Portrait of a Godly Mother

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But turn with me this morning to 1 Samuel, 1 Samuel chapter 1. We’re going to look at the story this morning of a woman named Hannah. And I love the story of Hannah.

And so I began making some notes this week on this story and about how it applies to a godly mother and what Hannah can teach us about a godly mother. And then I realized, you know, this isn’t just a picture of a godly mother and what God intends for a mother to do. Really, I see nothing in here that’s not what a father should do also.

I see nothing in here that wouldn’t also apply to a Christian grandmother or a Christian grandfather or great-grandfather. As we look toward the next generation and the little people that God has entrusted to us, and some of you have little people in your family still. Some of you have kids still at home.

Some of you have adult kids. Some of you have little people who are grandkids. Some of you have little people who are long since no longer little people.

They’re grown. But at every stage in life, there’s always a generation behind us. And in a sense, it doesn’t matter where we are in life or what we used to be.

Maybe we weren’t the best Christians when they were growing up. But folks, as long as there’s breath, as long as there’s life, it’s never too late to make an impact on future generations for Christ. And so while we look at this this morning and we’re looking at a godly woman and something that really happened in her life and what we can learn about it specifically for mothers. I don’t want you to tune out this morning just because you’re not a mother with children at home.

If you’ve got kids, if you’ve got grandkids, if you’ve got neighbor kids down the street who look up to you, there are things that we can learn from this passage and learn from Hannah’s story about what God would have us to do in impacting the next generation that comes after us. And that’s, guys, that’s so important. It’s so neglected now in our society.

I don’t know if the man’s a Christian or not, but he made a good point. There’s a man that I see every couple weeks or so at Chick-fil-A, and I don’t know him, and he doesn’t know me, but he just starts talking to me. And that’s fine.

But he was going on about kids doing things in the play area they weren’t supposed to do, and the parents just sitting back and letting it happen. And he looked at me and he said, you know, that’s the problem with this country today. Idiots are raising idiots.

And I thought, well, I wouldn’t put it exactly that way. I wouldn’t you know I’m too diplomatic I guess I wouldn’t put it exactly that way but he’s he’s right and and I notice I notice a tendency nowadays you know we really didn’t see a whole lot of it in most of your generation and my parents generation of leaving the raising of the kids to to somebody else while we go and do our own thing I talked a few weeks ago about sacrificing our children before our own desires. We desperately need to get back to a place in life as a society, as Christians especially, where we recognize the importance of the next generation.

Guys, we are, these are people, these are people that God has entrusted to us to invest in so that we are raising the next generation of people who are going to love him, who are going to serve him, who are going to lead others to him. And I think we can learn from this woman’s example how we can get back on track. But starting in verse 1 of chapter 1 of 1 Samuel, it says, Now there was a certain man of Ramatham Zophim of Mount Ephraim, and his name was Elkanah, the son of Jehoram, the son of Elihu, the son of Tohu, the son of Zuth, the Ephrathite.

And he had two wives. The name of one was Hannah, and the name of the other was Penina. And Penina had children, but Hannah had no children.

And I’ve read this and practiced these names before because you don’t want to get up here and get tongue-tied and not know what you’re saying, but it doesn’t matter how much you practice. Some of these names are just hard. But basically, there was a man named Elkanah, it says, and he had two wives, Hannah and Penina, and we’ve talked before about how that’s a bad idea.

But Penina had children, and Hannah had no children. And this would have been a big deal for her. We’ve talked at times about some of the status symbols that people throw their entire lives after in our day and age.

It’s the fancy house. It’s the big truck. It’s the 60-inch TV.

Whatever the status symbol is that everybody is after, the thing that they just have to have that makes you somebody. Ladies and gentlemen, in their society, for a woman, it was children. It was children.

That’s why we see so many times the Bible mentions so-and-so was barren or so-and-so had many children and they’d be upset if they were barren or they’re rejoicing that they had many children because it was a matter of life and death almost for them. If they didn’t have children, they felt like they were not fulfilling their role in life as Hebrew women. It says in verse 3, and this man went up out of his city yearly to worship and to sacrifice unto the Lord of hosts in Shiloh.

