To make her miserable is utterly poisoned by hatred because.
Somebody else was loved. And this was the, again, she's taking a poison that makes you thirsty. She's drinking a poison that the more you drink, the thirstier you get, so the more you drink. That's hatred. Feels good going down.
But it's really just killing you. This was a vicious, systematic, determined effort to inject Hatred. into this innocent person's life. You're listening to Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher, Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel, Mechanicsville.
Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of 1 Samuel. Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about cross-reference radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. And now here's Pastor Rick in 1 Samuel chapter 1 with this edition of Cross-Reference Radio. She likely could not have children, so he marries Panina, brings her into the family. To have the children.
And in the ancient world, failure to have children was regarded as a family tragedy. You had to have them to run the farm. To help eke out a life for yourself. And if he had a lot of land and worked it, which is why he may have been wealthy. Children would have been very much an asset in that agrarian culture.
It's not until we get to the the city culture where children become, in the eyes of some, a liability. This was one of the things that they were accusing the yuppies about not wanting to have kids, just wanting to live in the cities and enjoy nightlife and their careers. And I'm just pointing out a recent event That is connected. to this uh understanding of having uh children. Anyway, without Uh a s a son The family name was in jeopardy.
Again, we just got through this in the book of Ruth. And as a woman, she c uh well The allotments of the territory and the idea: if you were in Judah, if you belonged to Judah, and you knew Messiah was coming from out of Judah, you were automatically not in the running. And that was something that a mean person could turn against you. And that is what is going to happen in this chapter.
Now, the Jewish rabbis, they did, many of them, note that God produced one wife for Adam. Genesis chapter 2, verse 24. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother, and he shall be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the two shall become one flesh, is how it is said. not the three or the four etc.
And so some of the rabbis picked up on that. And good for them. Of course, Paul being one, he in 1 Timothy chapter 3: that if you're going to be a pastor, just one wife, you can't have multiple wives. Because in that time, at that time, in the culture that Paul pastored, polygamy was legal. And you have a guy, you know, you could have three wives.
And maybe you wanted to be a pastor. And no, you can't. It's a disqualifying feature. It's only, I think, the near. History, that we have a Christianity that feels entitled to do anything it wants, and no prohibitions can be placed on it.
Well, they're wrong. And that's why God has given the church pastors to oversee and to manage the church, not to invade your life and come and tell you how to arrange your furniture at home. But we certainly have.
sovereignty in arranging the furniture in the church, for example. And we shouldn't be afraid of that. There are certain words that we, as Americans, I think, we're afraid of.
Sovereignty somehow is connected with tyranny.
Well, God is sovereign, He's not a tyrant. And his kings were sovereign, and they were not all tyrants.
So we should be very careful and not throw our brains away. We have a tendency of becoming uh too narrow-minded.
Sometimes it's good to be narrow-minded in the face of sin. Straight is the way, narrow is the way, straight is the way that leads to eternal life. The name of one was Hannah.
Well, her name means grace. The name of the other, I'm in verse 2 now. Penina It means pearl. Et the only Uh Panina had children, but Hannah had no children.
Now again, the blame for not having children rested on the women. And in that time in history and often led to divorce. The women didn't come out well with that in that scenario. This is not going to be the case. Elkanah loves Hannah, and he loves her more.
And so verse 3. This man went up from his city yearly to worship and sacrifice to Yahweh. of host in Shiloh. Also the two sons of Eli, Haphni, and Phineas, the priest of Yahweh, were there. Elkanah is careful to honor the word of God.
He's not going to the high places to worship. He's not doing things his way. he is conforming to the Scripture. At which Deuteronomy just 12, for example, makes it very clear. And the men were mandated three times a year to go to the tabernacle.
to worship. the women did not have to go. They did, they often did, very often did. Uh but uh it was mandated for the men. And here we're getting insight into the type of man that Samuel's father was.
The type of home that he was born into, even though he's moved out of that home early on. And we may lose sight of Elkanah because we get focused on Hannah. And then we just quickly move into other characters. But he is an outstanding character. What we know of him is very good.
