"Judgment and Grace"

This has been automatically generated, and therefore may contain some unintended inaccuracies.

David and his men reached Ziklag on the third day. Now the Amalekites had raided the Negev and Ziklag. They had attacked Ziklag and burned it, and had taken captive the women and everyone else in it, both young and old. They killed none of them, but carried them off as they went on their way. When David and his men reached Yiklag, they found it destroyed by fire and their wives and sons and daughters taken captive.

So David and his men wept aloud until they had no strength left to weep. David's two wives had been captured, Ahinoam of Jezreel and Abigail, the widow of Nabal of Carmel. David was greatly distressed because the men were taking talking of stoning him. Each one was bitter in spirit because of his sons and daughters. But David found strength in the Lord his God.

Then David said to Abiathar the priest, son of Ahimelech, bring me the ephod. Abiathar brought it to him, and David inquired of the Lord, Shall I pursue this raiding party? Will I overtake them? Pursue them, he answered. You will certainly overtake them and succeed in the rescue.

David and the 600 men with him came to the Bezor Valley, where some stayed behind. 200 of them were too exhausted across the valley. But David put the other 400, and the other 400 continued the pursuit. They found an Egyptian in a field and brought him to David. They gave him water to drink and food to eat, part of a cake and pressed figs, and two cakes of raisins.

He ate and was revived, for he had not eaten food or drunk any water for three days and three nights. David asked him, Who do you belong to? Where do you come from? He said, I am an Egyptian, a slave of an Amalekite. My master abandoned me when I became ill three days ago.

We raided the Negev of the Kerethites, some territory belonging to Judah and the Negev of Caleb, and we burned Ziglag. David asked him, Can you lead me down to this raiding party? He answered, swear to me before God that you will not kill me or hand me over to my master, and I will take you down to them. He led David down, and there they were scattered over the countryside, eating, drinking, and reveling because of the great amount of plunder they had taken from the land of the Philistines and from Judah. David fought them from dusk until evening of the next day, and none of them got away except 400 young men who rode off on camels and fled.

David recovered everything the Amalekites had taken, including his two wives. Nothing was missing, young or old, boy or girl, plunder or anything else they had taken. David brought everything back. He took all the flocks and herds, and his men drove them ahead of their other livestock, saying, This is David's plunder. Then David came to the 200 men who had been too exhausted to follow him, and who were left behind at the Bezore Valley.

They came out to meet David and the men with him. As David and his men approached, he asked them how they were. But all the evil men and troublemakers among David's followers said, Because they did not go out with us, we will not share with them the plunder we recovered. However, each man may take his wife and children and go. David replied, No, my brothers, you must not do that with what the Lord has given us.

He has protected us and delivered us delivered into our hands the raiding party that came against us. Who will listen to what you say? The share of the men who stayed with the supplies is to be the same as that of him who went down to the battle. All shall share alike. David made this a statute, an ordinance, for Israel from that day to this.

When David reached Ziklag, he sent some of the plunder to the elders of Judah, who were his friends, saying, Here is a gift for you from the plunder from the Lord's enemies. David sent it to those who were in Bethel, Ramoth, Nagev, and Jatir to those in Siphmoth, Ashimoha and Rachael to those in the towns of the Jahamalites and the Kenites to those in Horem, Ba'Ashan, Attack and Hebron, and to those in all of other places where he and his men had roamed. Let me lead us in prayer. Our heavenly father, we pray all our days would bring glory to your name. And therefore now, father, as we come to your word, please, would you be our teacher?

Help us by your spirit to be ready to listen, and we pray for your transforming work in our hearts and in our lives and as we submit to your word. Amen. Well, I've said, it is great today to have our first baptism. Fundamentally, baptism teaches us, shows us the way in which we can relate to God and how God relates to us, which is that we can come to God, the living God, we can come to him, come into relationship with him on the basis of grace. If you're new to Christian things, maybe you're exploring Christianity, maybe even if you've had a bit of a background in Christianity, it's quite possible that you've not grasped grace and yet it is essential to Christianity.

