Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] What a joy to be together today. Amen. Amen.
[00:00:07] Just think, you too can join our creative team and get roasted by the people leading us in prayer.
[00:00:15] Just think, what a choice. Served the Lord.
[00:00:21] Oh, man. Guys, I'm excited for today. We are doing something new today that we don't always get to do, which is we are starting a series in a new book of the Bible today, which is pretty cool.
[00:00:34] Hopefully on your way in, you got one of those Bible journals for first and second Samuel. That is our gift to you. You don't have to use it, but our kind of hope and our prayer is that that would be a space where you can take notes on sermons, but also that as we're going through this book, that you'll be engaging it in your devotional life and have some spots to. To write down and consider what the Lord might be telling you. If you don't know this.
[00:00:56] At Emmanuel Fellowship Church, we're pretty passionate about what's called expositional preaching. And what that means is in general, when a sermon is delivered at our church, it's because we've selected a specific text of scripture and we're digging into it and expounding on it and asking the Spirit to speak to us through that text. And the way that happens most often is that we pick books of the Bible and go through them verse by verse.
[00:01:22] And we do that for a very specific reason. We believe that as Christians, we need to be informed by the Holy Spirit through the whole council of Scripture. Right. That we can't just zone in on the texts and verses that are comforting to us, but we need to let the whole Word speak the whole truth of God into our life. And going verse by verse through books of the Bible helps us to do that. We just finished an incredibly long time, the Gospel of Matthew, and we're, we're starting first and second Samuel today, and I fear we'll be here a long time. And the reason for that is this. We don't just do expositional sermons of verse by verse through books of the Bible. Pretty much every sermon we preach is text driven. But we, we pause several times a year and go through topical series. And in those series, we grab particular themes, still text driven, still expositional, but. But we grab specific themes or ideas that we want to see our church grow in. And so we don't just go hammering through the books, we go through the book pause, go through the book pause. So it takes a while. One of my prayers, seriously, this is not a joke, is that God would allow me to Preach the entire Bible to Minga Fellowship Church before I die. And I'm not sure we'll get there.
[00:02:36] I'm not sure we'll get there, but I'm trying, I promise.
[00:02:40] I'm so excited for us to get into first and Second Samuel. You may be asking, of all the books in the Bible, why this one? Well, the reason is obvious. We just finished Matthew. That was in the New Testament. Old Testament needs a turn. That's how it goes. Everyone takes turns and we go back and forth. No, but beyond that. That is part of the reason. But beyond that, beyond that, first and Second Samuel, which is one book by the way, we separate it, but it was written as one book. First and Second Samuel has some themes in it that are really rich and gospel centric, but I think are really timely for us.
[00:03:13] First and Second Samuel is primarily about the movement from Israel's history as a tribal confederation to a unified monarchy. I know, incredibly interesting, but what that means is that thematically, Samuel is really about the kingship of God.
[00:03:32] It is about his sovereignty, his authority, and very specifically, his kingship.
[00:03:38] We'll see back and forth over the course of this book what it looks like that God is our true authority and the earthly authorities are commanded by God to represent him to us.
[00:03:52] And as we all know, for the most part, they're pretty bad at that. Right.
[00:03:57] And so I think we're going to be pointed to Christ, our true king, in some really powerful ways. As we move through this book, we've taken First Samuel and broken it into kind of micro series based on some of the themes within the book. And so the first one we're stepping into, we're calling simply Faithful. This will take us to the first seven chapters of First Samuel. And what we're going to see in this first chunk of the book is the idea that our circumstances don't get to define our peace in life, our relationship with the Lord, our joy, and ultimately our faithfulness. What we'll see in this is that biblically speaking, faithfulness can often be defined as simply trusting Lord when our circumstances are pretty bad.
[00:04:44] It was one of the simplest, most concrete ways to see faith in Scripture is when people look beyond their circumstances and can see and trust and experience God's goodness.
[00:04:57] And so I'm really excited for us to dig into this as we launch out today.
[00:05:03] We're starting in this small series. My main point is going to be pretty simple because we're in a pretty simple, if not brutal, chunk of text these first few weeks. My main point Is this.
[00:05:14] God meets us in our despair.
[00:05:18] That's where we're starting. Happy Sunday. Good to see you guys. It's been a good week for you. Let's. Let's jump into the word together, right? But what that really is. That's where we're starting today.
[00:05:27] God meets us in our despair.
