Have you ever wanted something very, very much indeed? Perhaps there was something particularly special that you wanted. And most of us can remember something that we've had to wait a long time for until we finally got it. I can remember, and I think both of my sons will be able to remember, saving up for my first bike. It took a long, long time. I think it must have been at least two Christmases, two birthdays, and some earning in between times. I can remember being told from time to time while all my friends around me were getting their bikes as one off Christmas presents from Auntie Jane or whoever it was. I can remember being told that it would mean much more to me if I had saved the money and bought it myself. I must say I don't think I particularly appreciated the lesson at the time and I'm not sure I continue to appreciate that sort of lesson. After all my friends' bikes seem to be particularly appreciated and mean a lot to them even though they've received them all at one go. And they particularly appreciated their bikes when they realized I hadn't got one. When I finally did get mine though, it was a wonderful experience. Perhaps some of you have had the same sort of experience in praying hard for something as well. That was what we discovered was the experience last week of Hannah. I want you to turn in your Bibles, if you will, to 1 Samuel chapter 2. When Hannah finally got what she wanted, what she had been praying for for so long, when she finally got it, it must have been like coming out of a bad dream. No longer could peninar make fun of her. No longer was scorn poured on her by all the surrounding people and particularly of course by the other wife, this woman peninar. No longer was Hannah have to ask herself, there's no doubt she did many, many times. What have I done wrong? What am I missing? What's gone wrong God that I haven't got a child while everybody else has? And so in this chapter Hannah begins to praise God, have a gratitude in her heart for what he has done for her. Here is just the same Hannah, just the same Hannah as the Hannah we saw last week. Last week we saw a Hannah who was able to teach us about opening our whole hearts to God in the midst of suffering and pain and difficulty and troubles and complexity and thought. A woman who was able to bring everything to God and be thoroughly honest with him. Here we have the same Hannah being full of herself again only this time with rejoicing and the change in the field from chapter 1 to chapter 2 is obvious. She sincere and honest as much in her praises as she was in her requests and the unburdening of her heart. I wonder how you thank the Lord when he has given you something and when you have something to thank him for. I wonder what you say. Do you say thank you Lord for this or for that? Or do you say more than that? When Hannah looks on what the Lord has done for her, she sees a picture of all that the Lord is doing for his people and for the kingdom of God. Hannah has a big view of God. Look at these verses there in one Samuel 2. I don't see anywhere the words thank you. The sentiment is there. The sentiment is there. It's clear that this is welling up out of thanks to God and praise for God. She doesn't simply say thank you and somehow I don't know what you think but somehow I think that a prayer saying thank you is very light weight actually because I had this prayer that we had read for us earlier on. We read Mary's song for the New Testament lesson. The Magnificate. My soul blesses the Lord. You remember it from Luke chapter 1. We read that because Mary quite clearly bases her song of praise to God for what he is doing through her. She bases that on Hannah's song. It's an interesting fact that it's very clear. One time you'll have to sit down with the two passages in front of you and see how she does it. I suggest what was almost certainly the case was that young teenage girls in Israel of Mary's time were taught that they should emulate people of history like Hannah. And so almost certainly they would have learned by heart things like Hannah's prayer. And what Mary does is under the guidance of the Holy Spirit she opens up and she begins to use Hannah's prayer with slight changes in it. Changes in the light of what has just happened to her and the news that Gabriel has brought. Hannah you see news that while she should say thank you to the Lord there was so much more involved in proper praise of God. There was so much more involved in proper praise of God. And what we find in this prayer is that the main subject the main theme of it is giving thanks to God for being the covenant God. The God who keeps watch over his people. The God who answers the prayers of his people for Hannah and others like her. An answer to the prayer of the thought that she had asked was not just a personal thing between her and the Lord. Her request was personal between her and the Lord but the answer was something far deeper. It was evidence to her that God had great plans for his people. God is the covenant God says Hannah because he lives up to his promises. That's what Mary particularly draws attention to in her song. You remember God is fulfilling in Mary's life the promises that he made so long ago. There's no reference to Samuel in this prayer of thanks. Hannah doesn't say Lord I want to thank you for giving me Samuel. Isn't Samuel a fine lad and it's all your work, Lord? Thank you for Samuel. She doesn't say that. She