CBFC Worship Service 6/28/2026

Amen.

Whoa.

Sorry.

Good morning.

Welcome to Community Bible Fellowship Church.

It's lovely to be here with you all.

Very eventful morning.

And I got a long an hour, hour and a half minimum today.

Which funny enough, I had just mentioned to Eric.

No one else try that one, alright?

You get one with one of those.

No, he's gonna be alright.

We got people here caring for him.

So praise God.

Continue to pray for Eric.

Um if you need to stop listening to me and just and just pray for him, do that.

That'll be a better use of your time.

But we're gonna be continuing in 1 Samuel this morning, chapter 21, a little bit of 22.

If you want to open a copy of God's word to 1 Samuel chapter 21.

1 Samuel 21 · chapter mention

There's a a man from the 1800s.

You may have heard of him, his name is George Mueller, and George Mueller ran five different orphanages, these homes for children in England with no parents and no resources, caring for over 10,000 orphans over the course of decades of life and service and ministry.

And here's what's incredible: Mueller never once asked anyone for money.

Not a dime.

And he never took a salary, he never took out a loan, he barely owned anything at all.

You know what he did?

He prayed.

And God answered over and over and over and over again, God answered when the orphanage ran out of food, he prayed, when the building needed repairs, he prayed when they needed staff, he prayed when they needed a new building, he prayed and prayed and prayed.

There's this one story of a time, um, one morning when the orphanage had run out of food, there wasn't any breakfast for the children, and so George Mueller gathered all of the children together to the table, like he would on a normal morning, and led them in a prayer of thanks for the food that they didn't even have yet.

And as they're praying and thanking God for his provision, there's a knock at the door, and it's a baker who explains that he had not been able to sleep that night because he felt the need to bake bread for the orphanage.

And right after that, a milkman comes up and says, My cart just broke down up the street, and I can't transport the milk, it's gonna spoil.

Here, have it, use it.

Things like that just happened repeatedly as Mueller prayed and prayed, and God answered and provided donations would come in at the right time, bread would show up at the door, people would volunteer with exactly the skills needed.

Mueller kept journals of thousands, literal thousands of answered prayers.

Now, when we hear stories like that, I think most of us tend to fall into one of two categories.

We have one of two main reactions.

Some of us think that's amazing.

But that's George Mueller, right?

That is that that's the kind of faith of super missionaries and Christians from another century.

We admire it, right?

But it feels almost mythical.

It's unattainable, like something reserved for the the spiritual giants of stories.

Others of us have the opposite reaction.

We think that's crazy.

Like even if that is true, who would want to live like that?

Who would choose to live that way?

Why not build a savings account and have a backup plan?

Invest your resources.

Why not why why put yourself in a position where you have to depend on God or champs or whatever for your next meal?

It's reckless, it's it's poor stewardship, it's unwise.

But to understand both of these reactions, we see that b beneath each of them lies the same assumption that this kind of daily dependence on God is unusual at best, if not impossible and unrealistic.

An assumption that George Mueller spent his life trying to argue against.

The truth is, for many of us, we hardly ever think about depending on God for our daily bread.

We have refrigerators full of food and grocery stores around every corner and a consistent income and retirement accounts and same-day Amazon deliveries, which still blows me away.

Um we just don't wake up wondering what we'll eat today.

We we rarely, if ever, pray, give us this day our daily bread, because we already have today's bread sitting in the pantry.

What do we need God for?

And others of us live on the other end.

We aren't secure, we're anxious.

We're constantly worried and trying to make sure we have enough, trying to make ends meet, trying to protect ourselves, trying to get more control over tomorrow because we're terrified of what might happen if we don't.

And again, those two lives look very different on the surface, but they often share the same route.

Whether through comfortable self-sufficiency or anxious self-protection, we have quietly stopped living like God is our provider.

And that's exactly where this passage meets us in 1 Samuel 21, as David is in need of provision.

He's on the run from Saul, he's hungry, he's in desperate need of help.

And at the heart of 1 Samuel 21 is not merely the question of will David find bread or will David find refuge.

