I invite you now to take your Bibles and open them together with me to the book of 1 Samuel, chapter 21. This morning we're going to look at the whole chapter and intrude five verses into the next chapter. I'm not the one who invented the chapters and verses, but verse 5 of chapter 22 is the natural stopping point in this particular segment of David's life. So we're going to read 21 through verse 5 of 22 this morning. and look at it together. Let's begin there then in verse 1 of 1 Samuel 21. Now, David came to Nob, to Ahimelech the priest. We just need to remember where we've come from. David is on the run for his life. He has found out definitively now through Jonathan that Saul absolutely, through envy and fear, is committed to David's death. Samuel cannot protect David. Jonathan cannot protect David. And Jonathan has sent David away now in peace and with a benediction and prayer that God would protect him and keep him and defeat all of his enemies. So as David leaves Jonathan, that tearful farewell that we saw at the end of chapter 20 last week, he heads to Nab, which is a couple of miles north of Jerusalem, several miles south of Gibeah, where Saul's court is. And he goes there to the high priest, to Himalek, seeking Several things. He needs direction from the Lord, which we'll find out in a future chapter that he inquires of the Lord through Himalek. Food and a sword as he is without any of those things. When he left in the middle of the night through Michal's warning, he had nothing with him. I'm guessing that since David has spent three days living in a field without any of the normal comforts of home, he probably looks pretty rough around the edges as he comes wandering into Nod. and asked for the priest. Not the way that Ahimelech is probably used to seeing David. That when David would show up to inquire of the Lord or to worship, he is dressed for battle. He has a thousand men with him. David shows up alone, not dressed for battle and looking like a guy who slept outdoors for at least three days, maybe more. So you can understand then why it says here in verse 1 that Ahimelech came trembling to meet him. He was afraid as he met David and he said to him, Why are you alone? Not, hi, David, good to see you again. What brings you to Nah? But the very first words out of his mouth are, why are you alone and why is no one with you? This is very unusual, David. This is not normal. And he obviously has fear in his voice, a sense of distrust. What's going on? Verse 2, so David said to Himalek, the priest, the king has ordered me on some business and said to me, do not let anyone know anything about the business in which I send you. or what I have commanded you, and I have directed my young men to such and such a place, i.e., hush, hush, double extra, top secret. You can't know what this is about, but the king has sent me and the guys are waiting for me, and I've come here alone to talk to you because this is really super secret." Are you believing it? I'm not sure a Himalax is believing it, but this is what David says to him. So verse 3, now, therefore, David requests, What do you have on hand? Give me five loaves of bread in my hand, or whatever can be found. All right, David is hungry. He's been living in a field for three days. He is on the run for his life. There is no local convenience store to run in real quick and buy a 44-ounce Big Gulp and a snack to hit the road with. There's no fast food places. Who knows how much money, if any, he has on him. He is literally dependent upon others for food. And it's not as if he just wants to go all throughout the town saying, do you have anything to eat? Do you have anything to eat? Do you have anything to eat? People are wondering, why is the commander of the king's bodyguard, this great leader of a thousand men, begging food in our streets? So he wants to keep it secret from the town. He'll go to the high priest. Hopefully the high priest, who is required by God to show mercy, will remember his training and freely offer some food to David without making it known to the rest of the town. So he makes his request. I'm hungry. Give me some bread. And I want some for the road. I'm going to meet the guys. They have the supplies with them, but I've got to get to where they are. Please give me something to get me there." So the priest answers verse 4, David, and said, There is no common bread on hand, but there is holy bread, if the young men have at least kept themselves from women. So basically, he is talking here of the bread of the presence. God would have the priest bake 12 cakes or loaves of bread. And every Sabbath it was put out hot and fresh in the presence of the Lord, showing and displaying for any who came to worship on the Sabbath that God provides for his people. Twelve each one for one of the tribes of Israel. And David showed up at a time when the old bread is being removed as the fresh bread has been brought out. And the priest was this was part of their allotment. They got to eat the bread that was taken away from the presence of the Lord. And the fresh bread was put out. This was part of their allotment to eat. They got to eat the holy bread, the bread that had been sitting in God's presence all week long. And the high priest of Himalaya says, look, I don't have any just regular bread. All I have is the bread of the presence, the show bread. And I can't give that to you unless you can guarantee to me that the men are ceremonially