Promises Must Be Kept

Hey, good morning. Good morning. Welcome to Coffee and Devotions, where we are overwhelmed and don't have a lot of time this morning. I didn't even have time to make coffee. So it's one of those days. So let's go ahead and we have a question about is Hannah going to keep her promise? So yesterday we read about Hannah praying to God, wanting a baby. giving a baby, but she had vowed that the baby would be the Lord's. Is she going to keep the promise? We'll find out. Let's pray.
Father, we thank you so much for giving us your word. It is descriptive, historical. It teaches us things about you, about your covenant-keeping nature. but sometimes we struggle with how prescriptive, how much it should tell us how we should live our lives. So Lord, we pray that you would give us your Spirit and lead us with wisdom into truth and into right application. Help us, Lord. Father, we pray that you would please our teacher in Jesus' name, Amen.
All right, 1 Samuel chapter 1 beginning at verse 21 and we read verse 21 through 28. Go ahead, Bubba.
Now the man Elkanah and all his house went up to offer to the Lord that all he sacrificed, and his vow. But Hannah did not care, for she said to her husband, and until the child is weaned, then I will take him, that he may appear before the Lord and remain there forever. So Elkanah, her husband, said to her, do what seems best to you. Wait until you have weaned him. Only let the Lord establish his word. Then the woman stayed and nursed her son until she had weaned him. Now when she had weaned him, she took him up with her, with three bulls, one ephah of flour, and a skin of wine, and brought him to the house of Jehovah in Shiloh. And the child was young. Then they slaughtered a bull, and brought the child to Eli. And she said, O my Lord, as your soul lives my Lord I am the woman who stood by you here praying to the Lord for this child I prayed and the Lord has granted me my petition which I asked of him therefore I also have lent him to the Lord as long as he lives he shall be lent to the Lord so they worshiped Jehovah there
All right, so we need to ask ourselves our three questions. A, what is this? About. What's the... Best vs. Summoners. And C, what are we? Called to Dip.
All right, so what's this about? Samuel being concentrated to the Lord's walk. Yeah, very concentrated. Lent over to the Lord. Isn't that interesting? She's like, I'm not giving him. He's on loan. It's a lifelong loan, but it's a loan. But she's still his mother. So, yeah, it's this keeping up for promises, keeping up her vow. I wonder if Elkanah wondered like when he went to the temple and he was still weaned or still nursing and not weaned yet. If when she was like, no, we're not going up yet. Not till he's weaned. If he was like, All right, do what you want. Thinking she's not gonna give that baby away, she loves him too much. I don't know, that's just me guessing. Maybe it's not, I don't know. But then when she does come, what's it like? When Hannah does show up at Shiloh at the tabernacle. She's fully willing to give him away. Yeah, I mean, it's like, huge sacrifice like and she isn't interesting there's been enough time that she has to remind old man Eli like I was the one that you thought was drunk and here's this baby now he's a now he's a boy right now he's weaned so there's like this wholehearted devotion to keeping the vow. So what might have been questioned before is now very, very clear, and yet does she still love Samuel? Yeah. Yeah, it's very clear.
So what would you say is the best verse to underline this? You mean 28? Okay, yeah. Yeah, so I actually really like verse 4 to 27 also. For this child I prayed and the Lord has granted me my petition which I have asked of him. You know, our first baby, we call the baby Benjamin. We don't know if it was a boy or girl that died in a miscarriage. And we prayed and prayed that the Lord would give us another baby. You're him. Now you're not a baby. But then we also, we tried for years to have a baby when we moved here to Iowa. and then the Lord blessed us with little Judah. When we found out we were pregnant with Judah, this is the verse we used, verse 27, but we changed it from, for this child I have prayed, to, for this child we have prayed. The Lord gives these blessings, but interestingly She's loaning, and this is where I'm going to go to see calling. She's loaning the baby to the service of the Lord. But do you know what mom and I said about you guys at your baptisms? I don't know, what? That we're the ones who are supposed to be stewarding you, but ultimately you're the Lord's. Sometimes I don't steward very well, and you know that. Even this morning I got mad at you, and I shouldn't have. And I wasn't even mad at you, I was just overwhelmed. And yet, whose are you? God's. God's.
So I think Hannah finds that comfort knowing that he's going to be with the Lord. It's going to be OK. For a parent, that's really reassuring, even when we long for children. God gives us children. There's a lot of times that I've wept talking to mom about you. I'm proud of you, son. Thanks. But when I see it like, man, you're getting your permit this week. You're becoming a man. It's really fun to see that happening. But there's, there can be anxiety that wells up in my heart. Like, man, there's still so much to teach you. So much that I want to see you grow in. And yet, am I in charge of your heart? No. Right, the Lord is. And so there's a great deal of comfort. This is one of the things we do at baptism. It's like, no Lord, they're yours. So I'll raise them as best I can in my fallible, stupid, sinful self. But ultimately, trusting that the Lord's going to take care of your heart. So it's one of those fun things. When we think about being part of covenant families, think about even Paul when he tells children, children obey your parents in the Lord for this is right. We believe that you're, as part of this covenant home, part of the outward visible covenant, the sign of the covenant, baptism's been placed on you. You have all the rights and privileges of a baptized member of the church. Well, now you're a Communicant member, you've made that profession, but as you were a baptized member, that you you were still in the Lord in the sense of like connected to the community of faith. I'm here with Samuel. He doesn't have any choice in any of what's going on here and yet he gets these blessings.
All right. Have I prognosticated too long? I don't think so. Okay. You got anything else for C Calling for you? Yep. You ready to pray? Yep. Can you pray to close us? Sure.
God, thank you for a good day. Thank you for all the blessings you've given us. Thank you for giving us hard things to do that can strengthen us and make us better. God, thank you for today. Thank you for the blessing it is to wake up this morning and know that we can do things to glorify you. In Jesus' name, amen.
Amen. Well, may the Lord bless you. May you know that the Lord is watching over you and hears your prayers. We'll see you next time. Bye. Bye.