[00:05:32] Now, on some level, theologically, abstractly like that may seem like a really obvious statement, right? Of course God is good. He meets us in our despair because I think it's something we need to say often and say loudly as brothers and sisters in Christ, as Christians, because the reality is all of us suffer and all of us eventually despair.
[00:05:59] There is no one in this room so strong, so optimistic, so godly, so disciplined, so righteous that we have not at one time or another, been conquered by our circumstances and our suffering and found ourselves in despair. Amen.
[00:06:17] It is a true part of living in this broken and sinful world. And how many of us, upon finding our circumstances full of hopelessness, full of sorrow, full of bitterness, full of anger, immediately forget God's presence, Right?
[00:06:36] Good church folk who know the gospel, who have spiritual disciplines, who meet with the Lord, who raise their hands and worship on Sunday, and yet how easy is it when life is painful, when life is difficult, to see our circumstances and miss the presence of God?
[00:06:56] I mean it honestly, guys, like, it's actually a very natural idea.
[00:07:02] Some of you are there today, some of you are there right now.
[00:07:05] It's very natural in the midst of your suffering to say, why doesn't God change my circumstances?
[00:07:12] He cares about me so much.
[00:07:15] If the Bible's teaching about his love is true, why is this world so harsh?
[00:07:21] Why is life so difficult? Where is the love of God in the middle of my suffering?
[00:07:27] It's a very natural question. And if that resonates with you at all today, and I believe the word of the Lord is going to be a balm of healing on your heart today.
[00:07:36] Pray with me. We're going to start digging through this. Jesus.
[00:07:41] We need you today, Lord.
[00:07:44] We need you to be our Savior, our Lord, our Father, our comforter.
[00:07:52] Lord, for those in this room today who drug themselves over the threshold, who have learned how to present ourselves strong and capable, who are doing everything we can to ignore that facet of our life that tears down our heart and leaves us in despair, who have figured out how to present correctly amongst our friends and brothers and sisters so as to avoid facing our pain.
[00:08:22] Jesus, we pray that you would be present with us today.
[00:08:28] Lord, we know you're present.
[00:08:30] But we ask today specifically that you would cut through the noise of our minds and our hearts and allow us to experience your presence.
[00:08:39] To know you are with us. To know you are good. To know you are our comfort. To know you are our life.
[00:08:44] To remember that you are our redemption.
[00:08:48] Jesus speak hanging to hurting hearts today. We need you for this spirit. So we pray it in your name, Jesus.
[00:08:54] Amen.
[00:08:56] Amen. We're going to be in First Samuel chapter one today. If you want to go ahead and turn there in your Bibles, if you don't have, if you somehow manage to get this far without a deacon putting a Bible in your hand, there are Bibles around the room. You can look under the chairs in front of. You really believe in the importance of access to God's word here at Emmanuel. So we strongly encourage you. If you don't own a Bible, let us know. We will make sure you have one. That it is. That is at least nice enough. We're in First Samuels chapter one today. While you turn there, it's okay to use the table of contents. There's no shame in that game. While you turn there, let me set up the scene historically. Remember, we are in the Old Testament. And I know this is going to sound basic to some of you, but like, let's just all agree to just step into this with fresh eyes, right? We're in the Old Testament. That means before Jesus, right? Like, he's not on the scene yet. In this part of the Bible, the narrative centers around ancient Israel as a people group.
[00:09:55] They're God's chosen people and they are a covenant community. That's a Bible way of saying God himself has promised to live in a very specific and defined relationship with the people of Israel. After freeing them from slavery in Egypt, God met with Israel through the prophet Moses at Mount Sinai. And he made a covenant with them.
[00:10:17] He defined their relationship. They DTR'd with the Creator of the universe, which is pretty intense. But he did.
[00:10:24] They are his people.
[00:10:26] He will live with them, literally live amongst them in the tabernacle. He will guide them. He will bless them if.
[00:10:36] If they follow his laws and live in holiness.
[00:10:41] For those of us who live after Christ, in the time of a covenant of grace, it can be hard to wrap our minds around this truth.
[00:10:50] But you have to understand when you're reading the Old Testament, Israel lived with a very literal sense of blessing and curse from God.
[00:10:59] A very literal and immediate sense of blessing and curse. In Deuteronomy 28, at the end of his life, Moses describes in Detail. It's in the last speech he gives to Israel before he dies. He describes in detail the covenant they've made and the necessity of them following the covenant of living in holiness, living set apart, of obeying God and seeking him. And in Deuteronomy 28, specifically, he lists out in detail the blessings Israel will receive from following God. And it is practical stuff. He says things like, if you live into this covenant, God will deliver you from the wilderness into a promised land to call your own for generation upon generation. And in that land, he will make you successful.