clean, that they haven't done anything to make themselves disqualified for being in God's presence. Like, if they could come here and worship freely, I can send the bread with you to them as well. The priest said that, then David answered, verse 5, said to him, truly, women have been kept from us about three days. I've been living in a field for three days. My wife is a long way away. Of course, there's been no women. And the vessels of the young men are holy. The bread then, in effect, is common, even though it is consecrated in the vessel of this day. Basically, what's being said there is, don't worry. The men are clean. I am clean. We can eat the bread when you give it to us. So the priest gave him holy bread for there was no bread there, but the show bread, which had been taken from before the Lord in order to put out hot bread in its place on the day when it was taken away. Now, we have a little aside, OK? So that's the main thing. You see this up close encounter between Ahimelech and David, the back and forth exchange, David's story slash lie, and Ahimelech's response, the request for bread, Ahimelech's response. And then we get this little aside. It's as if the camera just pans over briefly and shows us another view. Now, a certain man of the servants of Saul was there that day, detained before Yahweh, and his name was Doeg, an Edomite, the chief of the herdsmen who belonged to Saul. Now, why bring that in here? Well, we need to know he was there because it's going to come in later in the story very soon, how Saul is going to treat the city of Nob. And you can almost see, and if this were done in a movie, that sort of the curl of Doeg's lip as he notices David and narrows his eyes. You can tell this is not a good character. This is not a happy thing. It's not like, oh, look, it's Doeg. Hey, how's it going, buddy? How are the sheep? What's going on? No, this is a bad guy. And it's purposely brought out that he is an Edomite. And of course, the Edomites are the descendants of Esau. And the prophecy made about them is their hand would be against all of their neighbors. They would be nothing but warfare from the Edomites against all those around them, descendants of Esau. So no, it's not. It's Ishmael. Forgive me, Ishmael. No, it is Esau. It is Esau. Forgive me. All right. So pass on from Doeg. David said to him, look, if they're not here on hand, a spear or a sword. Look, isn't it enough? You already asked for bread. Now I've got to arm you as well. What is going on, David? Your story is getting thinner by the moment. Do you have any weapon at all on hand? I brought neither my sword nor my weapon with me because the king's business required haste. It required so much haste that you couldn't go home and get your sword? Wow, I'm not sure I'm buying this anymore. All right, the priest said, well, the sword of Goliath the Philistine is here, whom you killed in the Valley of Elah. There it is, wrapped in a cloth behind the ephod. If you will take that, take it, for there is no other except that one here. Basically, they took the memorial of David's victory in the Valley of Elah against Goliath, and they put it there where God was worshipped as a memorial to what God had done. David knew it was there. He wanted to know whether or not Ahimelech was going to give it up to him or not. Do you have anything here? I'll take it. Well, I do happen to have the sword of Goliath. It's here all along. It's the only one. It belongs to you. You're the one that brought it here as a memorial to what God had done through you for your people. If you want it, take it. And David said, there is none like it. Give it to me. So he gets the bread. He gets the sword. He is now armed to go. Now, I want to stop here. We're going to see several vignettes from David's life, but I just want to stop at this point and say, Some commentators and some people who have read this have said, they're not comfortable with this. David does not deserve the bread he is about to eat because he had to lie to get it. It's kind of a theft by words. David did not deserve that bread. He told an out and outright lie. Why did he tell the high priest the truth? Why is the victor of the Valley of Elah suddenly reduced to the point where he's got to lie just to get his daily bread? Now, a couple of things have been suggested. One is that David purposely lied to protect Ahimelech so that if Saul ever came and said, you knew David was on the run. Why didn't you stop him? So he lies to protect Ahimelech. Of course, we're going to see the next chapter. It does no good. But maybe he had good intentions in his lie. And perhaps he did. The text doesn't tell us if he had good intentions or not. But I will say this much. The desperation throughout this chapter is evident. David is desperate. He is not thinking rationally. He is on the run for his life. He has no one to turn to, nowhere to go, no place of safety. And when you get in straits like that, David is a fallen man, just like you or I. What do you turn to? Whatever it takes to get by. I'm not saying it's right. I think it's wrong. The Bible says it's wrong. He should have trusted God and told the truth, but he didn't. He lied. Now, let's back that up, though, and say, OK, yes, he lied. No, he was not worthy of the bread. Which one of us could ever say on any day of our life that we were deserving of the daily bread God gave us? Does anyone here want to raise their hand and say, I know that I am