CBFC Worship Service 4/12/2026

Good morning.

Welcome.

For those of you who don't know me, let me introduce myself.

My name is Mike Roll, and I'm an elder here at uh CBFC.

Delayed to serve serve amongst you.

Uh when I was that better?

Is that a little better?

Alright, perfect.

Still crackly.

I got sorry.

I guess I should have shaved today.

Would have been a special moment.

Yeah, when I was and when I answered the call to become an elder uh maybe about 18 months ago, I knew this day was eventually gonna come.

The time to come and to give your first sermon.

Delegated to give it here with you all today.

I hope you guys feel honored.

And who knows, maybe this will be the last one.

Alright, well, let's begin.

If you can open up your Bibles to uh 1 Samuel, we're continuing our study of 1 Samuel, uh chapter 14.

Um as you go there, I'd like to share, I'd like to begin by sharing a brief story with you all.

Um this story was adapted from various World War I historical societies.

In October 1918, during the final weeks of World War I, a group of American soldiers became trapped deep in the Argonne Forest, cut off from reinforcements, surrounded by enemy forces, and running out of food and ammunition.

The unit, later known as the Lost Battalion, faced a desperate situation.

Their commander, Charles Whittlesey, refused to retreat or surrender.

Against overwhelming odds, they held their position, trusting that hope would come, and believing their stand mattered in a much larger battle.

But as the days dragged on, their situation became even more dire.

Not only were they surrounded by enemy fire, they were also being mistakenly shelled by their own army.

Desperate to stop the barrage, they turned to one last fragile hope, a carrier pigeon named Sermi.

The battalion's remaining carrier pigeons had all been shot down or lost during the chaos of the battle.

Sermi, which fittingly means dear friend in French, was their last hope of survival for these brave soldiers.

Serami was released into the chaos, the sky thick with smoke and gunfire.

German soldiers spotted her immediately and opened fire.

One bullet tore through her chest.

Another blinded her in one eye.

Her right leg was mangled, barely attached to her body.

Still, against all odds, miraculously, she continued to fly.

Through the brutal skies, she persevered and flew a remarkable 25 miles in just over 25 minutes.

When she reached headquarters, she was barely alive, but the message remained attached to what was left of her leg.

The message was a simple one.

We are on the road.

We are along the road parallel to 2764.

Our own artillery is dropping a barrage directly on us.

For heaven's sake, stop it.

Because of that message, the shelling was stopped.

Reinforcements were dispatched, and nearly 200 of the men were saved and survived the battle.

Now, as remarkable as that story is, and it is quite a remarkable story, we're here this morning to meditate on a much greater message of hope and the working of a mighty God who is mighty to save.

If you're able, I'd invite you to stand with me as we hear from God's word in 1 Samuel 14.

In verse 1.

One day Jonathan, the son of Saul, said to the young man who carried his armor, Come, let us go over to the Philistine garrison on the other side.

But he did not tell his father.

Saul was staying in the outskirts of Gibeah in the pomegranate cave at Migron.

The people who were with him were about six hundred men, including Ahijah, the son of Ahitab, Ichabod's brother, son of Phineas, son of Eli, the priest of the Lord in Shiloh, wearing a nephod.

And the people did not know that Jonathan had gone.

Within the passes by which Jonathan sought to go over to the Philistine garrison, there was a rocky crag on the one side, and a rocky crag on the other side.

The name of the one was Bozaz, and the name of the second Senna.

The one crag rose on the north in front of Mikmash, and the other on the south in front of Giba.

Jonathan said to the young man who carried his armor, Come, let us go over to the garrison of these uncircumcised.

It may be that the Lord will work for us, for nothing can hinder the Lord from saving by many or by few.

And his armor bearer said to him, Do all that is in your heart, do as you wish.

Behold, I am with you heart and soul.

Then Jonathan said, Behold, we will cross over to the men, and we will show ourselves to them.

If they say to us, Wait until we come to you, then we will stand in our place, and we will not go up to them.

