Sermon Tone Analysis

Engage

This morning is Palm Sunday 2022 and I will confess to you that we are in a most untraditional text for the occasion.

Palm Sunday is a day within the Christian calendar that marks the triumphal entry of Jesus Christ into Jerusalem just days before he was to go to the cross, days before anyone would realize how John 1:29 “The Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world,” as John the Baptist declared, would accomplish the taking away of the world’s sins.

We know it as the day that Israel welcomed her true King and Messiah, as he rode in upon a donkey, only to see that same King and Messiah rejected.

Thanks to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, who gave the evangelists cause to write, we know what was truly occuring on that first Palm Sunday which gives our hearts cause to exult and praise Jesus.

By God’s grace, there are points in time to which we can look back to and see his most direct movement in carrying out his will to bring about a permanent and lasting redemption to this world.

And there are days and moments that occur within our lives which we look back upon and with the benefit of hindsight, can see God’s hand.

One such day in my and my wife’s life was September 27, 2013.

In a sense, it was to be a day of completion for Yvette and I.

We had been married eight years and quite unlike the Hannah we have just read of in the Bible, September 27th was the day of birth for our second daughter, Lily.

It was to be a day of completion because for Yvette and I, being the goal-oriented types that we are, we were about to check a box with one of the things we agreed upon when we were married - we knew we wanted two kids.

Now, I won’t tell you everything we aspired to when we were first married, but in case you’re wondering, aside from having two kids, Yvette and I, without any debate, wholeheartedly agreed on this - that neither of our two children would ever become Lytle Pirates.

Yvette and I are Mustangs born and Mustangs bred and when we’re gone, we’ll be Mustangs dead and we have another decade of fervent prayer that the Lord wouldn’t place such a trial upon us before we can check that box...

Tension

For those who have welcomed a new child into your family, you know all too well the massive disruption that brings to a home.

But September 27, 2013 wasn’t one that was normal, nor were we able to see what God might be doing because of it.

Lily’s delivery was probably within the boundaries of what would be considered a typical delivery.

I know so many questions come to mind regarding the delivery of children, but I want to put your minds at ease… From start to finish, it was about eight hours, all tolled and was relatively smooth sailing.

Aside from standing for prolonged periods of time to be an encourager, I was really fine through it all and wasn’t particularly tired at the end.

Easy for me to say, right?

We thought everything was OK until our pediatrician came in to check on Lily.

I’ve only seen two of these examinations so I don’t know if this is par for the course, but the best way I can describe the way our pediatrician checked out our new borns is to compare him to an accordion player in a Tejano band at Fiesta.

You know, a guy who’s going to push the squeezebox for every ounce of air it has in it.

But with Lily’s examination, the pediatrician’s expression was different than when he looked over Bethany at her birth…and he asked questions about Lily that he didn’t with Bethany.

And we soon learned that Lily was born with under-developed hips, she had hip dysplasia.

With any medical diagnosis, you read about the worst-case and I will tell you, it sent Yvette and I into a tail spin that was long for us to shake free from.

Truth

This morning’s text comes as a form of response to what I would suggest was a significant tail spin for Hannah.

Before we can understand the prayer of response, we have to appreciate what led Hanna to pray this.

Despair

Looking back to 1 Samuel 1, this book tells of the time of Israel that immediately follows the time recorded in Judges.

Judges concludes with

and the period of history rolls right into 1 Samuel 1 where we are introduced to a man named Elkanah who kept two wives, Peninnah and Hannah.

Peninnah had children and Hannah had no children.

The scriptures say that Peninnah tormented Hannah because she gave their husband children, when Hannah had not.

Elkanah was sensitive to Hannah’s turmoil, overtly showing his love and support for her.

Despite the great support she enjoyed from her husband, Hannah was overwhelmed by her sense of being a defective woman.

Her sister wife’s harassment only added to Hannah’s spiraling down.

Hannah dealt with years of depression, indicated by her countenance, her tears wrought from pain, and loss of appetite.

Hannah was dealing with her stuff like most of us do.

Society has determined what is typical and when you don’t fall within that range of acceptability, well, the Peninnah’s of the world will do everything that they can to build themselves up by tearing you down.

This isn’t to overlook the fact that Hannah’s upbringing also trained her to feel ashamed and embarrassed, in other words, Hannah was just adding to her misery because that’s what she knew to do.