works at an all together deeper level of praise than that. The Lord would have known her heart. He knew undoubtedly that she was so thankful to have been given Samuel. But we have a lot to learn here about prayer. We learned about prayer of requests last week. This week we have a lot to learn from a lady a humble Israelite lady who lived 3000 years ago about prayer of praise. And don't say we have no lessons to learn if even Mary the mother of Jesus had lessons to learn from Hannah how much more we do. What can we learn? Well firstly I just want to pick out four points from the prayer fairly briefly. But points that ought to form part of our prayers of praise as well. Firstly she praises God because he delivers his people. First one I rejoice in my salvation or the new international version I delight in your deliverance. God saves his people. Is that what you say first off when you're thanking God for something? You come home and you want to thank God for a good day at work. It's a change because most of the other days have been bad and you've been praying about it for some time. Is the first thing you do to say I praise you God because you are my deliverer and Savior. If you like me it probably isn't the first thing you say. You probably simply start straight in and say thank you Lord for a lovely day. Well there's nothing wrong with that but let's just look again at what Hannah is doing. She's taking it she's taking her praise and her thanks and she's putting it where it ought to be. Focus in who God is. I want to thank God for giving me an answer to this all that prayer. No she starts with who God is just like Mary does. My soul magnifies the Lord my spirit rejoices what? In Jesus that's going to be born of me my soul rejoices my spirit rejoices in God my Savior. You see she does exactly what Hannah does. She turns first to the important things of who God is. Now what are these women teaching us? Surely they are teaching us about God Himself. The staggering thing to their mind and it should be the staggering thing for you and me as well. The staggering thing to their minds is God has taken note of me. God has taken note of me. You may think well so he should but what am I? I mean there he is he's the creator of the universe. Let's go back into Hannah's time for a moment and recognize that women were pretty looked down on. A woman without children was even more looked down on. Can you imagine what Hannah felt? God this God the Savior the judge of the world has taken note of me. So you see this is why she begins her praise with who God is. That is what is staggering for her. Do you ever feel that sense of awe when you come into God's presence? The awe that this God with Savior and judge look at verse 10 she begins and ends her prayer in the same way. Well the same sort of way right at the end of the end of the prayer there. She will thunder against them from heaven the Lord will judge the ends of the earth. Sounds pretty far removed from thanking the Lord for Samuel. You see she's talking at this great level of who God is. This God who she comes to praise. She comes to praise because he has given her what she asked. This God is the Savior and judge of the world. Do you have that sense of awe perhaps just at the time when you most think you are nothing in the eyes of everyone around you? It's clear that God is concerned for you have you had that experience? I remember the teenager reading a book which was called I Feel Like a Blob. Some sensible Christian youth leader gave it to me and then what he thought of me at the time. I feel like a blob. Now I don't really know what a blob was supposed to be but I know I often felt like a blob anyway. How many of you have ever felt like a blob? I'm sure Hannah felt and had felt for a long time like a blob. She felt like a blob but God had taken an active interest in her life. And the first thing that comes to her mind is who this God is, Savior and judge. And when we pray to God for things then we must give praise to him for who he is. And it's worth stopping and just thinking about that as we pray. Daily, often with many things for thank God for. The person to whom you want to give thanks is the sovereign Lord. She uses that word Lord there, my heart rejoices in the Lord. Now this may all be old hat to you but you may notice both in the NIV and the RSV which you are mostly using. That Lord is spelled capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D. And whenever you see that in the Old Testament, when you see that particular spelling of Lord where it's all capitals, the Hebrew word that's being used there is Yahweh which is the special name for God when he is being thought of as the Covenant God. In the Old Testament it was in the Old days it was sometimes transliterated, interpreted as Jehovah. That's a wrong pronunciation. It is Yahweh. And this is the Covenant God, the one who deals faithfully with his people. So when Hannah praises God she says, my spirit, my soul rejoices in my Covenant faithful Lord. The one who is my God, the one who made promises to me and my people and he's keeping them. It's worth pointing that out. We know how the Covenant Lord actually set about fulfilling his salvation promises, definitely. Hannah didn't know. Hannah knew he was her Savior but she didn't know the how of it but we know the how the Old Testament fills us in on all that. The Covenant Lord sent Jesus. Jesus comes as the Covenant Lord. He is