But if they say, Come up to us, then we will go up to, then we will go up, for the Lord has given them into our hand, and this will be the sign to us.

So both of them showed themselves in the garrison of the Philistines.

And the Philistines said, Look, Hebrews are coming out of the holes where they have hidden themselves.

And the men of the garrison hailed Jonathan and his armor bearer, and said, Come up to us, we will show you a thing.

And Jonathan said to his armor bearer, Come up after me, for the Lord has given them into the hand of Israel.

Then Jonathan climbed up on his hands and feet, and his armor bearer after him.

Then they fell before Jonathan, and his armor bearer killed them after him.

And that first strike, which Jonathan and his armor bearer made, killed about twenty men, within, as it were, half a furrow's length, in an acre of land.

And there was a panic in the camp, in the field, and among all the people.

The garrison, and even the raiders trembled, and the earth quaked, and it became a very great panic.

And the watchmen of Saul and Gibeah of Benjamin looked, and behold, the multiple was dispersing here and there.

Then Saul said to the people who were with him, Count and see who is gone from us.

And when they have counted, behold, Jonathan and his armor bearer were not there.

So Saul said to Ahijah, Bring the Ark of God here, for the Ark of God went at the at that time with the people of Israel.

Now, while Saul was talking to the priest, the tumult in the camp of the Philistines increased more and more.

So Saul said to the priest, Withdrawal your hand.

Then Saul and all the people who were with him rallied and went into battle, and behold, every Philistine's sword was against his fellow, and there was a great confusion.

Now the Hebrews who had been with the Philistines before that time, who had gone up with them into the camp, even they also turned to the to be with the Israelites, who were with Saul and Jonathan.

Likewise, when all the men of Israel who had hidden themselves in the hill country of Ephraim heard that the Philistines were fleeing, they too followed hard after them in the battle.

So the Lord saved Israel that day, and the battle passed beyond Beth Aven.

Let us pray.

O Father, we thank you for this day.

To come, to gather together and worship in your word.

We thank you for the word that you've given us.

Lord, I pray that you would open up our hearts and our minds to your mighty saving hand.

That you would stir our affections to you and to your son, Lord, and in the name of Jesus we pray.

Amen.

May you be seated.

In our reading this morning, we find the nation of Israel in a similar situation as the Lost Battalion, desperate, without hope, in need of a miracle.

Things have not gone as planned for the nation.

The sin of wanting a king to be just like the nations around them had once promised life and the start of a golden age.

Instead, it led them to the grave.

King Saul has proven to be a feckless leader, concerned about appearance and the things that are seen rather than the Lord.

His poor leadership, his unbelief in the Lord had left a standing army, which once amounted to 3,000 soldiers, now reduced to 600 men.

The army of Israel are without weapons that the Philistines had not permitted blacksmiths in the land.

Only Saul and Jonathan were left with a weapon.

They are hiding in caves on the outskirts of Gibeah, under attack by raiding forces of the Philistines.

To make matters worse, in an act of humiliation, the Israelites had to go down to the Philistines even to sharpen their farming tools, for a large fee, of course.

The Philistines have gained a foothold in the central hill country of Israel.

The Philistine army had vastly outnumbered that of Israel.

We read in chapter 13 a few weeks ago that the Philistines amassed 30,000 chariots, 6,000 horsemen and troops like the sands on the seashore.

A mighty force in comparison to the army of Israel.

Yet worse than their physical condition and the circumstances that they saw themselves in was their spiritual condition.

God had just rejected Saul as king over Israel.

The location of the very caves they hid in was a tragic picture of how much was lost.

Gibeah was located only a few miles from Mizpah, where Samuel had gathered the Israelites in chapter 7.

It was there that Samuel had called on the nation to cry out to the Lord for deliverance.

Return to him with all your heart.

Put away your foreign gods and serve him only.

And the Lord had heard their cries.

The Philistines drew near to the Israelites of Mizpah on that day and attacked.

But the Lord in a mighty thunder threw them into a confusion, saving them.

Samuel had raised a stone in remembrance of the moment and called his name Ebenezer, saying, Till now the Lord has helped us.

