Heart of Kings - David 16: Flight to Philistines

Today's reading is 1 Samuel 27, 1 through 4.

Then David said in his heart, Now I shall perish one day by the hand of Saul.

There is nothing better for me than that I should escape to the land of the Philistines.

Then Saul will despair of seeking me any longer within the borders of Israel, and I shall escape out of his hand.

So David arose and went over, he and the six hundred men who were with him, to Akish, the son of Mach, king of Gath.

And David lived with Akish at Gath, he and his men, every man with his household, and David with his two wives, Ahinoam and Jezreel, and Abigail of Carmel, Nabal's widow.

And when it was told Saul that David had fled to Gath, he no longer sought him.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Good morning.

Welcome to the future home of the Heights Church.

Yeah.

All right, so that's probably a very confusing thing to say for some of you.

So uh you might have noticed some new signage out front.

On Thursday of this past week, the building was sold.

So the deal has closed, yeah.

So that's that's a big deal.

So here's what this means.

This means that we uh well, I'll just sort of bring you in on the story.

So we uh have been renting the space from uh L2 Church, and we are uh the the past two months, uh our our rent has been really close in terms of are we going to be able to make this month's rent payment?

And on each occasion, through just strokes of incredible generosity from a few people, uh we we made it.

We were sustained through this season.

This was a season for our church that was that was very tight, existentially tight.

And yet uh we were able to be preserved through that season just through the generosity of the congregation.

Uh it was amazing to see.

It has been amazing to see and just praise God for his provision throughout this season.

And so part of this building being sold means that we are in this space for the next six months, rent-free.

Yeah.

That's a good deal in any economy.

And we are uh using that time to save up.

We uh will get some capital from the sale of the building.

It'll be about$590,000, uh, which is also pretty sweet.

And we are using that money and saving up while we're here these next six months, we're going to be searching for what will be the next home for Redemption Church Denver.

Our boundaries are partially described by our name, uh Denver.

So we are going to be looking, and we're looking for our next home.

So be praying for us, for us as a church, be praying together for where God is taking us in this next season.

Um it's an incredibly exciting thing.

It is a a light feeling, um, knowing that uh welcome to the first really truly official pop-up church meeting for Redemption Church Denver.

That's what we're having this morning.

Um and then uh yeah, so we'll wander around Denver.

Probably around like 40 years.

God tends to use numbers like that.

And then we'll enter into the promised building.

Unless this generation really blows it.

In which case our children will.

Um the uh uh likewise we are in the midst of our elder selection process.

The uh elder feedback period, which was the previous two weeks, was uh is now closed.

Thank you to all of you who sent in your feedback.

We are now in the midst of moving through what that feedback was for particular candidates.

Uh, these are challenging conversations.

They're vulnerable and they're incredibly important.

This is a time for our church where we are selecting who the leaders will be that will lead us in this next season.

Elder leadership is a biblical model, and that's what we're looking to adhere to.

And part of that is gaining a perspective on the character of the people that we have nominated to be elders.

And so throughout this time, I pray that uh I ask that you would pray for our church, for the people who ought to be our next elders as we're working through that selection.

Um, in fact, I think it's so important that uh let's go ahead and pray together now.

Father, we come to you knowing that you are the one who provides and guides.

Lord, we come to you because you are the true overseer.

You are the true shepherd of our church.

Christ, this is your church.

Father, I pray that you would guide us towards the leadership that you have chosen, that your leadership might be reflected.

Give us wisdom and humility to follow you.

Father, we lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So that was a prayer, and it's also a great example of how you can pray yourself uh throughout this these upcoming weeks.

Um and then soon, once uh we're in a space where we feel comfortable to confirm the next board of elders, we will do that uh together in front of the congregation.

Uh so uh continuing on announcements, uh let's uh just give a big thanks to Ed EB for preaching last week.

Uh just a wonderful sermon, so thankful for that.

Um yeah, so thanks, Ed.

Um and uh also part of our being in the building rent-free uh for the uh next six months, free rent, come on, in Denver.

