CBFC Worship Service 5/03/2026

Good morning.

Welcome again to Community Bible Fellowship Church.

It's lovely to be with you all.

We're going to be continuing in 1 Samuel this week.

If you want to find your way to 1 Samuel chapter 16, Steph Lewis has this story in the silver chair, part of his Chronicles of Narnia, where two children and a marshwiggle are trapped in this underland region beneath the beautiful magical land of Narnia.

1 Samuel 16 · chapter mention

It's this dark, gloomy region underneath the beautiful landscapes above.

And they encounter this evil witch who is trying to keep them from escaping her dark region.

And interestingly, she doesn't try to capture them, she doesn't tie them up, she doesn't restrain them physically.

What she does is tells them a story, basically.

She tries to deceive them with a different description of reality.

She essentially says that the world of Narnia up above was just imaginary.

It's something that they made up, it was fairy tales that they believed in, and they need to focus on what's really true, what is reality in front of them.

She says, all the animals and stars and sunlight and beautiful mountains and all the vivid colors were made up.

They're just a fantasy.

You dreamed it.

And they can't presently see Narnia at this moment, and they begin to believe her.

Their eyes can't see it, and they b begin to believe the story that she's telling them, and the which which gets them into this magical sort of trance, and she says, with her very gentle voice, There never was such a land, and they repeat it back to her, There never was such a land.

And she says, There never was any land but mine.

And they repeat it again, settling into this lie that there is no such world as Narnia, no such king as Aslan, all of the beauty and delight of that world was nothing more than a fantasy and a dream.

The witch is tempting them to believe that what is real is what their eyes show them, and nothing more.

What you see is what you get.

There is no more reality than what we can perceive with our eyes.

And like these two children and Marsh Wiggle, we have a similar enemy who has a similar tactic.

Satan, much like the witch, wants to bewitch you and numb you to believing that what you can see and hear and touch is all that there is to reality, so that you don't have the eyes to see the whole world of spiritual beauty that is all around you.

He wants you to believe that the world of your sight is the only world there is.

That what you see in the mirror is all there is to who you are.

Or what you see on your resume or your report card or in your bank account or garage or wherever you choose to look.

He wants you to believe that a bunch of ordinary people sitting through a monologue on an old book given by some guy that looks like he might be in high school is all that's happening right now.

He wants you to believe that the songs that we sing are just songs, and that these are just crackers, and that what we're doing is just a bunch of religious people that happen to share the same religion hanging out together.

He wants you to believe what your eyes tell you, that Jesus is absent, and that we individually, and the church as a whole, and the world as we know it, are things to be grieved and little more.

Because that's what it looks like.

But 1 Samuel 16 shows us that there is more to these realities than meets the eye, and it makes a world of a difference.

So let's read now from God's word together in 1 Samuel.

I invite you to stand if you're able to honor God's word as we read from 1 Samuel 16.

Beginning in verse 1, the word of God reads.

Fill your horn with oil and go.

I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided for myself a king among his sons.

And Samuel said, How can I go?

If Saul hears it, he will kill me.

And the Lord said, Take a heifer with you, and say, I have come to sacrifice to the Lord.

And invite Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will show you what you shall do, and you shall anoint for me him whom I declare to you.

Samuel did what the Lord commanded and came to Bethlehem.

The elders of the city came to meet him trembling, and said, Do you come peaceably?

And he said, Peaceably, I have come to sacrifice to the Lord.

Consecrate yourselves, and come with me to the sacrifice.

And he consecrated Jesse and his sons, and invited them to the sacrifice.

When they came, he looked on Eliab and thought, Surely the Lord's anointed is before him.

But the Lord said to Samuel, Do not look on his appearance, or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him.

For the Lord sees not as man sees.

Man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.

Then Jesse called Abinadab and made him pass before Samuel.

And he said, Neither has the Lord chosen this one.

Then Jesse made Shema pass by, and he said, Neither has the Lord chosen this one.

And Jesse made seven of his sons pass before Samuel.

And Samuel said to Jesse, The Lord has not chosen these.

Then Samuel said to Jesse, Are all your sons here?

