Sermon Tone Analysis

Women Lead Here

The next book of The Bible Project is Samuel, never mind the 1&2 it’s just divided that way because of scroll length, it’s one continuous narrative about how Israel’s life unravels when they ask for a king.

Nate started us off last week with Eli, Samuel, and we’ll talk more about Kings Saul, David, and Solomon, but we’re in today and it’s super important to notice how this grand story of Israel’s first kings begins.

Not with kings.

If you really want to know about a person, there’s one person who truly knows.

Instead, the story begins with someone who something more noble than any king.

She is the one who gets the whole story started by crying out to God.

It’s an important theme in scripture, a woman who is infertile prays for God to come and rescue her.

The narrator of Samuel is going to begin with THE person who can truly tell us something important about the namesake of this scroll, the last priest/prophet before the kingship politics of Israel begins, and Samuel is the one who anoints the first king, the one who brought “listening,” SHEMA, back to Israel, as Nate showed us last week.

If you really want to know about a person, there’s one who knows more than anyone else knows, who watches this person more than anyone else watches Samuel.

Who is it that can tell you more about someone than anyone else? Mom.

The story named after Samuel starts not with the birth of Samuel but with the turmoil of Samuel’s mother before Samuel, the choices and vows she makes and keeps to the Lord.

Instead, the story begins with someone who something more noble than any king.

She is the one who gets the whole story started by crying out to God.

It’s an important theme in scripture, a woman who is infertile prays for God to come and rescue her.

We know it’s not her husband, Elkanah, because he’s married to Peninnah ().

Her name is Hannah, and her name in Hebrew is “Channah” and means “Grace and Favor.”

If you really want to know about a person, there’s one who knows more than anyone else knows, who watches this person more than anyone else watches Samuel.

Who is it that can tell you more about someone than anyone else? Mom.

The story named after Samuel starts not with the birth of Samuel but with the turmoil of Samuel’s mother before Samuel, the choices and vows she makes and keeps to the Lord.

Her name is Hannah, and her name in Hebrew is “Channah” and means “Grace and Favor.”

But Hannah did not FEEL FAVORED.

1 Samuel 1:3-8

1 Samuel 1:3-

Easy to imagine that Hannah would grow bitter and retaliate against Peninnah, but we don’t see that in the story, but instead Hannah weeps and pours her heart out to God (1:8), like the psalmist Jesus quoted on the cross, .

Peninnah provoked

This bothers Elkanah and he tries to console her with double portions of food offerings but his best work is a little Beauty and the Beast’s “Gaston” moment when he says, [turn to profile], “How could you not be happy, my dear, you’re married to me!? Am I not worth ten sons to you!?”

Then Hannah makes a very serious vow to God, called a Nazarite vow.

Let’s look to see what that’s all about.

Here’s the deal with the Nazarite vow: Hannah is essentially asking God, “If you’ll remove this social, emotional, spiritual pain of childlessness from me, I’ll actually give this child back to you!”

You’ve heard of people in desperate times making vows that they will serve God, but actually offering their child up in service in the priesthood, no alcohol, no razors.

Now, Hannah would sit in the court of the worship place, the tabernacle?, and one day she was so anguished and crying but not making a sound, a site that looks crazy or drunk.

And this is what Eli thought about Hannah and said,

There’s a very interesting exchange here, listen to this:

:15

What happens next is so amazing I’ve asked [reader] to read it entirely from .

What will you notice as we read?

1 Samuel 1

What does this say about God that this pivotal story of Israel all begins with a woman’s anguished cry to God, vow, and faithfully keeping her word?

Bearing children has sometimes been taken for granted over the years, and yet in the Bible we see lots of examples of women who were considered barren at the time.

Can you think of six different women in OT/NT?

Sarah, Rebekah, Samson’s mother, Rachel, Hannah, and (not Mary) Elizabeth, mother of John the Baptist.

As writer Karla Hawkins says, “They all started out longing for a child of their own, and then God blessed them with very special children.

[God] turned their barrenness and grief into fruitfulness and joy.

To anyone who might be praying for a child today . . .

God can overcome and heal a couple of any diagnosis of infertility.

Likewise, while there is no doubt that women are blessed, and that motherhood is a blessing . . .

a woman’s worth is not in having children, though this is a great honor.

Even though barren, women have worth, value, and purpose, and though some may never bear a child, all women are image bearers of God.

The Journey upholds women who have had miscarriages.

The Journey upholds women who have had abortions or have been forced into abortions.

The Journey upholds women who have infertility and shed tears like Hannah or are wordless and soundless and don’t feel you have a voice.

Listen to me women, Here You Have a Voice.

At The Journey YOU have a voice.

You can cry out about injustices in the world to you, to other women, and we can together decide what the gospel says to do about it.

This story that starts with Hannah and barrenness and crying out and worship and God’s gracious response and Hannah’s reciprocal grace of offering up her only son, Samuel leads us to recount some important truths about what we believe here today about women in the same situation of Hannah and all women.

hey all started out longing for a child of their own, and then God blessed them with very special children.

He turned their barrenness and grief into fruitfulness and joy.

They had all been “diagnosed” as barren, but God had better plans for each one of them and their offspring.

If God can do that for them, he can also do that today for anyone crying out to him for a child of their own.

In God’s creation, men and women are both made in the image of God and equal in God’s site.

The Journey does not hold any intentional double standards and tries to include and call women to lead in every capacity as men lead.

Women teach not just other women or children but men.

Women pray, read scripture, and do all roles in worship.

Women preach at The Journey, and men cook occasionally.

Women serve communion, speak over communion, lead ministries, take leads where men enjoy being quiet and seeing their spouses or single women to lead boldly.

So this should be an encouragement to anyone who might be praying for a child today, as God can overcome and heal a couple of any diagnosis of infertility.

Likewise, while there is no doubt that women are blessed, and that motherhood is a blessing to mankind, a woman’s worth is no longer found in just having children today.

Even though barren, women still have worth, value, and purpose, and the key is to just stay close to the Lord and trust in him at all times.

The Journey supports the #metoo movement, women seeking equal treatment in the workplace, women speaking out courageously against sexual harassment and any other form of abuse.

We the men also speak out, and men should not sit idly by one more single day while women are once again blamed for being victims of crimes against their bodies and souls.

Men, it’s a complex world and the Bible never once says “the woman’s place is in the home,” it’s simply not in there, and that value was a product of a middle to rich class of Christians in the United States after the 1950s who perpetuated this idea as a luxurious value that feared women in the workplace would take jobs of men.

I don’t really think the men opposing this were really that interested in the children.

The Journey supports women working and men changing diapers and helping drop off and pick up kids from school, reading to them at night and men teaching by modeling to children how to wash the dishes.

I am a male feminist and I love my wife, my daughters, and I want to see not only the best for them but the best for every one of the women in this church, and if there’s something this church does uniquely better than any other church I know, it’s that women are empowered, not by me or any other man, but by God Almighty who has empowered them from the beginning with the spark of the divine and giftedness, and if we’re ever going to be a light to the world as the church again in this dark and confused age, by God Almighty we’re going to have to be one in proclaiming that women are just as competent, gifted, and ready to lead and grow the kingdom of God as men, and it’s going to take this workforce of 50% additional workers in the kingdom if we’re going to fill the world with God’s love.

No the biblical world, and cultures across the world, women work