This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

I want to welcome you to day two of our look through first and second Samuel.
We're really looking this week particularly at chapters one through three.
Yesterday we introduced the books and today we begin to dive into the life of
Samuel in chapters one through three.

And we're going to see how he lived with an open heart. In these days of open
heart surgery, we don't talk enough about open hearted people. These kinds of
people, open hearted people, they're the kind of people that you like to be
around.

They seem to really enjoy life. They care about you. They're able to listen.

They have a sensitivity instead of a stubbornness about life. And it seems to
characterize the way they treat you, the way they make decisions, the way they
handle their relationship with God. Samuel was a man who lived with an open
heart.

He was tuned into God's voice when much of Israel was thinking only of
themselves. He was a man who was willing to listen, to allow God to change his
mind and change his direction. And he really cared.

He cared about God's will. He cared about God's people. I want to be that kind
of man.

I want you to be that kind of man or woman. What gave Samuel an open heart?
We're going to look through that this week and even into next week as we learn
from the life of Samuel how to live before God with an open heart.

What gave Samuel an open heart? That answer has to begin with two names, Hannah
and Elkanah, Samuel's parents. Parents are entrusted with a great opportunity.

We can either open the door to an open heart for our children or we can close
that door. Now God can still open our hearts, but not due to our parents'
ministry. How do I live with an open heart?

Chapters one through three are overflowing with practical ideas concerning
actions and attitudes that parents can take or adults can take in the lives of
children that make all the difference. It might surprise you when you get into 1
Samuel, this history of Israel, the first few chapters read somewhat like a
parenting seminar. What to do, what not to do.

There's a lot of help for parents in these chapters, a lot of help for parents
these next few days. But this isn't just for parents. It's for relationships at
work, relationships at school, for friendships.

It's also for everyone who is a child and every one of us is that. Every one of
us has parents. And when you understand what these verses have to say about how
to parent, they also help you to understand some things about yourself, how you
were parented, and whether your heart was led to be open in the early years or
not.

And it helps you to understand how you lived before God even now. Samuel becomes
the great spiritual leader of his day. And in these first few chapters we get
insight into how his parents and the adults in his life were an important part
of what he became.

What can you do for a child to help him to live with an open heart? What was
done for you or not done for you as a child that would have helped you to live
with an open heart? What do you do?

We're going to talk about three things these next couple of days together. First
thing you do is you get your love in order. Now the next few days we're going to
talk about getting your life in line.

We're going to talk about putting your children before the Lord in God's hands.
But we're going to begin by talking about getting your love in order. When you
talk about helping kids, children, especially as parents, to love the Lord, to
live with an open heart, the order in which you love is very important.

So what do you love most? Now if Chocolate Fudge Sunday is the first thing that
came to your mind right now, you can see how that might cause problems in a
marriage or in a family. Sorry babe, I missed our anniversary.

They had a sale on Chocolate Fudge Sundays at the ice cream store. Whatever you
love most, whatever your priority of love is in your life, is going to drive
forward an open heart or a closed heart before God. Now to parents, you might be
surprised that in a list of three priorities of love, the healthiest place for
your child, for a child to be, is third.

When you talk about the Lord and your marriage and your children, you love them
all desperately with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. But really your
child, your children come third in that list. First you love the Lord.

Jesus taught us this. It's the first commandment. You love the Lord.

You might remember the story of Samuel's mother Hannah. She wasn't able to have
children and she was desperately wanting to have children. And so she prayed
this in chapter 1 in verse 9.

Let me read these verses. Beginning in verse 9, "Once after a sacrificial meal
at Shiloh," this is where the temple was or where the place of sacrifice was,
"Hannah got up and went to pray. Eli the priest was sitting in his customary
place beside the entrance of the tabernacle.

Hannah was in deep anguish, crying bitterly as she prayed to the Lord. And she
made this vow, "O Lord of heaven's armies, if you will look upon my sorrow and
answer my prayer and give me a son, then I will give him back to you. He will be
yours for his entire lifetime.

And as a sign that he has been dedicated to God, his hair will never be cut. "
This prayer that Hannah prayed that day, God answered that prayer. In verse 20,
"And in due time she gave birth to a son, and she named him Samuel.

For she said, 'I ask the Lord for him. '" Samuel, you might know, means God has
heard. God heard Hannah's prayer and she named him saying, "God heard my prayer.

" And Samuel eventually goes to serve in the temple just as Hannah had promised
under the leadership of the prophet Eli. And as he serves in that temple, he
finds something different. Instead of a mother like Hannah who put her
relationship with God first, such a priority that she was willing to ask God and
then give to God, she finds there a prophet who did not put his relationship
with God first.

In chapter 2, beginning in verse 27, here's what it says in 1 Samuel, "Now a man
of God came to Eli and said to him, 'This is what the Lord says. Did I not
clearly reveal myself to your father's house when they were in Egypt under
Pharaoh? I chose your father out of all the tribes of Israel to be my priest, to
go up to my altar to burn incense and to wear an ephod in my presence.