And the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were the priests of the Lord, were there. And when the time was that Elkanah offered, he gave to Penina his wife and to all her sons and her daughters portions. But unto Hannah he gave a worthy portion, for he loved Hannah, but the Lord had shut up her womb.

So he would go every year to offer the sacrifices at the tabernacle at Shiloh. And he would give part of the, there were certain parts of the offerings that you were allowed to take with you afterwards, some that you were not, but of what you were able to take, He gave a portion to Penina and her sons and her daughters. And it’s not like He left Hannah out.

God wants to make sure we really understand this because He says He gave her a worthy portion. She was not left out by her husband here, but He loved Hannah, and yet she was barren. And her adversary also provoked her sore for to make her fret because the Lord had shut up her womb.

Well, her adversary here is the other wife, Penina. Because she had children and Hannah didn’t. Now the Bible says here that Elkanah loved Hannah.

And something about that leads me to believe that Penina felt threatened by that. She was able to offer him all these children, but she still wasn’t on par with Hannah. Guys, I am talking about a lifestyle that I don’t even begin to understand.

I’ve said many, many times, most men do well to keep up with one woman. I can’t imagine wanting to be outnumbered. And I can’t imagine the chaos that it would bring into the house when you’ve got two wives who are competing for the affection of one husband.

And here we see how ugly it could get. And Penina felt threatened by Hannah and Elkanah’s love for her. And so the Bible says she provoked her sore, calls her her adversary.

I don’t know if you’ve seen the show Sister Wives where they all seem like they get along. I don’t even begin to understand that either. But this is not sister wives.

They evidently do not like each other because the word adversary in the Bible has a connotation of being enemy. I mean, the Bible refers to Satan as the adversary. I don’t believe the Bible is saying that Penina is Satan, but saying that’s the kind of ferocity with which she’s going after Hannah, to make her fret, to make her worry, to get her upset because the Lord had shut up her womb.

And as he did so year by year, verse 7, when she went up to the house of the Lord, she provoked her, therefore she wept and did not eat. So every year when they would go up to make the sacrifices, Penina would have Hannah so upset that she couldn’t eat and that she would just weep. Then said Elkanah, her husband, to Hannah, Why weepest thou?

And why eatest thou not? And why is thy heart grieved? Am I not better to thee than ten sons?

I got up early this morning and was rereading this passage again and having coffee. And when I came to verse 8, it struck me for the first time. What a dumb thing for the man to have said at this point.

She wanted children. She needed children more than anything in the world for her to fulfill her role in their society as a wife, as a mother. Well, not as a mother.

Well, in order to be a mother, she needed to have children. But for her to fulfill her role in their society, she needed children. She was desperate for children.

And he looks at her and says, aren’t I enough? No, you’re not children. You know, sometimes we as men say things to our wives thinking that we’re trying to help or to other women in our lives thinking we’re trying to help and being sensitive, and it just ends up making her feel worse.

We’ve got to be on guard against that. He says, am I not better to thee than ten sons? And we don’t have her response to him, but I’m imagining it’s somewhere in the neighborhood of no. Nothing against him, but I’m sure it’s somewhere in the neighborhood of no. Verse 9 says, so Hannah rose up after they had eaten in Shiloh, and after they had drunk, and 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. Now, this doesn’t mean she was bitter. This doesn’t mean that she was bitter, that she was angry at God or anything like that.

But when it says she was in bitterness of soul, that means she had a, I’m trying to think of the right word here. She had an agony in her soul. This wasn’t just something she thought about.

Hey, I got up this morning. I think I’d like to have children today. This was something that consumed her every thought.

And I don’t know if you’ve ever had those times where something has consumed you so deeply that when you would go to God in prayer about it, you could feel the burden. You could feel something constricting your heart. You could feel the burden here.

And when she’s in bitterness of soul, she is crying out to God from the very depth of her soul in agony and prayed to the Lord and wept sore. It wasn’t just a little tear here and a little tear there. She was weeping and sobbing.