[00:11:46] You'll have lots of kids, your crops will grow, your flocks will flourish, your armies will win, your cities will be built up. He even goes so far as to say, your bread will taste better than everyone else's.
[00:11:58] Which, I gotta say, that's a pretty stinking awesome blessing to have. As a carb guy myself, thank you, Lord, for thinking about the sandwich quality in Israel.
[00:12:08] But then he goes on to say, but if you break my covenant, every blessing will turn into a curse.
[00:12:16] I will take away your land from generation to generation. Your crops will fail, your cities will fall, your armies will be defeated. You will be childless, your bread will be bad. That's actually part of it. It's a real thing.
[00:12:32] Because every single blessing I give you will turn into a curse if you break my covenant. It's pretty intense.
[00:12:38] It's pretty heavy.
[00:12:40] God's relationship with Israel is defined in immediate and physical experiences, right?
[00:12:49] I mean, that's, that's, that's pretty heavy.
[00:12:52] And guys, for us today, like, it's kind of hard to just remember that, that Israel lived with an immediate and literal understanding of the covenant blessings. By the way, it's really important to notice, to note, God has always been a God of grace, right? It's not like he had a mean covenant back then, and now he has a nice covenant through Jesus. He's always been a God of grace. In fact, at the very end of Deuteronomy 28, he says, look, when you get tired of the curses, because you will, because they'll be bad when you get tired of them.
[00:13:22] All you have to do is just return to me in repentance and I'll restore all the blessings. There's no rigmarole, there's no trap, there's no whatever. Just when you're tired of the curses, come back to me in repentance so you can have all the blessings backed. He's always been a God of grace. You have to remember that piece. But regardless, what we find in this era of redemptive history, often called the era of the Judges, First Samuel picks up in the last generation of the Judges, is that Israel is really bad at keeping this covenant.
[00:13:55] Basically, as soon as Moses and Joshua die, as soon as that generation of leadership dies, the entire country goes, nah, we're gonna do what we want. And if you read the Book of Judges. The Book of Judges is just a story of generational descent where each passing generation, Israel gets worse and worse and worse and worse to where by the time you get to the end of Judges, and even the men of God, even the religious and holy leaders are terrible, awful, horrible people who you should never listen to.
[00:14:24] The last Judge who gets a story in Judges is Samson. And despite what your Sunday school memories may tell you, Samson's not a superhero or a good guy. He's a cautionary tale of how God can use even terrible, awful people to accomplish his purposes. Right?
[00:14:43] So when we step into First Samuel, we're stepping into this era of Israel's history that's incredibly dark. The end of Judges sums it up by saying this. At that time, Israel had no king, and everyone did whatever the heck they wanted.
[00:14:56] That sounds kind of punk rock on the surface, but it's actually meant in a terrible way.
[00:15:03] No one in Israel is consistently following the Lord.
[00:15:07] It's the Wild West.
[00:15:09] There's no healthy authority. There's no healthy structure. It's chaos. Everyone is doing what they want, and it's brutal.
[00:15:16] And that's where our text picks up.
[00:15:19] So read with me first Samuel 1. Starting in the first verse, we read this.
[00:15:25] There was a man from. Oh, gosh.
[00:15:29] Ramathaim Zophem. That's the only time I have to say that ever.
[00:15:35] Ramathaim Zopham.
[00:15:37] In the hill country of Ephraim.
[00:15:39] His name was Elkanah, son of Jirham, son of Elihu, son of Tohu, son of Zuf, an Ephraimite.
[00:15:47] He had two wives, the first named Hannah and the second named Penanah.
[00:15:52] Penana had children, but Hannah was childless.
[00:15:55] This man would go up from his town every year to worship and to sacrifice to the Lord of armies at Shiloh, where Eli's two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, were the Lord's priests. That was so many names to shove into three verses. But we're past it.
[00:16:11] Samuel opens by introducing us to this man named Elkanah and his fame.
