Hannah: A Portrait of a Seasoned Mother
1 Samuel 1:1-28
ILLUSTRATION Based on the study made by Salary.com, if the typical stay-at-home mother in the U.S. were paid for her work as housekeeper, cook, daycare center teacher, laundry machine operator, van driver, facilities manager, janitor, computer operator, chief executive officer and psychologist, she would earn $138, 095 a year.
Today is a special day to honor the mothers. Why do we honor the mothers? What are the criteria for honoring them? I think it is difficult to establish common criteria for all mothers because each mother has a different situation and opportunity in life. Example: We cannot say that…
Professional Mother > Stay-at home Mother
Married Mother > Single Mother
Elite Mother > Middle Class Mother
In fact, we need to honor all of them no matter what their identities are. We honor mothers for being their best based on their family context. The criterion is how they respond to the challenges surrounding them – the attitude and character they demonstrate in specific family context.
What are the attitudes and characters of a mother that deserve recognition? Hannah was considered one of the best mothers in the Bible but what made her deserving of honor for mother. Let us read 1 Samuel 1:1-28.
EXPOSITION
1. Hannah’s PERSEVERANCE in an adverse condition. (vv. 1-8)
a. Unfair judgment based on unrealistic community expectations. (vv. 1-5)
One of the main roles of a wife in those days was to provide children. A barren womb was considered a curse and Hannah would have been looked down upon because of her failure to bear a child. Despite of her condition, she persevered.
There are thousands of moms who are victim of unfair judgment based on unrealistic community’s expectation. As a mother, you cannot help but to live a life based on the picture your community created. It is difficult because the standards they use on you are unrealistic and unfair.
For example, they expect mothers to do all household chores because they are the women despite of the fact that they also work outside home. They are abused and overused and yet they persevere. These are the moms that we honor today.
b. Lack of empathy from people close to her. (vv. 6-8)
Though the Bible records the polygamous relationships of some of the patriarchs, it never endorses it. God’s Word teaches the monogamous relationship. It’s likely that Elkanah had married Hannah first and then, because she was not able to have children, he decided to marry Penninah.
Penninah - “…her rival kept provoking her in order to irritate her.” (v. 6) Instead of being thankful that she had children, she felt the need to torment and harass Hannah. The word “provoke” literally means, “to stir up purposely.” She’s trying to get Hannah to lose her temper. Verse 7 reveals that Penninah did this every year when they went to Shiloh.
Elkanah - In verse 8, Elkanah tried his best to comfort his wife: “Hannah, why are you weeping? Why don’t you eat? Why are you downhearted? Don’t I mean more to you than ten sons?” While it’s significant that a husband would even notice a wife’s sadness and want to find out why she’s crying, I wonder if his attempt at empathy should be appreciated.
One commentator said that Elkanah did what many of us husbands do when our wives are upset. Instead of listening to her pain, he seems to be rationalizing her problems and feelings. He’s trying to solve when he should be seeking to understand. He’s basically saying, “Darling, I am here what more could you want?”
I’m not sure if Elkanah really understood how deeply she wanted to have a child. Mothers I know that some of you have been hit with some insensitive comments, either by your husband, or from others. God understands your pain.
When you persevere despite the lack of empathy from people close to you and unfair judgment base on unrealistic expectations, you truly deserve our praises and honor today.
2. Hannah’s DEPENDENCE on God in times of crises. (vv. 9-18)
a. She turned to God for her needs. Why?
The most difficult thing that Hannah faced is the phrase that is repeated twice, once at the end of verse 5 and again at the beginning of verse 6: “And the Lord had closed her womb.” The problem that she was having came from the Lord. This is one of the hardest lessons we will ever learn.
Our problems are given to us by the Lord Himself. It is God who is behind the circumstances of life. We don’t really want to believe this. We’d rather blame it all on Satan, or on someone else. But it is God who allows good things and bad things to come into our lives.
SEE Job 2:10; Ecclesiastes 7:14
Hannah turned to God for help because she believes that God is in control of all the situations. Hannah had some problems but she didn’t shut down or lash out at those around her. She expressed her faith in prayer. God uses our problems to get our attention and to teach us.
SEE Psalm 119:71
b. She made a vow before God. (vv. 10-11)
As part of her prayer, she expressed a vow that if she’s given a son, he will be dedicated to the Lord for his entire life. Her son would become a Levitical priest, serving in the temple and a Nazirite. A Nazirite was bound by a vow to be set apart to the Lord’s service and had to abstain from the fruit of the vine, was forbidden to cut his hair, and was not allowed to get near any dead body. (Example: Samson)
A seasoned mother does not only persevere under adverse condition but also expresses her dependence on God for the crisis in life. I have seen and heard mothers who because of their crisis in life – person or situations turned to God and bathe their prayers with tears.
