I Will Give Him To The LORD

So this morning, we're going to be stepping away from our study in the book of Deuteronomy to focus on motherhood. It's Mother's Day, and with the confusion surrounding mothers and fathers and what it means to be a mother and a father, if you should want to be a mother and a father, we think it's good each year when these days come up to take some time and focus on it for a Sunday. We're going to be reading a full chapter of Scripture for our sermon text this morning. I thought about reading two chapters, but I settled on just one. and it's the account of Hannah. Now, I actually want to know, do we like the account of Hannah? Do you like the account of Hannah? You think I like Hannah? No, I don't. Men, I'm not asking you. I'm asking your wives. Do you women like Hannah? Do you like Hannah? If you like Hannah, I'm surprised. You're sitting here with a look. Ruthann's like, no, I don't like the story of Hannah. Is that fair to say? I don't want to put words in your mouth. Ruthann doesn't like the story of Hannah. I think,

that as you grow as a mother, Hannah's story will become harder to read because it will become more and more real to you. Now, am I saying that Hannah's a bad woman? No, actually. You probably feel about Hannah about the way you feel about Proverbs 31, which is just like, I can't do that. And yet the most helpful things are in that difficulty. And it's God's kindness that he gives us scriptures that don't just all go down smoothly, but that have some rough edges that need to be chewed on a little bit so that we can take them in and digest them. So this account's one of those accounts. Hannah's a hard story, I think, for mothers, especially as they grow more into their motherhood. It's a story of a barren woman having a child and then almost immediately, within a few years, giving that child up to the Lord.

and taking him to the temple to be raised there, where she comes and just visits him once a year and brings him a new coat or sweater or shirt for him. It's a hard story. Actually, there's other hard parts that we're going to come to as we read it. My hope this morning, though, as we read this passage and as we study it, is that God will help each one of us, and especially the mothers among us, to give our children to the Lord, just like Hannah did, even in less ideal circumstances. I do realize that not every woman that's here is a mother or has young children like Hannah. That does not mean the sermon's not for you. Here's the beauty about motherhood. Motherhood is just godly femininity in the context of motherhood. You don't have to have children to be like Hannah. Hannah's a godly woman who is demonstrating her godliness in the context in which we read about her, which is her barrenness and then having a child.

And so the things that are most essential in Hannah are necessary for all women of all ages, whether they're young and single and have not yet married, or whether they've raised children and are now grandparents. Hannah is a model to us, is an example to us of what a godly woman is. So we're going to be reading 1 Samuel chapter 1. We're going to read the whole chapter. Would you please stand now as we read this word from the Lord? From Ramathame, Zophim, from the hill country of Ephraim. And his name was Elkanah, the son of Jeroham, the son of Elihu, the son of Tohu, the son of Zuth, and Ephraimite. He had two wives. The name of one was Hannah, and the name of the other Penina. And Penina had children, but Hannah had no children. Now this man would go up from his city yearly to worship and to sacrifice to the Lord of hosts in Shiloh. And two sons of Eli.

Hophni and Phinehas were priests of the Lord there. When the day came after Elkanah had sacrificed, he would give portions to Penina, his wife, and all her sons and her daughters, but to Hannah he would give a double portion, for he loved Hannah, but the Lord had closed her womb. Her rival, however, would provoke her bitterly to irritate her because the Lord had closed her womb. It happened year after year. As often as she went up to the house of the Lord, She would provoke her. So she, referring to Hannah, would weep. So she wept and would not eat. Then Elkanah, her husband, said to her, Hannah, why do you weep and why do you not eat? And why is your heart sad? Am I not better to you than ten sons? Then Hannah rose after eating and drinking in Shiloh. And Eli the priest was sitting on the seat by the doorpost of the temple of the Lord. She, greatly distressed, prayed to the Lord and wept bitterly. She made a vow and said, O Lord of hosts,

If you will indeed look on the affliction of your maidservant and remember me, and do not forget your maidservant, but will give your maidservant a son, then I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life, and a razor shall never come on his head. Now it came about as she continued praying before the Lord that Eli was watching her mouth. As for Hannah, she was speaking in her heart. Only her lips were moving, but her voice was not heard. So Eli thought she was drunk. And Eli said to her, Let your maidservant find favor in your sight. So the woman went her way and ate, and her face was no longer sad. Then they arose early in the morning and worshipped before the Lord and returned again to their house in Ramah. And Elkanah had relations with his wife, and the Lord remembered her. It came about in due time, after Hannah had conceived, that she gave birth to a son, and she named him Samuel, saying, Because I have asked him of the Lord.