All this only a few miles away.

And yet, to those Israelites in the caves, that moment must have seemed like a distant memory.

The location could as well have been halfway around the world.

Now, since every good sermon needs to have a list, I've broken the sermon up into three main points.

With the final application to close.

Although I may have my moments, I'm not as woody and creative as others who have preached before, so unfortunately you won't get any well-crafted play on words, any alliterations.

But nevertheless, the three points are as follows: the wrong perspective of the Lord, the right perspective of the Lord, and the perspective of the Lord that leads to a contagious faith.

Let's start with that first point, the wrong perspective of the Lord.

We learn here in verse 2 that Saul is sitting in the pomegranate caves, hesitant, waiting for direction from the Lord who had rejected him.

Saul, determined not to make the same mistake again, has called a priest to be by his side.

But this priest is a sour reminder of Israel's past.

Ahijah, the son of Ahitab was Ichabod's brother in the line of Eli.

If we recall from a few months ago, Ichabod was given his name by his mother as she was dying shortly after his birth.

Ichabod means the glory of the Lord has departed from Israel.

The ark had been taken in battle, and Eli and his sons had died.

A rejected priest, serving alongside a rejected king.

We saw time and time again that Saul did not have a proper perspective of the Lord.

Saul had a little view of God and of his power.

Saul was concerned with external experiences.

This was evident in his public anointing, hiding himself among the baggage.

Yes, showing a lack of confidence of himself, but as we're beginning to see, more importantly, a lack of faith in the Lord and what the Lord can do through him.

This was evident in chapter 13, where Saul, concerned with the mounting Philistine army, performed an unlawful sacrifice to the Lord without the presence of Samuel.

Saul had looked at the predicament he was in.

The Philistines had amassed a great army, and his standing army was withering away, getting smaller each day as he waited for Samuel to arrive.

Saul did not see that God was his only hope for deliverance in that moment.

Or at least not when it counted.

Saul could not wait upon Samuel to perform the sacrifice to the Lord.

That was far too risky.

He had to act now to save himself.

It was this perspective that had gotten Saul and the nation in trouble.

We'll see later in the narrative that while Saul may have been displaying some signs of external faith, some external signs of faith in the pomegranate caves, his heart was still far from him.

Now let's turn our focus to the right perspective of the Lord.

The author of 1 Samuel takes care to paint this contrasting picture between Saul and his son Jonathan.

Jonathan, a man of action, is not like his father.

We see in verse 1, come, let us go over to the Philistine garrison on the other side.

Jonathan does not show hesitation, waiting for circumstances to change.

He's ready and he's willing to act, to make a bold move, to change Israel's circumstances.

You get the feeling in the latter part of the verse 1 that Jonathan does not see eye to eye with his father.

He decides not to tell his father of his plan.

Perhaps he didn't want to be dissuaded.

We don't exactly know why he chose not to say it.

In fact, no one was aware of Jonathan's plan, other than Jonathan himself and his faithful armor bearer.

We almost get the feeling that Jonathan knows that the fate of Israel is hinging upon someone making a move in faith.

And that move is not going to come from his father.

Before we get to the why behind Jonathan's plan, the author takes a moment to describe the feat that lays before him and his armor bearer.

The author paints us this picture of the hostile environment that must be traversed to execute this plan.

The route to the Philistine garrison consisted of a small pass with two steep, rocky crags.

The first named Boses to the north, the second, Sena to the south.

The name Boses means gleaming one, or in some translations, slippery one.

The name Senna means thorny one.

Every detail in the scripture is important.

The author here is painting us a picture that this is not an easy road.

Jonathan must traverse a hostile environment, steep, sharp, slippery slopes, thorny slopes.

In fact, some may even call it a rather audacious idea, and we could be left to wonder if Jonathan has a death wish, if we only consider the merits of his plan without taking into account the motives that are behind them.

Now to the why behind Jonathan's plan.

Jonathan, unlike his father, has a firm understanding and a faith in God's covenantal promise.

