"What we need is...? Introducing 1 Samuel"

Our reading is taken from 1 Samuel chapter 1 verses 1 to 8, which can be found on page 271 in the church bibles. There was a certain man from Ramathane, a Zafite from the hill country of ephraim, whose name was Elkanah, son of Jera, Jirohan, the son of Elihu, the son of Tohoo, the son of Zuh, Annette fromite. He had 2 wives, 1 was called Hannah and the other Penina. Penina had children, but Hannah have none. Year after year, this man went up from his town to worship and sacrifice to the lord almighty Ed shiloh.

Where Hoffman and Finihas, the 2 sons of Eli were priests of the lord. Whenever the day came for Alcona to sacrifice, he would give portions of the meat to his wife, Penina, and to all her sons and daughters, but to hammer, he gave a double portion because he loved her. And the lord had closed her womb. Because the lord had closed Hannah's womb, her rival kept provoking her in order to irritate her. This went on year after year.

Whenever Hannah went up to the house of the lord, her rival provoked her till she wept and would not eat. Her husband, elkenna, would say to her, Hannah, why are you weeping? Why don't you eat? Why are you downhearted? Don't, I mean, more to you than 10 sons?

Great. Please keep the passage open in front of you. Very exciting this morning that we are gonna be starting this new series in the book of 1 Samuel that we just started to have right. And I'm gonna lead us in prayer as we do so. Let's pray.

Emily father, we thank you for this book of 1 Samuel, and we pray please through this term as we go through it, father that you would teach us help us to be ready to listen, open our eyes, to understand what's going on in this book, help us father we pray to see Christ. Would you teach us, change us, to be the people you want us to be, amen? Well, this sermon is gonna be a bit of an introduction to the book of, 1, Samuel, and to introduce it to start like this. We put a lot of hope in leaders. Yet often, it feels leaders let us down.

I don't know whether you follow the news, follow politics. I don't think very much of it, but it has been interesting over this last week. The turmoil that there has been, in government, with 1 member having to stand down because they broke the ministerial code. And Keir Starman, the prime minister having to reshuffle his cabinet, all in the light of the fact that his ratings have gone down and down despite the fact that was only just over a year ago that he, was able to form a government with a big majority in the House of Commons. Big changes.

But is there someone who could do it better? His ratings are way down, but could someone come in and lead the country in a better way? Some people think Nigel Ferage is that guy. Ladim Dorris, who defected to reform, said Nigel Farage is the only politician who has the answers, the knowledge, and the will to deliver. Now I'm not making any political statement.

You may agree. You may disagree. That is not my point. The point is we constantly look for someone to lead us. We want someone to lead, and we are frequently disappointed with those who end up in power.

Are. We're frequently disappointed, sometimes because those leaders are deliberately immoral, and sometimes because they just make mistakes. And we see this in the church too. The church in this country has struggled with its leaders, including evangelical churches, leaders who have abused their positions, or have been weak. Some of you here, I know, have suffered because of leadership, bad leadership, abusive leadership in churches in the pass.

What's the answer? Is there an answer? Well, we turn to the book of 1 Samuel, a book in the Old Testament, which covers part of the history of Israel. And leadership is a significant theme in this book. It isn't the only theme we'll see as we go through.

There are many other themes, but 1 significant 1 is leadership. And it will help us to see the answers to many of our questions. What kind of leader do we need? What kind of leader should we follow? But before we get into 1, Samuel, I just wanted to take a little step back to ask a slightly different question, which is, why look at 1 Samuel at all?

In fact, why look at any passage, why look at any book of the Old Testament. After all, this book of 1 Samuel was written about 3000 years ago. So what relevance can it possibly have for us? And some will say, well, and Christianity is all about Jesus. And Jesus was 2000 years ago.

He isn't mentioned in the book of 1 Samuel. So why go back there? Why not just stick with Jesus? His life, death, resurrection? Why not just teach us about turning water into wine and the birth in Bethlehem, and, and those sorts of things.