Then the man, Elkanah, went up with all his household to offer to the Lord the yearly sacrifice and to pay his vow. But Hannah did not go up. For she said to her husband, I will not go up until the child is weaned. Then I will bring him, that he may appear before the Lord and stay there forever. Elkanah, her husband, said to her, Do what seems best to you. Remain until you have weaned him. Only may the Lord confirm his word. So the woman remained and nursed her son until she weaned him. Now when she had weaned him, she took him up with her, with a three-year-old bull and one ephah of flour and a jug of wine, and brought him to the house of the Lord in Shiloh, although the child was young. Then they slaughtered the bull and brought the boy to Eli. She said, Oh, my Lord, as your soul lives, my Lord, I am the woman who stood here beside you praying to the Lord. For this boy I prayed, and the Lord has given me my petition, which I asked of him.

So I have also dedicated him to the Lord. As long as he lives, he is dedicated to the Lord. And he worshiped the Lord there. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. Now, there's a lot, a lot in this chapter. There's a lot about prayer. There's a lot about vows. There's a lot about marriage. There's a lot about husbandry. There's a lot about motherhood and femininity. I want to do a bit of a survey about Hannah. who she was, what she was like, what her life was like. The first thing we want to focus on about Hannah is that there are two things that were prominent, three really, in her life. The first was that she was loved. Her husband, Elkanah, loved her. You see this when Elkanah went and he'd make his sacrifices and he would come back and he would give his other wife, Penina, and her children food.

their portion. But for Hannah, he gave her a double portion. And the scripture says explicitly he did this because he loved her. Now, Hannah had a deficiency that she knew about, that everyone knew about. And it's a deficiency that I don't think we think of today. And her deficiency was that she couldn't have children. In our day, we think that children are something, it's like we treat them like a light switch. You just turn on the ability and you turn off the ability and you just do it when you want and how you want. And we don't think much about it. And when we do think about it, we think about it in terms of our being in control of it. But we're wrong. We're not the ones who are in control of it. Which is not to say you can't have any impact on it, but in the end, you're not the one who's controlled it. Hannah's barren. And she's barren because the Lord had closed her womb. And so it kind of loved her in spite of her barrenness. And that would have been one of the primary things that wives,

would have understood to be important to give would be children, and particularly sons. And so Elkanah loved Hannah in spite of her barrenness. This commends him to us. He's a good man. He's a good man. I think probably one of the most common snapshots of this story is when Elkanah says to her, what, am I not better to you than ten sons? And we look at it as though it's just like he's just saying this stupid thing. I don't think he's saying a dumb thing at all. I think he loves his wife, and I think he's caring for her and trying to comfort her. And you realize by her response that she was comforted by what he said. But barrenness, nevertheless, was a big deal in this time. Barrenness in the Old Testament was the sort of thing, one of the most common reasons that men would put away their wives or divorce them. If a woman couldn't give a man children, he would put her away. And the law deals explicitly with

how that man had to treat that woman and provide for her and take care of her. But it was not uncommon for men to do that. And it wasn't a good thing for them to do. I'm not commending that. Jesus tells us that they did that because of the hardness of their hearts. Nevertheless, barrenness was a big deal and not the sort of things that husbands would have appreciated in their wives. It's the kind of thing that would cause husbands to reject their wives and to put them away because they wanted heirs, they wanted sons. And so Elkanah was a good man. A faithful man. His love for his barren wife, Hannah, was rooted in his love for God. You see him going up faithfully each year to Shiloh to worship. And if we were to consider Shiloh a church, he went up and he went to church. Was Shiloh a good church? No, Shiloh was not a good church. Shiloh had Eli, the old patriarch, and then he had his sons, Hophni and Phinehas. They were the priests at Shiloh. These were not good men.