good enough to deserve the food I eat every day, that God owes it to me because I'm good? I mean, literally, if we know anything about ourselves at all, every day that we eat a meal, we are eating undeserved, ill-deserved, I will argue, food. And the biblical word for that is grace. Grace. And how much lip service we get to it and yet how little we pay attention to it in the lives of others and ourselves. And the reason why I said earlier in the service and why I'm going to emphasize in this sermon the grace of God is because that is what ties together all of these different vignettes where David is on the run, goes here, goes there, goes the other place. They seem sort of disjointed. I mean, he runs here and lies and gets bread and a sword and then he runs there and then he goes to this other place and he goes to another place and all this stuff is going on. And when you read it in the commentators, frankly, all the chapters in the commentaries on this were very short. They just basically reset what the story said. And then you're waiting for them to apply it and say, now, how does this make a difference in my life? And they're just like, all right, moving right along to the next chapter. It's like people scratch their head and say, OK, this stuff happened to David. So what? Well, as a preacher of the Word, I don't get to say, this stuff happened to David, moving right along. I have to answer the so what. And the so what is, is even though it is not explicitly stated in the words, it screams from every word on these pages, God is gracious. God gives grace to David. David, you don't deserve those five loaves of bread. It's holy bread. It's the bread of God from His very presence, and you lied to get it. But God is gracious. God takes those who are ill deserving and hell deserving and lavishes his love and kindness on them. I hope one of the things I'm hoping to do by the end of the sermon, I pray is my earnest desire to God for you all, for me as well, that we would not be able to walk away today and be ho-hum about grace. That if someone says to you, God is gracious, you wouldn't just say, I know. But that you would go, yes, I know. I know in my own experience, God is gracious to me. So it's not just in our heads to say God is a God of grace. Oh, yes. Good doctrine. I know that. I believe that. But that you have it in your very fiber and being that God is gracious to me. Just like He is to David. David didn't deserve his bread, and I guarantee you we would all be skeletons in here today if we had to deserve our daily bread from God. God gives us grace just as He gave David grace. So David graciously, from God, receives the bread and the sword. Verse 10, David arose and fled that day from before Saul, and he went to Achish, the king of Gath. David, have you lost your mind? And as we read the story, you're going to see the irony in that statement. Gath. Who's from Gath? Oh yeah, Goliath. The guy's sword that you're carrying with you. The guy that you killed. And after you killed him, you killed a whole bunch of Philistines all the way back to the gate of this city, so that as you walk into town, guess who you see around? The widows of all of those warriors killed by you and your fellow Israelites. You're carrying the very sword that marks you out for who you are. Why on earth would you march into the very teeth of the enemy? Well, like I said, David is desperate. He is on the run. He thinks if I stay anywhere in Israel, Saul will come and get me. I have nowhere to go. My only hope is to do something that was somewhat common in the ancient world, which was to defect to a foreign power. And sometimes the more notorious you were, the more likely the foreign power was to take you in and protect you and provide for you because you were now a trophy as a defector from this other competitor, this other rival. So here is David, the victor of the Valley of Elah, seeking my aid. Boy, that's quite a feather there in Achish's hat there. He could crow about how David may have killed Goliath, but now he is seeking asylum in his own court. So David foolishly, I believe, runs from Saul right into Gath to the king. And as he is there, Making his petition and we don't get all the back and forth. We just get snippets of the conversation. So David presents himself to the court. I'm sure the king makes note of the sword he's carrying. I'm sure all of the courtiers in the court have made note of the sword that he's carrying. There weren't that many swords in the ancient world. They were probably fairly easy to recognize, especially a sword wielded by a guy who was nine feet tall. It was not a little dagger on his hip. OK, it was a big honking sword for a nine foot tall guy. They're all making note of this, and David is hoping and praying that the king will take him in because he thinks this is my only place of safety. I can't stay anywhere where Saul is. But as he comes to make his appeal, verse 11, the servants of Achish said to him, Is this not David, the king of the land? Is that not interesting? Now think about that for a minute. They didn't say, Is this not David, the king of Israel? He wasn't. Saul was still the head of Israel, but he was the king of the land. Because he had certainly defeated all the Lord's enemies round about, and he was promised to be the next king. It's almost as if God has, without their knowing it, used them to reaffirm the prophecy made about David. Think about the high priest