We are uh moving from morning services to evening services.

So that will look like uh we're we're going to send out a survey, and it'll have a couple of time options that we've worked over with the Heights Church, who will be moving in here, and uh then we'll vote as a congregation and we'll all experience together the tyranny of the 51% uh as we settle into a new time.

Um so I'm excited about moving to evening services because I'm not a morning person.

Uh likewise, uh, or excuse me, that change will also uh be taking place um on June 9th.

So mark your calendars.

June 9th, we will be moving to evening services.

So uh yeah, you guys can finally go to snooze.

All right.

Let's go ahead and get into our text for the day.

Uh but before we do that, let's pray.

Father, pray that you would guide us as we look into your word.

Would you show us the story that we're in and would you give us your clarity regarding it?

Father, we lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

I've been listening to a uh um uh a preacher who's in in Idaho, and uh and on his sermon audio, when he's done praying and he says amen, you can hear the whole congregation say amen.

And I really like that.

So I'm just gonna ask for it.

So, amen.

Because we're saying amen together, because we all prayed together.

So great job.

All right.

Uh if you see something, say something.

Saul, uh, where we're picking up in the story, uh, we're we're two weeks out now, so we'll give some refresher.

Uh David was on the run from Saul, and he was given two opportunities to kill King Saul, who was trying to kill him.

And in both of these opportunities, rather than killing Saul, he spares him.

One time he cuts off a piece of his cloak, another time he takes his spear and he says, See, I could have killed you, but instead I showed you mercy, because who am I to raise my hand against the Lord's anointed?

And so David, in his obedience to the Lord, holds his hand from seeking his own revenge.

Now, immediately following each of these times that David spared Saul, Saul offers this repentance.

And he says, Surely, David, I shouldn't be pursuing you like this.

Surely you're in the right, God is with you, he will make you king, I won't try and seek to kill you any longer.

And he does that the first time, and then he continues to seek to kill David.

And then he does it the second time.

And the second time he offers this repentance, and they don't come together and shake hands, instead, they continue to part ways, and David gets in his head, Saul's gonna try and kill me again.

That repentance that he offered now is just as thin and false as the repentance that he offered me before.

And so David flees.

And he goes and he lives with the archenemies of the Israelites, who are the Philistines, people who occupy the land that was promised to the Israelites, people who should be being driven out by the Israelites.

David goes and he lives with them.

Now, the way that I have talked about this in previous sermons, the way that I've referenced it, even at the end of my last sermon, I said, we're gonna see David have fear take over his mind, and he's gonna run and he's gonna go live with the Philistines.

And I painted it as a demonstration of David's faithlessness that he would run away to live with the Philistines.

Uh, so I'm here to repent of that interpretation.

Because I don't think that's actually the case.

As I've looked into this text further and studied this actual fleeing to the Philistines, I don't think it's actually fear that made David go to the Philistines.

I think it's something more like prudence.

I think David had several, there are several reasons why I think this, and so I'll just lay them out.

One, uh, later on in the scriptures that we're looking at today, we're going to see David uh uphold himself under a pressure that is far greater even than Saul.

And yet he strengthens himself in the Lord to move through it.

And so it would be sort of a violation of his character to say that he out of fear fled from Saul in this point.

We also see in David that when he moves in to the Philistines on this occasion, it's after the second false confession from Saul.

He'd already seen Saul lie to him once.

For David to stick around and say, you know, perhaps that one was the truth and Saul won't continue seeking my life.

I don't think that would be faithfulness on David's part.

That would probably be foolishness.

You know, if the George Bush quote, fool me once, shame on you.

Fool me on another time, and then whatever he said.

Uh third, I had said that David didn't need to flee from the Philistines, excuse me, didn't need to flee to the Philistines, because after Saul's second confession, that would be the last time that David and Saul encountered each other.

And so my thinking was if David and Saul encounter each other for the last time here, David didn't need to run because he'd never even see him again.