We see clearly in how he describes his army in verse 6.

Come, let's go over to the garrison of these uncircumcised.

Jonathan knows who he is.

Rather, yet, he knows whose he is.

He's an Israelite, God's chosen people of promise.

Similarly, he knows who his enemy is.

How they do not hold the same promises from the Lord.

You can almost hear the lament of the psalmist Asaph in Psalm 73, as Jonathan is taking in the state of his nation before him and devising this plan for redemption.

Psalm 73, starting in verse 12, it goes as this.

Behold, these are the wicked, always at ease.

They increase in riches.

All in vain I have kept my heart clean, and washed my hands in innocence.

For all the day long I have been stricken and rebuked every morning.

If I had said, I will speak thus, I would have betrayed the generation of your children.

But when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me to be a wearisome task, until I went into the sanctuary of God.

Then I discerned their end.

Truly, you set them in slippery places, you make them fall to ruin, how they were destroyed in a moment, swept away utterly to terrors.

I'm picking up in verse 23.

Nevertheless, I am continually with you.

You hold my right hand.

You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you'll receive me to glory.

And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.

My heart and my fet flesh may fail, but God is my strength, the strength of my heart, and my portion forever.

For behold, those who are far from you shall perish.

You should put an end to anyone who is unfaithful to you.

But for me, it is good to be near God.

I have made the Lord God my refuge, and I will tell of all of your works.

Jonathan has a similar refrain, one can think.

Jonathan knows that the Lord has promised to be with the nation of Israel, and that no enemy, certainly even the Philistines, can stand.

Things may look bleak at the moment for the nation, but the Lord has power to change all that.

All the Lord asks is to be sought as a refuge.

Furthermore, in verse 6 of 1 Samuel 14, he knows who the Lord is.

It may be that the Lord will work for us, for nothing can hinder, some translations say restrain, the Lord from saving by many or by few.

Here's where I want us to stay this morning.

Jonathan was a man who had a proper perspective, a high view of God.

Our prayers here at Elders at CVSC is that we would all have a big view of God.

A big view of our sovereign Lord.

Our Lord who knows the beginning from the end.

Our Lord whom he can trust with every detail of our lives.

Our Lord who has already written history.

If I could take a moment for a brief uh commercial.

Thursday mornings we meet for men's breakfast at Bible study at the Valley Cafe.

We had just begun the study of the book on the book of Revelation.

And in these past weeks we've been just kind of sitting in Revelation 1, just the first few chapters, or first few verses of the book.

And it's just such a glorious picture of the Lord that we've been able to meditate on.

Just how mighty and powerful our God is.

A God that we can trust and we know has the final victory.

But let's get back to 1 Samuel.

We get into the commercial.

What's beautiful about Jonathan's declaration is not only his view of the Lord, but also his view of himself.

It may be, he's not presuming that the Lord's going to do a mighty work through him.

Jonathan knows that he's not owed anything.

Rather, he is confidently displaying faith that the Lord is more than capable of delivering them.

And that alone is worth taking action.

It may be that the Lord, in his sovereign will, chooses a different outcome for Jonathan as an armor bearer than we read.

But Jonathan knows that the Lord will be glorified through him, regardless of that outcome.

And the Lord will not be restrained.

This is a starkly different outcome.

This is a starkly different approach than his father.

His father would size up the enemy, allow the external experiences and the circumstances to dictate that decision, and dictate his faith in the Lord.

Jonathan and his arm bear set out on their plan.

We read in verse 8 that as they arrive, Jonathan lays out a plan to check on the Lord's will.

They'll present themselves to the Philistines.

If the Philistines tell them to wait until they come to you, then they'll stand in their place and take a defensive position.

If they invite them up, then they'll go on the offensive.

For it's a sign that the Lord has given them over into their hands.

As they approach the garrison, the Philistines' response is all but unimpressed by these two, as we could imagine.

In verse 11, we read the Philistines' response is one of arrogance.

Look, the cave dwellers have come out of their hiding place.

Come up here.

We've got something to show you.