These were wicked men, unfaithful and deceitful and greedy. And you have to wonder, why did Elkanah go up and make sacrifices and worship yearly? It says year after year, every year he would go up, he would do this thing. It's like he had a priority, a principle about it. Why would he go up to such a place filled and led by such wickedness to worship? Well, it's because Elkanah loved the Lord and he wanted to serve the Lord and he understood that that was... He had a responsibility to do that. Now, we could consider for a moment what it takes to get people to come to church or to stay at a church or for what reasons they would leave a church these days. And compare it to Elkanah and to Hannah and realize that our commitment to worshiping the Lord is much lower than theirs in many cases. And as I said earlier, when he asked his wife, Hannah, is he not better to her than ten sons? You have to remember that the context of that is him giving her a double portion and her being sad after he's given Penina and her children their portion that's allotted to them. What was he doing in giving Hannah a double portion? Well, he was demonstrating his favoritism of her over Penina. And Penina had given him children. And so, in fact, what he was saying was, I favor you more than ten sons because I've given you a double portion. I've given them what's theirs.

But I'm giving you a double portion. You're better to me than the sons and daughters that I have with her. He was a good man. She was better to him than Penina. Now, we have to ask, what was it about Hannah that caused her husband to favor her? What was it? Well, we'll come to that question in a minute. Before we do, though, I want to talk a little bit about her barrenness. Her barrenness was the root of her grief and her sorrow. And it was exacerbated and made worse by her rival. Penina would mock her and make fun of her. It says that she would provoke Hannah bitterly to irritate her because the Lord had closed her womb and that it happened year after year. As often as she went up to the house of the Lord, Penina would provoke Hannah to the extent that Hannah wept and refused to eat. Now, Women can be vicious. They really can. Nasty in a way that men, I mean, it'd be like pounding some guy's face in, except with words and with insults. It's incredibly painful, and that's what Penina's doing. She's made Hannah so miserable year after year that she's weeping bitterly, frustrated, and grieved, and refusing to eat.

given a double portion and made so sick by the mockery that she couldn't eat. And this she submitted to year after year. And so the question comes, why did Hannah keep going? She'd go up only to have this other woman intrude into her most delicate pain, knowing that the Lord had closed her womb only to pour salt in it to make it miserable. You should note that the scripture says that it was the Lord who closed Hannah's womb. And that Hannah would have known that. Hannah would have understood that. You can tell from her prayer, what does she do? She goes to the Lord and says, would you give me a son? She understood, I'm coming to the one and asking for a son who's withheld a child thus far. So Hannah knows that her pain and her difficulty are not just from Penina, but are allowed in the providence of God. That her pain and her difficulty and the trials that she's facing aren't just a...

function of circumstance and Penina being a nasty woman, but that God had a hand in allowing that circumstance to come about. Now, that's a hard truth. Because when you face up to that truth, you're left being like, well, then God's bad. But here's the thing, does Hannah think that God's bad? Or mean? Or has been treated her poorly? Done wrong by her? There's no indication anywhere that Hannah is upset. with the Lord for what's gone on. It's important for us to remember this so that when we face difficulties, whatever they are, and here's the thing, you'll have hard stuff in your life. And if you're paying attention, you'll be able to connect it and say, you know, the Lord's allowed this difficulty into my life. Particularly, this sickness, this burden, this child, this lack of children, whatever it is, it'd be good for you to say, the Lord's allowed this into my life.