The deeper question is, can David trust the God who promises to provide these things?

And that's the question this chapter asks every one of us as well.

Can I trust God as my provider?

So let's read now from God's Word in 1 Samuel 21 and a little bit of 22.

I invite you to stand with me if you are able to honor the reading.

Beginning chapter 21, verse 1.

Then David came to Nob to Ahimelech the priest, and Ahimelech came to meet David trembling, and said to him, Why are you alone and no one with you?

And David said to Ahimelech the priest, The king has charged me with a matter, and said to me, Let no one know anything of the matter about which I send you, and with which I have charged you.

I have made an appointment with the young men for such and such a place.

Now then, what do you have on hand?

Give me five loaves of bread or whatever is here.

And the priest answered, David, I have no common bread on hand, but there is holy bread, if the young men have kept themselves from women.

And David answered the priest, Truly, women have been kept from us as always when I go on an expedition.

The vessels of the young men are holy even when it is an ordinary journey.

How much more today will their vessels be holy?

So the priest gave him the holy bread, for there was no bread there but the bread of the presence, which is removed from before the Lord to be replaced by hot bread on the day it is taken away.

Now a certain man of the servants of Saul was there that day, detained before the Lord.

His name was Doeg the Edomite, the chief of Saul's herdsmen.

Then David said to Ahimelech, Then have you not here a spear or a sword at hand?

For I have brought neither my sword nor my weapons with me, because the king's business required haste.

And the priest said, The sword of Goliath the Philistine, whom you struck down in the valley of Ela, behold, it is here, wrapped in a cloth behind the Ephid.

If you will take that, take it, for there is none but that here.

And David said, There is none like that, and give it to me.

And David rose and fled that day from Saul and went to Akish, the king of Gath.

And the servants of Akish said to him, Is not this David the king of the land?

Did they not sing to one another of him in dances?

Saul has struck down his thousands, and David his ten thousands.

And David took these words to heart, and was much afraid of Akish, the king of Gath.

So he changed his behaviour before them, and pretended to be insane in their hands, and made marks on the doors of the gate, and let his spittle run down his beard.

Then Akish said to his servants, Behold, you see the man is mad.

Why then have you brought him to me?

Do I lack madmen that you have brought this fellow to behave as a madman in my presence?

Shall this fellow come into my house?

David departed from there and escaped to the cave of Adulm.

And when his brothers and all his father's house heard it, they went down from there to him, and every one who was in distress, and every one who was in debt, and every one who was bitter of soul gathered to him, and he became commander over them.

And there were with him about four hundred men.

And David went from there to Mizpah of Moab, and he said to the king of Moab, Please let my father and my mother stay with you till I know what God will do for me.

And he left them with the king of Moab, and they stayed with him all the time that David was in the stronghold.

Then the prophet Gad said to David, Do not remain in the stronghold, depart and go into the land of Judah.

So David departed and went into the forest of Herath.

This is God's word, he may be seated.

Lord Jesus, would you bless the proclamation of your word now, and may the words be yours, that we would receive this good news with joy, that we would be changed by it and conformed into your image, and that you would be glorified.

I pray this in your name.

Amen.

As we walk through this passage, I want us to see three main themes that are central to David's story and to ours.

Panic, provision, and presence.

So this is our flow for this morning: panic, provision, and then finally presence.

The first thing that we see in this chapter is panic.

David is on the run from the envious, violent king Saul, who's been trying to kill him, and of course he's terrified.

It's the most powerful man in the world, is hunting him.

He's homeless, he's hungry, he's alone, wondering whether he'll even survive another day.

And that fear, that panic, starts to cause some problems.

Now, fear itself is not necessarily the problem.

The problem comes when fear takes the steering wheel.

Notice how quickly David moves from trusting God to trying to secure himself.

He arrives at this town called Nob, where the tabernacle of God's presence is in these days, and immediately he walks into God's presence and he lies to the priest.

He just flat out lies.

He invents this whole story about being on a secret mission from Saul because he doesn't trust that simply telling the truth will be enough and that God will provide.