To think about Christianity without thinking about grace is like thinking about meat free sausages. Are they really sausages or vegan cheese? Is it really cheese? Maybe you disagree on that, but I'm not sure they are. You could call them something else, but I don't think they're really sausages, and I don't think it's really cheese.

Again, Christian okay, maybe you disagree on that, Christianity without grace is not real Christianity. Christianity without grace is maybe it's more like a counterfeit item, a fake item, like a fake Rolex. It's not the real thing. Christianity without grace is not really Christianity, so we need to get our heads around it. Even if you've been a Christian for many years, we need to keep coming back to it because it is a truth which changes lives.

When we really grasp grace, it doesn't remain something intellectual but it changes our hearts, changes our lives, and we need to keep coming back to it so it keeps changing us. And actually, Samuel 30 in God's goodness is a great chapter to go to actually to see God's grace at work in the life of king David, who we've been following as we've gone through one Samuel. David, you see, experiences God's grace and is changed by it. So let's see that as we go through this chapter and we've got three points and the first is when life falls apart, when life falls apart. First thing we see in this chapter, one Samuel 30, please have it open, if you've closed your Bibles, please open them up again, we started on page 301, and the first thing that we see in this chapter is David's life falling apart, and it falls apart suddenly and dramatically.

David and his men, we saw last week in the previous chapter, at the end of the chapter, are on their way home. They're heading home having been told that they can't fight in a war. They are and they've been living in Philistine territory, which is not Israel, but Philistine territory, I'll explain a bit more about that in a few minutes. That's where they've been living and they've been told that they can't fight in a war and so they're heading home, but at the beginning of one Samuel chapter 30, we read that the Amalekites have raided various areas including Ziklag and Ziklag is where their home is, where David's home is. So the Amalekites have raided, have attacked, have burnt everything and taken all the people away.

And in verse two, we read at the end of verse two, they carried everyone off, but killed none of them. Now don't think that's the Amalekites being nice, it's not like they've signed up to the Geneva Convention or that they, you know, they they are all for sort of good practice in wars. No, they have captured these people in order to sell them on in all likelihood, to sell them as slaves, so this is not them being nice but it does mean they're all alive and you can imagine, David and his men, on their way home hoping for, looking forward to being welcomed home, family meal, being welcomed by wives and children, home cooking and all that kind of thing. And as they approach home, they see it is just a blackened mess. No people left.

The whole place burned. Their response, verse four, is to weep. It says, so David and his men wept aloud until they had no strength left to weep. No British reserve there, just weeping until they have no more strength to weep. And David's men start talking about killing him.

I I I think it's understandable. It was David's plan to go and live in Philistine territory and now that they've gone there, they have all lost everything and it's not too surprising that they are now thinking of turning on David himself. They plan to stone him, and so do you see David's life has just hit rock bottom. All of a sudden, everything has gone, family, possessions, even his own men are now turning on him. It has got very bad, but there's more significance to this moment even than that.

A few chapters before, David and his men were living in Israel amongst God's people, and we knew at that point David had been chosen to be the next king of Israel. And we've said this many times, but the actual king of Israel, Saul who knew this, had been pursuing David because he hated David, because he knew that David was gonna be his successor, and so David had been on the run, and although God had protected David everywhere he'd gone, protected David from Saul's attacks, yet David said at the beginning of chapter 27, one of these days I shall be destroyed by the hand of Saul. The best thing I can do is to escape to the land of the Philistines. He says it's it's all gonna go wrong. I'm gonna be captured, so the best thing I can do is escape even though God had promised he would be safe and that he would become king.

His view was, actually, I can't trust God. I'd better come up with my own plan, find my own way to be safe. He didn't ask God, didn't talk to God, didn't consult a prophet, he just decided, I've got to go. And his plan led him to leave Israel and set up home in Philistine territory. He is, in a sense, away from God, trying to keep himself safe by his own means, but it turns out his plan backfired spectacularly.