The sermon on the mount. Give us the sermon on the mount. Give us that kind of thing. Why go back to this history in Israel? Well, I'm just gonna give you 3 things on that.

And for some, this will be familiar truths, but for others, it won't be. And for those, for whom it's familiar, I hope it's a helpful reminder. Why look at this 3 things, first of all, to look at this verse. This verse from 2 Timothy, 3 verse 16, the apostle Paul wrote this, and he says this. All scripture is god breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness so that the servant of god may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

All is talking about all scripture. And that includes the book of 1, Samuel. And he says, of all scripture, it is god breathed. So the first thing is, it is god's word. It is god breathed.

That is that all of scripture, including the old testament, comes from god. God breathed it out. He spoke it. And that in itself should be enough to make us go, yes, we want to read 1 because every part of 1 samuel, every word in 1 samuel, is a word of god, comes from god, is a message from god to us. So if all you ever do is read the new testament, if you only read the bit after Jesus' birth, you're not even gonna read half of god's word to us.

You wouldn't do that with other messages. You wouldn't just decide, well, just read the last third of every email, I guess. Or the last third of every text text. Wouldn't do that. How much more precious if it is god's word to us?

That we need to read all of it to understand all of it because it is all a message from god to us. Which does mean, by the way, I'm really not a big fan of red letter bibles, because every part of the word of god, every part of it, of the bible is god's word? Now, if you don't know this, some publishers decided at 1 point that they would make the words of Jesus in red. So, and by doing that, it seems like they're elevating Jesus' words for to a higher status to say, well, that's really god's word, but the rest maybe is just slightly less. Fall would say in, 2 Timothy 3.

No. That's not right. Is it? All scripture is god breathed. And that means 1 Samuel is as much god's word as the gospels, just as much god's word as the words of Jesus.

They are all on a level. If you were gonna do red letter bibles, you should make the whole thing red letter It should all be read letters because it is all just as much the word of god. So first thing is, it's all the word of god. So, of course, we should want to get into 1 Second thing is, it's useful. Did you spot that in the, in the verse?

In 2 Timothy, he says, all scripture is god breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness so that the man the servant of god may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. Paul's saying, the scriptures are the word of god, and they are useful for us. He doesn't say it was useful 3000 years ago, that god spoke this word to the Israelites 3000 years ago, and it was useful for them. Like you might read a historical letter, historical text, and you might go, well, that that was right for them, and it was useful then. But now it's it's just a historical art effect.

Now Paul is saying, that's not true of of 1 somebody. It's not just useful then. It wasn't just god's word then for them, but it is useful for you and me to do what? To teach us. Correct us, rebuke us, train us in righteousness.

So we'll be ready for every good work. In other words, as we come to the book of 1, Samuel, if we understand it right, we should come away going, this has taught me and corrected me and trained me so that I can do good works. It's gonna shapers to be ready for action as we understand it. But we do need to be aware, of course, once Samuel wasn't written in a way where the teaching is obvious in that way. Part of beauty of god's word.

Now he doesn't give it to us in a way which is, you know, once Samuel isn't written as 10 lessons in prayer, 4 lessons in parenting, 8 lessons in how to do your job. It's just not written like that as we've already seen. You come to it and you start to read it and you see you're getting immersed in other people's stories In history, events that happened 3000 years ago, it's narrative, its stories, god relating to his people in particular circumstance, us is. And we observe it. We observe these events unfolding, and we need to realize this is how god has chosen to speak to us through these events.

And through the the accounts of them. But it is useful. So it's god's word. It's useful. And then the last last 1 is it's all about Jesus.

It's all about Jesus. Now that may surprise you, particularly as the book of 1 Samuel Jesus isn't explicitly mentioned. But the the contention of the Bible is to say all of it is all about Jesus. After Jesus had risen from the dead, He met with a couple of his followers and walked with them on a road to a place called Immaus. And he talked with them, and he opened up the Bible with them as it were.