Have you ever felt the suffocating weight of being less than or a misfit?

It’s difficult to admit it, I can tell you I know it’s difficult because our first inclination is to conceal it.

With hip dysplasia in new borns, the treatment is to hold the ball joint of the femur into place at the pelvis until that pelvic bone grows around the ball joint and holds it tight.

Until that happens, the leg and pelvis will just keep popping out of joint.

To keep things together, there’s a harness your baby has to wear that goes over the shoulders, around the chest and has foot holders to kind of hold the kid in a permanently seated position, keeping the hip joint tight.

There’s no real hiding the harness.

It was a source despair for me and my wife.

As a parent, your mind wonders, “Did I contribute to that?”

In a public setting, you’re on constant edge, hoping against all hope that no one finds out what makes you different or what you’re dealing with.

Maybe Hannah would give Peninnah a break from the kids by taking some of them to the market with her, with Hannah’s true motive to give public appearance that she was a perfectly whole woman.

Dependence

Hannah lived in this cycle of despair and depression for years, until one year, before the Lord’s temple at Shiloh, she poured herself out before the Lord.

This was something she hadn’t done before, although we can read from 1 Samuel 1 that Hannah and her husband were pretty good at keeping to religious practices.

They checked the right boxes.

The equivalent here is that they gave their church money regularly and made sure that they didn’t miss Easter services.

They were “good Jews” or like some of us might say today, “a good Christian family.”

At church when they’re expected to be.

Not stirring up trouble at the markets.

Good folk in the eyes of everyone around them.

But one day, on one of those trips to the temple that they made faithfully year after year, Hannah does something she hasn’t done before.

She does something maybe no one was used to seeing because if you read 1 Samuel 1, even the temple priest Eli is confused by what he’s seeing.

From her despair, arriving at a place where she finally knew that she couldn’t fix her situation, she became vulnerable before God and all who laid eye upon her.

The trials from her inability to conceive and the oppression at the hand of her sister wife were beyond her control and nothing about what she does, even making it to church when she was supposed to, was going to fix that.

She asked God in a most moving of prayers to give her a son and if he did, she would return that son to the Lord for temple service.

And as you read on in the chapter, God did.

And as you read to the end of the chapter, Hannah did in return as she had committed to in that prayer.

So many might read this and come away with a perspective that prayer amounts to an interaction with a god who is a vending machine.

You want a baby?

Push the buttons, B-1.

Want money?

A-3.

Health?

D-4.

You ever hear a preacher on TV talk about “sowing a seed”?

He’s asking you to put money into that vending machine while selling you on the idea that you will get more in return that what you put in.

The problem is that the god that the TV preacher is talking about isn’t the God of the Bible.

He’s not the God who rode into Jerusalem on a donkey.

He’s not the God to whom Hannah prayed.

“What do you mean?

She asked and she received!”, says the person who has been reading along.

He’s not the God to whom Hannah prayed…how do I know?

Look at how she prayed from what we read at the start.

Verse 1, God alone is able to save.

Verse 2, no one or nothing compares to the true and living God.

Verse 3, God is all-knowing and the standard by which all men and women are measured.

Verse 4, God is stronger than the mighty.

Verse 5, he starves the full and feeds the hungry, he opens and closes wombs.

Verse 6, he gives and takes away life.

Verse 7, he gives and takes away wealth.

Verse 8, he is in total control of everything.

Verse 10, the Lord alone stands victorious.

Friends, Hannah’s prayer is a prayer of dependence and confession.

She knows her place before the Almighty and where the Lord has been through her great trial of barrenness.

The Lord did not and does not beckon to her call, but she, like the rest of us, revolve around God who, at the same time, is present in our trials and sufferings, using them to bring us to the place where we learn this truth: 1 Samuel 2:9 “...for not by might shall a man prevail.”

Most of you have known my family for years and not a one, except for having maybe heard me share bits of this story before, would know that there’s a thing wrong with Lily, except for the fact that she’s got a dad who is crazy enough to believe God called him to be a preacher.

Her hips did what they had to and that trial is behind us.

But you better believe that the Lord had a purpose in it.

The unsuspecting Dan Newburg who approached September 27, 2013 was a Christian who had drifted from being someone who lived with God at the center of his life.