Caiaphas, who stood up and the New Testament tells us, prophesied without knowing it, that one man would die for the nation. Jesus would die for the nation. Caiaphas didn't know that. He just said, someone's going to have to die for us to take care of this Roman problem. And he had no idea what he was saying, but under the power of the Spirit, he prophesied something that was true. I think the Philistines are the same way. Is this not David, the king of the land? Boy, you bet he is. You never said truer words, even though you're maybe thinking that he's just a guy who has a lot of power, a lot of clout, someone who's done us a lot of harm, certainly. And they said, did they not sing of him to one another in dances? OK. Wow. News travels. It's not just that Israelite ears are hearing this song. This song has made its way into Philistia. This little diddy has traveled far. Saul has slain his thousands and David his tens of thousands. Now you're a Philistine listening to that song. How many of those 10,000 are friends of yours if you survive the battle? You know, things are not looking good for David at court right now. The king may be thinking, oh David, quite a prize. Everyone else is saying, this man is bad news. You need to kill him now. Great David, way to go. You run from Saul who wants to kill you? Write to the Philistines who want to kill you. Couldn't you have picked a different town? Anything, you know? Why here? So, verse 12, David took these words to heart and was very much afraid of Achish, the king of Gath. So he changed his behavior before them. He pretended madness in their hands. David, have you lost your mind? I sure want them to think so. He scratched nonsense on the doors of their gates and let the saliva run down into his beard. And Achish said to his servants, look, you see that this man is insane. Why have you brought him to me? Don't I, have I need of more madmen that you have brought this fellow to play the madman in my presence? Shall this fellow come into my house? So the king's buying it, at least outwardly. And part of the words here, which is not as clear in my translation, says that they had come into their hands. So the assumption is that not only had David come in, but they had taken custody of him and put him in prison. They were holding him under guard, awaiting the king's order to execute him, they hoped. And so it's not just that David is roaming around the city, walking around the market, tasting some of the fruit or whatever, idling time away before he waits for the king to make a decision. He is in dire straits. As far as he knows, the next word coming down is take him out, take Goliath's sword and cut his head off. So he is afraid as he feigns madness. The king says, look, I have enough madmen as it is. I don't need one more. This guy is not coming into my household. He's not coming into my protection. Get rid of him. David therefore, verse 1 of chapter 22, departed from there and escaped to the cave of Adullam. Now, in ordinary thinking, and I'm afraid too much in our own thinking, we all sort of go, wasn't David lucky? They bought the act. We need to go back then and read Psalm 56 and Psalm 34. And I encourage you to do that today. Both of these Psalms were written by David about the events that we just read about. When he was in the power of the Philistines and after he escaped. And I'm here to tell you, when David got away, he didn't go, that was lucky. He said, all praise to God who has delivered me out of the hands of my enemies. All praise to God who has heard my prayer and my plea for deliverance." David, did you deserve to be set free from the Philistines? I mean, you walked right in. How foolish can you be? No, David did not deserve to be set free from his enemies. But he cried to God. And God is gracious. And God set him free. And I'll apply that later as we think about our own lives. But we need to see that. This is another example of God's grace to David. David, how can you be so stupid to walk to the one place you know would be trouble for you? You might as well just walk back into Saul's palace and say, here I am. I mean, literally. Gath. Goliath's hometown. It doesn't make any sense. Now, here he is then in a cave in Adullam. Quite a palace for the future king, living in a cave. As he went there, his brothers in all his father's house heard of it, and they went down there to him. And everyone who was in distress, everyone who was in debt, And everyone who was discontented gathered to him. Boy, what a band to lead. Lucky me. Look at all these great, promising characters lining up outside my door to enlist in my army. Lord, what are you doing? What did I do to deserve this, okay? It was bad enough when I was alone. It was pretty nice when my family showed up. But what is this? I've got to take care of myself and 400 other malcontents. I don't know what you're doing here, Lord. It doesn't make any sense to me. So all these people gathered him there. There were about 400 men with him. It says, David then went from there to Mizpah of Moab. He didn't stay in a dulum. He said, I've got to do something for my family. And this is very interesting here. He goes to Moab. OK, he went to the west to Philistia and got kicked out of there. This time he goes east and crosses the Jordan into Moab. Now, God had no kind words to say about the Moabites. As a matter of fact, according to God's Word, they were barred to the tenth generation, which some people