Sermon Tone Analysis

Intro to Psalms and Samuel

Kings and triumphs, failures and anxiety.

The book of Psalms starts off with a beautiful poem about the difference between living righteously and living wickedly.

This Psalm has been one of my favorites for a long time.

My senior year of high school I drew a picture of a tree on the front of my Bible because I found this Psalm to be so helpful and encouraging in my life.

As Christians it is important to think carefully about how we live and behave.

It is important to ask ourselves the questions, how does the way I am living reflect what Christ has done in my life?

Am I representing Christ in the way that I ought to?

It is important to remember that when we choose to follow Christ we become something completely new.

We don’t just change in part, we don’t learn new habits, we become new creations.

The old us is dead and the new us is alive.

The Lord has called us to walk in holiness, by the power and guidance of His Holy Spirit we are to walk in newness of life.

It is no longer us who lives but Christ who lives in us.

It shouldn’t surprise us that God calls us to act holy because that's exactly who He is.

He is holy.

We should expect that a God who is holy and created us to have relationship with Him would also call us to be holy.

The Lord cares a great deal about how we think and behave.

Our first story in Samuel is about a woman named Hannah.

Hannah lived in a towards the end of a time period in Israel’s history known as the time of the Judges.

This was about a 400 year gap between the days of Moses and Joshua and the days of the Kings.

During this time we see Israel not walking under one clear ruler, although they had God to lead them, Israel began to do what was right in their own eyes.

Israel would sin and turn from God, God would allow an outside power to take over, Israel would call out for deliverance, and God would supply a Judge to deliver them.

This cycle would repeat over and over again.

It gave us characters like Samson and Gideon.

But with each generation Israel grew worse and worse.

This is why the story of Hannah is so inspiring.

Here she is surrounded by wickedness but she remains faithful to the Lord.

The story begins with a man named Elkanah who came from the hill country of Ephraim.

He had two wives, the first named Hannah and the second named Peninnah.

Peninnah had children while Hannah was childless.

Every year the man and his family would go up from their town to worship and sacrifice to the Lord in Shiloh.

Here a man named Eli and his two sons Hophni and Phinehas served as the Lord’s priests.

Elkanah was a good husband.

When he offered a sacrifice he always gave a portion of meat to his wife Peninnah and each of his sons and daughters but to his wife Hannah he gave a double portion.

He loved her despite the fact that she couldn’t bear any children for him.

In the ancient world a woman’s value was determined by whether or not they could bear children, and we see this play out in stories like Abraham and Sarah with their son Isaac, Jacob and Rachel with their sons Joseph and Benjamin, and Zacharias and Elizabeth with their son John the Baptist.

Like these other women, Hannah could not have children and so the book of Samuel tells us her rival, Peninnah, would taunt her relentlessly.

Year after year they would go up to Shiloh Peninnah would taunt her severely to provoke her.

Hannah would weep and would not eat.

Hannah went home to her town of Ramah and before long Elkanah and Hannah had their very own child.

God had given her a son and she named him Samuel because she had “requested him from the Lord”.

Hannah then remained faithful to her promise.

She weaned Samuel and when she had done it she took him to Shiloh along with other items for an offering.

She brought the boy to Eli and gave the boy to him.

Imagine you’re Hannah.

You have wanted a child your whole life.

You’ve done everything you could.

You’ve begged, wept, prayed.

God finally answers your prayer and all you can think to do is give it back to Him.

In the scope of the book of Samuel this story is often forgotten.

Yet here in this little town of Shiloh we see one of the most authentic expressions of worship and sacrifice ever recorded in Scripture.

Hannah offers to the Lord this gift of Samuel knowing that the giver of that gift was far more worthy to be praised.

When I first began preparing what this semester would look like I felt like the Lord was leading me and us as a student ministry to take a step back and look at what it means to be worshipers.

That is why we did the night of worship that is why we are doing the book of Psalms.

As I prepared I wanted to tell the story of 1 Samuel along with some of the Psalms to help give historical context to the Psalms we study each week.

If you don’t learn anything else about worship from this entire semester I want you to remember this story of Hannah.

She loved and trusted the Lord when things were not going her way and she loved and trusted the Lord when things were going her way.

More than that she was willing to give everything she held dear to the Lord because He was worthy of it.

Will you find the Lord worthy of your worship and devotion in the same way Hannah did?

When things don’t go how you planned will you trust Him?

Will you give back to the Lord all that He has given you?

Your hobbies?

Your time?

Your friendships?

Your life?

Listen to this prayer of Hannah in chapter two.

We find in these first few pages of Samuel and of Psalms that true worshippers worship in the way they live their lives.

Where do you spend your time?

What kind of people do you seek advice from?

What kind of friends do you have?

Do they encourage you to do what is right?

Verse 1 gives us some helpful wisdom about living righteously.

Doing what is right is a blessing

It can keep us out of harms path

It guards our heart against sin

It helps us grow in our trust and obedience to the Lord

The longer we associate with sin the more familiar we become with it (walking to standing to sitting)

Sin is a slippery slope that leads to destruction

How many times have you seen a person’s life get completely blown up because they were living in sin?

I experienced it first hand with my dad (talk a bit about your story)

I have spent a lot of my life afraid I will make the same mistakes my dad made, but what I have found is that this Psalm tells me everything I need to know about staying faithful

Christ offers redemption and hope for a life of Godliness and by His grace He has shown us how through His Word.

There is nothing more beautiful in this world than God’s word.

Think about the most beautiful things this world has to offer, sunsets, flowers, people, experiences.

All these things will pass away.

Here one day gone another, but the Word of God will never pass away.

The word of God is beautiful because it tells the story of our redemption.

How even though we fall short of God’s holy standard, He has made a way for us to have new life in Him through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.

You might say the word of God is beautiful because the Word of God became flesh.

Fully God yet fully man.

He came and made His place amongst His sinful creation yet He Himself was without sin.

Jesus lived a sinless life but He died a sinner’s death.

He rose on the third day victorious over sin and death.

And with all authority He offers that forgiveness to us freely by grace through faith in Christ alone.

That is worth delighting in.

That is worth meditating on.

We live holy lives not out of obligation but out of joy and thanksgiving for what Jesus has done for us (God’s word causes us to delight)

We hunger for the word so we can learn all we can about who God is and how we can honor Him.

What does it mean to meditate on the word?

How important is it that we aren’t just readers of the word but students of the word?