And she vowed a vow in verse 11. she vowed a vow and said, O Lord of hosts, if thou wilt indeed look upon the affliction of thine handmaid and remember me and not forget thine handmaid, but will give unto thine handmaid a man child, then I will give him unto the Lord all the days of his life. And there shall no razor come upon his head.

And she, there are a few things in that verse that we can, that we can notice about Hannah. She says handmade several times. That word handmade means she’s a servant.

She, she’s not going to God, and I think we need to be reminded of this sometimes. We go to God in prayer as though he owes us, as though he’s obligated to us. God, you owe me.

Didn’t I go to church last week? Didn’t I put a couple dollars in the plate? Didn’t I help that lady cross the street?

God, I was a good person this week. You owe me. Wrong.

God doesn’t owe us a thing. The sovereign God of the universe is not obligated to us for anything. But she goes to God, I think, with the proper attitude, with the proper perspective, reminding, telling him, admitting to him and reminding herself in the process, I am a servant of God.

You are the master. I am the servant and I’m coming in and I’m entreating you. I’m begging you and saying, if you will, if you will it, if you desire it, if you’re willing to grant it to me, and if you would be so kind and gracious as to give me a son, then I will remember that.

I will give that child back to you all the days of his life. And she says, and a razor will not cut the hair of his head. And if you remember the story of Samson, the whole thing about Samson’s strength being taken away by his hair being cut, he was a Nazarite.

And the Nazarites were a group of people that were set apart unto God in ancient Israel for a specific purpose. And so everything she says in here says that I am your servant, whatever you choose to entrust to me, I understand belongs to you, and I will give it back to you, and I will set it aside for you while I have it. I got the opportunity to talk to a group of high school students this week at a private school up in town.

And they were having their graduation banquet. And I talked to them about Mark chapter 8 and, you know, whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospels will find it. Whosoever shall find his life shall lose it.

And basically God says we need to look at things from a different perspective and understand that it’s a life that he’s lent to us. And if we lose the things that are near and dear to us on earth for his sake, so what? It’s his to do with as he pleases.

And I talked to them about this very thing. Used an egg as an illustration that my son likes baby animals. And you get a chicken egg and he’ll want to hold it and he’ll want to squeeze it tight because it’s mine now.

And I just love the egg. Tries to do that with my turtles too and they don’t like it. You squeeze their heads, they don’t enjoy that.

But he’ll do that so he can’t play with the turtles anymore. But he’ll want to hold the chicken egg and there’s life inside that egg. But if you hold it too tightly, you crush it.

You destroy the life that’s inside of there. But we’ve got to hold it very lightly, realizing we don’t own that. We hold it lightly so we don’t destroy the life.

Well, same thing with our lives. We hold it lightly with open hands, realizing that it’s something that God has lent to us. And our lives are really His to do with as He pleases.

And this is what she’s recognizing here and saying, God, I belong to you. I’m yours. And if you choose to give me a child, then he will be yours also.

See, we spend our life in pursuit of things that we think are going to make us happy. And the choices and the direction in life that we want to go and we hold on to it. And we think this is mine and he can’t have it.

When really, it’s his. And we need to learn to hold on to things very loosely. Because he’s the one who’s entrusted them to us in the first place.

The things that we have, the people in our lives, the very fabric of our lives is made of things that he’s entrusted to us for his purpose. He didn’t give it to us to hoard and hang on to for our own purposes. So she says, I’m your servant.

And if you give me this child, I will recognize that he’s yours. I’ll give him back to you every day. I’ll set him aside unto you.

And verse 12 says, and it came to pass as she continued praying before the Lord that Eli marked her mouth. Eli, the high priest was sitting there and was watching her as she was praying. Now, Hannah, she spake in her heart.

Only her lips moved, but her voice was not heard. Therefore, Eli thought that she had been drunken. And we see this a lot of times in the Bible.

Somebody is having a spiritual experience with God and other people don’t understand it. And they say, well, they must be drunk. That happened at Pentecost. When Peter and the other apostles began to preach in these other languages, people said, well, they must be drunk.