And I'm going to praise him even though he's allowed this hardship into my life. If your relationship with God is such that you only want to praise him and you only want to be happy when things are going well, you may have long periods of life and the points where you'll need the Lord the most where you've wandered away and walked away from him, hardening your heart against him. And we don't see any of that in Hannah. Year after year, she goes up knowing what's coming. I mean, after all, she lived with Penina the rest of the time. But it was especially painful realizing that sacrifices had to be made for the children. And that when they came up, all of the animals, you can imagine Penina, all the sacrifices that are being brought, well, they're all for me. They're for my kids. God's looked on me with favor. Look at you, the misery of it. She goes up year after year. Any of us would write her a pass, having sympathy for her and thinking, it may be a bridge too far. It may be too difficult.

But we need to realize this, that if someone were to say that to us in our grief and our pain, and it's okay if you are unfaithful a little bit right now, that they would be doing us harm and not good. So Elkanah was committed to worshiping the Lord and going up with wicked men, Phineas and Hophni running the temple there. And he brings up his family. Now, is there any indication that he drug Hannah along? Maybe you might think, well, the reason Hannah went was because Elkanah just required it of her. You're just going to come up. That's just how it's going to be. This is what we do. All I would ask you is, the prayer that we see Hannah offer, would someone who is drug against their will up to the house of the Lord offer up a prayer like that once they got there? Do you think that Hannah wanted to go up? I believe Hannah wanted to go up, knowing what was coming from her rival. She loved God, and she trusted God. The account of her pouring out her heart, weeping.

And pleading with God was not a function of Hannah's wonderful leadership in making her, well, you just need to go pray about it. This woman loved God and she trusted him in the midst of her great pain and difficulty. Where else could she turn? Where else would she go? She knew what laid ahead. She went anyway. Job said, though he slay me, I will hope in him. And that's what Hannah's doing here. Though he slay me. and withhold from me the things that I need, the things that I want, and even beyond that, allow my rival to make me miserable, yet still I'll hope in him. This is what Elkanah loved about Hannah. This is true feminine beauty and piety. He knew her pains. He knew her sorrows and her griefs. He knew her tears. He also knew her love and her trust, and he favored her.

Because of it, Hannah was an exemplary Christian woman. Before she was a wife, before she was a mother, she was an exemplary Christian woman. And this is part of the reason you start to be like, I don't know if I like Hannah's story. I like Hannah, but I don't know if I like Hannah's story. Because she's setting the bar high and there's a lot of pressure. Even when she comes up to the temple and she comes to pray. you kind of get a little window into what temple worship would have been like at that time. Because when Eli, the priest, sees somebody crying and muttering to themselves, his assumption is not they're praying, but that they're drunk. And so he rebukes her. Woman, put away your drunk from you. And it's just salt in the wound, isn't it? Penina's been after her. She's crying. She's weeping. She's barren.

Now she's praying and now the priest is coming to her and saying, stop your drinking. That's difficulty. That's hard. Women aren't unique in this, but it is true of women. You will face things that are very difficult in your life. And what you want to do is face those things and hit them like Hannah did. It's encouraging. And you men, I'll tell you, don't go home and tell your wife, you just need to be more like Hannah. It won't help. She knows that. She could say, well, you need to be more like Elkanah, except for the second wife, you know. But you don't want to take examples in Scripture of someone's sorrow and their responding faithfully to it and attribute that strength to them. Hannah was just a woman who loved God and who, when she was confronted with hardship and difficulty, what was inside of her just came out. It's like she got cut and what came out was godliness. What came out was faith. What came out was hope.

So why did she go up to the temple? To pray for a child? In a sense, yes, obviously, because that's what she did while she was there. She went and she prayed. We're not told whether this was the first time she'd made this prayer or not, but it's the only time we have it recorded. And the reason she prayed this way and vowed this way was because her barrenness was a terrible burden to her and she wanted to be free of it. We should note, though, that as she prays for a child, she immediately makes a vow. And it's easy to miss the vow because...