And again, the stigma of polygamy in from our age is not fair. Uh You have to look at it through the eyes of the culture then. Uh it says here in verse 3 that he went up From his city yearly to worship and sacrifice. To Yahweh of hosts.
Now, this is the first time that phrase appears in Scripture: the Lord of hosts, which means the commander of armies, spiritual and Israel's also, and is carried into all the way to Revelation 19, where the Lord returns with his host. And that is a significant phrase. Shiloh, of course, where the tabernacle was presently located before it ends up in Jerusalem. long, uh much time later. Um David will dance before the ark.
We'll get to that story. Anyway, This is significant because in Judges we saw people doing violating this. creating altars and shrines where they should not have been, but not Elkhanah. He is true to the Lord. Also, the two sons of Eli and of Eli.
Hafnai and Phineas, priest of Yahweh. Dramatic Music Cue right here. These sons were the fools of Shiloh. They were thug priests. There is nothing redeeming about these men.
Three character types are found in just this one clause of the verse. You have devout Elkanah. You have Lukewarm Eli, who's the high priest, and his two sons who are evil. In fact, Uh The names Hafni and Phineas, some suggest, are Egyptian. If that is accurate, Because some of the names actually show up in you know the the um They work in the Hebrew and they work in the foreign language, and they're not the same.
But if that is true, it reflects on the tolerance of the pagan peoples around them. That they were shopping for identity elsewhere. In fact, Saul's sons will.
Well, children, at least three of them, will have foreign names. We're not surprised when we consider the man Saul. These are rival characters. Devout Elkanah. Lukewarm Eli and wicked Hafni and Phineas, rival characters.
They're irreconcilable. And we are now beginning to enter into the spiritual education. of 1 Samuel. That will not stop. It will continue.
How widespread was the pagan influence?
Well, these men did nothing to stop it.
So you come to church and you hear the pastor, sometimes he's just preaching the word. And you think he's body slamming people.
Well, I mean, if he's body slamming those things that are false, he doesn't mean he's trying to hurt the individual, he's trying to help them. And the scripture is going to do that. When it asks questions like this, how widespread is the influence of evil in the lives of the righteous? David will write in his 16th Psalm, one of the most beautiful, well, you know, they're all like most beautiful, but the 16th Psalm. I don't even say the names of those gods.
God in his rebuke to David said, You thought that I was altogether like you. And God's saying, but I'm not. That's to the wicked. The righteous are saying, Lord, I want to be like you. We call it Christ-likeness.
And our dual nature. Battles for superiority. in whatever area we find ourselves attacked in. Verse 4. And whenever the time came for Elkanah to make an offering, he would give portions to Peninnah his wife.
And also Pardon me, to his wife and to all her sons and daughters.
So she's prolific. She has a lot of children, and Hannah has none. Scores like, you know, 10 and a zip or whatever number she has. This likely is a peace offering because a peace offering would yield. Food.
You take it to the altar, and the priest gets the portion, but you get a large portion back, and you're there to s sit down and you can commune with the Lord and your peace offering. And that's likely what is going on here. And so there's Hannah. She's sitting there with this wife-in-law who hates her guts, incidentally. And and her husband Elkinah, and she's tormented and she's got to eat.
That's the story's going to tell us this. Verse 5. But to Hannah he would give a double portion, for he loved Hannah, although Yahweh closed her womb. There's motive. There's Pinina's motive right there.
Hannah was loved. Paninu did not feel love. Maybe she wasn't lovable. She certainly is a mean person. We're going to get to that, and maybe a solution for that.
Hannah was cherished by Elkina. And that excited the jealousy in Panina. And she was ruthless. In her in her harassment. of of Hannah.
So the motive For her meanness. Self-exaltation. Big lesson. Maybe you're struggling with something that you're just a nasty person. It's because you're too much onto self, you got your eyes on you too much.
Maybe what you're missing, maybe what you're threatened by. Maybe how you feel others are more blessed than you, whatever it is. She detested that she was Outloved. And instead of helping the cause by becoming loving, she went the other way. And she made herself Just as she it was a burden to Hannah.
