Yesterday was Mother’s Day, and we took the occasion to celebrate moms and all the godly women in our lives. Moms, you play a pretty special role in the economy of God’s advancing kingdom in this world. None of it would work the way it does without you. But your work is hard. Some days it’s really hard. This message is to offer you a bit of hope and encouragement. Your labor in the Lord will never be in vain. Blessings to you!

Honor for Honorable Commitments

Have you ever felt like the work you were doing didn’t really matter? You were trying your best, but you weren’t seeing anything you felt like were meaningful results. There are days that it takes a lot to get up and get moving. This isn’t primarily because we are physically tired, but because we are emotionally and mentally and even spiritually exhausted. We are in such a state because we have been getting up and going over and over again every day without much in the way of rest. But worse than that, we have been doing all of that without much in the way of a sense that we are really making any difference, that our efforts matter. 

We have all experienced this at one level or another. This is something we feel especially poignantly as parents, because raising kids is tough, and you don’t always or even often see the fruit of your labor the way other people do—and they don’t always tell you about what they are seeing. But I think moms feel this even more than dads do. There are several reasons for that, but a big one is that while dads can often find identity and purpose in work happening outside the home, for a mom, her biggest source of identity and purpose is often inside her home. 

When you can’t see or feel the kind of movement there you’d like, that drains you. When you keep doing the same things every day and don’t notice any real changes over time, that wounds you. When you keep fighting the same battles time after time and they don’t ever seem to get any easier, that exhausts you. If you are a mom who is like most moms out there, you are weary a whole lot more of the time than you’d prefer. And it’s hard. Even if you are not a mom, I suspect you still feel this in a way that resonates with your very soul. It’s tough to be a woman—especially a godly woman—in a world broken by sin. 

With all of that in mind, and in light of the fact that today is a day we set aside to celebrate and honor moms and godly women more generally, can I just offer you some encouragement this morning? I’m not going to do this from the standpoint of all the wisdom I have in being a mom. I’m pretty fresh out in that department. Rather, I want to encourage you with a word from the Lord and a reminder of just why you matter so very much. Hear that well this morning: Moms, you really matter. Godly women, the difference you make in this world—in our lives—goes beyond what you could really imagine.

This morning, I would like to share a story with you about a godly woman and mother in the Scriptures who made a kingdom-sized difference in the world because of her tenacious faithfulness even in the face of circumstances that were about as hard as they could be. If you have your copy of the Scriptures this morning, would you join me in the Old Testament document that tells of the rise of King David—1 Samuel. The book bears the name of the man who likely wrote much of the first part of the two-part collection, and presents us with a long look at a crucial period of time in the history of Israel. We are going to start right at the beginning of the story, long before David was even a thought in his parents’ minds. The story here opens with a woman named Hannah, who was struggling under a load of misery that she wasn’t sure how much longer she could bear. Check this out with me.

“There was a man from Ramathaim-zophim in the hill country of Ephraim. His name was Elkanah son of Jeroham, son of Elihu, son of Tohu, son of Zuph, an Ephraimite.” This kind of genealogy would have mattered a lot to the first folks who heard and read this story. It feels a bit pointless to us, I know, but what this tells us is that Elkanah here was a descendant of Joseph. That doesn’t mean a whole lot by itself except that he was part of a faithful line of Israelites. And, as it turns out, he himself was a pretty faithful guy. Sort of. Elkanah was what we might call a cultural Christian (minus the whole not being a Christian thing since Christianity didn’t actually exist yet). He thought of himself as faithful to God, but he had some pretty glaring holes in his theology that resulted in his making some decisions about how he would live his life that were not particularly honoring of God. He meant well, but in refusing to yield his whole life to God, he was causing problems for the people around him and especially the other members of his family. We run into the heart of the problem in the first four words of the next verse. 

“He had two wives…” Marriage was designed in creation to be a covenantal union between one man and one woman, not one man and two (or more) women. Yes, the Old Testament often features stories about guys who had more than one wife. Yes, sometimes those guys are the “good guys” in terms of the role they play in the story being told. But the Scriptures never condone polygamy. They simply present that it happened. Polygamy was fairly normal throughout human history for a variety of reasons. There are a number of ungodly and unrighteous habits and practices that have been historically normal and in which God’s people participated without His direct judgment or condemnation for them. It’s sometimes hard for us to grasp why that is, but what we can see is the moral framework being laid down pointing people away from those things and toward habits and practices that are honoring of God. Historically, we know that God’s people eventually got the message and started working intentionally to get rid of them more directly. The whole thing is a grand demonstration of the fact that God accepts us where we are rather than insisting we meet with His standards first before we can be in a relationship with Him. 