And I also gave your father's house all the offerings made with fire by the
Israelites. Why did you scorn my sacrifice and offering that I prescribed for my
dwelling? Why do you honor your sons more than me by fattening yourselves on the
choice parts of every offering made by my people Israel?

" So here you have this comparison. Hannah who put God first, Eli who was
serving God, but who put his family first, who put himself first, who had a
selfish kind of service. And his sons, as we walk through this story, you're
going to find they had many, many problems.

They were selfish, unholy men, they had a disastrous end, even though Eli was a
priest because he put them ahead of God in priority, they had all kinds of
problems. Now kids can have all kinds of problems for all kinds of reasons. And
I want to warn you parents against evaluating how you did or didn't do.

God tells us here what Eli did. And your children may have problems because of
your priorities, they may have problems because of their own priorities. But
what I learned from this is what can I do now?

Kids are going to make their own choices. But in this case, the problem started
because his children were more important to him than the Lord. And it is
possible for your children to be too important to you.

If you give an egg the right amount of warmth, it hatches and it grows. If you
give it too much warmth for too long, it's going to spoil. So the question for
all good parents is, how do you keep from being overprotective?

How do you keep from smothering your children with an unhealthy selfish love?
And the example is here in Hannah, you love the Lord first. Don't make it too
complicated.

Make your love for God a priority in your life. Let him speak to you in your
life. Don't make God a way to take care of your children.

Make your priority of your love for him the very first thing. Only by making him
first can you build this all-important quality of trust into your relationship
with your children. So first, and I took most of the time on this one, first is
your relationship with God.

And then second is your relationship with your spouse. Elkanah, Hannah's husband
teaches us about this. In 1 Samuel 1, 8, Elkanah, her husband said to her, and
this was before Hannah had children, when she was still grieving, her husband
says to her, "Hannah, why are you still weeping?

Why don't you eat? Why are you downhearted? Don't I mean more to you than ten
sons?

" Now when you read this verse at first, it sounds very self-centered. Elkanah
doesn't care at all. But you have to understand some of the culture of that day,
where for a husband to not care about his wife having children was extremely
unusual.

It showed in these verses that he loved her more than he loved the children that
she could bring. And in that culture, usually a husband loved the children that
a wife could bring because that meant riches for him, that meant value for him,
that meant influence for him. So he says, "I love you, even if you don't have
children.

" Who's the most important person in your life? If you're married, it needs to
be your spouse, obviously, because you're one. You're one.

If it's not your husband or wife, and you have kids, if it's become your kids,
then you're cheating your kids out of an open heart. You're cheating your kids
out of the opportunity to see the kind of love that should happen in a home. Now
I say this with full understanding of the struggles that we have.

And again, I don't want to heap guilt or blame or anything on any of us. What I
want to do is invite us to walk through the difficult times to keep loving each
other as husband and wife, even during the tough years of child raising. What I
want to do is affirm those of you who are saying, "I'm going to make this a
priority in our date nights.

I'm going to make this a priority in the time that we spend with each other. "
Because when you do that, you're doing something great for your kids. First the
Lord, then your spouse, and then your children.

Now being third doesn't mean you don't love your kids deeply with all your
heart. It just means that you have your loves in order so that you can love them
with a healthy love. Let me talk about this as we end on a broader basis,
because I know not all of you are parents.

Jesus taught us the clearest priority about our loves when he said, "You first,
commandment, you first love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength,
and the second commandment is you love people. You love your neighbor as
yourself. " As you love people, I would encourage you, don't let your love for
others, for all people, become an excuse for not loving those you are most
committed to through the tough times.

We tend to do this. We run from a tough time in marriage to our kids, "Well,
I'll just pour all my love into them. " We run from a tough time with our
parents to a ministry in the church, "I'll just lose myself in ministry in the
church," because we don't want to walk through the tough times.

We run from a tough time in a commitment, in a marriage commitment, to our
friends, "I'm just going to spend all my time with my friends. " We run from a
commitment to a friend to pray for the world, "Sorry, I couldn't be with you
because maybe it's not so pleasant right now, you've got some difficult things
to walk through. " I had to be praying for the world, that kind of super
spiritual thing.

Love is too powerful, it's too wonderful a thing to allow it to become a mere
excuse. So here's the invitation, you love the Lord, and out of that love, you
love in the committed relationships of your life because God honors our
commitments. And out of that love, you love all who are around you.

That's the right order of love. Let's pray that God would give us the strength
to do that because I don't know about you, I need the strength to love. Father,
we pray for your strength.

If we're going to love like you've challenged us to love, we can't do it on our
own strength because we're around people that are tough to love sometimes
because they're imperfect, and we're tough to love sometimes because we're
imperfect. So I pray you'd help us to learn from Hannah and Elkanah. Help us to
learn how to love in the right order.

Love you Lord first, and love if we're married or spouse, love our kids, to love
in the tough times in the committed relationships. Help us to love in the right
order. Help us not to run away from the opportunity to love someone today, even
if it's difficult.

We ask this in your name, Jesus, amen. Tomorrow we're going to look together at
the power of your example to others.