He feels the need to manipulate the situation to get what he thinks he needs.

And he gets bread and then he asks for a weapon.

And Ahimelech, the priest, gives him Goliath's sword.

The very sword that David had just taken as a trophy after defeating the giant without needing one himself.

You see the irony?

Like you want to stop David and say, like, David, don't you remember what that sword represents?

The whole point of that battle was that, in your words, David, the Lord saves not the sword.

But fear has a short memory.

I mean, how often do we shift from believing and trusting in God in moments of faith and trust to moments of panic and grasping for control?

And in between these two requests for bread and for a weapon, we see something really interesting.

Verse 7 really ominously tells us that a certain man of the servants of Saul named Doeg, or Doge, or Doug, I don't know how you pronounce it, but this guy, this Edomite, is there the whole time watching this whole scene play out.

If this were a movie, we'd see like David and Ahimelech talking in the main focus, and then just for a second, the focus would shift to the background, and we'd see a man like lurking in the shadows, with like peering at them, watching this all go down.

And then it's back to David and Ahimelech, and you almost forget for just a second until he returns later in the story.

And as some of you who have cheated and read ahead might know, this man Doeg is about to tell Saul all of this that he's just witnessed, and then be sent out by the king in a violent massacre of the priests, Ahimelech included.

And get this, it was David's lie to the priest out of his panicked lack of trust in Yahweh, that results in this kind and generous man of God being murdered alongside 84 of his colleagues and friends.

And it's David taking his sword out of his panicked lack of trust in Yahweh that leaves Ahimelech defenseless when that day comes.

This is not the last time that David would learn the painful lesson that sin hurts other people.

Always.

Even when it feels personal and private.

Sin hurts others.

It always promises to be harmless, and it is always the opposite.

It introduces itself to us as our friend.

And yet not only is our sin our deadly enemy, it is the deadly enemy of those that we love, our families, our friends, and our church, and it will creep in through our hearts to wage its attack on those around us.

My sin in my heart becomes a Trojan horse to bring sin into a community and unleash harm on those around me.

It's dangerous to others, always.

When we buy the lie that ungodliness only has the power to harm us, we take more notes from Adam and Eve than we do from Jesus.

It's just a little disobedience.

What could go wrong?

The suffering of all of human history, Adam.

It's just a little white lie to a priest.

What could go wrong?

Eighty-five dead priests.

Homes without fathers and husbands.

That's what could go wrong with a little white lie.

One of the most deadly lies we can believe about sin, especially when it's confined to our own private lives and our own private hearts, is that we can contain its consequences somehow and maybe harm ourselves, but without harming others.

It's a lie, church.

We always sin as people in relationship and as people in community, even when the offense itself feels private.

So when Satan is tempting you to indulge in lustful thoughts, for example, he's not just attacking your sanctity, he's attacking your spouse or your future spouse.

He's not just assaulting your faithfulness, he's assaulting your family.

He's not just waging war on your chastity, he's waging war on this church.

Don't let him.

If you are a member of this church, your sin, my sin, however private it may seem to me, will harm those around us in ways seen or unseen.

David had to learn the hard way that sin, even a white light of a fearful distrust in God, hurts those we love.

He then learned the hard way that our sin will hurt us too.

Always.

It was in panic, in his fear, that he then fled out of the kingdom, out of the promised land of God's people, to seek refuge among God's enemies, which was foolish from the start.

He goes to the Philistines that he has been openly fighting against for years now, and he goes to Gath of all places, Goliath's hometown, carrying Goliath's sword, who he publicly killed.

Of course it doesn't go well.

If David had forgotten the 200 onion rings he had taken from the Philistines, they did not.

If you're a visitor, I'm sorry, I don't know how else to David walks right into the mouth of the beast, out of the frying pan of Saul, into the fire of the Philistines, in his foolishness and fear and sin, and now has to pretend to be insane and utterly humiliate himself just to escape with his life.

It's a new low for David.

Fear will lead you into all kinds of foolishness and sin that not only hurts others but can destroy us ourselves.

Fear tells us that God isn't gonna come through and provide for us, and so we better take control ourselves.