One, because the terms of it are unsavory to mothers. But also because her grief and sorrow is so acute that you could just kind of ignore what she said and just go, this poor woman. But she, who was going through it at the time, made a vow that she would give the child to the Lord. And it's an incredible vow that she makes in the way that she addresses God. She addresses God as the Lord of hosts. This is the first time in Scripture Other than in verse 3 where Samuel's writing the history of it, where he talks about the Lord of hosts. This is the first time in Scripture God's ever addressed as the Lord of hosts. He's never been addressed that way before. He's been addressed in lots of ways, but here he's addressed as the Lord of hosts. If you don't know what that address means, that's sort of a military address. That's like an SOS. That's like, I'm in trouble and I need the reinforcements to come and help. You're the God of strength. You're the God of the military. You're the God of power.

Come and save me. And so she addresses her prayer to him as a rescuer, a strong tower, a military force to be reckoned with. Oh, Lord of hosts. She's asking the Lord to do battle for her, to deliver her from her afflictions. You might think of it in terms of having a problem and calling 911. You know, sometimes you might call a friend or you might call a family member or maybe you might call someone in the church, but if things were really dangerous and bad, you'd probably call the fire department or the police and you'd say, come now, I need help. That's the sort of import of this prayer and of these vows. Then she says that if he's given a son, she vows that he'll serve the Lord all the days of his life. Now those were like, well, okay, yeah, and sure.

But it's worth noting that the priests who served didn't serve all the days of their lives. They typically served from about the age of 25 to about the age of 50. And during those 25 years had large chunks of time where they were gone, back to their families and back to their lands. And so when she says he'll serve you all the days of her life, she's not saying he's going to be a normal priest. She's saying he's going to be the kind who never comes back home to me. He's going to be the kind who lives there all the time from his young childhood.

to his old age. And we know from the future accounts of Samuel's life, that's what he does. And she also says that he would be a Nazarite, that no razor would touch his head. That's not a vow that mothers could make about their sons. That was typically a vow. A father could vow that his son would be a Nazarite, but mothers couldn't or didn't. And so Hannah's saying some things here that are out of the ordinary. It's not just, well, if you just give me a son, I'll like, I'll do my best to train him up to be, you know, to follow after you. She's saying some very particular things, very weighty things, costly things for her son. She's setting the bar high for him and in turn high for her because she's going to be letting all of this go, her son, to fulfill all of these vows.

So she makes this vow. Eli comes to her and says, stop drinking. And she says, I'm not drinking. And they have a sweet interaction. And toward the end of it, she stops crying. Her countenance is lifted up. She eats and they worship and then they go home. Then the story skips ahead a little bit. She and Elkanah come together. She gets pregnant. She has a baby. And then comes around this time to go up for the yearly sacrifice sometime after the baby's born. And Elkanah comes to her and he says, you know, it's time to go up. to offer the yearly sacrifice. And it says, but Hannah did not go up. For she said to her husband, I will not go up until the child is weaned. Then I will bring him that he may appear before the Lord and stay there forever. Now, dad, did you hear what she just said to her husband? And there's no indication in scripture that I'm aware of that he had any knowledge of this vow before this. Now, maybe he did.

But I don't have any awareness that he did. He's finding out that this new son that he has with this wife that he loves has been committed to the Lord to go and to stay forever. Now, Timothy could tell you about my Father's Day sermon last year, right? About men being able to nullify their wives' vows. It says that if in the day they hear of it, they say no, they can nullify the vow. Well, she's made a vow. to take his son and to keep him a little while longer and then to take him up and to leave him at the temple far away with Eli, who was the father of Hophni and Phinehas. And that's what I vowed to do, husband. So I'm not going to go this year. I don't want to go this year. Elkanah said to her, do what seems best to you. Remain until you have weaned him. Only may the Lord confirm his word. When Elkanah heard that

The vow that Hannah had made, he honored it. And he owned it as his own vow. The part about him being a Nazirite. I mean, you realize there's all kinds of ways Elkanah could have been technically opposed to it and ruled it out on a technicality. But you're not allowed to make that kind of a vow. Do what seems best to you. Only may the Lord confirm his word. These are parents who understand their places as parents. and who loved their children, to be sure, but loved the Lord more. He didn't consider her vow to be foolish. He was not selfish. They both did well. Now, a word about husbands and wives. She says, she makes this vow. He has no knowledge of it, at least initially, and most likely not until this point, when the baby is here and come. Isn't that her taking an awful lot of authority to make decisions on behalf of the family?