But the text actually cites the reason that David doesn't see Saul again is because here in verse 4 from our reading this morning, it says, and when it was told David, excuse me, when it was told Saul that David had fled to Gath, he no longer sought him.

And so the very reason that Saul no longer seeks out to kill David in this way is because David fled to Gath.

So if it isn't his fear, it's his prudence, then that gives us reason to think that this is something that God is doing.

God is sending David to live with the Philistines for what would be a year and four months, to live undercover with the archenemies of Israel.

Why is God doing that?

What I want us to see this morning is that this is the normal way that God operates.

There are patterns in Scripture where God shows us in his stories the typical means that he uses to accomplish his ends.

These are patterns like humiliation and then exaltation.

These are patterns like exile and then return.

These are patterns like death and then resurrection.

What we see in the story today is that we uniquely worship a God who saves.

And for a God who saves to demonstrate that quality of his character, he ties up his beloveds in impossibility.

So that their only hope would be dependence on the Lord.

And so we see this morning this demonstrated in this story is we're going to witness this sort of chiasmus, this crossing where Saul will fall to his uh ultimate descent as he dies, and David will begin this rise from this most impossible of places, which is exiled from his people, hiding with the Philistines.

We're going to watch those two together to see that it is God who saves.

Our hope is that we worship a God who rescues.

So, this is a very interesting story we're going to look at today, and it comes in three parts.

Uh I uh they aren't in this order, but I really like this title.

Uh we'll call the parts uh the uh The Wives, the Witch and the War.

Um, because it sounds like a uh Disney movie from a little while ago.

All right, so let's go ahead and jump into our text.

1 Samuel 27, 5 through 7.

Then David said to Akish, If I have found favor in your eyes, let a place be given me in one of the country towns that I may dwell there.

For why should your servant dwell in the royal city with you?

So that day Akish gave him Ziklag.

Therefore Ziklag has belonged to the kings of Judah to this day.

And the number of the days that David lived in the country of the Philistines was a year and four months.

Okay, so this is following uh what we initially read this morning, which is basically the story of David fleeing.

He goes to the Philistines and he moves in with the king of Gath, who is uh named Akish.

That might be a royal name, like Pharaoh or Caesar.

It might not necessarily be a designation of a person named Akish.

We just don't know.

Now you might be thinking, hasn't David done this before?

Didn't he try the whole run to the Philistines to escape Saul, and it didn't work?

In fact, he had to fake his own insanity because he might have otherwise been killed.

And uh yeah, good point.

He did try this before.

Uh so what's different now?

Why is the king of the Philistines willing to accept David into his court?

And the reason is this is a very different circumstance.

The first time that David fled, he was one person.

This time he has developed an army of 600 people that are coming with him.

Now, it's not just like, hey, me and my 600 friends want to stop by.

Like, I don't, the image that came to my mind just now is being a freshman in Boulder, and you just wander the hill in Boulder and you try and get into frat parties, and you're like, hey, does this party need any more dudes?

They don't.

They're set.

It would have been the same sort of thing.

So what you would do is you would send out your uh they would have sent out some message and and said, look, we need to work out this peace deal with the Philistines.

And so that's what David would have been operating under.

So this time he's not alone, he has 600 men.

Uh Akish would have had no reason to suspect that David would still be loyal to Israel.

You see, this is David's ultimate cover.

It had become very public that David was fleeing from Saul, that Saul was trying to kill David.

And so King Akish wouldn't even have this category in his head that would suspect that David would possibly hold any loyalty to Israel.

It's this perfect cover.

Because that's exactly what David does hold.

Unimaginably so.

It's this insane thing to see that David in this time he's hiding out with the Philistines and it's hiding out, and he's undercover because he does in his heart remain completely loyal to Israel, to Israel's king, and to Israel's God.

The only thing that could explain something like that is the most basic description that we have of David, which is that he was a man after God's own heart.

Akish didn't have that category.

Likewise, David establishes his cover for Akish in this very shrewd way.

He goes, and in this section here, he goes to Akish and he says, Hey, would you mind if we didn't live in the capital city, Gath?