With tears, they fervently prayed for their strange husband or rebellious or struggling sons and daughters. They never give up and continue to hope and believe that God would someday answer their prayers.
ILLUSTRATION Susannah Wesley spent one hour each day praying for her 17 children. In addition, she took each child aside for a full hour each week to discuss spiritual matters. It’s no wonder that two of her sons, Charles and John, were used mightily in both England and America (Methodist).
3. Hannah’s FAITHFULNESS in her commitments. (19-28)
ILLUSTRATION A mother was browsing in the ladies’ department one day with her son who was just learning to read. Trying to read all the signs he could, he came upon one in the maternity department. "Look, Mom!" he said excitedly as he pointed at the sign. "They’re even making clothes for eternity now!"
a. She remained faithful to her husband. (vv. 19-20)
Before she was a mother, she was a loving, obedient wife. She did this in difficult circumstances. How so? Well, she was not her husband’s only wife. And she had not yet been able to conceive. And as if this was not enough, she was criticized and ridiculed by her sister-wife.
But she refused to snitch even when her husband asked her the reason for her sadness. Instead, she forgave the other wife, committed herself in unselfish love to her husband Elkanah, and prayed to God. She poured out her grief before the Lord and not bitterness upon the others in her household.
b. She fulfilled her vow to God. (vv. 24-28)
Women of faith excel at keeping their promises (1:21-28). After Samuel was born, Elkanah went once again to Shiloh in order to worship. Hannah decided to not go until Samuel was weaned, which would have been at around three-years-old.
She dedicated herself to her child, nursing and nurturing him, knowing that when he is able to eat on his own, she “…will take him and present him before the Lord, and he will live there always.”
Many people make promises to God, only to forget them once time passes. Not so with Hannah. She fully intended to keep her promise because she knew that Samuel did not really belong to her anyway. Hannah dedicated her child to the Lord. She then brings Samuel to the house of the Lord.
c. She met the needs of her son.
While she gave Samuel to her Savior, she never bailed on her responsibility. Look at 2:19: “Each year his mother made him a little robe and took it to him when she went up with her husband to offer the annual sacrifice.”
ILLUSTRATION I recently came across a true story that happened during the Holocaust. Solomon Rosenberg, his wife and their two sons were arrested and placed in a concentration camp. The rules were simple. As long as they did their work, they were permitted to live. When they became too weak to work, they would be exterminated.
Rosenberg watched as his own father and mother were marched off to their deaths and he knew that his youngest son David would be next because he had always been a frail child. Every evening Rosenberg came back into the barracks after his hours of hard labor and searched for the faces of his family. When he found them they would huddle together, embrace one another and thank God for another day of life.
One day he came back and didn’t see those familiar faces. He finally discovered his oldest son, Joshua, in a corner sobbing and praying. “Josh, tell me it’s not true.” Joshua turned to his dad and said, “It’s true. Today David was not strong enough to do his work and so they took him away.” Mr. Rosenberg then asked, “But where is your mother?” Joshua could barely speak and finally uttered, “When they came for David, he was afraid and cried and so mom took his hand and went with him.”
That’s the kind of love that Hannah had for Samuel. She was willing to sacrifice herself for the sake of her son. She loved him so much that she was willing to forgo a mother’s greatest joy that of bring up her son and having him around her. She was committed to do whatever it took for him to reach his godly potential.
CONCLUSION
Some of you probably didn’t want to come to church on Mother’s Day because your mother is no longer alive and you really miss her. Some of you may have a mother who is very sick right now and you wonder how much longer she’s going to be with you.
A handful of you have experienced the devastating loss of a child’s death. There are probably some mothers here this morning that wish they didn’t have kids and I know there are women here who would give anything just to have a child.
God could not be in every place
With loving hands to help erase
The teardrops from each baby’s face,
And so He thought of mother.
He could not send us here alone
And leave us to a fate unknown;
Without providing for His own,
The outstretched arms of mother.
God could not watch us night and day
And kneel beside our crib to pray,
Or kiss our little aches away;
And so He sent us mother.
And when our childhood days began,
He simply could not take command,
That’s why He placed out tiny hand
Securely into mother’s.
The days of youth slipped quickly by,
Life’s sun rise higher in the sky,
Full grown were we, yet ever nigh
To love us still was mother.
And when life’s span of years shall end,
I know that God will gladly send,
To welcome hone her child again,
That ever faithful mother.
--George Wiseman