[00:16:16] Now, we immediately get some information here. First, we know that Elkanah is from the land of Ephraim. It's important to note this is kind of a dumb thing, but it's actually kind of important. It's important to note that. That Elkanah is not an Ephraimite by tribal affiliation. He. He's an Ephraimite by geographical location. And so what. What. What that means is this. In Joshua, when the land was divided up amongst the 12 tribes, the tribe of Levi wasn't given a tribal allotment. Their. Their inheritance was to serve the Lord. And so they were divided up into cities spread throughout the other tribal territories. And this is a weird little nuance of the Hebrew that just doesn't translate well into English. And this is one of the only times in the whole scripture it comes up. Normally when the Bible says the Ephraim, it means someone of the tribe of Ephraim, but this specifically is referring to one of those cities allotted for the Levites. Elkanah is a Levite who lives in the land of Ephraim. And so he's an Ephraimite by geography, not by tribe. Sounds silly, but it's actually important for where the text goes.
[00:17:16] So Elkanah is a Levite, and he is, we're told pretty quickly, he's. He's a wealthy man.
[00:17:23] Only men who were wealthy and established would have their name connected to four generations every time they're introduced. That's a pretty normative thing back then.
[00:17:31] But beyond that, he also has two wives.
[00:17:34] This is a definite sign of wealth in this day because Jewish husbands were expected to actually care for the needs of their whole family. You couldn't marry multiple wives if you couldn't afford it. That does leave us with a weird discomfort as modern readers, right? Kind of like, well, okay, because Samuel's trying to tell. Samuel's using this as a way of saying, hey, this dude, he had a lot of money. Okay? He had no problem having two wives. But we kind of stop and go, yeah, but he shouldn't have had two wives, Right? Like that's a bad thing. And that. This is a weird little piece of digging into the Old Testament that you kind of have to wrap your head around. There's a couple different of these cultural pieces that come up as you study scripture. We know clearly that the scripture teaches that marriage is defined by God as being eaten between one man and one woman for one lifetime.
[00:18:18] The scripture teaches that over and over and over, Jesus affirms that. We know that is the commandment of scripture. And yet throughout scripture, especially the Old Testament, we see polygamy practiced often.
[00:18:31] And you'll never really see it outright condemned.
[00:18:34] A couple times it is. Very specifically, it's commanded that the king of Israel is not allowed to have more than one wife, which is interesting. We'll talk about that a lot in the coming months.
[00:18:44] But in general, most of the people, like the big names who are wealthy in the Old Testament, if they're guys, they have more than one wife, which is pretty wild. And the Bible seems to describe that as incredibly foolish.
[00:18:57] Incredibly foolish.
[00:18:59] Polygamy is never described in a positive sense in the entire Old Testament. It's always described as being something foolish that causes problems, which leads us as modern readers, to go, why didn't God just say, don't do that? Like, that's bad. Don't do that one.
[00:19:13] I have no idea.
[00:19:15] That's kind of weird. It's a weird. It's a weird piece of it. The Bible gives us a positive command. This is what marriage is. Shows us a lot of examples of people who didn't follow that command. Talks about how foolish they were for not following it, but never just stops and says, that was a sin for them to do that.
[00:19:31] Which is. It's just interesting. And honestly, it probably just speaks to the cultural bias within which these books were written. Right. Polygamy was. Was beyond the norm. It was considered a good thing, a sign of wealth, a sign of prosperity, a sign of wisdom in the ancient Near East. And so it honestly probably didn't occur to the people who wrote these things down to stop and go, that's bad.
[00:19:54] Instead, they just paint to us how foolish it ends up being, which is just as helpful. Okay. Anyway, Okana has two wives.
[00:20:03] And what's interesting here is the text is going out of its way to let us know that, generally speaking, he is a godly man with a godly family.
[00:20:11] This part is important.
[00:20:13] Remember, this is the time of the Judges.
[00:20:16] Israelites generally do whatever the heck they want to do, and very few of them are faithfully following God. In fact, Judges. By the way, this is part of why it's important that Elkanah is a Levite. Judges ends. The last story in Judges is about a Levite who is so apostate that he does horrific things and leads Israel to a civil war where they almost slaughter one of the tribes into extinction.
[00:20:38] The Judges ends by showing how far Israel has fallen, and Samuel picks up by going, but here's at least one Levite who honored God. Here's one guy. He even went. He even went down to Shiloh where the tabernacle was, and he would offer sacrifices and feast once a year. And she left kind of going, okay, okay, cool. That's. That's great. Like, yeah, there's at least someone in the midst of all this Wild west chaos who's pursuing God. But there's one blot in this picture of this family, happy family. One of Elkanah's wives, Hannah, is barren.