I don’t understand how that works. I’ve never seen a drunk person who’s never known a word in Spanish to speak perfect Spanish. It just didn’t work that way.

Here she is pouring out her heart before God at the altar. And only once or twice in my life have I ever experienced anything like this where I pray in such anguish. And I know what’s on my heart before God.

And I know what I’m trying to say to him. And yet there just aren’t words. There just aren’t words.

And I really feel like that’s where, that’s what I understand to be going on here in her case. That she’s pouring out her heart to God and she knows what she’s trying to get across and there just aren’t words. No, the good news is there God understands.

But Eli looks at her and says, she must be drunk. And Eli said unto her in verse 14, How long wilt thou be drunken? Put away thy wine from thee.

How long are you going to sit around here drunk in the tabernacle? Put your wine away. And Hannah answered and said, No, my Lord, I am a woman of sorrowful spirit.

I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but have poured out my soul before the Lord. Count not thine handmaid for a daughter of Belial. For out of the abundance of my complaint and grief have I spoken hitherto. Then Eli answered and said, Go in peace, and the God of Israel grant thee thy petition that thou has asked of him.

And she said, Let thine handmaid find grace in thy sight. So the woman went her way and did eat, and her countenance was no more sad. So many things I love about Hannah’s behavior in this story.

But at any point, she could have been angry. She could have been bitter at God. She wasn’t.

Now, as I pointed out, the Bible says she was full of bitterness of spirit or something to that effect. I can’t remember the exact. She was in bitterness of soul.

Now, that doesn’t mean she was bitter toward God. If she was bitter toward God, she wouldn’t be calling out to him the way that she is. She could have been bitter toward Eli for saying she was drunk.

That would offend me. I went for a test at the doctor’s office once when I was a teenager, and my liver function came back just a little bit high. The doctor tried to convince my mother that I must be out drinking.

She said, you don’t know my son. He said, oh, maybe you don’t know your son. Lots of mothers of teenage boys don’t know their sons drink.

She said, you don’t know how Baptist my son is. And when I found out he was accusing me of drinking, it offended me. Because I don’t.

Because I never have. And I’ve never gone back to that doctor ever in my life. It bothered me so much.

For him to say, for him to say to Hannah, how long are you going to sit there drunk? I mean, those should be fighting words. And yet she gets up and she is just as gracious as she can be.

And she refers to herself as his servant also. And says, I’ve been here to pour out my soul before God. The only thing that has been poured around here today is my soul before God.

She said, don’t look at me as a daughter of Belial. Don’t look at me as a woman who serves after false gods. Because they would, as we talked about last week, they would get involved in the service of these false gods and it would lead to all sorts of awful things in their worship. She says, that’s not me.

And so Eli says, God grant you the thing you ask for. And she got up and she went away. And because she trusted in God, the Bible says her countenance was no more sad.

Even the very look of her face had changed. A few more verses to go through and we’ll look at some points of application here. And they rose up early in the morning, in the morning early, and worshiped before the Lord and returned and came to their house at Ramah.

And Elkanah knew Hannah his wife and the Lord remembered her. Wherefore it came to pass, when the time was come, after Hannah had conceived that she bare a son, and called his name Samuel, saying, Because I have asked him of the Lord. And the man Elkanah and all his house went up to offer unto the Lord the yearly sacrifice and his vow.

But Hannah went not up, for she said unto her husband, I will not go up until the child be weaned, and then I will bring him that he may appear before the Lord, and there abide forever. And Elkanah her husband said unto her, Do what seemeth thee good, tarry until thou have weaned him. Only the Lord established his word, so the woman abode, and gave her son suck until she weaned him.

And when she had weaned him, she took him up with her, with three bullocks, with one ephah of flour, and a bottle of wine, and brought him unto the house of the Lord in Shiloh. And the child was young, and they slew a bullock, and brought the child to Eli. And she said, O my Lord, as thy soul liveth, my Lord, I am the woman that stood by thee here praying unto the Lord.