take to mean forever, because ten generations seems like forever, of being able to come into the assembly of the Lord. And there was one exception to that that we read about in the Bible, a very huge exception to that, and that was Ruth. Ruth came from Moab. But it wasn't that she held on to her Moabite ways. She converted and said, Naomi, your God is my God. Your people are my people. I'm an Israelite at heart. I convert. I take Yahweh as my God. Nothing short of death ever separate us. Ruth, as we know, is David's great grandmother. David has Moabite blood in him. And he goes to the King of Moab, and though the text doesn't say it, and I admit with Ralph Davis, I'm reading between the lines here, but I am almost positive. I would say with a high degree of probability that David pled some of grandma's kinship when he appeared there before the king. And why come before the king and say, look, I'm on the run for my life. Would you watch my parents? What's the king of Moab going to say? Why should I watch your parents? Sounds like a personal problem to me. Get it out of my court. Ah, but king, we have something in common. What do we have in common? My great-grandmother's from Moab. Really? Yep. Ruth. Heard of her? You know, if the Philistines can hear the song of David slain his thousands, David his tens of thousands, why couldn't the Moabites have heard about Ruth? Now, text doesn't say it. Believe me on that, OK? I don't know what David said. But I'm pretty sure David said something about Ruth and about his links to Moab, Moabite ancestry. He took his parents there and he said, please let my father and mother come here with you till I know what God will do for me. I don't know my situation. I'm worried about mom and dad. They're very elderly. I want to take care of them. Will you help me? So he brought them before the king of Moab and they dwelt with him all the time that David was in the stronghold. Now, I want you to see Grace here in a new way. Not just that David didn't deserve to have the King of Moab show him any kindness. This is grace prepared beforehand. If it's true, and like I said, it's not a text, but if it's true that David said, my great grandmother is Ruth of Moabitess and that had any sort of sway with the king, then that sheds a whole new light on this whole thing of Elimelech and Naomi taking their sons and going to Moab and marrying the sons off to Ruth and Orpah and then All the men dying and Orpah going back and Ruth and Naomi coming back to Bethlehem and having Obed and Jesse and then David. God prepared a grace for David and for his family a hundred years in advance. A hundred years in advance. That's mind boggling to me. And that's nothing compared to what God has done for us in Christ. When did God plan grace for us in Christ and for everyone who will believe in Him? Before there ever was such a thing as time. Before God ever said, let there be light and there was light in eternity past, God purposed grace for those who would believe in him, in Christ, and brought it to pass in our life. And that's a glorious picture that I think here at least implied in the text that David got a little grace from events that God orchestrated a hundred years before this for his family. And we have infinite grace for something that God planned for us in eternity past. David is in the stronghold. I believe the stronghold is still in Moab because that's what makes verse five make sense. The prophet Gad, perhaps one of the men from the school of the prophets under Samuel, was sent to David and said, do not stay in the stronghold. Depart and go to the land of Judah. So he's probably in the stronghold in Moab thinking, well, I can't take up residence at the king's court, but I could at least stay on this side of the border and I could find myself another place to hang out, perhaps another cave with all these people. And I'll stay here, but God sends him word and says, go depart, go into the land of Judah. So David departed and went into the forest of Hereth. Now, why is that important? Saul was deserted by God. He got no word from God. Saul was left to his own devices, his own madness, his own insanity, his own envy. Saul had nothing. David had the word of God. David had direction. David had guidance. Once again, the question, did David deserve it? Could David lay claim to anything? that would say, yes, God, you owe me your word. You owe me knowledge. You owe me information. Certainly not. And his life is going to bear that out. It's because God is kind and loving and gracious to those who don't deserve it. And we need to make sure we understand this, it's not just neutrality, it's not just like David didn't do enough to deserve it. Along with the rest of us, there was not just a lack of merit. There was real demerit. Not just undeserving, but ill-deserving. And until we get a hold of that, for David and for ourselves, we will never understand grace. People will talk to you about grace all day long, and you'll equate it more or less with mercy. God's good to me because God likes being good, and I'm not such a bad person. Is that not what it comes down to sometimes? I think that's the only way we can be humdrum about grace is that we have to think of ourselves better than the Bible tells us to think about ourselves. And we have to think about God in a way that makes sense for God to show kindness. I don't think we have the capacity, short of what the Spirit can do in us, to show real