And this is what it says in Luke 24 27, says beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the scriptures concerning himself. That began with Moses, went through the prophets, went through all the scriptures and said, this is all about me. Another time, when he spoke with the pharisees, Those were the Bible scholars of the day. And he said to them, you study the scriptures diligently because you think that in them, you have eternal life. These are the scriptures that testify a out me yet you refused to come to me to have life.

So that means Jesus is saying to them, you know, you've not understood the scriptures. You may have studied them. You may have spent a long time in them. But if you don't see that they point to me, you've not understood them properly. So that means as we look at 1 Samuel, we need to keep saying, how is this about Jesus?

Now notice that. It is not that 1 Samuel is about you or me. It's not about you or me. This is why the Bible is so different from the sort of self help books, isn't it? The self help books are all about you.

How can you have a stress free life? How can you have time for yourself? How can you cope with the how it's how can you have a fulfilled life? It's all about you, you in the middle. And yet you come to the Bible, and we've already seen Genesis chapter 1 verse 1.

It begins that it's all the Oh, god. And once Samuel and all of the Old Testament, Jesus says, is about him, first and foremost, which is actually very helpful for us because the bible is saying, you know what? Maybe just maybe. The world doesn't revolve around you. Does revolve around someone.

That someone is Jesus. And if you see how these passages in the old testament are about him, you will get everything in the right perspective. You understand 1, Samuel, correct, likely, you'll see it's about Jesus, which means we're not imposing on the text by say by seeing how is this about Jesus? We're not making it into something it was never about. No.

Jesus is saying, understand it properly. You'll see it's about me. So as we go through 1 Samuel, that's what we're going to want to do. We're going to want to keep saying, how does this point us to Jesus? There you go.

3 things, hope they were a good reminder for for some and maybe were new for for others to say this is why we look at 1 Samuel. I mean, you could say this is why we look at any book in the Old Testament. It's God's word, it's useful, and it's all about Jesus. And with that in mind, we're then gonna come back to introducing 1 Samuel. So I hope you still got the passage open in front of me, although we're not gonna spend a huge amount of time just in that 1 passage because I'm gonna give you a little bit of an introduction to the whole book.

We need to think What was going on at the start of 1 Samuel? What was the situation? Well, as we get into 1 Samuel, we get into a family situation We are introduced to a family in which there's a barren woman. This family is the family of a guy called El Kanar. And we'll look at him a bit more next week, then we'll look at this passage more next week, but we begin with him and his family who live in the middle of nowhere.

It's a nowhere place, and Alconar is really a nowhere kind of guy. He's a nobody, really, see. And he's married to 2 women, Hannah and Penina. Now I'm not gonna spend time on polygamy at this point. We're not gonna spend a lot of time whether that's that's, right or wrong.

Obviously, we shouldn't do it today. And but notice, actually, as we come to the Old Testament, the Old Testament narrative, an important thing to consider is just because an Old Testament text says something is the case, doesn't mean it's saying it's good. It doesn't explicitly say whether this was good or bad. Just tells you what there is, and you need to work out, is this a good thing or a bad thing? Nah, just as a little aside.

Yes, it's true. In the Bible so far, polygamy has not been, has not been outlawed. It's not been said that that you shouldn't do it. But every time there is someone married to more than 1 person, it's a disaster. But the subtext on that, the underlying thing is to say, this is not good.

But, actually, that's not the big point here. The big point here is you have Hannah, whom you focus in on through this early chapter, this first chapter. And she is back. The other wife of elkanah, can you still him? Yeah?

The other wife of elkanah, Pennina, she can have children, Hannah can't. And in the opening chapter, you see her grief. You see her despair. Maybe there are some here who can feel that with in a particular way, that pain of not being able to have children. But with Hannah, we should ask as we begin 1, Samuel, why are we focusing in on this woman.