the faithful one, the faithful God. He comes to die for our sins, to take the curse of the Covenant, the judgment of the Covenant on himself. He comes to take the judgment that we as sinners should have deserved, did deserve. He comes and takes it on himself. God saves his people through Jesus, the Covenant Lord. And that's why in the New Testament we come to call Jesus, Savior and Lord. He's the fulfillment of Hannah's prayer here. When we come in praise to God, we praise now with an even deeper understanding than Hannah had of just who this great God is. And what it cost him to fulfill his promises of salvation. Secondly, Hannah thanks the Lord because he knows us, verse 3, for the Lord is a God of knowledge. Hannah recognizes we cannot come arrogantly before God. She says, talk no more so very proudly, let not arrogance come from your mouth. There's no one like this God of ours anywhere. It's what she's saying. He's Savior and judge, He's Covenant Lord. He's a God of knowledge. God knows us. You see, Hannah praises God as well because she recognizes through his dealings with her as an individual that he has been in control all the way through. He has known what will happen and it isn't just a matter of, well, he knows it with an intellectual knowledge. The thing is something that Western civilization has grasped. If you want a quick philosophy lesson, you don't. It's what Western philosophy has taken from the Greeks, not from the Bible. A separation of knowledge from action. You and I can know something and it can be totally non-effective on us, academic knowledge if you like. From feelings or from doing. That's not biblical. That's very Greek. It's very English, but it's not biblical. And when we talk in the Bible about God knowing us, it means that He actually knows everything we say in the sense of even guiding what we say. He knows what will come out not just because He has four knowledge but because He actually brings it about in our lives. Because we are His children and He has a purpose for us and He's going to work that purpose out for us. It's a difficult one to grasp that but it's terribly important to understand because then and only then will we begin to get to the depths of Hannah's praise of God here. You see, He knew Hannah and she praises Him for that, not just because He knew her as a person, but because He had a hand in this all the way through. Turns to Psalm 139. It's always useful to let Scripture interpret Scripture. It's a wonderful principle which I'm sure most of you know already. Psalm 139, you'll see this worked out because here again the psalmist is talking about God's knowledge, verse two. You, God, know when I sit and when I rise, you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down, you're familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue, you know it completely, O Lord. Now of course you may say, well, that could be just normal sort of knowledge. Yes, it could. It could simply be that He knows what you're going to say in advance, not that He has anything to do with it but He knows it. Read on. Verse 5, you hem me in behind and before. You have laid your hand on me. Such knowledge, you see, of God actually doing it in a person's life, working in a person's life. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty to attain. Where can I go from your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? So if I got to the heavens, you are there. If I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the door, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me. See the sudden switch there in the middle of his train of thought. It's not a sudden switch for him, it is for us. When he thinks of God knowing him, he thinks of God guiding him and taking him through things. We don't always think like that. We separate action from knowledge. Hannah, this psalmist, Jesus, the Bible, never do that. When God knows it is a knowledge of action. There is one place in the quaint old versions of the Bible and it is a bit quaint at this point where that becomes very, very obvious as a use of the verb to know. That's in describing sexual intercourse. Remember in the authorised version and Abraham knew Sarah and what it meant was they had sexual intercourse. Remember that version? Actually, that's a thoroughly correct translation of the word to know. The idea was you cannot separate knowledge from action and involvement. When a husband knows his wife, it is assumed that that includes the knowledge of sexual intercourse, the action. So there's just an example of how all the way through the Bible, this is true and how we need to make it true for ourselves. So we find that Hannah praises God as her saviour and because he really knows her to the extent that he governs her life. And then thirdly, Hannah praises God because verse 6, he makes a live and puts to death. There's an awesome thought. Here is Hannah, even way back in the Old Testament. In fact, some people say this couldn't possibly be as old as Hannah because people didn't believe in life after death in Hannah's day. I don't believe it for a moment. I think they did. I think Hannah knew that God could raise people from the dead just as he caused people to die and go to sheol or the place of the departed spirits. I believe Hannah knew that. Having said that, she certainly didn't know it as you and I know it. She didn't have the profound knowledge of the resurrection that we have. She had some