And he said, There remains yet the youngest.

But behold, he is keeping the sheep.

Samuel said to Jesse, Send him and get him, for we will not sit down till he comes here.

And he sent and brought him in.

Now he was ruddy and had beautiful eyes and was handsome.

And the Lord said, Arise, anoint him, for this is he.

Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers, and the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon David from that day forward.

And Samuel rose up and went to Rama.

This is God's word.

Please be seated.

Lord Jesus.

Lord, we are blind and hopelessly lost apart from you.

Lord, open our eyes, we pray.

By the power of your Holy Spirit, give us eyes to see the truth of your scriptures and meet with us now in your word.

We pray these things in your name, Lord, and for your glory.

Amen.

The key word in this story is see.

The word see, the various forms of the Hebrew word for sight or seeing appear exactly seven times in our story this morning, all working together to give us a view into what this is really about.

And what we'll discover in this is that God sees and creates realities that are hidden from human sight.

What God says is real is often hidden from what we see with our eyes.

But it's no less real because God sees and creates realities that are hidden from human sight.

We're going to discover this truth in three different areas through 1 Samuel 16 this morning.

The saints, the Savior, and the sacraments.

They all start with the same letter.

You're welcome.

The saints, the Savior, and the sacraments.

The first hidden reality that God sees, that God creates, is in the saints, in God's chosen people, his holy ones.

We begin to see this in the first verse.

The story opens with Samuel, the prophet of God, grieving over King Saul.

This is how the chapter 15 ends.

Saul has been just spiraling out of control, descending deeper and deeper into sin and rebellion against God, and now he's been officially rejected by God.

And the end of 15 tells us that Samuel grieved over Saul, and then verse 1 begins.

Look at verse 1, if you have your Bibles open.

The Lord said to Samuel, How long will you grieve over Saul?

Since I have rejected him from being king over Israel.

Now, Samuel's grief here is understandable, right?

He rightly sees that the kingship that had begun so hopeful is coming crashing down all around him, and he rightly sees that Saul's rebellion and rejection before God risk the whole kingdom of Israel collapsing or being taken over by enemies or falling apart from disunity within.

And Samuel himself probably feels like a failure.

He's the one that selected Saul and anointed Saul.

He probably feels like a failure of a father, of a spiritual leader, of a king's mentor and guide.

There's something that is not just understandable, but I would say appropriate about Samuel's grief.

Jesus himself grieved over the people of Jerusalem in Matthew 23.

The Apostle Paul had great sorrow in his heart, Romans 9 says, for the nation of Israel in his day.

But it wasn't everything.

And Samuel needed to see more.

He needed his eyes to be open to what God sees.

And so God goes on and says, Fill your horn with oil and go.

I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided for myself a king among his sons.

Now, somewhat ironically, hidden beneath what we see in our English translations here is something very meaningful that's easy to miss, because the word provided here in verse 1 is literally the word seen.

God says, I have seen for myself a king.

So he's saying, Samuel, your grief is valid, but it's not the full picture.

While you see a kingdom collapsing, I see a king on the rise.

While you see a ruler who has selfishly brought ruin to my people, I see a king who will redeem them and who will rule them in justice and peace.

And we, like Samuel in his grief, we need a fuller picture to look beyond what our eyes tell us.

Samuel's limited vision led not only to grief but to fear, right?

He goes on to say in verse 2, How can I go?

If Saul hears it, he'll kill me.

So now his very clear view of his very real predicament has eclipsed his view into the invisible reality that the sovereign Lord Almighty stands supreme over the universe and governs every atom of it for his good.

He's lost sight of the invisible reality because he's focused on what is seen.

And church, if Samuel, the great prophet, the righteous leader of God's chosen people, if even he can be tempted to believe only in the gloomy shadow land of his eyes' perception, with no sight to greater things above, then how much more are we prone to be held captive by these same lies?

We are so quick to be overcome by grief and fear when we look only to what our eyes can see.

So let me ask you, brothers and sisters, do you, like Samuel, feel like a failure?

Do you feel like you have blown it so bad that you couldn't possibly be recovered, that you couldn't possibly be welcomed again by God?