In any event, Elkanah had two wives. He shouldn’t have had two wives. But he did. And from the way his domestic situation played itself out (similar to the way every instance of someone having more than one wife in the Scriptures played itself out), we can see that this wasn’t how things were intended by God to work. “He had two wives, the first named Hannah and the second Peninnah. Pheninnah had children, but Hannah was childless.” 

The rest of the verse here offers a window into why Elkanah took two wives in the first place. Having kids, and especially sons, was a big deal in the ancient world. Elkanah married Hannah, and the two were happy. He loved her, and life was good. But then they couldn’t conceive, and life got very hard. That was uniformly seen as the woman’s fault back then. It would have been understood to mean Hannah was cursed by God and not a good wife. She was failing in her most basic duty. As much sympathy as Elhanah had for her barrenness, though, it didn’t change the fact that he needed sons both to help work his farm, but also to be able to preserve his family land by passing it on to them. So, he took a second wife, Peninnah, with whom he was able to have those children. 

This gave Elkanah the sons he needed, which was good, but it would have made Hannah’s situation all the harder. Not only was she now having to share her husband’s affections with this other woman, but this other woman was being the wife to him Hannah longed to be. Now, this doesn’t mean that Peninnah is the villain of this story. Her situation was bad as well. She was not Elkanah’s favorite wife—which is a problem that doesn’t exist when you have just one the way God intended it. She might have even been a slave who was elevated to wife status like Abraham and Sarah did with Hagar to gain Ishmael for themselves. For her, even though she was being fully the wife that Elkanah had wanted and needed Hannah to be, Peninnah never really gained his heart the way Hannah did. Peninnah’s own hurt and envy would have been intense—a hurt and envy that wound up being taken out on Hannah in the most painful ways possible. 

“This man would go up from his town every year to worship and to sacrifice to the Lord of Armies at Shiloh, where Eli’s two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, were the Lord’s priests. Whenever Elkanah offered a sacrifice, he always gave portions of the meat to his wife Peninnah and to each of her sons and daughters. But he gave a double portion to Hannah, for he loved her even though the Lord had kept her from conceiving. Her rival would taunt her severely just to provoke her, because the Lord had kept Hannah from conceiving.” 

Can you see how hard things were for Hannah? All she wanted was to be a good and godly wife and mother, but the latter was persistently denied to her. Peninnah’s understandable envy for their husband’s love and attention just made things worse. Hannah tried to be faithful, but Peninnah just wouldn’t leave her alone. “Year after year, when she went up to the Lord’s house, her rival taunted her in this way. Hannah would weep and would not eat.” Have you ever been so low that basic operating functions started to get really hard? It took a ton of effort just to do normal, daily tasks. And extra things like being a good and faithful member of the church felt almost impossible to do. And, worst of all, her husband was clueless as to why she was so miserable. He meant well, but he was clueless. “‘Hannah, why are you crying?’ her husband, Elkanah, would ask. ‘Why won’t you eat? Why are you troubled? Am I not better to you than ten sons?’” Wives, have you ever had your husband make a genuine effort to love you that only served to double down on your pain because he wouldn’t really listen to you? Should I get an “amen” on that, or should we just leave it alone for now? Let’s go with that second one. 

In spite of all of this pain, though, Hannah remained faithful to God. She kept turning to Him in her misery over and over again no matter how bad things got. She did it when others didn’t understand. She stuck with it even when well-meaning but misunderstanding others scolded her for her efforts because they didn’t understand. One year, when the family was in Shiloh, when Peninnah was being worse than ever, and when Hannah’s own misery seemed too great to bear, she fell before the Lord and poured out her heart to Him. The local priest, Eli, who would eventually play a much bigger role in her life than either of them knew in the moment, tried to shoo her way, but she defended herself with courage and humility, and he wound up blessing her for her efforts to seek the Lord. And as she sought the Lord, she made a promise—in fact, she essentially bargained with God. “Lord of Armies, if you will take notice of your servant’s affliction, remember and not forget me, and give your servant a son, I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life, and his hair will never be cut.” 