For this child I prayed, and the Lord hath given me my petition, which I asked of him. Therefore also I have lent him to the Lord. As long as he liveth, he shall be lent to the Lord.

And he worshiped the Lord there. So what’s happened is God remembered her. God gave her the son that she asked for, and she was thankful.

And she remembered the promise that she had made to God. And she raised the boy. She raised him as a godly mother.

She raised him to be a godly young man. And when he was very young, basically when he was old enough to be apart from her, I don’t mean old enough to be on his own, but old enough to be apart from her and to go be raised by the priests in the temple, she took him back and took him to the temple and said, here he is. He’s here for the Lord’s service.

I cannot imagine how hard that would have been for her to say, but now that he’s here, I just want to hold him so tight. I want to keep him with me all the time. I understand that.

I mean, I’m not a mother, but I understand that. I’m away from my kids for more than a few hours. I’m like, I just want to squeeze them.

I need to be back with my kids. And here she said, he’s a young boy and he’s going to go live at the temple. They weren’t, or the tabernacle, they weren’t close by either.

You notice it says they went about once a year down to the tabernacle. But she had asked God for a son so that she could instill in him godly value and set him loose to serve God. Those of you in here who are parents, who are grandparents, isn’t that what we want for the generations who come after us?

Isn’t that what we should want? To raise them up as godly people? To raise them up to want to serve him and then set them loose to do it?

And we push them so hard, so hard. You’ve got to focus on getting the best education you can and the best job you can, and there’s nothing wrong with those things. Again, I’m kind of repeating what I told the kids on Friday night, I think, telling them, you know, the world is going to tell you when you graduate, go after these things full force.

No, you need to go after the things God has told you to do. There’s nothing wrong with education, certainly nothing wrong with hard work. But shouldn’t we, just as much as we try to instill in them hard work and get a good job, just as much as we try to instill in them education, just as much as we try to instill in them all these other things, shouldn’t we work at least that hard to instill in them godly values and say your life belongs to God and you need to go do something pleasing to him with it?

My mother was so upset. My mother was so upset when I came home and announced that we were moving to Arkansas. Benjamin was three months old at the time.

First grandchild, and you’re taking him four hours away? I don’t think so. But really, once she thought about it, this is what they’d raised me for.

Raised me to follow the Lord and then go where he leads. And you know what? I want my children to stay with me all the time, but I want to raise them to be godly people and go do what God has called them to do.

And I know that with Benjamin, I’ve got about 15 years left, a little under 15 years left before he’s an adult. And I know that’s going to go by like that. And God may call him to the mission field.

God may call him to some third world country. God may send him to Arkansas. Sorry.

No, I liked Arkansas. God may send him somewhere else. God may send Madeline into ministry.

God may put Madeline with a man who’s called into the pastoral somewhere. When we want our kids to follow God, we have to learn to hold them very loosely. And we give up control about, yeah, we want them here close to us.

But if God calls them away to do something else, isn’t that what we’ve been working for? For them to follow God? If we want them to make their first million and buy us a house and take care of us, And God calls them and says, I want you to do something else.

Maybe it’s not being a pastor, but maybe it’s, I want you to do ministry at the bank. I love my dad. He’s worked at the bank for 30 years.

He’s known the bank longer than he’s known my mom. He’s worked at the bank 30 years. And he said, as a teenager, I knew God was calling me into ministry.

It just took me a while to realize that the bank was my ministry. That’s incredible. And we want our kids to be so successful.

And yeah, go take the million dollar job. What if God’s calling them to, what if God’s calling them to farm and serve Him? What if God’s calling them to work at the gas station and tell people about Jesus?

There’s not a thing wrong. We want our kids to be the best and to do the best. Guys, what about letting go of our plans for them and raising them to be people who follow God? Now I realize many of you are past the time of raising kids, but you still have an influence on your adult kids of you have grandkids who are still young.

We need to focus on instilling in them godly values and then holding them loosely, letting them go, realizing that they’ve been lent to us. God has lent them to us. He’s entrusted them to us for a time so that we could invest in them so that we can raise them and so we can point them in the right direction.