Do you feel dirty and gross inside and shameful and broken?

God says, you've seen your sin and your shame.

You've seen your mistakes and your disgrace, but I have seen for myself a king.

A king who has taken every ounce of your sin and shame upon himself and has given you his perfect righteousness in its place.

You yourself, you see yourself as vile and wretched, and that you were.

But I see you now, the Lord says, as holy and blameless, Ephesians 1.

At peace with God, Romans 5, beloved, Colossians 3, a new creation, 2 Corinthians 5, resurrected and ascended in Christ, Ephesians 2.

If you are in Christ, you are glorious, perfected, and beautiful in the sight of God.

You don't see this yet with your eyes, but God does and you will.

Colossians 3 tells us.

If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God, set your mind on things that are above, not on things here on earth, in the shadow realm.

For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

Your true identity is concealed.

It's hidden right now with Christ in God.

But when Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

Church, God's word is saying to us here, don't be bewitched into believing the lie that the gloomy darkness before your eyes here on earth is all that there is.

Don't be deceived into believing that the sinful corruption that you still see in your heart is what defines your reality.

Look up to the greater reality above these shadow lands.

Set your gaze on things above and see there the king that God has seen for himself and see yourself there with him.

You don't seem glorious and perfect and beautiful, but in Christ you are.

You are no longer a sinner in the eyes of God.

You are his saints.

And this is not just true of us individually, this is the invisible reality behind the whole of the church, of God's people.

Samuel looked around at the people of God around him, and he saw a desperate, poor, helpless, dying kingdom.

But God looked at that same kingdom and saw a new beginning, a new creation about to spring forth through the anointing of a new king.

But we tend to have Samuel's eyes more than God's.

So let me ask you, do you, like Samuel, look around at the people of God and feel burdened by the condition of God's people around the world today?

What do you see?

Do do your eyes see in the church disgrace and hypocrisy?

Do you see an institution riddled with sin and scars and scandals, something weak, something ineffective and irrelevant and dying?

God says, you have seen what is visible, but you haven't seen what's ultimate.

You haven't seen what I see.

You see a flawed institution, and it is, but I see the glorious body of the risen Lord Jesus made manifest on the earth.

You see a gathering of poor sinners.

I see a holy nation, a royal priesthood.

You see something weak and fragile.

I see a kingdom, an army advancing over the globe, a people against whom the gates of hell will not prevail.

You see something fading, but I see a bride being prepared for her husband in splendor, without spot or wrinkle, for the return of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Brothers and sisters, the church is not ultimately what it appears to be to our eyes.

It is what God has declared it to be in Christ.

Yes, there is real sin.

There is real corruption.

There are real failures that should grieve us.

Just like Saul grieved Samuel and Israel grieved Paul, but that is not the whole story.

How long will you grieve?

How long will you look only at what is seen?

Like Samuel, we need our vision corrected, not to ignore what is broken, but to see beyond it to what God sees, namely that the church, though hidden and veiled, the church now today stands as the glorious, exalted body of Jesus Christ, soon to be revealed in glory.

We are his saints.

And he delights in us.

That's the first point, the the first hidden reality that that God sees, the reality of his saints.

And the second is the Savior.

Israel is in desperate need of a savior.

So God sends Samuel to the little town of Bethlehem to have a sacrificial meal and to anoint a new king, God's chosen king.

And he arrives, and the leaders of the town are trembling in fear, which, I don't know, might have something to do with the fact that in the last chapter, Samuel hacked a dude to pieces with his sword, a little chicken nuggets, as Brian said.

But Samuel assures them that he comes in pieces, in peace, sorry.

Um, and he tells them to consecrate themselves to prepare for the sacrificial feast.

And uh he invites Jesse and his sons as well.

Meanwhile, he's examining Jesse's sons to see which of them God had chosen to be the next king over Israel.

Look at verse 6 with me.

If you have your Bibles open, it says, When they came, he looked on Eliab, the oldest, and thought, surely the Lord's anointed is before him.

Samuel looked on Eliab and thought.

You see that?

He looked and thought.