If he was leaving Israel to go to Philistine territory so that he would be safe, well, it's all gone wrong, hasn't it? It's all backfired. It turns out his plan wasn't as solid as he'd hoped. Now we can see in this, in a sense, a picture of what mankind has done and what we all do. We talk about sin, Christians talk about sin, the Bible talks about sin.

What is sin? Sin is not just sometimes doing bad things, I mean, we all do that as well, but sin is more than that, it's rejecting God and replacing God, a bit like David has done here, saying, I don't want God and his ways and I'll go and do things my way, and that's what we each do, that's all of our testimony that we all go our own way and do our own thing and when we see that the world is in fact not a safe place to be, we try to put in place things to keep us safe, to keep us stable, so we will look for security in all kinds of things. We need the job that we have to make sure we have the money coming in to make sure we can pay the bills so that everything will be alright or we might find security in our bank balance being high enough that we could deal with any eventuality or we find security in a relationship with a family, parents or or a romantic relationship. We seek security and safety and stability in a whole load of things And for some time, maybe, they are stable and they are secure.

They shield us, protect us, but we need to know that all those shields, all those things that we put in place, none of them are solid. It's like shielding yourself with jelly. It's not a wise thing to do, but even if those things last through this lifetime, in the end, death breaks through and shatters them all. The reality is like David, we might run away from God and try to keep ourselves safe, but in the end, the things that we try to use are not strong. Relying on them won't protect us.

Now David, at this point, makes the right move. Verse six, it says, David was greatly distressed because the men were talking of stoning him. Each one was bitter in spirit because of his sons and daughters, but David found strength in the Lord his God. Seems this is a key moment in this chapter. David found strength in God.

He strengthened himself in the Lord. He turned to the Lord for strength, for a shield, for to be his protector. How did he do that? Well, he must have remembered the promises of God and said, I'm gonna trust them. He turned to the Lord.

As far as we're aware, this is the first time since he's moved to Philistine territory that he has made this move of looking to the Lord. He does it, turns to the Lord, and we need to realize however far away we are, however far away friends or family might be from God, seeking to live our own lives our own way, if we will just turn back to God, he is ready to welcome and accept any back who will turn to him. And what we see next is God's grace to David. So this is our second point, God's grace. David experiences God's grace in actually an incredible way.

Let's see how it unfolds as we go through the story of the chapter. David next consults God, he calls for the priest, he hasn't done this for a long time, he calls for the priest and he says, bring the ephod, and we don't know how the ephod worked, but it was some way by which God's people could consult with God, get a message from God. So he consults God, says, should I pursue the raiding party who came and attacked Ziklag? Should I pursue them? Will I overtake them?

And the answer from God is, verse eight, pursue them. You will certainly overtake them and succeed in the rescue. Go after them. You're gonna win. And so David goes with 600 men to go after the raiding party, but on the way, 200 of them are left behind in the Bezoar Valley because they're tired.

I mean, it's completely understandable that they are shattered. They've marched all the way back from where they were gonna be fighting in another war back home, which was quite a journey, and then they find when they get home that everything is burned and they are weeping, are grieving, which is exhausting in and of itself, and now they are all heading off to go and capture the raiding party, and it's unsurprising that people are tired. And so David said, well, we'll leave behind the two hundred and four hundred go on, and we see the significance of that later on. So 400 of David's men go with him to chase after the raiding party. They then discover an Egyptian in a field.

Verse 11, they found an Egyptian in a field. It makes it sound like Egyptians were just randomly around in fields in places. Not quite what happened, it just but this Egyptian has been left behind because he'd been ill. He was a slave of the Amalekites, and he'd been left behind, and it seems he was almost dead. He would have been almost dead.

For three days, he doesn't have food or water, so they give him food, they give him water, and he revives, and they find out who he is, and they say, actually, he's an Egyptian, slave of the Amalekites, and he says that they'd been raiding. They'd been raiding in various places and he says at the end of verse 14, and we burned ziklag. David then says, will you show us where the raiding party is? And the Egyptian says, I will show you as long as you don't kill me and you don't hand me over to my master. David agrees, so he shows them where the Amalekites are.

