’s Pattern of Spiritual Revival for a Nation”
1 Samuel 1:10-18
Have
you ever been so desperate for something; you were willing to bargain anything
with God to get it? [Show clip from the 1978 movie The End starring Burt Reynolds.]
Maybe
you have prayed for spiritual revival for yourself, your church, and the
nation. Perhaps you have wondered if there was ever a time where the moral
fabric of our society was as tattered and frayed as it is now. We are living in
a day and age where lawlessness abounds in our culture. Everyone is right in
their own eyes. All opinions are equal, unless your opinion is from an
evangelical Christian viewpoint.
We are standing at the edge of precipitous time in our country’s
history. We are gearing up for a presidential election that will shape the
future of our country. But the cultural divides in our nation are shaper than
ever before. Just this week in San Jose, California people were attacked by
mobs outside of a Donald Trump rally. Anger, frustration over the economy and
politics, and fear for the future is threatening to tear our country apart. We
need godly leadership in our churches and government more than ever before.
First
Samuel chapters 1-7 narrate the ministry of Samuel during one of the most
critical moments of Israel’s history. Samuel is one of those great Bible
figures who seem larger than life. In terms of Old Testament history, he was an
important transitional figure at one of the most important turning points in
the life of the nation, namely, the rise of Israelite kingship. Ever since
Moses had led the nation out of Egypt, the Israelites had been a loosely
organized confederation of tribes governed as a theocracy. During the centuries
prior to Samuel, the tribes were independent, joining only temporary for purposes
of joint military endeavors, organized and led by divinely appointed judges.[1]
Now in 1 Samuel 1-3,
Samuel is introduced as an important step from theocracy to monarchy. He is a
judge like others in the book of Judges. But he is also a prophet, like those
great prophets who would later play an important role in Israel’s history.
Samuel was forging new territory for Israel.
As we know from the concluding chapters in Judges (17-21), the
period in which Samuel was born was one of great moral decay. During this time
everyone did what was right in his or her own opinion (Jud. 17:6). The
nation seemed to be adrift without a moral conscience, nor did it have any
external moral compass to give definition to righteousness. The leadership was
perverse, and the people were wicked. It was obvious to the author of Judges
that the nation was headed for total disaster unless God provided a righteous
king to lead the people.[2]
If
we are to experience spiritual revival in our churches and nation, what is the
pattern? The Bible tells
us that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Heb. 13:8).
Since Christ is the second person of the Trinity, God the Father, and God the
Holy Spirit share in this fundamental constant. So what the pattern was in
Samuel’s day is still the pattern today.
I. The Problem and the
Prayer
1 Samuel 1:2 sets up the painful
situation for Hannah: “Peninnah had children, but Hannah has none.”
In the ancient social
setting, the most important role for a wife was to bear children. Men of
financial means needed to have a male heir to continue the line, and barren
wives suffered the embarrassment and shame of seeing another wife provided for
their husbands.[3]
Hannah’s
intense pain is exacerbated the cruelty inflicted on her by Peninnah: “Her rival kept provoking her in
order to irritate her” (1:6). This is a perpetual burden for Hannah,
since it recurs each year at the time for the festival in Shiloh, probably the
Feat of Tabernacles celebrated at the end of each summer (1 Sam. 1:7; Lev.
23:33-43).
Have
you ever had someone just rub salt in a proverbial wound you had? Perhaps it
was someone at school or on the job, or maybe even a family member. Many times
it comes in the form of a snide remark or a backhanded compliment.
If you were like me, you grew up poor. My teenage and young
adult years were spent in L.A.: “Lower Anderson.” I went to T.L. Hanna High
School which was considered the “rich school” in town. When many of my
classmates got their driving license, they were rewarded with new mustang
convertibles, Camero’s, or Honda Preludes.
When I wasn’t dropped off at school by my mother I drove an old Dodge
Omni. I can still hear the murmurs, giggles, and smart remarks by some unkind
teenager.
Spiritual Application: We must not give in to our emotions, but
allow our circumstances to drive us to prayer.
While
at the Lord’s temple for the festival at Shiloh, Hannah weeps and prays
earnestly, making a vow to God. Her years of barrenness have convinced her that
any children born to her will be nothing short of a miraculous gift from God.
Therefore, she vows to return such a precious gift to God forever, if He will
only answer her cry. Her
vow also promises that “no razor will ever be used on his head” (1:11),
which implies the so-called “Nazirite” vow.
