“Samuel: Intercession - Hannah’s Prayer”

Tonight, let us begin looking at Samuel. First, we will start with his mother’s prayer that led up to Samuel’s birth. I trust it will give us some practical insight for effective praying.

Last week we looked at Moses, the intercessor who stood in the breach, a man willing to trade his own life in exchange for the salvation of a nation.

And, now, Samuel would be the first of three great men (the other two being Saul and David) who Jehovah would use to reshape Israel’s history in its alignment toward His ultimate Thought. 

Samuel was to play a central role - in a God-ordained role to be a God-led servant, to be His instrument of His will in Israel’s midst.

Samuel’s birth was at the proper moment, the period when Israel was in a sad, spiritual, internal decline that caused  the Lord to step in.

The sons of Eli, the priest, at Shiloh where the ark of the covenant was kept, were corrupting the priesthood with their sinful practices. (1 Sam 2:11-17)

And Eli seemed powerless to deal with the problem, a condition that called for God’s intervention, as seen in the closing verses of chapter 2.

With this as the reason for Samuel’s entry upon the scene, there is this preparatory episode of Hannah’s part in Jehovah’s plan to use Samuel.

His birth was to be ‘activated’ by Hannah’s prayer.

It all began with the distress of this barren woman who prayed - really not knowing what she was actually praying for - when she yearned so hard and for so long for the Lord to give her a son.

But - please note, and consider wisely - that it is Jehovah - not Samuel, not Hannah, nor any of the other persons involved - but it is Jehovah alone Who is seen as the one principal, unifying Agent in all of the events in this narrative.

It was Jehovah Who closed her womb; it was because Elkanah, her husband, desired to worship and sacrifice yearly at Shiloh unto Jehovah that Hannah was there before the Lord; it was the Lord Who she petitioned; it was the Lord Who Eli invoked to grant her her desire; it was the Lord Who remembered Hannah and graciously answered her prayer; it was the Lord to Whom she dedicated Samuel; and it was Jehovah’s doing when Samuel began his earthly work under the Lord’s guiding hand.

And, after the answer to her insistent prayer came, she magnified and extolled the Lord with utterances about Him that probably puts most of us to shame. 

You can read that, if you like, in chapter 2, verses 1-10. 

It is a masterpiece of praise and worship unto the Lord - I urge you to read it through several times and just let it feed your mind and heart through the Holy Spirit.

It speaks of a whole catalog of reversals that are possible through the power of God: weakness made strength, the lowly made exalted, the hungry filled, the poor made rich, the barren given children.

It gives the certainty of God’s providential working and of His presence in human history.

At the end, God’s anointed one, the king, is the gift of God just as Samuel was to be to her.

I hope you will prayerfully read it through on your own.

It was her husband, Elkanah, who summed up well all of the Lord’s doings in this entire divine happening, in v 23, when he said to Hannah, ‘May the Lord establish His Word’, which - of course - was what He was doing all along. 

In the carrying out of the Lord’s ultimate Plan, Hannah demonstrated for us how Jehovah is the determining power toward His own purpose.

That is, there is a relationship between prayer and God’s work and rule in the earth.

The kind of prayer ministry the Church is called to is the prayer that brings with it the Lord’s intervention in His work and rule in the earth. 

It is that serious and that important!

And this is why this prayer of Hannah’s cannot be looked  upon as coming from an unknown, sniveling sort of character - bent only on her own way without including the Lord’s doing and His Being in its answer.
 
For His overall plan, the granting of a son to Hannah was linked with the future granting of a king to Israel, a fact of salvation history that is attached to God’s grand Thought of the bringing in of the royal line of His King/Son, Jesus Christ.

The Church’s work comes into play with this fact alone.

And for the rule in the individual heart, there is no question that Hannah was ignorant of what a tremendous part she played in the whole divine design of things.

On the surface, it could be considered a selfish prayer - a prayer that was meant to alleviate her suffering and grief so that her society would accept her in her capacity as a woman.  

But - it was in her persistence to overcome that obstacle and to include the Lord in the answer that we can make some discoveries that teach us about effective prayer and intercession - discoveries that were the rule in Hannah’s case and surely established His Word more soundly. 

And this is the reason we will look at this prayer tonight before going on to Samuel, which - Lord willing - we will start next week.

So - let us start with verse 9 in this episode in the first chapter of 1 Sam: “After they had eaten and drunk at Shiloh, Hannah presented herself before the Lord.”

Why did she do this? 

The reason is given in v 2: Peninnah, Elkanah’s second wife, had children while Hannah had none - she had been barren all that time. 