The wife that was loved. And it seems like Hannah does not ever tell Elkinah what's going on. She doesn't come running to him. Love for Christ. Makes Self-surrender easier.
That is a fact. Love for self makes it impossible. I mean, and you know, an inordinate love, the love for self that is out of bounds, that is overzealous for self. too centred on self. That's a problem.
What's the solution? Francois Fenelon from the seventeenth century. You wrote powerful stuff. And this is one thing he he has in his Oh, I don't recall the name of his book. It's worth reading.
Um Well as long as you can Keep your perspective. This is what he writes about Selfishness and prayer. It's just very short. And he's talking about speaking to God about this. He says, Tell him how self-love makes you unjust to others.
Is that not powerful? Self-love makes you unjust to other people. It hurts other people through you. For a while there, the church was embracing self-esteem. The Bible says that's the problem, your self-esteem.
You're exalting yourself. You've got too much of that. That is the problem. That's why Peter says, humble yourself in the sight of the Lord, and He will esteem you in due time. And I don't know, I don't hear about it too much, but it sure was, you know, championed a long time.
You've got to help your self-esteem. All they were doing was pouring gasoline on the fires.
So if you if you have this problem And we're going to get to some of how her meanness comes out. Go to the Lord and tell him right out: Lord, I don't want to be this way. Uh it hurts. To hurt others, there should. It should not feel good.
to chop others down. In verse 6, And her rival also provoked her severely to make her miserable because Yahweh had closed her womb. She took that as an opportunity. The thing that Hannah wanted most. Panina took and used it against her as much as she could.
It's savage. And this is where the, you know, people can come to church, and maybe they have this particular problem or another one, and the pastor's talking about it, and he gets blamed. for pointing it out. No matter how he says it. Even though he provides a solution to it.
Because the flesh is unreasonable. The flesh wants to rule the spirit. without negotiation. And it seeks your destruction. And so we fight the flesh.
And I want to read Francois's quote again. Tell him how self-love makes you unjust to others. And there in verse 6, we saw it, her rival. That's how, you remember, Samuel is telling this story about his mom. He knew the story well.
Just because he was Sent to the temple to be raised does not mean he was out of touch with his family. It does not mean that he never saw his family again. He was not banished to the temple. The story reads that way because sometimes you might think it does, because it's highlighting his experiences in the house of God. But he was very much still with his family.
And this is an emphatic This disharmony was Panina. She caused it. Take her out of the picture, and Hannah has a happy marriage. Even though she may not have children. Says here Her rival provoked her severely.
to make her miserable is utterly poisoned by hatred because Somebody else was loved. And this was the, again, she's taking a poison that makes you thirsty. She's drinking a poison that the more you drink, the thirstier you get, so the more you drink. That's hatred. Feels good going down.
But it's really just killing you. This was a vicious, systematic, determined effort to inject Hatred. into this innocent person's life. Her taunting Tormenting Hannah. Got her no good testimony.
To this day we do not read about Panina's children, we read about Hannah's son, Samuel. She's forgotten. In the Bible, God is saying, as for her judgment, that's my business. As for the lesson, that's your business. We look and we read a story like this and we say, okay, God, who am I in this story?
Am I the Hannah in the story or the Panina? It says here, because the Lord had closed her womb. How painful it was for Hannah. How much suffering did she go through? We're going to get to where it says in the next verse, year by year, that she'd go through this.
Now in scripture language, again, God has frequently said, to do that which he permits. And Uh okay, we accept that. Deuteronomy 29, 29. God does something, and it's us to find out why when He's not revealed it. But here is.
One of the important lessons from just this word: because Yahweh had closed her womb, that's how Samuel saw it, that's how they saw it in those days. Matthew 10 verse 30. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. And in my Bible, it says, and some of you not as much as some of the others. But The part is, when God says, I know how many hairs you have on your head.
Means he's paid attention. And he is paying attention. And he's got this. He's totally on top of it. It's what comes out in the Song of Solomon.
Tell us about your beloved that you so charge us. And then she goes on this, you know, this rant-like about how beautiful his teeth are, all these wonderful things, because she's paid attention because that's what love does.