The Nazritie vow is
defined in Numbers 6, where a man or woman can make a special vow of separation
to God. The vow involves a period of time in which the individual abstains from
wine, uses no razor on his or her head, and avoids contact with dead bodies. After
a period of separation was over, Numbers 6 prescribed a ritual for terminating
the vow. Interestingly, in the case of Samson (Judges 13) and Samuel, the vow
is not temporary but permanent. Thus, Hannah is offering her unborn child as a
permanent Nazirite, whose life will be wholly and exclusively God’s.[4]
Spiritual Application: There
is a difference between “bargaining” with God and making a vow to Him.[5]
Sometimes
when people pray under stress our duress, they will attempt to make a bargain
with God: “If you do this, then I will do this.” Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn, in his
magisterial account of Stalin’s prison system entitled The Gulag Archipelago,
tells how one imprisoned astrophysicist, a non-believer, began praying from his
cell asking God for a text book on astrophysics, something he knew was highly
unlikely to happen, proclaiming that if he did receive such a text, he would
then believe that God actually existed. After a prolonged period in which the
astrophysicist prayed faithfully, his cell door clanged open one day, and an
astrophysics text book was tossed into his cell. Even though his prayer had
been answered, the astrophysicist reverted to his agnosticism, explaining away
the improbability of such a text being thrown into his cell as pure chance.
On the surface,
Hannah’s prayer in 1 Samuel 1:9-18 appears as if she is bargaining with God.
Her prayer is in the same “If…then…” form of bargaining as that of the above
astrophysicist. But a key difference between Hannah’s prayer and a bargaining prayer is in her
preface prior to her prayer in which she “vowed a vow.”
The
law pertaining to vows is given in Numbers 30:1-6 in which the sacredness and
the binding character of a vow are emphasized. A vow is not a bargain, even
though it appears to
fit into a bargaining form. One cannot
bargain with God. A vow, unlike a
bargain, is a solemn promise. It obligates the one making the promise to
fulfill its conditions fully that one has made in the “if” form of the promise.
Biblically speaking, one can make pledges with other people, but
one can only make a vow to God. These vows can be life long, as in the case of
Samuel, or short term, as in the case of Paul. Vows can be made for periods of
special service, for repentance or for thanksgiving. Vows to God were
common in the Old Testament, the word appearing 44 times. Vows in the New
Testament were not as common. Paul, while at Ephesus, appears to take a
temporary Nazirite vow and cut his hair (Acts 18:18). Later, while Paul visited
James in Jerusalem, four men who are with him were also under a vow (Acts
21:23).
As mentioned earlier, we must never bargain with God, but if we
make a vow to Him, it is a sacred vow and must never be broken. A Christian
marriage is based upon a sacred vow. A marriage vow is a vow made to God
sealing a covenant relationship between a man and a woman. This vow, of course,
is permanent. A temporary vow might be one to fast and the seek repentance
during the Lenten season. Another vow might be to pray diligently that a member
of one’s household or a friend might be restored to the faith or that a
relationship can be healed.
The principle behind a vow is this: we are making a solemn
promise to God in which we dedicate ourselves to serving Him in some way which
will bring glory to Him. And again, this vow might be lifelong, or it could be
a short term pledge.
Notice Eli’s reaction in v. 13, “Eli
thought she was drunk.” Eli represents the corrupt and apostate leadership of
the priesthood and Hannah the simple faith that arises from suffering and pain.
The spiritual leader of the nation is unable to discern the spiritual
significance of this woman’s struggle. In the end, he recognizes in her the
faith he was supposed to represent (1:17).
II. The Sovereignty and Plan of God
Hannah’s spiritual
sensitivity and devotion is the anvil God uses to hammer out His will for her
and her family. Hannah’s piety results in the introduction of Samuel into the
biblical story. Samuel’s birth reveals the way God uses holy individuals and
their circumstances to accomplish His purposes.
Chapter
one introduces Samuel as the miraculous and gracious gift of God to Hannah and
to the nation of Israel. The recurring wordplay using his name which means, “…because I asked the Lord for
him” (1:10) and forms the root “ask, request” portrays Samuel as the one
desperately needed, not only for Hannah but for the whole nation of Israel.[6]
The book of Judges had concluded with accounts of brutal
intertribal warfare and cruel acts of cultic and moral disobedience. Israel is
barren like Hannah; each has a desperate need that only God can satisfy. The
deliverance is the same for both Hannah and Israel: the birth of a weak and
innocent child.