[00:21:13] She can have no children.
[00:21:15] Now, I have to stop here for a minute. I know I'm stopping a lot, and this is kind of the deal with the Old Testament. You got to stop a lot more and dig through some of these cultural pieces.
[00:21:24] But I want to talk for a few minutes very openly about barrenness and fertility.
[00:21:30] And I need you to hear this before I talk about this.
[00:21:33] I understand that this is a deeply painful issue for many of us in the room. I know some of you guys have wrestled through the pain and sorrow and infertility. I know some of you are in that struggle right now.
[00:21:45] And if that's you, I need you to hear this from me.
[00:21:48] God sees you. The church family sees you. We love you. We are with you.
[00:21:54] You are not condemned. You are not alone.
[00:21:57] This is a real thing, a heavy thing.
[00:22:00] And I'm going to talk about this from a very specific historical and theological perspective. And I need you to not project this onto yourself, because Hannah was living in a very specific moment with a very specific theological context that made her experience of this different than yours.
[00:22:19] You need to hear that.
[00:22:20] There's nothing that's going to be said in this sermon that is condemning anyone in this room who is struggling with fertility, but there is a piece here we have to talk about historically, and that's this.
[00:22:31] Hannah's barrenness was both her shame and her sorrow.
[00:22:37] She lived in a moment of history where a woman's worth and security were found solely in. In her children.
[00:22:46] Remember, this is a day when women have no education, they're not allowed to own property, they're not allowed to work outside of their immediate family.
[00:22:54] Every family was a family business in an Israel that mostly meant agricultural work, which means more children, means more workers, means more business, means more money.
[00:23:04] Children were also your social safety net in a world with no retirement and no health care.
[00:23:09] Hannah's infertility created a very real and practical problem for her and her entire family.
[00:23:17] So much so that infertility was legal grounds for divorce amongst Jews at this time because it caused such a burden on the family.
[00:23:27] But there's even a step beyond this.
[00:23:30] Remember, these are Israelites living under God's covenant, right, One of God's covenant blessings, specifically listed in Deuteronomy 28 is fertility.
[00:23:43] One of the curses specifically listed was infertility.
[00:23:47] For the ancient Israelites, infertility was considered a very literal and immediate sign of broken covenant, broken relationship with God. If you were infertile, the ancient Israelites considered it primarily a spiritual issue.
[00:24:04] What have you done to break covenant with the Lord?
[00:24:09] And why are you not restoring yourself to him?
[00:24:12] Why are you not seeking to rebuild your covenant?
[00:24:16] This is on you.
[00:24:19] What had Hannah done to break covenant? Why didn't she simply repent and return to God? After all, her husband's such a godly man, right?
[00:24:28] This is a heavy and painful situation that we find Hannah engrossed him, but it's actually worse than that.
[00:24:37] So read on with me.
[00:24:40] Verse 4.
[00:24:44] Whenever Elkanah offered a sacrifice, he always gave portions of the meat to his wife Peninnah, and to each of her sons and daughters. But he gave a double portion to Hannah, for he loved her. Even though the Lord had kept her from conceiving, her rival would taunt her severely just to provoke her. Because the Lord had kept Hannah from conceiving year after year, when she went up to the Lord's house, her rival taunted her in this way. Hannah would weep and would not eat.
[00:25:12] Hannah, why are you crying? Her husband Elkanah would ask. Why won't you eat? Why are you troubled? Am I not better to you than 10 sons?
[00:25:19] On one occasion, Hannah got up after they ate and drank in Shiloh, the priest Eli was sitting on a chair by the doorpost of the Lord's temple.
[00:25:28] Deeply hurt, Hannah prayed to the Lord and wept with many tears. Making a vow, she pleaded, lord of armies, if you will take notice of your servant's affliction, remember and not forgive me. Give your servant a son.
[00:25:41] I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life, and his hair will never be cut. And while she continued praying in the Lord's presence, Eli watched her mouth.
[00:25:51] Hannah was praying silently, and though her lips were moving, her voice could not be heard.
[00:25:56] Eli thought she was drunk and said to her, how long are you going to be drunk? Get rid of your wine.
[00:26:03] Well, this section is gut wrenching to read in the middle.
[00:26:09] Of all the internal turmoil Hannah experiences, we find that she is failed by basically every relationship that should be supporting her, right?
[00:26:22] First, we're told that her rival taunts her.