You can't have children. Is there significance to this? And there is. There's more significance just that than her grief and her despair. There's more significance because god has promised his people in the book of deuteronomy, that if they are faithful to him, if they are obedient to his word, this is what he says.

You will be blessed more than any other people. None of your men or women will be childless nor any of your livestock without young. That's good. It's promised to his people. Be faithful, and none of you will be Baron.

So why at the start of 1 Samuel is Hannah unable to have children? That's what we should be asking. The answer is God's people have been disobedient. The promise was this would be true if they kept god's word, but they haven't. In fact, we need to see that at the start of 1, Samuel, god's people are actually in a terrible state.

Since arriving in the land, which god gave them, they have disobeyed god over and over again. If you read the book of judges, which in terms of history is the 1 just before 1 Samuel, gives you the the the period of history just before 1 Samuel, you'll you'll see god's people disobey him over and over and over again. In fact, their morality goes so downhill. It is stomach churning, what they do. If you were to read it, you would I mean, it is revolt it is really awful.

There's rape going on. There's there's there's a a guy who who kills his own daughter. It's awful, and it looks like Israel, they're just becoming just like all the other nations around them. They're not standing out as god's people. And even though god sends them leaders.

He sends them leaders who are called judges, and they rescue the people of Israel when the nations come and attack them and, and overwhelm. These judges come and rescue them, and they do okay. But then when the judge dies, everyone disobeys god again. And they just go down and down, and the spiral gets worse and worse. And it is awful by the end of judges.

And so it isn't surprising in some ways that you get the beginning of 1 Samuel, and you see a woman unable to have children, despair. And you ask, why is this the case? As god's people have been disobedient? They've rejected god. There's a repeated refrain throughout the book of judges, which is in those days, Israel had no king everyone did as they saw.

That's the repeated refrain. In those days, Israel had no king. The answer to Israel's problems, you see, is not no king. And the answer to the world's problems is not no king. And the answer to our problems in this country is not no king.

It's not no leader. You might think maybe it is. You might think, well, maybe we'd do better. If we just took all the leaders, all the president's kings, we just took them out and just got rid of them all, and then we'd all be a lot happier. But the Bible says, no, that's not right.

The answer is not no king. Look at the people of Israel, you see that is a desire. Asked her. But what is the answer? Not joking.

What do we need? Well, I also want you to see just in this introduction that there is a glimmer of hope. There's a glimmer of hope. Hannah, This woman who can't have children is miraculously given a baby boy. And we need to see that this is actually a familiar setup.

If you've read the Bible all the way through up to this point, you would know that this setup of this family is not the first time we've seen this. This has happened before. In fact, the miraculous birth of a child to someone who is barren has happened a few times. You go back to Abraham married to Sarah, and she couldn't have a baby, but then miraculously could. Their son, Isaac, married, a woman who couldn't have a child and then they could.

And then, they're offspring. He saw in Jacob, Jacob, married 2 women, 1 of whom could have children, the other couldn't, and the 1 who couldn't miraculously Skaper. Sanction with seen before. And where it happens, we see god is about to do something special, something spectacular. When you see the baron woman having a child.

God is about to do something. And so as we come to the beginning of 1 Samuel, we should begin with a glimmer of hope Is god about to do something? Well, the answer, wonderfully is yeah? God is about to do something. Something amazing.

And now I'm just gonna give you the briefest of overviews of 1 and 2 Samuel. Now 1 and 2 Samuel are actually 1 book. They should be 1 book, but they were split into 2 books. You've got 1 Samuel followed by 2 Samuel, but really they're 1 book. Now where do we go throughout these books of 1 and 2 Samuel.

You start with this miraculous birth, and it is the birth of a guy called Samuel, and Samuel was not a king. He was a prophet, and he was a priest, but not a king. But as you go through 1, Samuel, you see that people start demanding a king, and so god gives them a king. Samuel, the prophet, goes and anoints a guy called Saul to be king, and he has the physique of a king. He is ahead above everyone else.

