March 9, 2025 God's Faithfulness| Celebration of the sacrament of Baptism | 1 Samuel 1:27-28; 1 Samuel 2:1-10

Today we are celebrating the baptism of Pax, the newest member of our church family.  We will reflect on 1 Samuel 1:27-28 and 1 Samuel 2:1-10, God’s Faithfulness. The birth of Samuel to Hannah and Elkanah came about after a long season of prayer to God. In Samuel’s birth, we see God’s faithfulness and presence, and how God can transform our grief into great joy. In Hannah’s prayer, she rejoices in God and his faithfulness, looking back to God’s long presence with his people and how he humbles the proud and exalts the humble. In Hannah’s humility, she offers Samuel to the Lord, recognizing that our children are a gift given to us, but they are God’s children first. We have a responsibility as a covenantal community to walk alongside the parents to help them raise Pax to know and love the Lord. 

Transcript

God’s Faithfulness

1 Samuel 27-28; 2:1-10

Baptisms remind us who we belong to and God’s blessings. Catrinus and Gloria, you and your families especially recognize this as we celebrated Pax’s baptism just a few moments ago. It was a special moment on New Year’s Eve when I received your text that Pax had been born; you wrote, “Her name is Pax Chalaine Brouwer. Pax is Latin for peace because that is what she has brought us thanks to God.” When talking to you later on, you said she was a miracle given to you by God, this is reflected in the passages, and the Bible story you chose for the service; the story of Hannah’s pain-filled prayers for a child. It strikes me that Hannah’s deeply loved by her husband Elkanah. He shows his love by giving Hannah twice as much food as he does to his other wife Peninnah and her children, but his love isn’t enough because Hannah identifies herself by her barrenness and the shame that others lay on her. Elkanah can give Hannah food his love, but ultimately, he cannot give Hannah her heart’s desire, only God can. Elkanah even asks her, “Don’t I mean more to you than ten sons?” Hannah doesn’t even bother answering him because he can’t give her the answers to her own painful questions, only God can, and so Hannah turns to the only one who can fulfill her deepest desires and transform her situation.

Hannah vows to God that if God gives her a son, she’ll give him over to the Lord for all the days of his life. God answers Hannah with the gift of Samuel. The verses you chose begins with Hannah keeping her vow, “I prayed for this child, and the Lord has granted me what I asked of him. So now I give him to the Lord. For his whole life he will be given over to the Lord.” And he worshiped the Lord there.” You understand Hannah and her deep desires in a way that many of us cannot. Hannah names her son Samuel, “heard by God,” a confession of faith in a God who hears the cries of our hearts.

I appreciate how you identified three themes in Hannah’s story and prayer; themes that shape your own faith: God’s power to transform, the importance of surrendering to God, and God’s faithfulness. Hannah fulfills her vow to God when Samuel is weaned, likely 3 or 4 years old, and brings him to the temple for the priest Eli to raise with his own children. The temple becomes both Samuel’s home and place to worship. Samuel’s life is shaped by worship; his birth an answer to prayer rooted in trust and faith of the Lord. Hannah recognizes that Samuel is first of all a child of God, a child from God. Pax’s baptism reminds us that she too is a child of God. 

As you mentioned, this is part of our confessions: Lord’s Day 1, “What is your only hope in life and in death? That I am not my own, but belong body and soul to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and has set me free from all the power of the devil. He also preserves me in such a way that without the will of my heavenly Father not a hair can fall from my head; indeed, all things must work together for my salvation. Therefore, by his Holy Spirit, he also assures me of eternal life and makes me heartily wiling and ready from now on to live for him.” This is part of your prayer for Pax, that her heart and soul is rooted in the worship of, and trust in the Lord. 

Hannah turns to God in a beautiful prayer of faith that echoes Mary’s Magnificat in Luke 1, and King David’s prayer of thanksgiving in 2 Samuel 22. She rejoices in the Lord’s faithfulness, not only to her, but she remembers his faithfulness to his people throughout history. Her prayer is a deeply personal prayer that recognizes the upside-down nature of God’s kingdom. Hannah begins with rejoicing and celebrating the Lord’s holiness. She gives thanks that, “in the Lord my horn is lifted high.” Hannah’s referring to a custom among the Israelite women of wearing a tin or silver horn on the forehead that their veil hung from. Wives, who have no children, wear it pointing more outwards, while those who become mothers point it upwards, showing that they’re mothers; a sign of God’s blessing to them. 

Hannah, looking back over the Lord’s history with Israel, highlights how the Lord has compassion for the weak, the oppressed, those without hope, and turning things around against those who have everything and fail to realize that in their wealth and power they’ve been called by God to care for the ones who’ve learned to lean heavily on God. Last week we reflected on how we’re called to transform our minds so we know God’s will, but our God is also a God who enters into our lives regularly to transform us, and even to transform the situations we’re in. Hannah’s prayer reminds us of how God is behind the breaking of the bows of the warriors while those who stumble are armed with strength; how those whose stomachs were always full now are hiring themselves out for food, while those who were hungry now have full stomachs, and then Hannah touches on something so personal to herself, how she who was barren now has seven children, while she who has had many sons pines away. We hear an echo to Job’s confession, Job 1:21, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised.” Job knows God is faithful to his promises. 

This takes trust in the Lord to praise the Lord’s faithfulness in the good and the hard. I appreciate how you confessed how you were “reminded of his faithfulness many times through out this journey and love how Hannah’s prayer shows God’s sovereignty, faithfulness and reminds us to praise God in all circumstances.” This is hard for many today as we’ve been conditioned by our society to believe that we deserve the best, that we can accomplish whatever we want to accomplish, but then life happens and we find we need to learn how to trust. We see this movement in Hannah; in the beginning nothing can satisfy the hurt in her, but by the time she gives Samuel over the Lord, “so now I give him over the Lord. For his whole life he will be given over to the Lord,” a difficult moment for any mother to leave her young child behind for someone else to finish raising him, but she’s learned to lean on the Lord, surrendering herself to him, and trusting him to care for her son. 

Mary, Jesus’ mother, makes that same emotional and spiritual journey of surrendering her son to God, trusting in God’s plan for his life. I’m sure she never imagined how her son was going to be so instrumental in Israel’s history, being part of the beginning of Israel’s kingships. Your desire for Pax is to dedicate her to the Lord and his plans for her, even though we have no idea of how the Holy Spirit is going to shape her or use her. We trust the Lord’s plans ahead of time.

Not all our prayers are answered in such beautiful ways, yet when we surrender ourselves to God’s will and walk in faith and trust, God walks with us. Our salvation and hope rest not in what we have or what we do, Paul writes in Titus 3:5 “he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.” God is with us through the presence of his Spirit, but he’s also actively with us in our lives, “he will guard the feet of his faithful servants.” We’re reminded that the Lord is powerful and mighty and will give us the strength we need to trust in his ways; that he will exalt the horn of his anointed in his way and his timing. 

Baptism reminds us of God’s faithfulness to his people, a reminder of who we belong to. On the first Pentecost, Peter calls the people to repent and be baptized: Acts 2:38–39, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.” With the gift of the Holy Spirit, we hear an echo to Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus, “No one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit.” Paul writes in Galatians 3:27 “for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.” This is identity language, family language, and it’s offered freely to those who accept Jesus, who place their faith and trust in him. Our value and identity come from Jesus, not our accomplishments. Baptism reminds us of the new life we receive from God through the gift of the Holy Spirit and the washing away of our sin; new life that ushers us into the kingdom of heaven.