The God of Grand Reversals

Order of Service

• Announcements
• Graduate Honors
• Call to Worship — Psalm 117
• Hymn
• Prayer of Invocation
• Confession of Faith — Apostles' Creed
• Scripture Reading — 2 Samuel 20
• Pastoral Prayer
• Offering
• Offertory Prayer
• Hymn
• Sermon
• Hymn — A Mighty Fortress Is Our God
• Benediction — Numbers 6:24-26
• Gloria Patri

---

Sermon Title: The God of Grand Reversals

Scripture: 1 Samuel 2:1-11

I. The Grand Reversal of God for Hannah — 1 Samuel 2:1-2

A. Hannah's song opens with personal testimony of God's salvation

1. She uses the covenant name Yahweh nine times in ten verses
2. Her testimony springs from her own experience of reversal — barrenness turned to fruitfulness

B. God is holy yet personal — "there is no rock like our God" (1 Samuel 2:2)

1. Unlike the gods of the ancient Near East, Yahweh is not subject to the life-and-death cycles of creation
2. He is transcendent and holy yet stoops to hear the cries of weak and suffering saints
3. His salvation is solid like a rock precisely because he is eternal and unchanging

C. Hannah exults over her enemies (1 Samuel 2:1)

1. The Hebrew word for "derides" means to be enlarged over — the language of conquest
2. Her mini-blessing is a taste and foretaste of God's grand cosmic redemption
3. To invoke Yahweh is to invoke the God who places enmity between his people and the seed of the serpent
4. Small blessings are not merely occasions for thanksgiving to a good gift-giver but occasions to praise God as the cosmic victor — as in Romans 8 where Paul declares believers more than conquerors

II. The Grand Reversal of God for the World — 1 Samuel 2:3-8

A. Verse 3 serves as a transition: "the Lord is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed"

1. God balances human experiences by weighing human actions
2. Warning against arrogance in comfortable circumstances

B. The reversals of verses 4–8 span every dimension of human life

1. The mighty are broken; the feeble are strengthened (1 Samuel 2:4)
2. The full become servants; the hungry are fed (1 Samuel 2:5)
3. The barren bear children; the mother of many is forlorn (1 Samuel 2:5)
4. The poor are raised from the dust to sit with princes (1 Samuel 2:8)

C. The lesson is not asceticism but humility

1. Whatever your state of blessing, do not become proud — God weighs actions and balances the scales
2. Jesus echoes this: "whoever exalts himself will be humbled; whoever humbles himself will be exalted"
3. Paul warns the Gentiles against spiritual arrogance toward unbelieving Israel in Romans 11 — God can reverse the reversal
4. "Work out your salvation with fear and trembling" — not with pride and arrogance

III. The Grand Reversal of God for the King — 1 Samuel 2:9-10

A. God guards his faithful ones but destroys the wicked — prevailing comes not by human might but by resting in God's strength (1 Samuel 2:9)

B. Hannah closes by speaking of the king — God will judge the ends of the earth and crush his adversaries through the king (1 Samuel 2:10)

1. The same language used of Hannah — God raising her "horn" — is applied to the king
2. The king will not be a display of human might but of God's strength working through humility

C. This is foreshadowed in David's anointing in 1 Samuel 16

1. Samuel assumed Eliab, the firstborn, had the look of God's anointed
2. God's response: "the Lord sees not as man sees; man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart"
3. God raises up David — the youngest, a simple shepherd boy — as king over Israel

D. The greatest display of this grand reversal is the cross of Christ

1. At Calvary, the God-man is presented as a crucified criminal; Rome and the Jewish authorities appear to be winning
2. That very moment sealed their fate — God brought victory through the crucified king
3. The God Hannah calls her rock (1 Samuel 2:2) is Jesus Christ, the chief cornerstone — once crucified, now raised
4. For those who reject him he becomes a rock of offense and crushing judgment; for those who receive him he is the rock of salvation
5. Every small blessing in the believer's life is an ingredient of that grand reversal — life and victory out of death and defeat