His thinking is based on his looking, what could be seen with his eyes.

It's almost reminiscent of in Genesis 3, when Eve, it says, seeing that the tree was good for food, and uh that it was a delight to the eyes, took and eat.

Eight.

I read one commentator who described him as an impressive hunk of manhood.

Which people say about me sometimes.

I don't you can say that if you want.

But you you get the picture, right?

Jesse's firstborn son, the prized and prioritized member of the family who had the highest rank and status, was also a handsome, fit, tall, warrior-looking man, the ideal picture of a king.

And we would think, well, a lot of readers I think would remember that Saul was described very similarly just a few chapters earlier, and we might think that Samuel, who's been through this whole process already, and has seen how the last tall, good-looking king that he anointed turned out, we'd think that wise, thoughtful, godly Samuel would know better than to give so much weight to external appearances.

But again, he is corrected by God.

And how quick we are to slip back into this deceptive way of thinking.

How quick we are to lose sight of this.

With all the wisdom a man could have, and with the words of God being whispered in his ear, Samuel still slips into the ways of the world and judges reality based on what his eyes can see.

And though we too have God's word in a fuller and greater way than Samuel did, we still slip into Thinking like the world, where physical appearance trumps everything, where attractiveness overshadows spiritual depth, where success in our jobs and in our churches is measured by materialistic means, where a large following is taken as a sign of God's favor, and a small, quiet life is looked as as overlooked as insignificant.

So God gently corrects Samuel again, and he says to him in verse 7, The Lord sees not as man sees.

Man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.

Now, I hate to do this, but a more literal translation.

Our English Bibles are trustworthy, they're good.

This is a true and good text, but a more precise translation of this verse would read, Man sees according to the eyes, but the Lord sees according to the heart or the will.

In other words, what this is saying is that God doesn't just see deeper than we do.

He sees according to his own heart, his own will, his own purpose.

He does see into our hearts as well and judges on our hearts, not our looks.

But what this is saying is that God sees not according to external things that he's taking in, but according to what he wills.

That's why Eliab is rejected, not because Samuel missed some secret flaw in him, but because Eliab was never the one that God had set his heart on.

And likewise, David is chosen, not because he's morally superior to everyone else.

That would still make the choice rest on something in man, not in God's choice.

The emphasis in the passage is not on David's hidden righteousness, but on God's hidden purposes.

So remember verse one, God has seen for himself a king.

God's sight is not his mere observation, but his active will, his choice, what he ordains, what he chooses.

God doesn't see with eyes like we do, Samuel is telling us.

Taking in data from the external world.

God sees according to his will for the world, what he purposes.

And so David had a particular place in God's heart, God's purposes, which is what set him apart from Saul and Aliab and all the others.

So David is chosen by God's perfect will and anointed as the king of God's people.

And what is unique about David is several things.

First of all, he's the youngest.

Contrary to the whole ancient Near Eastern world that prioritized the oldest, David is the least, he's the youngest.

Some translations say the smallest, the tiniest, or the shortest.

In comparison to Eliab, who's tall, and Saul, who is tall, and Goliath, who is tall, David is pictured as a small man.

So does God prefer the youngest child and the average or below average height?

I would say yes.

But that's not that's not what the text is saying.

The point is that David is the tiniest and most insignificant overlook.

He's the runt of the family.

In fact, he's not even like welcomed to the feast.

He's not there with the brother.

Samuel has to basically go and ask the dad, hey, Jesse, did you, I don't know, maybe like forget one of your kids?

Which would be understandable.

He has at least ten of them, we know, from elsewhere.

Maybe he pulled a Jared and just happened to overlook one of them.

It happens.

But it turns out he hasn't just been overlooked.

He has been intentionally put to work in the fields to slave away so that the rest can come to the feast.

He's a sort of ancient male Cinderella figure who's cut off from the rest of the family to go do his chores and not invited to the party.

That is David's life.

Keeping sheep was not a desirable job.

Slaves and social rejects were shepherds, and that's how David is presented to us: slaving away in the field as an overlooked, small reject.