David and his men go with him and we read verse 16, he led David down and there they were scattered over the countryside eating, drinking and reveling because of the great amount of plunder they had taken from the land of the Philistines and from Judah. So there they all are, these Amalekites having a great time, having a wild party because they've got so much. They've got so much plunder that they're just having a wild party. David and his men attack the Amalekites, and as I read these next few verses, notice the emphasis of the text is that they got everything back. I've just given it away to you, but there you are, verse 18.

David recovered everything the Amalekites had taken, including his two wives. Nothing was missing, young or old, boy or girl, plunder or anything else they had taken. David brought everything back. He took all the flocks and herds and his men, drove them ahead of the other livestock saying, this is David's plunder. Okay?

You got the emphasis? Everything is back. They got it all and a whole load more and the whole load more they are calling David's plunder. Oh, the the feeling of the group has changed quite a bit, hasn't it? We're not gonna stone David anymore, in fact, we're calling the plunder David's plunder.

That's how things have changed. As they head back to Ziklag, they have with them their families, all their possessions and a whole lot more. Now why do I say this is an experience of God's grace? It is because of the way David talks about this. As they go head back towards Ziklag again, they come to the 200 who were left behind, who were exhausted, and he says there were some evil or wicked people who say, well, those 200, they shouldn't get any of the plunder because they didn't fight.

We can have it, but they can't. They can take their families. Yeah. Take them. We don't want them.

Take their families and go, but David says, now this is key, verse 23. Verse 23, this is important, David replied, no, my brothers, you must not do that with what the Lord has given us. He has protected us and delivered into our hands the raiding party that came against us. Now the way David is viewing this is really important. He's saying this, all that we have here, the protection that we just experienced, being kept safe, all these possessions of having our families back, all this extra plunder, it is all a gift from the Lord.

It's all a gift. It's not like, you know, sports teams, they win a tournament or win a, you know, maybe you've had this if you've been in a I know, but yeah, in sports teams, we didn't win much when I was in them, but but maybe you have different experiences and you've actually won tournaments and that kind thing, and sometimes the coaches will say to you, you deserve this. Enjoy this moment. You deserve it. All the hard work, all the training you've put in, all the times you committed to those early morning training sessions and you were there, and the tactics that we used, the skill that you showed, the fitness that you got into, all of that has led to this.

You deserve this. That is exactly not what David says. He doesn't do that. He said, no, this is all a gift from the Lord, and David knows it is a gift they do not deserve. David had been unfaithful to God.

All he'd done is turn to the Lord and the Lord did all this for them. And we need to see, a Christian is someone who sees this is how God deals with us because this is grace. Grace is God's undeserved favor on us, that we receive good things from God though we don't deserve it. In fact, we deserve the opposite. Do you see this?

Grace is God giving us good things though we don't deserve it. Christians are people who realize that is how we relate to God, how God relates to us. See this verse from Colossians one. Colossians one verse six, in the same way the gospel is bearing fruit and growing throughout the whole world, just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and truly understood God's grace. So this is Paul writing a letter to some Christians, and he's saying, the gospel is bearing fruit.

The good news about Jesus is bearing fruit as it goes out throughout the world, just as it has done amongst you as you heard it and truly understood God's grace. God's grace. The gospel is all about God's grace, that God gives us good things though we don't deserve it. You see, we live our lives away from God, disobeying him, seeking to live our lives, ignoring his promises, trying to make ourselves safe, trying to make something from our lives, yet here is his grace to us. He pours out his love to us in sending Jesus to come and die for us that we might be forgiven and can come to know God, and all we need to do is turn to him, and we are showered with his grace, just as David.

All he needed to do, he just turned back to the Lord, and the Lord showered him with grace, with goodness, with gifts. That is what God does to us. We do not come to God on the basis of our works. That was important. Remember what Yasmin said in her testimony about what she'd heard about Islam, that it actually that what it was about was it was about good things that you do counteracting the evil things that you do, and lots of people think that's what Christianity is, do good, be good.

It is not that. It is not that you do good to counteract the evil in your life. No, it is about a gift. We don't come to God saying, well look, I've done all these good things, therefore you should accept me. Do you see that?