You're going to see the arrogance pouring out of their response.

They have no regard for the Israelites or the God who they serve.

The Lord provided Jonathan the sign, and he had given them over to them.

And Jonathan and his arm bear don't waste any time acting on behalf of the Lord.

We read in verse 13 that Jonathan climbs up on his hands and his feet with his arm bear closely behind him.

At the first strike, Jonathan had caught the garrison off guard, and he and his arm bearer killed twenty men within a half acre of land.

Jonathan and his arm bearer had done their part in faith.

Now the Lord was going to perform an even greater feat on their behalf.

A great panic fell over the camp.

The raiders trembled and the earthquaked.

When we read about earthquakes in Scripture, they're oftentimes synonymous with the Lord's supernatural intervention.

That's exactly what's happening here in this moment.

The Lord is supernaturally intervening for the nation.

The narrative switches back to the caves now, near Gibeah, where Saul's watchmen took notice of the chaos unfolding at the garrison.

We read in verse 16 that the watchmen report to Saul what they had seen.

Behold, the multiple were dispersing here and there.

I like the way the NIV translates it.

Saul's lookouts at Gibeah and Benjamin saw the army melting away in all directions.

And what was Saul's response to this?

Okay.

Well then, how about We do a roll call.

Let's see how many soldiers we have.

The Lord is working a mighty work, a mighty wonder, right before his very eyes.

And his first response is to number his troops.

Again, to take count of the external realities.

Saul then calls for the Ark to be brought forth.

Saul wants to hear from the Lord first before taking action.

Not a bad idea, right?

But we're left with the feeling that the only thing he's doing is to not make the same mistake again, right?

Saul's mother didn't raise new fool.

Saul made that mistake in chapter 13.

It wasn't going to happen again.

So he calls for the ark.

Let's acquire from the Lord here.

We see that in verse 19.

As Saul's talking things over with the priest, meanwhile, the chaos in the Philistine camp keeps increasing, so much so that it can no longer be ignored.

In haste, he tells the priest to withdraw his hand.

He no longer needs to hear from the Lord in the matter, and hastily he goes into action.

This is a heart that externally may look like he's making a move towards the Lord, but we can see it's not.

His heart is still far, far from.

Now, if you recall, the Israelites did not have any effective weapons with which to enter this battle.

The Philistines had removed all weapons and blacksmiths from amongst Israel.

A form of protection to maintain their dominance.

In a divine irony, we can see that Israel did not need any weapons of their own.

We read in verse 20 that every Philistine's sword was against his fellow, and there was a great confusion.

The Philistines had made sure to give themselves the best advantage possible by limiting the enemy's weapons.

Yet the Lord caused them to use their own weapons against themselves with devastating effects.

You can almost see Saul and what remained of that standing army rushing into battle with whatever farm tools they could muster, only to see hundreds of swords lying around next to all the fallen Philistines, right there for the taking.

Who can restrain the Lord from his will?

What a powerful God we serve.

Now the third point.

The perspective of the Lord that produces a contagious faith.

We see in verse 21 that there are Hebrews in the midst of the Philistine camp.

Note how the author uses their national identity to describe these individuals, not their covenantal identity.

These were former Israelites, born of the promise, born of all the covenant blessings.

These are men, people, we're not given exactly whom, who forfeited that identity and defected to the enemy.

Matthew Henry describes this moment, the moment this way in his commentary.

Those that had deserted and gone over to the enemy, and who were among them, now fought against them.

Some think they were such as been taken prisoner by them, and now they were goads in their sides.

It rather seems that they were into them voluntarily, but now that they saw them falling, recovered their hearts of the Israelites, and did valiantly for the country.

But for a moment those deserters, witnessing the mighty power of the Lord, remembered God's covenantal promises, and joined with them in the route of the Philistines.

Even more so we read, we read in verse 22 that those Israelis that had cowered in the fear, in the caves, in the hillsides, saw the mighty hand of the Lord at work.

These were men likely of that initial standing army of 3,000 men.

Who had cowered away, who had left their post.