Um, and instead we move down to a place like Ziklag.

Could you give us the land?

And so Akish gives him the land of Ziklag, which is this border town on the southern part of the five city-states of Philistia.

And uh David and his men start raiding these areas, and they're raiding tribes that are mutual enemies of the Philistines and Israel.

But when David relays to Akish how he's gathering up all this cattle and wealth, he says that he is raiding tribes that are enemies, excuse me, that are friends of Judah, which is Israel.

And so in that cover, Akish thinks to himself, oh, well, this guy has made himself a stench to Israel.

Because even now he is still acting on these raids against them.

And so his cover is really firmly established.

David is in hiding, but he's well in hiding, in good standing with a new king.

You see how he's torn here, how strange the situation is?

David is in an enemy nation serving a good king, fleeing from his home nation from a bad king.

It's a very strange position that David finds himself in.

And there's perhaps only one event that could blow David's cover.

And that's if the Philistines decide to go to war against Israel.

And what do you know?

The Philistines decide to go to war against Israel.

Here's what happens, and how David finds out.

In 1 Samuel 28, verses 1 through 2, it says, In those days, the Philistines gathered their forces for war to fight against Israel.

1 Samuel 28:1–2

And Akish said to David, Understand that you and your men are to go out with me in the army.

David said to Akish, Very well, you shall know what your servant can do.

How's that for a vague answer?

And Akish said to David, Very well, I will make you my bodyguard for life.

So I didn't that just tickled me for the first time.

But it because the stakes are outrageous.

So literally, the only way David's cover can be blown is if they go to war together.

And here's the situation.

They go to war.

Okay, who's trying to kill us here?

Well, Saul's trying to kill me.

I don't want to kill him.

Hands kind of tied there.

I'm with the Philistines.

I'm supposed to be killing the Israelites, not gonna kill the Israelites, but if I don't kill the Israelites, the Philistines are gonna kill me.

And now I'm the bodyguard for life of the king of the Philistines.

People would probably notice.

So he's in uh a bit of a pickle here.

So here's how God providentially rescues David from this event that could totally blow his cover.

Their Philistines are marching in formation towards Israel.

And in the back would be the most important people, the kings, and probably their bodyguard for life.

And so while they're marching, the other commanders of the Philistines come to King Akish, and they say, Why is this Hebrew marching with us?

Why is this David here with us?

I'm not going to go to battle with him.

Here's what they say to seal their argument.

1 Samuel 29, 4 through 5.

It says, But the commander of the Philistines were angry with him.

That's King Akish.

And the commanders of the Philistines said to him, Send the man back that he may return to the place to which you have assigned him.

He shall not go down with us to battle, lest in the battle he become an adversary to us.

For how could this fellow reconcile himself to his Lord?

Would it not be with the heads of the men here?

Is not this David of whom they sing to one another in dances?

Saul has struck down his thousands and David his ten thousands?

And King Achish is convinced.

He says, okay, we'll just send David and his men back to Ziklag.

But I want us to hear what it meant for David to have heard this story.

For Akish to turn to him and say, Look, look, you're a great bodyguard.

And uh and because the movie The Bodyguard, that's how they would have parted.

I will always love you.

Look, you're a great bodyguard.

I love you, Whitney.

And they uh but the commanders don't want you around.

They don't want you to be around.

And so we're sending you back to Ziklag, the land that I gave you in Philistia.

And uh he would have heard this conversation because we have it, so David probably heard it.

And that thing that freed him, David had to have thought to himself, yeah, yeah, Saul's killed his thousands, David has killed his ten thousands.

I'm so sick of that song.

Since I was a kid, after killing Goliath, they started singing that song.

And you know what?

Saul heard it, and ever since he heard that song, he's been trying to kill me.

And so I've been on the run.

I'm exiled, I'm living with the Philistines because of that song.

And the last time that I fled and ran to the Philistines, I almost died because when I was in their court, somebody in the court remembered that they sang that song about me.

And yet here, in the mouth of a Philistine, God uses that very song to save David and his 600 men's life.