Let me give you an illustration. I recently was listening to The Hiding Place, I mentioned this before in a previous sermon. The Hiding Place, which is a great book by Corrie Ten Boom. She and her family hid Jews during the second world war, they lived in Holland and it's an amazing book to read or listen to, you could get it on Spotify. If you've not read it or listened to it, you really must.

It's a great book to read or listen to. Now early on in the book, before they start hiding people, there's an incident in which one of her aunts is dying. She has quite a few aunts who seem to live with them as a as a family, but one of them is dying and the rest of the family hear that she only has three weeks to live before she does. The doctor tells them. They they are all Christians in this household and they think, well, as a family, they gathered downstairs and they were, what are we going to do?

Well, we need to go and tell her. So the father, Cory's father says, well, we'll all go. As a family, we'll all go and we'll tell her, but maybe to ease this, what we'll do is we'll we'll remind her of all the good things, of lots of good things she's done because she had done a whole load of good things, she'd done a load of charity work and they said, well what we'll do, we'll go, we'll tell her, but we'll then tell her all all these good things, that will help her. So they go in the room and the dad sort of says what he needs to say but in a roundabout way, so he says to her, to this aunt, there's a joyous journey that all God's children must sooner or later start on. I think she got from that that she was dying.

Then he said, some must go to their father empty handed, but you you will run to him with hands full, and then they listed a whole load of the things that she had done. But she, who clearly knew God's grace, put her head in her hands and began to cry, And she said, empty. Empty. How can we bring anything to God? What does he care for our little tricks and trinkets?

And she lowered her hands and with tears on her face whispered, dear Jesus, I thank you that we must come with empty hands. I thank you that you have done all, all at the cross, and that all we need in life or death is to be sure of this. She knew that she couldn't bring things to God and say, look here, accept me on the basis of these things. Here are the good things I've done. Maybe they outweigh the evil.

No. She knew you come to God empty handed and saying, all I need has been done for me by Jesus at the cross. When he died for me to deal with my sin, that's all I need in life and death and that is God's grace and that's what baptism symbolizes too. It's a humbling thing to be baptized. You'll notice Yasmin will not baptize herself.

People don't baptize themselves. That is significant. You need someone else to do it to you. When was the last time you were washed by someone? Well, it doesn't really happen, does it?

I mean, maybe it was a lot, maybe it was recent, but it generally only happens if you're young or if you're incapable of doing it yourself. That's significant. Yasmin will be baptized by others, Steve and Paul, because that shows actually it is not that Yasmin can make herself clean, it must be God who makes her clean, and God will do that for us if we come to him. Because of what Jesus has done on the cross, we can be washed clean of all our wrongdoing. Baptism points us to the fact that the way we can relate to God is purely through his gift of grace.

Now, if we have really grasped that, it transforms us, and that's what we see actually in the chapter. I just want to show you quickly three ways David is changed by God's grace. There are three ways. First, we see with the Egyptian. It's all in how he relates to other people.

First, with the Egyptian, so that Egyptian man that they happen to find in a field, those Egyptians wandering around fields, that Egyptian they found in the field, now I don't want to read too much into it, but that Egyptian is actually well, he doesn't have much going for him when it comes to finding favor with David and his men. He's an Egyptian. Now there's a bit of history between Egypt and Israel. The Egyptians enslaved Israelites in the past, so that kind of goes against him, but also he was an Amalekite slave and the Amalekites were definitely enemies of God's people. Historically, they had been enemies.

They had fought against Israel, tried to demolish the Israelites, tried to take advantage of them in the past. They've done it many times. So he's an Egyptian, slave of an Amalekite, and he said, not just all that, but when it came to doing all these raidings, notice he said, we attacked Ziklag, which suggests that he was involved in it. So there's not a lot going for him. Okay.

Yeah. True. He knew where the raiding party was, so he was gonna say, yeah. Okay. I can give you that information, so maybe that's all that's going on but I think that Egyptian is a bit of a picture of someone who's going he just needs mercy.