And sometimes that control looks respectable.

We obsess over our finances and we save aggressively, and we're we're hesitant to give.

We resist generosity and tithing because we're afraid there won't be enough left over, or we work ourselves into exhaustion because everything seems to depend on us.

Other times it leads into outright sin.

We lie like David because we're afraid and grasping for control.

We cheat, we steal, maybe we embezzle or we fudge on our taxes.

Underneath all of it is a deeper problem.

Our panic is rooted in our theology.

Every anxious attempt to gain control over our lives rather than trusting in God is quietly saying something about God.

It says, I don't believe God will really provide what I need.

If I'm gonna be okay, I'm gonna have to make it work myself.

In other words, panic is rooted in a theology of stinginess.

We view God as stingy, as master, as withholding.

He's tight-fisted and reluctant to give, as though he can't really be trusted to care for his children, to give them good gifts, to provide what they need.

And when we believe that lie, we grasp for control that only belongs to him.

And the tragedy is that grasping never brings the security that it promises.

David's lies don't bring peace, they bring death.

Goliath's sword doesn't make him safe, Gath doesn't become a refuge, it's a place of danger.

Every attempt to save himself only leads to worse situations, only makes him more desperate, more humiliated, and as we'll see next week, it contributes to the death of those around him.

So that's our first point, panic.

David demonstrates a lack of trust in God as his provider, which teaches us that fear, rooted in a theology of stinginess, leads us to grasp for control and security in ourselves, which produces sin that harms us and others around us.

Which brings us to our second point, provision.

What's remarkable is that God doesn't respond to David in his fear and sin by abandoning him.

Right?

David has lied, he's grasped for control, he's manipulated, he's acted out of unbelief, and yet God quietly continues to provide for him every step of the way.

He gives him freedom from the Philistines in Gath, he gives his parents refuge and safety in Moab, he gives David a stronghold in the cave of Adulam, he gives him a growing army of 400 men, and the focus of the story, God gives David bread.

He provides him with his daily bread.

And not just any bread, verse 6 tells us that Ahimelech gave David the bread of the presence, which to us might sound like a random detail or an odd thing to mention, but to an Israelite, that would have been loaded with meaning.

Because every Sabbath, for hundreds and hundreds of years, twelve fresh loaves were placed on a table inside the tabernacle in the presence of God before his face, twelve loaves representing the twelve tribes of Israel, the fullness of God's chosen people, being welcomed to feast in God's presence.

Week after week, the priests entered the tabernacle, the presence of God to feast with him, proclaiming the same truth that God has not forgotten his covenant people, he welcomes them into fellowship with himself, and he would faithfully provide them and sustain them with his presence.

God's people needed this weekly.

The bread wasn't there because God needed food, like the pagans that would feed their gods to keep them alive.

It was there because God's people needed to be fed in God's presence, to be sustained by fellowship with him, week in and week out, to be reminded that every meal ultimately came from his hand.

They, like us, needed regular reminding that life is not found merely in bread itself, but in the God who gives it.

And that's been the pattern through the whole story of the Bible, right?

When Israel is wandering through the wilderness with no food, God provided manna, this bread from heaven, from the presence of God as though from his own table, every morning, enough for one day.

Not enough to save for a month, not enough to save for tomorrow, but one day.

Because he wasn't merely feeding their stomachs, he was training their hearts to lean on him, to trust him one day at a time for their bread, to trust him to provide for them.

Not to work aggressively and anxiously hoard as much as they can, but to say, God will give me my bread for today, and that is all I need.

And that was just for a season, the manna.

But the bread of the presence was a continued weekly version of that bread from heaven, bread from the presence of God.

It was a continual reminder that we are in the wilderness and God is providing for us with Himself.

And now David finds himself in another wilderness.

He's on the run, he's hungry, probably hasn't eaten in days.

Remember, he was driven from Saul's table and he missed the several-day feast because he's hiding out in a rock somewhere.

He probably hasn't eaten for days.

And once again, God feeds his chosen son with his presence and with bread from his table.