sort of an inkling of it for which she praises God. Here is a God who makes a live and who causes death, kills. A God who saves and a God who judges. But we know in the light of the New Testament how her words there are perpetically fulfilled once again in the coming of Christ. Do you see how wonderful this is? Here is a little Israelite woman who is actually full in her praises of prophecy, all of which comes true in the person of Jesus Christ. Isn't that a lovely thought? In fact, a point that we passed over last week is that back in, I'm looking for it quickly, you should never ad live quite like this, should you? She actually says in this passage, she uses the word, oh yes, I'm sorry, it's in chapter two in verse 10, that she says that she gives thanks for his strength that he will give strength to his king. And there she is actually prophesying really for the first time the coming of a king. You see there wasn't a king on the throne at that time, remember? And she was looking forward in that passage and picked up in the New Testament. She was looking forward in that passage to the coming of Jesus prophetically. She didn't know that at the time, she said it, but prophetically she's even looking forward to the coming of Christ. But Jesus said, you see, I am the resurrection and I am the life. And yet Jesus is also the one who brings death, isn't he? When Christ comes again, he will raise people to resurrection bodies for both the covenant blessings of eternal life with God and the covenant punishment for those who have continuously turned their face against God, the punishment of hell. And we don't often like to think of that, but Jesus is the complete fulfillment of all that Hannah says at this point regarding God's salvation and his judging. So do you ever wonder why your prayers are lightweight? Hannah was not a trained priest. She didn't know the first five books of the Bible by heart, Eli probably did. She didn't. And yet here she is full of praise and death of understanding of God. Do you really know this sort of Jesus, this sort of God, the Savior? Do you know Him in this way? Think about it. Think right now, do you know Him in this way? You run shorter things to say to God when you're praying. Perhaps you don't know Him in the death that you walked to know Him. Maybe you do know Him as Savior, but perhaps you don't know Him as the one who preserves and uplifts his people. Perhaps as yet, it hasn't really dawned on you that this is the God who is both Savior and judge. And perhaps tonight you need to come before Him and say, Lord, I just never knew this. I never knew that you could be a Savior, let alone a judge. And I need to know tonight you. Do you know God? Do you know Him through Jesus Christ? We have a much better opportunity of getting to know Him than Hannah did. We've seen and heard through the descriptions in the Bible of Jesus. Jesus, God who came to this earth. Jesus, the one who saves and the one who judges. Do you know Him? It's not that hard to know Him. I've described part of who He is tonight. It's not that hard to come and faith and say, Lord, I don't know you. Please reveal yourself to me. Help me to see who I am in your presence. Help me to see my sin. Help me to know what to do about it. It's pretty simple, actually. And God who is God cares about you as he did about Hannah. And just the final point, because it's such a wonderful point. Hannah had also come to know that in whatever circumstances, God was guarding the feet of His people, verse 9. He guards the feet of His faithful people, His saints, those who belong to Him. If you do come to this God today, if you have already come to Him and sought His salvation, then be assured and be comforted because He guards the feet of His people. He will look after you. He will continue to care for you with His knowledge of you, that is, working out His purposes and His plans for your life. And again, we know about that in a way that Hannah didn't, because we know Jesus. And once again, Jesus fulfills the Old Testament here in John chapter 27. Jesus said, and see how many points He picks up here. Jesus said, my sheep hear my voice and I know them. And they follow me and I give them eternal life. And they shall never perish. Life, judgment, salvation, judgment. They shall never perish and no one shall snatch them out of my hand. There is the covenant laws that Hannah knew. We now know Him as Jesus, because He came and revealed Himself and He's the same God yesterday today and forever. We just know more about Him. Isn't that wonderful? The same God, the God who is our Savior, the God who is judge, the God who looks after His people and God's, and the God who brings life to people. This is our God. So when you next have a bicycle to give thanks for, just remember who it is or into whose presence we come. And then your prayers won't be one sentence prayers. They'll be prayers which will continue to flow from you in the way in which Hannah's must have done. Let us learn how to praise God properly. Let's pray. Our Father, we thank You for what Your Word teaches us. We thank You for how so much of what Hannah knew was fulfilled in Jesus. And so we can know it even better and more clearly. Help us to learn to pray with open hearts. Help us to be able to unburden our souls to you. But also help us to be able to praise from the depth of our being. Praise you for who you are. Amen. So we come to sing our final hymn, number 200.