And finally, then David is brought in, and the narrator tells us in verse 12, he was ruddy and had beautiful eyes and was handsome.

Now, if you're like me, you might have read that and been like, didn't God just say that he doesn't judge based off of physical appearances and physical attractiveness is not the metric?

And then he goes on to say, but also he was pretty good looking.

So even if God did judge face off appearances, he still would have gotten the role.

This normally sounds that way to our modern ears.

It sounds like a positive description to Westerners, especially.

It's not actually meant to be that way.

This is meant to be a contrast to the imposing size and strength, the manliness of David's older brothers.

Unlike their masculine gruffness, David is described as more gentle, a beautiful, a fair-looking boy, with words that are used elsewhere in scripture almost exclusively for women.

This is why in the next chapter, in 17, verse 42, I believe, it says that Goliath looked and saw David.

When Goliath looked and saw David, he dismissed him, for he was but a youth, ruddy and handsome in appearance.

So yes, he's attractive, but the point is that these qualities present David to us more as like a cute kid than a powerful warrior.

He's not kingly and masculine and strong and tall like his brothers.

So, wrap all of that together.

Notice what this tells us about what's going on here.

God picks David according to his own heart, his own will, his own purposes, not because David is righteous, but because he's young, weak, small, poor, unimpressive, and overlooked.

It's much like what God says in Deuteronomy 7 and Deuteronomy 9, as he's talking to Israel and says, I did not pick you because you were righteous in heart, or because you were great, but precisely because you were small, because you were weak, because you were poor.

God chooses to select the weak to shame the strong, Paul says in 1 Corinthians.

And while this does have true implications for how God works in all of his people, this is not ultimately meant to give us a picture of ourselves.

It is meant, like all of Scripture, Jesus says in Luke 24 and John 5 and Romans 1 and 1 Peter 1 and elsewhere, all of Scripture is meant to give us a picture of Jesus.

David's greater son, David's Lord.

And so just as David was a poor nobody from the little town of Bethlehem, Jesus came as a lower class, poor no-name from the little town of Bethlehem.

And just as David was unimpressive and overlooked, Jesus lived most of his life in obscurity, unknown and insignificant.

And just as David appeared weak and unkingly, Jesus had every appearance of weakness, the furthest thing from royalty.

And just as David was filled with the Spirit of God in unprecedented ways that Saul could only dream of, and then immediately returned into the fields and then the caves to hide for his life and was betrayed, and then to exile from his own people that he was rightful king over, so too was Jesus anointed with the Spirit and then driven to the wilderness to be attacked by Satan and wild beasts and then later dragged outside of Jerusalem by his own people to die.

Just as David lived for years in darkness and suffering before he was ever exalted as king, Jesus lived for decades in pain, poverty, loneliness, abandonment, betrayal, and ultimately a torturous death.

And yet, just as David rose victorious to the throne, Jesus, this weak, poor nobody from Bethlehem, has risen, exalted, ascended, and is enthroned above all creation, over every enemy, reigning supreme over his kingdom and over the entire universe for all eternity.

That is the reality of our Lord Jesus Christ.

He is on the throne, reigning supreme.

So as you look around at the world today with your eyes, what do you see?

Do you see the powers at work in the world?

Do they seem strong?

Do governments and armies and other religions and Satan and his demons and the world of unbelief around us, do they seem in control?

Do they look victorious to our eyes?

Do they appear powerful?

And where is Jesus?

Do you see him?

Church, don't be bewitched.

Don't look only to what is seen.

Though our eyes are veiled from his kingly glory now, Jesus is the King, and he is reigning over the nations, supreme over all creation, and is returning soon in glory.

That is the reality that we need to see this morning.

That's our second point, the Savior.

Which brings us to the third hidden reality, the sacraments.

We'll just look briefly at these.

In 1 Samuel 16, God's people are participating in a sacrificial meal.

God sends Samuel to have a sacrifice and a meal that would result after the sacrifice in communion with God.

But notice that no one comes to this feast casually.

This is according to the Old Testament law.

They must first be consecrated or made holy, washed, cleansed before that they can draw near to God and sacrifice to feast in communion with Him.