[00:26:25] Now, besides being an apologetic for why polygamy is such a foolish idea, this is such a failure of how Hannah should have been treated.
[00:26:34] Penanda builds up this habit of mocking and provoking Hannah about her barrenness. This annual trip to the tabernacle to worship moves for Hannah from being a time of celebration and worship to a dreaded time of sorrow and despair.
[00:26:51] This happens year after year. You know, Leviticus tells us that sin offerings could not be eaten. They were fully for the offering. And then any leftover was given to the priest. The only offering that the family could eat was a Thanksgiving offering, a worship offering.
[00:27:10] And so we infer from this is that Elkanah has built a habit of bringing his whole family to the tabernacle to worship and celebrate God's faithfulness and to eat a feast in celebration in thanksgiving of his caretaking for them.
[00:27:26] And this is likely why Pen took the opportunity to mock Hannah.
[00:27:31] And you can imagine it.
[00:27:33] Oh, wow, Hannah. Here we are again, celebrating God's faithfulness to our family. He has blessed us so you can see all his covenant blessings in our family.
[00:27:43] The business is thriving, our crops are booming, our hearts are succeeding, our. Our herds are succeeding. Oh yeah, I'm pregnant again.
[00:27:52] God has really blessed our whole family.
[00:27:56] Except, well, you. You're obviously under God's curse, right?
[00:28:02] No covenant blessings for you.
[00:28:05] That's how this would have been culturally understood.
[00:28:08] And the text tells us that in these feasts, year after year, Hannah would be broken down by this and would come to tears and sorrows as she was ridiculed by her rival.
[00:28:21] Her enemy isn't the only person to make this situation worse. Right, like you expect that. But then her husband comes along and makes it worse as well.
[00:28:31] The text tells us that Elkanah would give her a double portion of the celebration meal. And you know, he's trying to honor her, to. To comfort her, but obviously that only rubbed it in.
[00:28:42] Our family is so blessed. Would you, Hannah, you just need a little extra.
[00:28:47] And he spoke comforts to her, almost certainly from a place of genuine love. Hannah, I love you. I don't care that you haven't given me children. I care for you. I love you. Isn't that enough? Which, by the way, is beautiful.
[00:29:01] But for anyone here who struggled with infertility, you know exactly how painful that would be.
[00:29:08] Her sorrow over her barrenness and God seeming curse upon her had nothing to do with her love for her husband.
[00:29:15] Of course she loves him.
[00:29:17] This is a different issue.
[00:29:19] She longs to be a mother, to carry and care for her own child, to add into her family rather than simply taking from it.
[00:29:28] And his well meaning comforts dig her further into despair.
[00:29:33] And the text tells us that at some point. Finally, the dam breaks, and she just can't take it.
[00:29:44] One year, during her normal sorrow, refusing to eat, weeping, being mocked, struggling with unhelpful comfort, she finally reaches her breaking point, and you can just imagine the scene.
[00:29:55] She starts sobbing and runs away from the feast table.
[00:29:59] Children and cousins and family and friends sitting around eating and smiling, penanas, smirking, enjoying her family. Elkanah sitting near her, trying to comfort.
[00:30:09] And she stands up and runs away.
[00:30:12] She can't take it for another second, and she sprints off to some seemingly empty part of the tabernacle and begins to sob her prayer to the Lord.
[00:30:24] And unbeknownst to her, the priest is there, watching.
[00:30:30] The text says she is deeply hurt, her heart is broken, she's bearing her soul to the Lord through her sobs.
[00:30:40] And when we see Eli as the reader, you get this moment of going, well, good, right? Like, here's a spiritual leader, here's some comfort for her.
[00:30:49] And Eli so misses the situation.
[00:30:52] It, by the way, speaks to the spiritual health of Israel at this time. That the priest's first assumption is that someone at the tabernacle is drunk is probably an issue they dealt with relatively often during feast days at this point.
[00:31:04] But he sees her and sees her praying silently through her sobs and assumes she's drunk and rebukes her.
[00:31:13] When will you stop getting drunk?
[00:31:16] I need you guys to see this moment.
[00:31:19] Sweet Hannah is at the absolute end of her rope, and she's been dramatically failed by everyone who should help her.
[00:31:27] Her rival, her enemy, mocks her, her husband offers false and unhelpful encouragement. Even her spiritual leader misses her need and rebukes her. In the midst of her despair, she is completely alone.
[00:31:41] But she comes to the Lord with her real heart.