It's like God is saying, David, I've been providing for my people always.

I don't need you to be anxious and lie for me.

I don't need you to grasp for control.

Your seizing for control and security doesn't do anything.

I was always going to provide for you.

I mean, look at the birds, David.

I give them all of their food.

They don't work for it.

I give it to them.

And you're more worth valuable?

What's the word that Jesus uses in?

Matthew 6.

You can read it yourself.

I'm gonna stick to my notes.

The point is, God is saying to David, I am a loving father who has promised to provide for you.

We panic because we think tomorrow depends on us.

Meanwhile, God quietly keeps putting bread on our tables.

Sometimes literally, sometimes through a paycheck or through a friend or through our church.

God can make bread fall out of the sky if he wants to, he's done it.

He can set a baker knocking on your door, he's done it.

There are a million ways that God can provide for you and has provided for us, and all of it is meant to teach us this same lesson that we are not dependent on ourselves, but on our Father, who is generous and who loves to give good gifts to his children.

In the New Testament, Jesus teaches that there is a path toward freedom from anxiety and fear through a theology of generosity, through a right view of who God is.

We often imagine God as reluctant and miserly, as though his default position is to withhold and we have to pry blessings out of his hands.

His word here reveals the exact opposite.

God loves to provide for his people.

He loves to give to his people.

That's why Jesus later points back to this very story in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

When the Pharisees criticize his disciples for plucking grain on the Sabbath, Jesus reminds them that David ate the bread of the presence on the Sabbath, which by law was only meant for priests.

Why?

Because the bread had always pointed beyond religious regulations to the very heart of God.

A God who delights to show mercy, to provide for the hungry, to welcome needy people into his presence and to sustain them.

It's not that Ahimelech broke God's law, or that God's law contradicted itself and he chose this part over this.

It's not that he overrode it to do something good.

It's that he fulfilled the very essence of the law, which was for God's people to display the heart of God Himself in living lives of radical, beautiful generosity out of love for those in need.

All over the Old Testament law, repeatedly, dozens of times, after dozens after dozens, just our heaps of commands to feed the hungry, to care for the poor, to clothe the naked, to house the homeless and sojourners and refugees, to structure our lives and our homes and our finances around caring for the weak, the vulnerable, and the needy.

God's desire and his design was for his people to see his goodness and to develop a theology of generosity that leads to a lifestyle of generosity toward those around us and beyond.

The priest understood that the ceremonial institution ultimately served God's covenant purposes.

It wasn't an end in and of itself, which is why Jesus followed up his point by quoting Hosea and saying, Learn what this means, Pharisees.

God desires mercy, not sacrifice.

Now God did command sacrifices, right?

But he's saying, sacrifice, divorced from covenant mercy, misses the entire point.

Religious activity without active mercy misses the point.

Worshiping in here without giving and serving out there misses the point.

We can't have one without the other.

And thus when David experiences God's provision in Nob and in Gath and sees finally that God is no longer stingy, but sees him as the generous father that he is, it's then that he begins to care for his elderly parents and provide for them in their desperation.

It's then that the hurting and those in debt and in distress begin to flock to David and find refuge in him.

It's then that David is freed from fear to be truly generous and open-handed himself.

Because when we truly believe that our Father is generous, we no longer have to clutch to everything so tightly or seek to control everything so desperately.

Open hands become possible because we know that they are held by an open-handed God.

And George Mueller no longer is extraordinary, he's the norm.

Faith in God's provision produces generosity in God's people.

A theology of generosity produces activity of generosity.

So, just as David's fear, rooted in a theology of stinginess, led him to grasp for control, producing sin that hurt him and others, now David's faith, rooted in a theology of generosity, produces generosity that benefits both him and the hurting and needy around him.

That's what happens when we see and believe in God's provision as our generous Father.

Presence.

Because as wonderful as the provision of bread was, it was never the point.

The bread of the presence wasn't called that simply because it sat in God's presence.

It was called the bread of the presence because it represented God's people enjoying fellowship with God Himself in God's presence.

In the ancient worlds, uh sharing a meal together was not ultimately about satisfying physical hunger.