Now, there’s a lot there that we don’t need to get into right now, but in His wisdom and grace, God answered Hannah’s prayer just the way she wanted Him to answer it. Verse 19 now: “The next morning Elkanah and Hannah got up early to worship before the Lord. Afterward, they returned home to Ramah. Then Elkanah was intimate with his wife Hannah, and the Lord remembered her. After some time, Hannah conceived and gave birth to a son. She named him Samuel, because she said, ‘I requested him from the Lord.’” The name “Samuel” in Hebrew sounds like the Hebrew word for “requested from God.” 

Hannah, at long last, was a mother. But she was also faced with a choice. She had made a vow to God before conceiving this child. That may have seemed like a good idea in the moment, but now that she was holding her precious baby boy in her arms, the reality of what following through on that vow meant was no doubt pressing in pretty hard. Yet her righteousness and faithfulness shined even in this. When the time was right, she fulfilled her vow. She brought young Samuel back to Shiloh and entrusted him into the care of the priest, Eli, the very priest who had scolded her for being drunk in the temple a few years before. And, listen, I know that what she does here doesn’t make any sense to us. That’s okay. She was operating from within the understood and accepted boundaries of her culture and diligently pursuing faithfulness to God from within those lines. That’s what matters most for us right now. Hannah made a promise to God, she made a commitment to Him, and she followed through on that commitment to the good of her family even when it was really, really hard. 

And when it was all said and done, she praises the Lord. The second chapter of 1 Samuel opens with this incredible prayer of praise and triumph from Hannah. She reveals an understanding of God’s character that is insightful and nuanced. She recognizes that the God who allows us to face hard times—even though we don’t always understand why—is also the God who sustains us through them. Those who turn from Him and reject Him, though they may seem to prosper now, will one day fall victim to the great reversal when God turns around the fortunes of those who have suffered with courage because of or in spite of their faithfulness. 

Indeed, that is what Hannah herself experienced. She suffered under the weight of her circumstances and the people involved in those circumstances added to her suffering whether they meant to or not. Yet in spite of it all, she just kept pursuing the Lord. She sought His presence and meditated on His word. She came to know Him not because someone else told her about Him, but because she spent just so much time with Him. And in response to her faithfulness, the Lord blessed her. He blessed her with the joy of Samuel with whom she stayed deeply connected in spite of their distance. She made sure he knew that he was not forgotten, and that his work in serving the Lord was a high and valuable calling, a calling he pursued with the same faithfulness his mother had demonstrated for him. 

Look at 1 Samuel 2:18 now: “Samuel served in the Lord’s presence—this mere boy was dressed in the linen ephod. [That’s a note of just how dedicated and faithful he was, especially relative to Eli’s sons who were scumbags of the highest order.] Each year his mother made him a little robe and took it to him when she went with her husband to offer the annual sacrifice. Eli would bless Elkanah and his wife: ‘May the Lord give you children by this woman in place of the one she has given to the Lord.’ Then they would go home. The Lord paid attention to Hannah’s need, and she conceived and gave birth to three sons and two daughters. Meanwhile, the boy Samuel grew up in the presence of the Lord.” 

So why tell you this story on a day like this one? I mean, it’s a little on the nose to tell a story about a mother on Mother’s Day. Well, perhaps, but there are some pretty powerful truths here that offer a lot of encouragement to all of us, but especially moms and other godly women. Let’s think back through the story and highlight what some of these are. 

First and foremost, being faithful isn’t an exercise only for when times are good. Faithfulness when times are good is easy. Praising the Lord when the sky is bright and sunny only makes sense. But times aren’t always like that. We are called to faithfulness in both seasons. Sometimes God allows us to enter into and then leaves us in those positions—positions in which we are powerless to change our circumstances on our own like what Hannah faced as a barren woman with a rival wife who was in a culture that considered such a status a curse from God—even over our pleadings for Him to take us out of them. Why would He do that? Because He intends to accomplish His plans through our faithfulness in powerful ways. He plans to sustain us through the hard times if we will only lean into Him and trust in Him, and to use the example of our faithfulness in a season like that one to encourage others to faithfulness in their own difficult seasons. Other times He is using that season to strengthen and equip us for challenges still ahead of us that we don’t even know about yet. The timing on all of this is rarely what we want it to be, but our faithfulness will always pay off in the end. Moms, your faithfulness will always pay off in the end. God honors your commitment to His kingdom. 