grace to other people. We need some justification for being nice to other people. I like them. They're nice to me. They show me love. I show them love. Jesus said as much. The Gentiles, the pagans, the non-believers, are kind to people who are kind to them? How are you any better than them? He told the Pharisees. When you greet those who greet you. When you invite people over to your house that have invited you over to their house and you return the favor. That's how we kind of operate. Maybe there's someone we don't know, but they're in desperate straits. Okay, well, their desperation makes me feel sorry for them. Pity. I'll do something nice for them. But there's got to be some justification for it. We don't ordinarily, naturally, normally look at our enemies and say, how can I think of something nice to do for them today? This person has spread lies and rumor and slander about me. They've trashed my name. They hate my guts. I'd like to do something nice for them. Anyone here want to say that's your normal activity every day you wake up and say, I want to think of something nice to do for people who hate me. It's not normal to us. God comes to people who hate him, who are rebels against his authority, who are committed with every fiber of their being to their own kingdom. Their own prosperity. Their own comfort. Their own agenda. We're selfish. Proud. Arrogant. Who think well of themselves and think ill of others so they can build themselves up. God comes to people like that and says, I love you. And I will give you every breath you take. And I will give you every meal you eat. and I will make My Son, which belongs to Me, rise and set on you and grow food for you, and I will send rain on your fields, and I will provide for your every need, because that's My nature to do so, even though you fight Me with everything and gift that I give you." God is gracious. Do you see how it's wrong to hear that? For someone to say, isn't God gracious? And go, yeah. I wonder what's on TV. that grace would ever bore us, that we could ever hear about the grace of God and just say, yeah, makes sense. Normal. I'm not such a bad person. You know, I got to say I'm bad because, you know, the Bible says that and all that, but whatever. Yeah, God's gracious. It ought to absolutely flourish, humble us, fill us with joy, fill us with an earnest desire to thank God and to praise God, that he would look at the likes of us and say, Yeah, I'm going to do you good because it pleases me to do so, because it's my nature to do so, because I love you. I really believe it is the grace of God that ties all these things together. David, you lied. You shouldn't get the bread of God. Here are five loaves and the sword of Goliath. Go in peace. David, you ran into a place that is the heart of the enemy's territory. How stupid can you be? Can you think of a time, at least one in your life, and I don't want to be too open up here, but I can think of a lot more than one in my own life, where you purposely ran into a place, a situation, a circumstance, a relationship that you knew you should not. You knew there was danger written all over it. You knew it was the very seat of temptation. You knew that when you went there, I'm going to sin. It's going to happen. You ran headlong into the camp of the enemy. And then God graciously took you out of that quagmire cleaned you up and said, I forgive you. Can you think of at least once that's happened in your life? I can think of a bunch. We are foolish. We run headlong, right into the camp of the enemy. The very thing that binds us up, the very thing that we hate, as Paul says in Romans 7, that's what we do. And if God were not gracious, if God dealt with us according to our deserts, what would He say to us? You're a fool. I'm going to leave you to your devices. Good luck there in enemy territory. I hope they don't kill you. God delivers. God saves. God forgives. God is full of grace. Kindness shown to the ill deserving, the hell deserving. We deserve the wrath and curse of God. What do we get instead? Love and provision and kindness and goodness every day of our lives. If we only had eyes to see it. If we only had eyes to see it. And that's why I point this out. These are very, in one sense, ordinary things in life today, but now it doesn't happen to us. But needing food is an ordinary thing. Needing deliverance from things that bind us up and hold us down and shame us is an ordinary occurrence to us. And when God delivers us and when God provides for us, how often do we just go on our merry way and say, oh, good, I'm glad that's over. That was a good meal. And not thank God for His grace. And then, of course, in Christ to thank him for the grace that he had determined for us before there ever was such a thing as time. I think it's something we have to think about a lot during this time of year, and we think about the incarnation, we think about Christ coming to earth to take on flesh, to die for us. What a gracious act that was, that that was fulfillment in space and time of what God had planned graciously in eternity past. And he did it for us. God didn't do it in one sense just because he had nothing else better to do. He did it to show his grace to us, ultimately for his own glory. But but we're the recipients of that. And then finally, what a gracious and wonderful thing it is to have the word of God. To read whenever you need it, whenever you want it, it's right there. And what a sad