Because God is holy, access to His presence is never ordinary.

We must be purified, holyified, is the word consecrated or sanctified.

And that pattern runs throughout the whole Old Testament in big picture ways.

God cleanses the earth in water with a flood, and then Noah sacrifices and eats the meal in God's presence.

The people of Israel pass through the waters of the Red Sea, and then they meet in God's presence at Sinai.

And all of the sacrificial meals are structured this way, where they are cleansed, consecrated through ceremonial washings first, and then feast in God's presence.

Washing, then worship is the pattern.

Cleansing, then communion, consecration, then sacrifice, water, then food.

But what they had to repeat again and again and again and again to cleanse themselves and purify themselves before God, Christ has accomplished once and for all.

If you are in Christ, if you have trusted in Jesus, then you have been washed, not with water only, but with the blood of Jesus.

Your baptism is the visible sign and seal of the invisible reality that you have been consecrated by him forever.

You are clean and can enter his presence.

And now having been washed, you are invited to do just that.

You are invited to come to the feast to commune with God Himself, who is our host.

We don't need to repeat our baptism.

We don't need to consecrate ourselves or work to perform for God or purify ourselves.

We are clean, perfected, holy, and blameless, and we can come into his presence at this feast every single week if we wanted to.

God has purified us.

And this is where we need to see what's more than meets the eye.

Just as Samuel said, We will not sit down to eat until the anointed one comes, so too this meal is little, if not nothing, without the presence of the anointed one.

The messianic king, the greater David, Jesus Christ Himself.

If Christ were absent, this would be little more than bread and cup, a bare ritual, a shallow religious symbol.

But he is not absent.

1 Corinthians 10, Paul says, The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ?

The bread that we break, is it not a participation or a fellowship in the body of Christ?

Notice it's not just a picture, it's a participation.

It is a real sharing, a real communion in the person of Jesus.

And in the next chapter, he warns that those who partake unworthily are guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord.

Can't be guilty of mishandling something that's not there in any real sense.

So it only makes sense if something real is happening here, if Christ is truly giving himself to his people in this meal.

Remember, it was Jesus who first declared himself to be the bread of life.

It was Jesus who said in John 6, My flesh is true food and my blood is true drink.

Whoever feeds on me abides in me and I in him.

Whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me.

It was Jesus who instituted this meal by saying, This is a symbol of my body.

No.

A remembrance of my body put into visible form.

No, this is my body, he said.

This is my blood.

Not because, not because the bread becomes the body in a physical way.

Jesus is in heaven.

He has been sacrificed, he is raised once, he is in heaven, but through this meal he truly gives us what he promises, namely himself, spiritually to be nourished in our souls.

So how is Christ present?

Not by coming down from heaven into the elements, but by the Spirit lifting us up to commune with the risen Christ who is seated at the right hand of the Father.

As Ephesians 2 says, we are raised with him, seated with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

So don't be bewitched.

What looks like a simple table in our eyes is in reality a meeting place with the living God.

What looks like ordinary bread is a participation in the body of Christ Himself.

What looks like a common cup is a sharing in his blood.

What looks like a simple room of ordinary people is in truth the royal children of the Most High God gathered in the presence of our heavenly King.

In the Lord's Supper, we don't just remember Christ, we encounter him in an invisible but very real way.

So lift your eyes now beyond what is seen and come remembering Christ and receiving him personally.

Come not as spectators, but as guests at his table.

You have been washed by his blood, perfected by his righteousness, and made glorious and wonderful in his sight.

He has called you his brothers and sisters.

He calls you his friends, and he invites you now to his feast.

Come to him and have your souls fed and filled at the table of the anointed King.

Let's pray.

Lord Jesus.

Fix our gaze on you, our risen and reigning Lord, our King.

Teach us to see ourselves as you declare us to be your holy, beloved people.

And to see your church as your glorious bride.

Lord, we come to your table.

We lift our hearts to commune with you by your Spirit.

Lord, strengthen our faith, quiet our fears, and keep us looking to you until we see you face to face.

We long for that day, Lord, and we pray these things in your name.

Amen.