Like she's deciding what's going to happen with her child forever. Didn't consult with her husband first. The reason I'm bringing it up is because in our church we talk a lot about authority and a lot about submission and a lot about how that's all supposed to work. And part of the reason we talk about it is because none of us really know how it's all supposed to work. And one of the sort of the immature stops along the growth is to think that everything that you do as a wife has got to be run by your husband. Husbands, if that's what you require of your wife, you're a fool. You're just a fool. She needs to be able to make decisions and make commitments, and you need to consider the way Elkanah responded to her. And I'm not trying to tear down your authority. I'm trying to strengthen it. Because if you can't lead somebody without being able to make every decision beforehand, then you're weak, and the weakness of your leadership is going to bear its fruit over time.

What you want is a strong wife who's able to make decisions, who knows your desires and the priorities of your family and how best to serve the Lord and is able to go out and to consider it and to buy a field without saying, I need to call my husband first to see if I can do the thing. The same is true the other direction. And you wives, you'd want your husbands to be able to make decisions without always having to check in to make sure that you can be okay with what's going on. This is a good marriage. This is a good marriage. And the reason it's a good marriage is because both of them had...

a top priority of serving the Lord. And when one of them says, I did this thing as an act of worship and I've committed myself to the Lord with regard to this, the other says, then may it be. Let it be, let it be. And so the sum of Hannah's prayer and her vow was that if the Lord would give her a son, then she would give that child back to the Lord almost immediately. And if you had to pick which part of the story of Hannah that you didn't like, it's probably that part. Compared with the cruelty of Penina, you'd say, but this is worse. This is worse, harder, heavier. Hannah understood something that we all need to understand. She understood her work as a mother and that her work was to prepare her children to be presented to the Lord. She did it early on, right after her son was weaned, and she did it with gladness.

And this is only possible because she understood what it meant to be a mother. Having the children and having them become the thing that defines you is not what it means to be a mother. You will only have children in your house for a minority of your marriage, for most of us. We will get married and we'll have kids in our house for 20 or 25 or maybe 30 years. And then we'll be married for another, hopefully, 30 or 40 years. But you only have a particular child in your house for about 20 maybe, maybe a little less, maybe a little more, depending. But the old saying is that the days are long and the years are short. Vanessa and I are starting to feel the shortness of the years. We're still feeling the longness of the days. Daniel and Marianne, Deanna and Wendy, I'm sure you felt the, where did it go? Wow, where did it go?

Our work as parents is one to realize you will feel that way. I don't know that you can't feel that way. Will you ever have prepared them enough? Will you ever have had enough time with them? Will you ever have trained them or made the memories with them or loved them or had them love you enough for you not to go, they're leaving. I don't know. I've not met a parent who said that. Not a parent who loved their children. I've met plenty of parents who don't love their children and can't wait for them to leave. But to parents who love their children, they never feel like the time's enough. Even the men. I wouldn't have felt that way early on. But now, oh yeah, oh yeah. I just don't cry about it. But it's all there. And so our work as parents is to prepare our children and to be giving them back to the Lord. Hannah did it early on, and she gave her son.

to Eli, and as I've pointed out earlier, was not an ideal situation. And what mother here doesn't say, well, I don't want my kids to go be in that situation. Well, okay. I'm going to have my sons go, my young little one, toddler, go with the men who are just wicked in every way possible. Completely corrupt. Their father, the man who raised them, who were told never crossed his sons, my boy's going to go live with him. None of us would say that's a good idea. We wouldn't say that's good parenting. But she's commended for it. Trusting God with your children is not something you do when they get older. It's something you have to do with them right now. Now, there's a danger here. And the danger is that you're going to take everything I'm saying and you're going to hear me saying, giving my children to the Lord means not loving them. And that is not at all what I mean.