He's on death's door and he needs mercy from David. Now why does David show it to him? Yes, so he can get the information, but also maybe David sees in that Egyptian a bit of himself because David had been at rock bottom needing mercy from God, and what you find is when grace takes hold of your heart, you're willing to pour it out to others. That's what you see in Christian. A Christian is someone who knows God's grace and because they know God's grace, will pour it out to others in forgiveness and seeking to help those who need mercy.

It's the first place. Second place, where you see David changed by God's grace. Notice that was before he'd even got the plunder from the Amalekites. It was purely on the basis of God's promise, interesting that, but the second place is when they're back going heading back to Ziklag and they come across those 200 people again, and you remember the evil people, the wicked people said, those those who who stayed behind, who were exhausted, they can't have any of the plunder. Why should they have it?

David says, no, no, we're gonna share with them because this is a gift from God. Now notice, those evil, wicked people, they are viewing the plunder in a completely different way from the way David does. They say, we restored restored this plunder, we restored these things, that's the word they used, we did it. David says, no, it's a gift from God and that makes a massive difference to the way you view yourself, your possessions, the way you view life. Are you a recipient of grace or are you fundamentally someone who has worked for and owns and possesses everything that you've got?

Those wicked people were like, this is ours. We earned this. We risked our lives for it. We are not gonna share it. David says, this is a gift from God.

We can give it out. What about for you? Actually, it's not just about salvation, it's not just about coming into a relationship with God, everything we have is a gift from God, including the monthly pay that you get at the end of the month. You think, surely, that's my work. I did that.

I worked hard for that, and I'm sure you did, but actually these fighters could say, we worked hard for that plunder. We risked our lives for it. David still says it's a gift from God. Those who are shaped by grace aren't tight fisted, they're generous, wanting to give, and even at the end of the chapter, this is the third incident, at the end of the chapter with all that plunder, David decides to give some of it away. He decides to give it, it says verse 26, when David reached Ziklag, he sent some of the plunder to the elders of Judah, who were his friends, saying, here is a gift for you from the plunder of the Lord's enemy.

Now what's going on there? It may well be that David is restoring some to people who also lost things because the Amalekites raided elsewhere, maybe he's doing that, and maybe he's being politically astute saying I'll give plunder to people who will maybe show me favor later on when I move back to Israel, maybe. But maybe we can take verse 26 at face value and what David says there. He says, here is a gift for you from the plunder of the Lord's enemy. David is saying, I wanna share what I've received from God and that is what a grace shaped heart does.

It says, I wanna share. Yeah, possessions, money, but wanna share this good news of what God has done for me, as Yasmin did earlier, getting up and saying what God's done in her life. And as all Christians wanna do, we wanna say, look, this great thing, this gift of grace in my life, I wanna share it with others. Do you know God's grace? If we know God's grace, it shapes us.

It changes us. Has that happened in your life? Has that happened in your heart? That actually you know and love what God has done for you. Do you recognize that all you have, your relationship with God, all your possessions, all your family is all a gift from God?

Do you see his grace? Like we said at the beginning, a Christian is someone who knows God's grace. If you're a Christian, you don't know God's grace, you've not understood it in all its fullness. Can I say, maybe you should question whether you are a Christian because Paul says Christians know God's grace, know it in it and have come to grips with it? Yes, it still keeps changing us, but we know it and we love it and we want to tell others about it.

And today, as we go from here to do the baptism, that's really what it's all about. It's actually not primarily about Yasmin. It's primarily about God and his amazing grace to Yasmin and to all who we'll turn to. Let's pray. Heavenly father, we praise you for your grace, and we pray, please, that you would help us all to come to terms with your grace, to to understand it in all its fullness.

Father, we will never fully grasp your grace, but yet help us to understand it, to take hold of it. Father, if there are those here this morning who do not understand your grace, who haven't really got it, father, please open up their eyes. It is so good to know your grace to us, to accept it, that we cannot earn our way to you, but we need it as a gift from you. Help us to see that. And as we grasp your grace, change our hearts.

In Jesus' name, pray. Amen.