When we say we have a God who saves in these unexpected, amazing ways, we see it like this in scripture.

These are the patterns that we see.

That same song that has only been a thorn in the side of David now becomes his rescue.

So David and his men head back to Ziklag.

We'll leave them there.

Let's go to the other side of the battle.

Let's see how Saul is experiencing this.

In 1 Samuel 28, 5 through 7, when Saul saw the army of the Philistines, he was afraid, and his heart trembled greatly.

And when Saul inquired of the Lord, the Lord did not answer him either by dreams or by Urim or by prophets.

Then Saul said to his servants, Seek out for me a woman who is a medium, that I may go to her and inquire of her.

And his servants said to him, Behold, there is a medium at Endor.

So Saul sees the Philistines approaching.

David is no longer in that camp.

He's headed back to Ziklag.

But as the Philistines are approaching, Saul is terrified, and he's looking for some sort of certainty that he might receive from the Lord.

And he seeks out all the ways that he might find it.

He's not getting any dreams from the Lord, which means the Lord is not speaking to the king.

Urim, which was a stone that the priest would have worn in his chest pocket, that was a sort of way of discerning the will of the Lord.

We don't know precisely how, but somehow, God was not answering through Urim, which means God is not answering through the priests.

And there was no prophet that was coming to answer Saul, because the prophet in Israel was Samuel, and he'd recently died.

Prophet, priest, and king.

These are the three offices that encapsulate the properly functioning Israelite society.

These are the three offices that we will see Christ come and fulfill perfectly.

And in all three offices, Saul is receiving no answer from the Lord.

This is the Bible's way of saying complete silence, even rejection.

God is not answering Saul.

And so Saul has this panicked moment.

And we know Saul at this point.

He's a pragmatist, which means that the ways of the Lord are good as they is insofar as they are useful to him.

But if they are no longer useful to him, then he will find the next best pragmatic option, be that the way of the Lord or not.

And so that's precisely what he does.

On a previous occasion, he had thrown all of the mediums, which have been people who could talk to the dead, out of Israel.

But now he goes to his men and he says, Alright, get me a medium.

God's not talking, I'll find someone and make them talk.

And they go to this uh woman who is at Endor, who was a medium, and through some coaxing and some disguise, Saul takes off his royal robe and he disguises himself as a common person, and he goes into this medium, and she says, Look, Saul's gonna kill me if I speak with someone from the dead.

This is not an option.

And Saul says, Well, I promise that uh you won't be killed.

I've got uh, you know, a good word that you won't be, because he's Saul.

And so she does it.

And he asks that she would raise from the dead Samuel.

Now, look, this story is so weird that I know I have to say something.

This isn't so we're gonna have a tangent here because this isn't exactly in line with where we are in with the point of the sermon that I'm in.

The point of the sermon that I'm in is this Samuel comes up and he says to Saul, Yeah, God's gonna kill you like I told you when I was alive, I'm gonna go back to being dead now.

That's the point of the sermon, that God is utterly rejecting Saul.

But there is something that's worth saying here because it's so strange, the story's so weird.

Uh so let's do a little metaphysics.

The woman raises Samuel from the dead.

And Samuel comes up, and the this medium is terrified.

She says, I see a god coming up out of the earth.

And it's Samuel.

So what does this mean?

Are mediums real?

Is this something that can happen?

Is this like an expectation we should have for our biblical worldview?

And the answer is uh partially, but maybe not in the way that you think.

So we've got a couple of boundaries that we want to set up.

One is uh when the woman raises Samuel from the dead, she is terrified when she sees him.

Which means that actually engaging with someone from the dead seems to be something for her that is horrifying and strange, unique perhaps.

And yet, Samuel is really raised from the dead.

Here's what we need to do as modern enlightened people when we read a passage like this.

We need to see that the goal here isn't to make this fit into our materialist, naturalist worldview.

The goal here is to see that the Bible describes a world that is far stranger than we often give it credit for.

And that's the world we actually live in.