There's no indication in this passage or anywhere else in Scripture that the parents who were faithful and gave their children to the Lord and entrusted their children to him didn't love their children. These things are not opposed to each other. Of course you should love your children. Of course you should care for them. But the thing you ought to realize about yourself is that you're not God and that you're not actually able to protect them or to provide for them all the things that they're going to need. We can't do it. The best, most wise person or grandfather you can think of doesn't have the ability to give to the children the things that they need. In fact, many parents will withhold the things their children need. When they're little, they withhold discipline. When they're older, they withhold freedom. We have to be giving our children back to God, which means that we have to love God and love our children, but in that order. And you have to realize there's going to be some conflict or some friction or some difficulty. It's inescapable. You're going to feel it.

And you're going to feel it so strongly that you're going to want to succumb to it. Don't succumb to it. My encouragement to you is don't succumb to it. Don't succumb to it. Who's going to provide for your children when you're not there? I'll always be there. No, you won't. Even when your kids are little, you're not always there. But as they get older, you're increasingly not there. And you have to look and say, God's put these children in this world at this time with these pressures, and he does all things well. And so we ought not, as children or as parents, look and go, my love for my children will lead me to always acting in fear for them. You will not do your children any good if your ordering principle is that you're afraid for them. What will you teach them? Certainly not to trust God, but to trust you. And then what happens when they get older and realize that you're not quite as trustworthy as they thought when you were little.

Mom and dad make mistakes. Mom and dad have their own problems. Ought we to teach our children to trust the Lord, to rely on his provision? It just seems silly. It seems like a fairy tale. It's like the thing you'd say to a little kid, but you wouldn't really mean it when it comes to real life. But I really do mean it when it comes to real life. Our children have to be taught to rely on God for every single thing they need. And we can put ourselves in the place of God in a way that's inappropriate. Parents have an incredible responsibility to train their children up, but not to put themselves in between their children and God in such a way that their children can't get to God, or they're taught worse, that they don't need to get to God. I want you to love your children. And you mothers, especially young mothers, have to learn what that means. When Vanessa and I were talking about this,

Our conversation was cut short, but what I was reminded of was in Titus 2 where it says that one of the things the older women are to teach the younger women is how to love their children. And it's a weird thing because you just think, oh, well, every mother knows how to love their children. But God, who's much wiser than us, said that this is something that the young women need to be taught and that the older women are supposed to teach them. And so I said to Vanessa, I said, listen, I can't preach a sermon on like... All the nuances and details of how to love your children and act like I've accomplished really much of anything. This is a lifetime of learning. As you have kids, as they get older, as they develop, as you change. How to love your children in every season of life is something we're all learning. But you younger women, if God's put us, our church together, and has given us a disproportionate number of younger women to older women, then...

You younger women want to go learn these things from the older women. You want to be going and asking. How do you do? What's going on? And you older women, you want to be saying to the younger women when they're giving in to fear that they're giving in to fear. We need to be presenting our children to the Lord and preparing our hearts for that. That's painful for women. It's hard. It's very hard. I think particularly hard for us because in our society, many women are taught not to love children and then they either were taught by, to love children growing up, and they go, okay, I love children. Now if I could just get married and have children. And they're scared of Hannah. Or they come to loving children as an act of repentance. They used to love something else. And then they came to realize, oh, there's something, God made me for something else that I'm supposed to love and care about and go for and give myself to. And it's hard when you give yourself to something to not keep in mind.

that you're a Christian first and that you love God first and that your children, the goal is to be raising them up, to be training them up and to enjoy every bit of it as much as you can. But it's going to be hard and it's going to be painful to let them go. Do you know why there are so many men living in their mother's basements and it's just sort of a byword in America? It's just kind of this like thing that we say, oh, you just live in your mother's basement. It's because their mommies loved them. They loved and loved and loved and loved and loved them. And they loved them right into Nothing. If we've avoided that, it doesn't mean we're all in the clear and everything is great. If I thought about this passage and I had to think, I was thinking, what is the corollary passage for men with regard to their children? Like how difficult is, you know, this is like, men, I don't think you understand how difficult this would be for your wife. The corollary passage is Abraham and Isaac. Take your son, take the wood, take the knife, give him to God,