Here’s another idea that comes out of this passage that just might be the one thing you really came to hear today even though you didn’t know it when you were walking in. Being joyful and miserable are not mutually exclusive states of mind. There are times when we are going to be both. There is joy in serving the Lord even when our circumstances are terrible and we are miserable in them. Experiencing the joy of the Lord doesn’t mean we are always going to like where we are and what we are facing. But when your first and highest commitment is to His kingdom, the joy of His presence will sustain you even in your most miserable estates. That doesn’t mean the misery will vanish like a vapor of fog, but when your commitment is to His kingdom, you are able to see through the fog to taste the full joy that is waiting for you there. God honors your commitment to His kingdom. 

We talked about the fact that Hannah made a costly commitment to the Lord and then honored that commitment. When we have committed ourselves to the Lord, following through on that commitment sometimes comes with a cost. When you say yes to Jesus and serving the advance of His kingdom, you are simultaneously saying no to a whole lot of other things you might kind of wish you could say yes to still. But if you will honor your commitment—including paying the cost—God Himself will return the favor. God honors your commitment to His kingdom. 

Hannah’s story is obviously more about her becoming a mother than the actual mothering she did, but her faithfulness even there offers us some good examples to follow. Your efforts to raise your kids to know the Lord matter. Every single one of them does. Your commitment to be in the Scriptures. Your commitment to engaging in both public and secret prayer. Your commitment to serving faithfully in the church. Your commitment to practicing quick and intentional forgiveness. Your commitment to living with a spirit of repentance of your own wrongs. Your commitment to loving with the unconditional love of Jesus. Your commitment to lovingly holding your kids to the high standards of God’s kingdom. All of that makes a difference. When you show your kids Jesus faithfully and well, the odds of their following Him on their own go way up. There aren’t any guarantees here, of course, and I wouldn’t dare offer you one. But those who labor in the Lord never labor in vain. God honors your commitment to His kingdom, especially the efforts you put toward that in your own home. 

There’s also this: The impact we have on our kids doesn’t end when they are no longer under our direct control and supervision. We can still point them to Jesus long after that point. We can also invest in others the same way. If your kids are out of the house, you can still be intentional about investing in the kids who are close to home—there is no shortage of those around here these days. If you don’t have any kids of your own, number one, Hannah understands the burden of that season or of that journey through life. But more than that, until that season changes, God has given you the time and space to make incredible investments in the growth in Jesus of the kids who are within your sphere of influence. When your commitment is first to His kingdom, there are all kinds of things God can do with that. God honors your commitment to His kingdom. 

How about one more thing? What makes Hannah’s story so powerful is that she was living for a story that was bigger than her own story. Yes, she was invested in her own story—how could you not be? But she wasn’t invested only in her own story. She was primarily invested in the story of growing God’s kingdom. When we strive to live for a story that is bigger than our own, God is able to make us a part of His story. Doing that will make us part of a legacy that will last far longer and be exponentially more impactful than anything we could hope to accomplish on our own. We started out this morning talking about struggling with feeling like our work doesn’t really matter. When the primary substance of our work is our pursuit of living out our commitment to God’s kingdom in practical, meaningful ways, our work will always matter. We will always matter. You will always matter. God honors your commitment to His kingdom. 

Now, sometimes our kingdom impact is not in the things we do directly to advance God’s kingdom, but in the actions of the people we inspire. One of the scholarships we will give out next week on our Graduate Recognition Sunday is in memory and honor of Mae Brooks. Mae’s impact on God’s kingdom as just one person was sizable, yes, but her impact through the people she impacted will be exponentially larger. This is because she did all the things we’ve been talking about this morning. She was faithful in all seasons. She found joy even in misery. She pointed her own children toward Jesus and went on to point many, many more children in His direction. And, above all, she made her story a part of God’s story because she was committed first to God’s kingdom. God honors your commitment to His kingdom. Moms…godly women more generally…every single person in the room, your faithfulness may not seem like it is accomplishing very much here and now, yet be faithful anyway. The stories that will be told one day about the impact of your legacy will tell of the goodness of God through you. They will boast of all you did to advance His kingdom. That’s the real goal. Let that be your commitment, and everything you do will matter. God honors your commitment to His kingdom.