He looks like the right guy to be king. And to begin with, he's not bad. He's alright to begin with. We'll see. But then it soon becomes apparent he is not gonna be a good king.

He disobeys god. So we've gone from no king to a king, but a bad king. And so god then says, well, I'll send you another king. I'll give you another king. And he's and he anoints another guy to be king after saul, and that is David.

And David is described as a man after god's own heart. This, at long last, looks like this is gonna be the answer This answer is not no king, and it's not a bad king, a disobedient king, but it is it looks this king, this king, after god's own heart. And in many ways, David is a really good king. He points to what a good king should be. And we learn from it what a good king should be, but he can't keep going before spectacularly.

It is awful to read, and he never recovers. Not really. Here is the best king Israel had. Throughout the rest of the bible, he's looked back on as being the pinnacle of the kingship that even he couldn't do it. He couldn't succeed.

He is the best king they had, and he wasn't enough. Now doesn't that resonate with our experience? I in in the world around us in this country, you look at leaders and you go, well, even the good ones, they're not really good enough. And if this was true for good people when you've got a point of kings over them. Do you go none of them could do it?

Maybe we should be more realistic about the leaders that we have. And they they should still be held on, you know, for they should still be scrutinized, and they should be held to out, but we should be realistic to say they are none of them going to be the leader that we really need. Do we still wanna know what's the solution? The promise of the book of Samuel is that 1 day, the king will come, a king in the line of David, who will be the great king, as people have called him, great David's greater son. Who will be the answer to our deepest needs.

And a thousand years after Hannah, there is another woman who is unable to have children accurately does. Her name was Elizabeth. She gave birth to a son who was called John, and at almost exactly the same time, you get a slightly different situation. A woman, Mary, who's gonna have a child carelessly, though she was a virgin. These births signal god is gonna do something incredible again.

Those births mark the arrival of the King, Earth of Jesus. When Jesus arrives, he is the mighty king, the great king that Samuel has pointed us to, made us long for. And Jesus is unlike any other king because he doesn't establish his kingdom through might, not through military conquest but through dying on a cross, and this is the great king we and the world need. B. We said, Samuel will point us to Jesus it very clearly does.

And Jesus calls us to come into his glorious kingdom. Come part of it, bow before him as your king. Come in to his kingdom. Because Jesus is the hope of the world. And so when we get to Christmas, at the end of this time, oh, it's a long way off, isn't it?

But when we get there, We will sing, if we've understood 1 time incorrectly, we will sing with greater joy, Hark the Harold Daniels soon, Lori to the newborn. Is the king that's Samuel Bonf. And next week, we'll be with Hannah again. Back at the beginning of 1 Samuel, and we'll begin our journey through 1 Samuel. And actually by the end of this time, we're not going to have got through to the end of 2 Samuel.

No. I don't want us to rush through it. In fact, we're not even going to have got to David. We'll have got to well, we'll have gone through the life of saw well, Samuel, and we'll get to saw the king, that first king, and we'll see his rise, and that's about as far as we're going to get this turn. So that's where we're going to head So that's the introduction to 1 Samuel.

The people of Israel in a terrible state, we see Hannah, this barren woman, and we ask why and we say yes, they are an unlawful state. We see that the the desperate need of a king and the glimmer of hope that the birth of Samuel brings, the miraculous birth, and that it all points us through Saul and David, breaking. Let's pray. Emily father, we pray again that you would teach us. So we get into 1 Samuel.

Thank you. It is your word. Thank you. It is useful, and thank you. It's all about Jesus.

And so help us as we read it to understand it. Would it be grip to us? Will it be exciting to read because we're reading your word? And teach us, we pray. Help us to know Jesus better and help us prepare us for the good works you've got for us this time as we read