And every dad just shudders at the thought and he goes, mm-mm, mm-mm, mm-mm, mm-mm. That's a story I don't want to read. And it shows up in multiple places and it's not just confined over there into Genesis and it's not just some little obscure by the way story by some little obscure by the way man. It's Abraham. He's the father of our faith. And Paul talks about him and writes about it and tells us and how good it was. And it was just appropriate. And here he shows up in Hebrews again, just doing the right thing. And all of us are just like, if I could be an editor. So men, that's how your wives feel about this passage right now. Just so you know, that sort of visceral, like, so don't go home and tell her. We just need to just figure it out. Be like Hannah. So unhelpful. Pour out your cares to the Lord.

Trust God with your children. Be wise in what you allow them to go to and attend and what they interact with. You actually have responsibilities. Giving your children to God doesn't mean stepping out of the equation and being like, free-range kids. That's not what it means. But give your children to God. And learn to pray as a parent that he would give your children the things you can't give them. Like a new heart. For all of your training and all of your instruction and all of your discipline and all of the everything and all the experiences and the vacations and the money and the whatever and the whatever, you give them. The one thing you can't give them is a new heart. So you have to pray and ask God to give your children the things you can't give them. And that's just meant to be like the beachhead, just the entry point into you realizing there's not much you can give your children unless God blesses the things that you offer up to him in faith. Now, do you know what's sweet?

about their story. It's not in this chapter. Remember, I said I was going to read two chapters, but I decided just to read one. I want to ask you a question. Was Eli, by as much as we know, was he a faithful dad to Hofty and Phineas? If we looked at their life, I mean, he really wasn't. And then you give him your son. Was he a faithful father to Samuel? I think he was. I think it was a kindness to him. I think it's interesting how God worked it out. Eli, I think was incredibly strengthened and helped by the Lord through Samuel. It's very sweet. It's a kindness, this Eli. And you get, there's this little vignette at the next chapter, toward the end, in 1 Samuel chapter 2, where he's growing up and his parents are coming back and they visit him every year and his mom brings him a shirt because he's grown that she made for him.

And you just get the impression that Eli just was ecstatic every time Elkanah and Hannah came around. I want to read to you what happens here. This is 1 Samuel 2, 18-21. It says, When she would come up with her husband to offer the yearly sacrifice, then Eli would bless Elkanah and his wife and say, may the Lord give you children from this woman in the place of the one she dedicated to the Lord. He realized what their sacrifice was. And then they went home. And do you know what happened? The Lord visited Hannah and she conceived and gave birth to three sons and two daughters. And the boy Samuel grew before the Lord. So she ended up with six of them, six kids.

And she got to keep the five at home like a normal family. What prepared her to raise those kids and Elkanah to raise those kids? Their faithfulness with Samuel. Their faithfulness with their first one. What a kindness and a blessing from the Lord. Hannah loved the Lord. She loved her husband. She loved Samuel. In that order, and the Lord blessed her for it and gave her children and the desires of her heart. And we don't hear about Penina anymore. We just don't hear about her anymore. And it's a really sweet story. It's a really hard story, but it's a really sweet story. And so my encouragement is to be like Hannah. And for you husbands to be like Elkanah. He was a good man who loved his wife, who loved God, and who trusted God with his children. As you need wisdom, as you want to know what you should do in any particular case, ask the Lord to give you wisdom. Ask the men and women, the older men and women around, what you should do or what they think.

It's what they're there for. But most of all, trust God with your children. Don't spend your life being afraid. And certainly don't spend your life thinking that you're the one that's going to keep them from all their troubles. Don't make your children choose between you and God. Lead them into his presence and leave them there for him to care for and seek to be faithful. Let's pray.