Spiritual Application: In
human weakness, God’s strength can be seen with greater clarity.
This scenario reminds us of other times in biblical history when
the birth of a child was the answer to hopelessness and desperate need. Isaac’s
birth marked the fulfillment of the great ancestral promises and the beginning
of God’s salvation from sin.
Moses’
birth initiated the beginning of salvation for the nation of Israel, so long in
bondage to Egypt. And the birth of Jesus Christ initiated the era of salvation
(Isaiah 9:6-7).
God
seems to find particular delight in using the ultimate in weakness and
vulnerability to accomplish His great purposes. When the apostle Paul pleaded for the Lord to take away
his thorn in the flesh, God told him, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my
power is made perfect in weakness.”
Thus Paul could say, “I will boast all
the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me” (2
Cor. 12:9).
All
of this illustrates the way God continually works out His purposes through the everyday
affairs of righteous people. He is looking for people to bless, and in Hannah,
God finds a woman who can be trusted. Building on her devotion, God provides Israel’s
future deliverer. This chapter is a witness to God’s transforming power.
Spiritual Application: Christians
must be faithful to God Word’s living devout and godly lifestyles over the long
duration in order to reform the church and the nation.
The many cultural
differences between 21st century America and ancient Israel at the
time of Samuel’s birth over 3,000 years ago are obvious. Nevertheless, human
beings are not very creative in expressing their desire to be independent of
God.
Israel’s
tendency to fall into rebellion over and over again, as narrated in Judges, is
not unlike America’s propensity to strive for a secular, non-religious society.
More apropos theologically and more alarmingly, the church has displayed
similar propensity toward abandoning biblical principles and redefining the
nature of life with God.
God’s answer is the same today as it was then. When a nation is
despair, the only hope is the appearance of righteous individuals, both in
local, state, and national leadership and in the common citizenry.
Israel’s
problem was rooted in her failed religious leadership. Eli and his sons were so
perverse that they provided no hope for renewal. Without godly leadership, any
nation faces eventual ruin. The birth of Samuel provided hope for the future of
Israel.
So too for the United
States, the role of leadership in the church and government should not be
overlooked. The 20th century has left behind examples of individuals
who have manipulated nations and inflicted untold pain and suffering upon the
masses (Adolf Hitler, Cambodia’s Pol Pot, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin
Laden, and our current President, to name the most notorious).
As illustrated by 1 Samuel 1, God desires to use righteous
leaders to reform nations. In the Old Testament,
kingship was a source of great potential good for the nation of Israel. It
became a means through which God Himself would eventually redeem His people
through the Messiah Jesus Christ. But kingship was also a potential for great
evil.
These
principles are no less true of the Christian church, which also suffers from a
lack of godly leadership in its pastors, staff, and elders.
The second necessary element in the spiritual rebirth of a
nation is a godly citizenry. A devout ruler alone cannot reform a
rebellious and sinful people. Interestingly, the good news of this passage
begins with the righteous, everyday affairs of a faithful family.
Through
her suffering and trials, Hannah was used as an instrument of God to initiate
spiritual rebirth in Israel. But without a host of other, nameless Israelites
who also prayed and lived their lives in quiet devotion, such reform would be
impossible. These individuals become the salt and light of their society (Matt.
5:13-16).
I believe the Bible
illustrates that social change and reformation takes place primarily in this
way. As the waves of the sea slowly and gradually alter the landscape of the
seashore, we need billow after billow of godly people, swelling up to
contribute their influence on our culture and slowly chip away at the evil in
our society.
To
use another metaphor, as the slow but incessant drip, drip of water on a
granite boulder will eventually change its surface, so Christians must be
faithful to God Word’s living devout and godly lifestyles over the long
duration in order to reform the church and the nation.
[1]
Bill T. Arnold, Samuel, The NIV
Application Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003), 52-53.
[2]
Ibid., 54.
[3]
Ibid.
[4]
Arnold, Samuel, The NIV Application
Commentary, 55.
[5]
The following information was taken from David Sincerbox’s, “Bargaining with
God or a Vow? Hannah’s Prayer in 1 Samuel 1:9-18,” Christian Worldview Journal (Feb. 23, 2015); accessed 4 June 2016;
available from http://www.breakpoint.org/the-center/columns/call-response/22675-bargaining-with-god-or-a-vow-hannahs-prayer-in-1-samuel-19-18;
Internet.
[6]
John F. Walvoord and Roy B. Zuck, The
Bible Knowledge Commentary (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1985), 433.
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