It was a sign of friendship and peace and fellowship and communion.

Table fellowship was one of the greatest signs of intimacy and kinship and love shared between people.

So God wasn't just saying, here, here's some food.

He's saying, Come to my table and eat with me as family, as friends.

That's why the Bible begins in a garden where humanity enjoys fellowship with God around his provision of food, and it ends at the marriage supper of the Lamb, where God's people feast forever and joy in his presence.

The whole story of Scripture is moving toward a table, toward feasting in the presence of God, in friendship, peace, fellowship, communion.

Eden, the manna in the wilderness, the bread of the presence, David receiving bread from God's house, Jesus eating with sinners.

All of it is pointing to something greater.

Or someone greater.

In John 6, after feeding multitudes with only and exactly five loaves, much like David received here, Jesus says something astonishing.

He says, I am the bread of life.

Not just I will give you bread, I am the bread.

Israel received bread from God's presence, and David received bread from God's presence, but Jesus is the true bread who comes from the presence of God to sustain us, to nourish us, to give us true satisfaction and life.

David ate and lived another day, but whoever feeds on Christ by faith will live forever.

As Jesus continues to say in John 6, Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness and they died.

This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.

I am the living bread that came down from heaven.

If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever.

You see, David's deepest problem, and our deepest problem, was never simply that we were hungry.

It was that we had been driven from God's table by our sin.

And like David, we were exiles, shut out from God's kingdom, shut out from God's presence, unable to enjoy fellowship with God, the God for whom we were made to enjoy fellowship.

But the gospel is the story of the rejected king, the greater David, opening his table to rebels and sinners like us.

The worst of the worst.

Someone asked me the other day if you could share a meal with anyone in the world or in history, who would you share a meal with?

It's a classic question.

People have lots of different answers.

Some people pick a historical figure or a celebrity.

Some people pick someone they know and love, a loved one that they've lost, or someone that they haven't seen in a long time.

Church, God's answer to that question in Christ is you.

He looked at humanity in eternity past and said, I want to share a meal with you.

I want you at my table, as my friend, as family, feasting with me in joy and in fellowship.

And so every time we gather around the Lord's table for communion, like we'll do next week, that's exactly what we're celebrating and experiencing.

Not merely that Christ died, not merely that our sins are forgiven, but that through his broken body and shed blood, we have been welcomed back into fellowship with God, to feast with him at his table as family.

The Lord's Supper is our true bread of the presence, not because it includes bread, but because it includes Jesus, the true bread, the true presence of God Himself, who is truly present with us when we partake of it together.

Week after week, month after month, God invites his priestly people, all those who have had faith in Christ, to come to his table, in his presence, to have our souls nourished and fed by him.

Not because we have earned a seat there, but because Christ has for us.

So where does this passage leave us?

Well, David's panic teaches us that fear, rooted in a theology of stinginess, leads us to grasp for control.

And God's provision teaches us that faith, rooted in a theology of generosity, opens our hands.

And Jesus demonstrates that God's greatest provision is not merely bread, but his own presence, inviting us into eternal fellowship with him that begins now and culminates at his table forever.

That's where this story leaves us.

Not merely trusting in God for today's bread, and not merely stepping out in faith and generosity to give bread to those who need it, but eagerly awaiting the day that Jesus Christ will return and dwell with us.

And there, in the fullness of God's presence, every fear will be gone, every hunger will be satisfied, every doeg will be made a friend, and every anxious grasping for control will give way to everlasting joy as we feast with our generous God forever.

He's coming soon, Church.

Wait patiently until he returns.

Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, how wonderful it is to know that though we are yet a little while longer in exile and in wilderness, the day is coming soon when you will spread a banquet for us in a new creation, when we will be resurrected to live with you and never hunger again, never thirst again, to have our hearts and our souls and our bodies and our minds satisfied at the feast of King Jesus.

Lord, if there is anyone here this morning that does not yet know you, we ask in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit that you would awaken their hearts and open their eyes to see and believe the truth of your gospel.

That we may soon rejoice.