So when we see the Bible describing events like this, we often start to do like all these dances.

I mean, I read commentaries this week where it was like, oh, it wasn't actually Samuel.

It was just a vision, a mental hallucination of Samuel that everyone in the room was having.

And that seems in some way less far-fetched to us, but it's not less far-fetched.

It just fits more comfortably in the Western Enlightenment worldview that we've all grown up in and come to adopt.

This is one of those points where scripture really critiques that.

So the question that we have when we approach a story like this is do we see the Bible as a text that is accurately describing the world that we're in?

Or are we going to choose our own accurate descriptions to hold the Bible up against?

Alright, it felt like it felt like I needed to say something when a witch is raising Samuel from the dead.

So Samuel rises.

This is what he says.

And Samuel said, Why then do you ask me?

Since the Lord has turned from you and become your enemy.

The Lord has done to you as he spoke by me.

For the Lord has torn the kingdom out of your hand and given it to your neighbor David.

David, the one in exile.

Because you did not obey the voice of the Lord, did not carry out his fierce wrath against Amalek, therefore the Lord has done this thing to you this day.

Moreover, the Lord will give Israel also with you into the hand of the Philistines.

And tomorrow you and your sons shall be with me.

The Lord will give the army of Israel also into the hand of the Philistines.

Saul desperately wanted certainty.

Now he has it.

He will die, his sons will die, he will have no heir, and Israel will be invaded by her enemies.

Back to David.

They had left the camp of the Philistines, and they were heading back to their temporary home of Ziklag.

Now, when they arrive at Ziklag, well, I'll read you what happened.

1 Samuel 30, verses 1 through 4.

1 Samuel 30:1–4

Now, when David and his men came to Ziklag on the third day, the Amalekites had made a raid against the Negeb and against Ziklag.

The Amalekites, do you remember the Amalekites?

They were just referenced by Samuel saying, Saul, you were commanded by God to destroy the Amalekites from the face of the earth.

Saul didn't.

The Amalekites are still out there.

And what have they most recently done?

They have raided David's camp in Ziklag.

The Amalekites had made a raid against the Negab and against Ziklag.

They had overcome Ziklag and burned it with fire and taken captive the women and all who were in it, both small and great.

They killed no one, but carried them off and went their way.

And when David and his men came to the city, they found it burned with fire, and their wives and sons and daughters taken captive.

Then David and the people who were with him raised their voices and wept until they had no more strength to weep.

We escaped.

We were going to be put in this terrible situation where we would certainly be found out by the Philistines or found out by the Israelites, and God providentially saw to it that we made it through.

And they walk back to their camp, and their wives and their sons and their daughters had been kidnapped, and their camp had been burned.

They wept till they had no more strength to weep.

Can you imagine?

We thought David was exiled before.

Exiled when he was pushed into the camp of the Philistines.

But he's still surrounded by these 600 loyal people.

But at this moment, where they thought they had been saved and they realized they had been ransacked, even David's men turn on him.

He says, this is what happens.

It says in 1 Samuel 30, verse 6, and David was greatly distressed, for the people spoke of stoning him, because all the people were bitter in soul, each for his sons and daughters.

1 Samuel 30:6

But David strengthened himself in the Lord his God.

David overhears now in his own camp.

Let's stone David.

And think how obvious the reasons are.

David isn't following God's will.

Twice God led Saul into David's immediate presence, and Saul was either too much of a coward to kill him.

Excuse me, David was either too much of a coward to kill Saul, or David was too much of a legalist before God, where he wouldn't step on these petty laws and get his morality dirty.

But now our sons and daughters and our wives are gone.

Because we've got this terrible king, David.

Now David's alone.

And those arguments make sense.

And so David's doing this thing that obedient people find themselves doing, which is I'm moving forward, and this seems crazy.

The story doesn't make any sense, and yet I think I'm being obedient.

I'm being obedient.

I'm being obedient.

This is what God is calling me to.

He said that morality was the way I should have operated, and it seems like it's led only to loss now.

But David, he strengthens himself in the only thing he has left.