So God's willingness. Or maybe I'll say it this way. God's unwillingness to immediately remove from our life or deal with some misery and some suffering or pain in our life does not mean He is indifferent and it does not mean He's not doing something. It does mean that there's opportunity in the misery for us to find out. I don't like it any more than you like it.
What I do like is that it won't be this way forever. But right now, it is this way. And I find in my life, when I feel sometimes, you know, sometimes you can just suffer. And you can't even say why. You just don't like Life.
It will pass. Just accept it for the moment that you're you're God's child. and it will pass. But if you harden your heart against it, You will suffer more. Go back to that poison that you drink and makes you thirsty the more you drink.
the more you get poisoned. Verse 7.
So it was year after year when she went up to the house of Yahweh that she provoked her, therefore she wept and did not eat.
Now, see, my flesh says, I would have. Shoved her off. the cart or something, I would have dealt with that chick. That's what I'm thinking. But of course I'm a pastor.
Yeah. And I'm a Christian. And I'm just telling you, like it is. I mean, the flesh, that's how it thinks. Save thyself.
Get behind me, Satan. But you are not mindful of the things of God, but you're mindful of the things of men. You're exalting you. Your view, your way over God's. And Hannah had to be saying.
When will it stop? Am I gonna go to my grave this way? Not all women in Israel who were barren. Were saved from, did not all eventually have children. Many of them did just live a life without children.
Well, sometimes for reasons unknown to us, God takes his time. Disentangling us from the wicked. or from life's setbacks and circumstances.
Sometimes God just takes his time. It is his prerogative as God. It is our privilege to suffer honorably. It says here, when she went up to the house of the Lord, that she provoked her. Here you go Going to church.
It says it just like that. They went up to the house of the Lord. I'm in verse 7. that she provoked her. Tormented by a church goer.
for years. Panina never figured it out. She didn't want to. It felt too good to hate on somebody, to be mean to them. It just felt too good to her flesh.
There are some who believe that the house of God is a good place to make trouble. A good church will filter them out. The people will do much of that. and probably more than the pastors. There are those that feel that a church is a place to criticize and to argue and to sow seeds of discord.
And they seem to get away with it in so many circles.
Some people think they're just such great Christians because they're playing the con on them. Elkinah might have thought Penina was just a great wife-in-law. Because again, we never read of Hannah saying, he's going to ask, what's wrong with you? And she's not going to say, Panina, that's what's wrong with me. She doesn't do it.
One pastor from years ago. said he had a threefold criteria. Might say years ago, like 200 years ago. Threefold criteria for a sermon. And Christians need to listen to this.
I believe. Or are you going to harden yourself up? And the pastor becomes the boogeyman, Does, when he prepares this sermon, does it exalt the Lord Jesus Christ?
Okay. Many Christians can accept that one. Yeah. Does it humble the sinner? How many does it take out?
And church is on a Sunday morning. more likely a Sunday morning than a Wednesday evening or midweek study because Of course, on a Sunday morning, you have those who just, not all of them, but you have a higher number of those who aren't as devout, as hungry. That's the word I want. As a rule, That's why Sunday service is handled differently. Three Does it promote holiness?
Does it exalt the Lord? Does it humble the sinner? Does it promote holiness? What a wonderful criteria. Is it appreciated?
If he steps into the pulpit and he exalts the Lord. And in giving the truth about the flesh, it humbles the sinner, not slays them. And does it End up with solutions towards holiness. Here's Panina. She's going to the temple, and none of these things are registering with her.
She's enjoying, she's eating the sacrifices, she's playing the game. But she is vicious. On the way to worship. She finds it acceptable to take opportunity to be cruel. She wasn't commanded to go to worship.
But she wouldn't miss a chance. To pour the salt in, to twist the knife, she wouldn't miss a chance. Therefore, it says here in verse 7. She wept and tears. did not eat.
That's Hannah. Uh Okay. Thanks for joining us for today's edition of Cross-Reference Radio. This is the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel, Mechanicsville, in Virginia. Currently, Pastor Rick is in the book of 1 Samuel.
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