Hannah’s barrenness was looked upon as a sign of God’s rejection.

And this caused strain, and pressure for many years, the number of which is not given.

‘The Lord had closed her womb’. (v 5)

‘And’, in v 6, ‘because the Lord closed her womb, her rival (Peninnah) kept provoking her in order to irritate her.’

So - there was family tension, rivalry, between the two women.

Of course, to the Lord, it was not yet time for this child to be born, and it was important that this particular prayer at this particular time be prayed in God’s economy of time.

Having borne a child sooner before Samuel’s arrival would not have precipitated this important prayer.  

So, - there came that time when Hannah ‘presented herself’
before the Lord.

And - here - is where she made the right turn in her life.

The Lord was establishing His Word in Hannah as we see in 2:1, where she later said, ‘My heart rejoiceth in the Lord; mine horn is exalted...I rejoice in Thy salvation.’

She took the initiative to bring her case to the Lord, appealed to the Lord of hosts, wept before Him, in bitterness of her soul - in fact, wept bitterly in His presence. 

She turned to the Lord - her heart gravitated toward Him, toward His intervention in the problem - she saw the need to pray, and acted on it.

So, first we see that the Lord God Almighty established the need - there was no other way out but to depend on divine power, a power manifested in holiness and strength.

Next, notice her prayer in v 11, of chapter one, ‘O Lord God Almighty, if You will only look upon Your servant’s misery and remember me and not forget Your servant but give her a son, then I will..,’ - and she stipulated the conditions she would meet.

She ‘continued praying’ (v 12), she spoke in her heart  
(v 13), and poured out her soul before the Lord. (v 15)

‘Lord God, O Lord of hosts...’ take a look at my heart and ‘remember me’.

‘O Lord God...remember me’.

The natural law that kept her barren for so many years, that caused her the anguish of soul and heart, that made her the object of ridicule, that brought her to helplessness - these were her motives of action.

But - it was the ‘O Lord God’, ‘O most High’, that holy exercise of faith, that honest seeking for His mediation that the Lord honored.

Why would He honor her request?  

Her request was according to the divine design for the nation of Israel that God was ready to put into action.

Her heart’s desire was founded on His desire to make Samuel, the creation of prayer, His emissary in carrying onward His ultimate will.

Yes, He looked at her and her need: especially, at her need of getting things right within her being, first, if He did see something amiss.

It is from her song that we see this, especially in v 3, where there is a recognition that Jehovah weighs the actions of the proud and arrogant.

If deliverance from Him was being sought, she could not afford to harbor that within herself.

‘If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me’. (Psa 66:18)

Examine this with me for a moment. 

She prayed and she did it silently, with her whole heart into it.

Eli, who mistook her silent praying for being drunk, rebuked her for that.

Her reply to him corrected his assumption: ‘Not so’, she said, ‘but I am a woman who is deeply troubled.

I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I have been pouring out my soul before the Lord.

Do not regard your servant as a worthless woman, a wicked woman, for I have been praying out of my great anguish and grief, my great anxiety and vexation all this time.’

She admitted to being deeply troubled, which is translated ‘hard, obstinate, stubborn, sorrowful of spirit’, and her stature for so many years may verify this trait in her.

But, look again at ch 2:3 where she learned that ‘...the Lord is a God of knowledge, and by Him actions are weighed’ or ‘meted out’.

It was in the ‘pouring out of her soul’ that gave the indication that there was something deep happening within her, a working upon her heart.  

Now - perhaps - as it is so true in this foundation law of the Christian prayer system, - much may have had to be done in Hannah’s heart - possibly rubbish that established a root of bitterness, perhaps an angry spirit with loose and irreverent lips, or perhaps some unsettled scores with Peninnah - in other words, SIN - that needed to be dethroned and rooted out in order to perfume the sacrifice of her prayer with genuine love, love in her inward parts.

Only by refering to the song that followed can we dare to infer this.

We do know that the Lord started in plenty of time, for it had been a ‘year after year’ happening - which had its effect.

And - we can assume that Hannah’s innermost being was being watched by the Lord since she - as all of the Lord’s people - lived under this same spiritual system of our Lord’s redemptive action.

Please believe me - when I say this - we are all plagued with a ‘Hannah problem’ - we all have that obstinate, stubborn spirit hidden deep within us, that holds us to self-seeking, to pride, and to the vanities of life.

Hannah was no exception to this rule - and neither are we!

But, also let it be known, that this quest - for relief from pain and sorrow, for new and better conditions - effectively foreshadowed Israel’s objections to the way things were and for its request for a king.