Emboldened now in faith, they also joined the fight.

Oftentimes, a proper perspective of the Lord can be a contagious thing, strengthening those around us.

Now I'd like to close with some applications.

The author closes the narrative in verse 23 with seven words.

A simple sentence, but one that holds great hope for us in the glory of our God.

So the Lord saved Israel that day.

The author wants the proper perspective to make sure that the point is not lost here.

It was the Lord that worked and saved Israel that day, not Jonathan.

Now we can end right here.

We can walk away from the charge with the charge.

Have faith like Jonathan.

Don't be like Saul.

Well, that would be a good word for us.

I fear that would be of great disservice to all of us if that's our primary conclusion.

You see, this passion is not simply about Jonathan and Saul.

It's about a great God that we serve.

You see, this passion is a God who loves his children and a God who saves.

And points to a greater deliverance not yet realized for his people in 1 Samuel.

A deliverance not just from earthly enemies, but a deliverance from greater ones.

Their sin and unbelief leading to eternal separation from the holy God who created them.

In our narrative, Jonathan is a foreshadowing of our coming Messiah, the work of one bold and faithful man who acts in faith against all laws to bring about the salvation of his people.

This is a picture of our Savior in a charge to remember the great promise of our God, for he is mighty to save.

Let's remember back to where this narrative started.

The nation of Israel is desperate, without hope.

Do you see yourself in that picture?

I know I certainly see myself at times in that picture.

There may be some among us who don't know this great God whom I speak of.

Maybe you find yourself in a similar state as the Hebrews in our text.

Those who have ignored God's promises and his call to save, who have made themselves friends with the world, down in your heart of hearts, you're beginning to get the feeling that there's more to this life offered than what the world has.

That the Lord is stirring up a conviction in your soul for your sin.

That the Lord will settle all accounts one day.

That's not a great feeling.

Apart from the Lord.

The Lord's call to you today is a simple one.

Come, taste and see that the Lord is good.

Come repent of your sin and turn away from the things of the world in the past.

And put your trust in Jesus, whose death has paid the punishment you deserve, and offers true relationship with the Father.

There may be some of you among us that see yourself in the Israelites hidden among the caves.

Believers in that covenantal promise, who saw their need for a savior and turned to the risen king.

But along the way, life got hard.

Have enemies surrounded you, numbered like the sands of the seashore?

Are you getting desperate?

Have you forgotten the promises that were purchased for you on the cross?

Perhaps the Lord is calling you to take a stand for him.

But it feels too costly.

Success in your call is in doubt.

To you, the Lord is calling, remember my promises, child.

For if God is for you, who can be against you?

Fear not.

You will have trouble in this world.

But take heart.

I have overcome the world.

To all of us, the Lord is calling us to put on a proper perspective of God, of the God we love and the God we serve.

This passage is a call for remembrance.

Remembrance of his great kindness, his willingness to save those whom he has called and loved.

And ultimately, as we gather around this table for the Lord's Supper, remembrance for what he has done through his son, for the depths that he was willing to go to save us, to redeem us, to invite us, to participate in this story for his glory.

The Lord saved Israel that day, and so it is with us.

That day at Calvary, the Lord saved us.

Let's pray.

O God, Creator of the heavens and earth, thank you for this day.

Thank you for your word for us and this charge to remember how great and how mighty you are.

Lord, forgive us.

For how often have we found ourselves doubting your promises?

Lord, we look at our circumstances around us.

We can't possibly see how you would work.

Forgive us, Lord.

Let us remember what you've done for the Israelites here in 1 Samuel 14.

But more importantly, Lord, let us remember what you've done for us on the cross, Lord.

How you stopped nothing to come and find us, to come save us.

Lord, I thank you that you are a good, good father, one who cares for his children.

Lord, thank you for hearing our cries for help.

Let us not lose heart in our battles raging around us, but give us perspective that sees things as you see them.

Give us hope to endure, Lord, knowing that the battle has already been won through your son.

Amen.

Robert, this time?

Would you like to come up?