I may not even get into all my points this morning because I’ve already hit on some of them, but the first, you know, there are a few thoughts that I had here that as I read through this passage, stuck out to me about a godly mother, but as I said earlier, it occurred to me it applies to everybody who’s involved in the raising of kids. First of all, a godly mother invests her heart in her children. There was nothing about Hannah that was passive when it came to her kids.

I am so tired, and y’all didn’t come to hear me on my soap box today, but I am so tired of watching people out in public who are there with their children and could not care less about them or what they’re doing because they’re so wrapped up in their own lives. We cannot afford to be passive about our children, about our grandchildren. We cannot afford to be so wrapped up in our own pursuits that we forget that God has entrusted to us little people, future adults, who we have a limited amount of time to encourage them and point them in the right direction.

And we’ve got to invest our hearts in them. We’ve got to invest our time in these children. And we know that she did this because she went to the, she went to the tabernacle every year and she wept and she prayed for the children.

They weren’t even born yet. Samuel was not even born yet and she was already praying for her kids. We need to be taking our kids to the throne of God.

We need to be lifting them up. We need to be praying for them. We need to be invested in them.

I’m getting ahead of myself on some of these points, but she invested her heart in her children. Nobody could look at her and say she doesn’t care about her kids. Second of all, a godly mother prays for her children.

This is so, so important. It goes along with the first one. Prayer is a direct line to God.

Prayer is a conversation with God. We look at prayer and we think, oh, that’s something else to get through. I’m supposed to pray.

I do it every day. Guys, we’ve got to realize the creator of the universe, the creator of the universe has said, come boldly before my throne and talk to me. That’s not an exact quote.

But he expects us to have a conversation with him and tells us to come boldly before the throne of grace. If the president, and I get some of you, some of you may like the president, some of you may not. Some of you may like the next president or not, or the last president or not.

But if the president of the United States said, come on into my office and let’s have a conversation and you can tell me what you need, well, probably get an earful from some of us. But we probably wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to go into the Oval Office and sit down and say, these are my concerns. There’s somebody who’s much more powerful than the President of the United States.

I think we’d all do well to remember that. The God of the universe says, come and share your heart with me. Come and talk to me.

Guys, there’s only so much we can do with our kids. There’s only so much we can keep our kids under control. There’s only so much we can watch over them.

But we serve a God who has counted all the hairs on their head. We serve a God who knows every heartbeat, who gives them every breath they will take. We should be a God who loves them and loves us.

And we should be in constant communication with God about our kids, about our grandkids. Even if you’re not raising them anymore, even if they’re grown up, even if they’re moved out, we need to be praying for our kids. Godly parents pray for their children.

Hannah prayed to the Lord even before Samuel was conceived. Third of all, a godly mother devotes herself to her children. She devotes herself.

We look at the story, Hannah did not care. Hannah did not care that the other people were going to look on her and say, she’s drunk, she’s crazy. She did what she needed to do for her children.

She devoted herself to her children. When it came time, she put everything else on hold and said, I want a child. And when that child comes, I’m not even going to go down to the tabernacle every year.

Evidently, you just had to send one person for the family. I’m not going to do anything but stay here and take care of the child that God has entrusted to me. I’m not saying, folks, I’m not saying as parents, as grandparents, don’t do anything else but hover over the children.

There’s a phrase called helicopter parents. That’s not what the Bible’s telling us we have to do. The Bible’s not telling us we can’t work, we can’t go to church, we can’t have a night away from them, whatever.

But everything in her life was geared toward God has entrusted these kids to me to invest in and I’m going to. Folks, we need to be devoted to our children. Again, we are in a day and age where the hearts of parents seem to be cold toward their children.

And we wonder why the hearts of the children then are cold toward the parents and toward the God that really I think we represent in the lives of the kids. I’m not saying that they should look at us as God. I’m saying God calls himself a father.

God calls himself a parent in the Bible for a reason. And their first understanding of that unconditional love, their first understanding of that discipline, of the grace, Everything that God has over us is first demonstrated to them as children through the parents. And I t

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