This would be the self-same problem that Samuel - Hannah’s son soon-to-be - would need to face, as well, when the time arrived. 

The Lord would honor her request as the Lord saw her heart, and the answer to her request would work in line with His ultimate purpose.

‘...He that searches the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because He maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God.’ (Rom 8:27)

Therefore, we do know that our Lord uses the need for prayer as a means for the cleansing and preparation of the heart and for the establishing of His Word.

Along with this, we can also discover something about praying within her own heart: her silence as she prayed says much.

Did you notice that she kept her request before the Lord alone - according to this record, Eli did not know the content of her petition. 

But - she kept her petition so locked in her heart that even her own husband, apparently, was not aware of her heart’s desire.

Later on she could tell them in v 27: ‘For this child I prayed; and the Lord hath given me my petition which I asked of Him.’

She kept her secret between the Lord and herself - a good place to be, especially since, unbeknown to Hannah, it was so perfectly aligned with His desire.

She did not have the faintest idea of what God was doing in all of this.

Would any of us have known?

Do any of us have any idea of what the Lord is doing many times?

Sometimes, we think we know, but it is only our Lord Who searches out the deep things of the heart and knows its beginnings from its endings.

For - you see - we really do not always understand what the Lord is doing in any of us, except that we know He is doing, and we are willingly submitting to Him every step of the way in it - at least, I would hope we are all willingly submitting to Him in the secret of our own hearts.

For it is at that place and time that all the rubbish of the putrid self is being slowly uprooted and swept away altogether so that His answer to prayer reaches us within our barren selves first and it becomes pregnant with the rivers of living waters that are to flow out in prayer ministry.

Hannah kept the content of the secret of her heart where it belonged - in the secret place of the Most High - that is where His glory would be known.

It is there that the Lord is able to keep it in His possession to do with it as He pleases in carrying forth His will.

It needs to be learned there first and then carried over to corporate prayer.

Sad to say, there have been, and are, times when corporate prayer is taken from out of the Lord’s hands once it has been placed there and carelessly spread over the earth where it is trampled to nothingness.

That destroys the effectiveness of prayer. I pray this is driven home in the Church so that when we pray, the Lord will be given full opportunity to respond accordingly.

Jesus’ warning was not for nought when He said: ‘But thou, when thou prayest, enter into the closet, and shut the door, and pray to the Father in secret. And thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly.’ (Matt.6:6)

He had a good reason for it - may we discover it quickly, and let His Word become solidly established!

How right Hannah was to pray in this quietness and in confidence to the Most High God Who made her secret place blossom with peace.

That was her strength. 

She finally laid her problem aside and left it in the hands of her Lord.

She came to rest in Him. 

Eli’s departing words of benediction indicated that she had been given peace by the Lord and she ‘went to her quarters, ate, and drank with her husband, and her face was no longer downcast.’ (v 18)
  
What a change that had taken place - beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness...’ - who could ask for more?

And, finally, there is another discovery to make: Hannah followed up on her granted petition - she returned to the Lord what He had given to her.

The prayer response to God’s gifts is to dedicate them back to the Lord.

Grace - when we receive it - brings new life with it, and that is given back in the form of worship, of praise, of adoration, of delight in the Lord - just as Hannah did in chapter 2.

Samuel belonged to the Lord.

She knew it even before he was to be born, or she would not have prayed as she did.

‘For his whole life, he will be given over to the Lord’, she said. (v 28)

Little did she know, in her prayer and in her giving him back to the Lord, the far-reaching effect of what she did.

The kingly line of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, would be incorporated into Israel’s history, as a result of her prayer.

Thus, Israel was once again given the opportunity to continue on in God’s program.

Samuel had become hers by her conscious faith and through him, a nation would be restored, and - eventually, - the Kingdom of God would come.

She did not know that particular fact but she followed her heart so that the Lord would be glorified in her child when she gave him back to the Lord.

This kept the channel open - a free-flowing, unclogged, unbroken connection between the Lord and herself so that He could send Samuel into this ordained work.

New life came out of barrennness. 

Hope rose from hopelessness.

Despair, anxiety, and vexation were changed to peace, rest, joyfulness, thanksgiving, and praise.

God remembered Hannah, but in that remembrance, He also remembered Israel, and all of mankind, and now, we - too - know the measure of His grace in Christ.

And - we are able to pray from the very depths of our hearts: 

‘Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. For Thine is the Kingdom and the Power, and the Glory, forever and ever, Amen - So be it.’

Song: ‘Praise God from Whom all blessings flow’ -

May the Lord bless you this week as you move these things before Him and find in Him the great joy in accepting and embracing His Word. Amen.