He strengthens himself in the Lord.

Let's look at the difference between what happens with David and what happens with Saul.

In 1 Samuel 30, verses 7 through 8.

1 Samuel 30:7–8

And David said to Abiathar, the priest, the son of Ahimelech, Bring me the Ephod.

So Abiathar brought the ephod to David, and David inquired of the Lord, Shall I pursue after this band?

Shall I overtake them?

He answered him, Pursue, for you shall surely overtake, and shall surely rescue.

David turns to the priest, because if you'll remember, Saul killed all the priests except for one who fled and lived with David.

And so David turns to the priest, and the priest gets the ephod, which would have been his priestly garments, to inquire of the Lord, and they inquire of the Lord, and the Lord answers.

And he says, Yeah, go pursue the Amalekites.

And he pursues the Amalekites, and he defeats them from sunup till sundown.

They rescue all of their wives, all of their children.

There's another little dispute where David's men who stayed by the baggage and David's men who fight have a dispute amidst each other, and David says, Whether you stayed by the baggage or whether you fight, everyone gets to share in this victory, because this victory is from the Lord.

And then David takes his winnings, which are now more than they had previously lost from the Amalekites, and he goes to his friends, the elders of Judah.

These are the elders of Israel.

And he gives them these gifts and says, Here are the spoils of the enemies of Israel.

And David gives those to the elders of a nation which will soon find itself without a king and without any heirs to the throne.

Becomes the means that David becomes the king of Israel.

We worship a God who rescues.

In order for God to rescue, for it to be a true rescue, for God to be something more than just a giver of good advice or free text messages.

He gives all good things.

Another free gift.

Look at the narratives of Scripture.

Look at these patterns for how God works in the world.

Read through it over and over and over again until it seeps down into your bones and you look back and you see the normal way that God has operated in redemptive history, and then you can know where you are in your story.

Because God shows us that He's a God who saves.

And that means you will find yourself frequently in positions where your only hope is that you're saved.

Not that you get better advice, but that you're rescued.

This will teach us to interpret exile.

Exile is precisely how God makes a king.

He tells Abraham, get out of this land, go live in a land that you don't know.

He sends Joseph into slavery and then imprisonment before he makes him Pharaoh, second only to Pharaoh.

He takes Israel and he rescues them across the Red Sea from their captors.

First of all, he makes them captive, then he rescues them.

And then they wander in the wilderness before they become a real nation.

Jesus, when he's born, he does exactly what Israel does.

He's born in Bethlehem, and then they're exiled from persecution from the king, and they have to go live in Egypt.

And then Matthew says so that the scripture might be fulfilled.

It's because what he's saying there is Jesus is the new and the real Israel.

And the way that I've operated throughout history, I'm making complete in him.

This is how I make a people.

This is how I make a people for myself.

I bind you up an impossibility so that I might show you a love that you would have an utter and complete confidence in.

And read along with us.

And uh it says this, Psalm 50, verses 14 through 15 offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and perform your vows to the Most High, and call upon me in the day of trouble.

Psalms 50:14–15

I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.

How do you glorify a God who saves?

When you're totally exiled, you turn to him for strength.

And you say, God rescue us.

And then he does.

And then you praise him.

Let's praise him now.

Unless there are any questions.

Are there any questions?

Okay.

You know what?

I'm gonna if you have any questions, you can come down and talk to me in the front.

We'll just keep moving because I think I'm going late anyway.

So let's pray together and then we'll take our communion.

Father, pray that you would work in our hearts and teach us to read where we are in our stories.

Lord, we have a spirit of celebration this morning because we're it we're in a building that we don't own.

Like, teach us, even as a church in the story that we're in now, we we don't have a permanent place.

There's a bit of exile in that.

Lord, let us see this amazing hope that we might interpret our story in the way that you show us in Scripture, which is that you're God who saves.

And our hope is in you.

Father, come to us in these places to bring healing to our hearts.

That in exile we might not despair, but we might hope in you.

Lift us up in Jesus' name.

Amen.