thing it is, how often neglected it is, even by pastors. There it is, the word of God. Gad came to David and said, the Lord says, depart and go back. God comes to us in His Word and says, this is what I've done for you in Christ. What a glorious thing it is that God, by His grace, gives us these things. I want to read to you a story. It's an illustration I thought was interesting about this planning of grace before time. Of course, the interesting thing about it is it's within time. It's only within a few years. Ralph Davis shares this in his commentary, and I thought it was interesting. So I just want to read it to you briefly, and then we'll conclude. In 1938, a man by the name of Roman Turski, a Polish flyer, was on his way home from France. His plane developed engine trouble, and he had to land for repairs in Vienna, which was currently under Nazi control. The next morning, as Turski stepped out of his hotel to buy souvenirs before resuming his flight home, A man came running through the doors and slammed right into him. And before Tursky could inflict verbal vengeance on him, he saw the man was white with fear. And then the frantic man said, Gestapo, Gestapo. Tursky rushed him through the lobby, up to his own room, arranged the man's slender body under the covers at the foot of his bed. Tursky made himself look like he'd just gotten up. And after the visiting Gestapo checked his passport and shouted questions, they left without even searching the room. The pilot showed his grateful visitor his flight map, and they communicated by gestures, no Tursky could not take him to Warsaw. He had to land for fuel in Krakow, and drawing prison bars on the margin of the map, he indicated to his new friend that he would be arrested at the airport. So he told him that he would land in a meadow just over the Polish border, and his passenger would then be on his own. And this is exactly what they did. When Tursky landed in Krakow, the police were there to search his plane. They'd been told he'd assisted a man to escape from Vienna. They found nothing, so they released him. And he asked why the man had been wanted. And they told him because he was a Jew. Turski served as a fighter pilot in the Polish Air Force. After Poland's defeat, he and others crossed over to Romania, where they fought, and then were sent to concentration camps. Turski managed to escape, joined the French Air Force. After France's fall, he went to England, fought in the Battle of Britain. And on one of his missions, he ran a German plane, was hit by a scrap of its tail. Partially blinded by blood, he was unconscious when he crash landed his Spitfire in England. His skull had been fractured, and the chief surgeon at the hospital thought it was useless to operate. But Tursky awoke and he saw a narrow face looking down at him. The fellow in the white smock spoke and said, remember me? You saved my life in Vienna. Tursky remembered and learned the rest of the story. The fugitive passenger had eventually arrived in Warsaw. Before the war, he escaped to Scotland. He heard that a Polish squadron had distinguished itself in the Battle of Britain and he thought of Tursky and checked to see if he was in it. He wrote to inquire and found out that he was. He knew Tursky's name because it had been written on the margin of his map. The day before, he had read of a Polish hero shooting down five enemy planes in a crash landing near a certain hospital. The piece in the article in the newspaper indicated the flyer's condition, that it seemed hopeless. He asked the RAF in Edinburgh to fly him to that hospital. Terzi asked him why, and his answer was, I thought that at least I could do something to show my gratitude. You see, I'm a brain surgeon, and I operated on you this morning. Who could have guessed that by shielding a fugitive, One who, by shielding a fugitive, he was saving his savior. One would think that he would not have anything to do with anything. One would think that that would have, one would think that would not have anything to do with anything. The twists of Tersky's story, however, were confined within the scope of several years. In David's case, all the unusual arrangements had been made over a century before. God plans his kindnesses long beforehand. He directs circumstances long in advance in order to bring a ray of relief to us in our present distress. It was not something that David set into place. It was a gift. God arranged it long before. I hope we'll reflect on that today and over the coming days as it heads up to Christmas, what God had arranged for us long, long before in Christ our Lord. We're going to sing here in a few moments the hymn I always forget the name of it. Come thou fount of every blessing. And I really want us to focus on that line that says, oh, to grace, how great a debtor daily. Daily, I'm constrained to be and then. Repent, if we need to, if we find out that we're really not. Feeling that gratitude for daily grace because we haven't stopped to reflect that all the little things God does for us every day, of course, along with the great things for us in Christ. Daily grace seen in daily bread. Grace seen in our foolishness as we run headlong into the camp of the enemy ensnared by our sins and God delivers us. God preparing grace for us in advance. So the next time that we talk about the grace of God, may we not just with a ho-hum say, of course, but may we be amazed and humbled and be made more thankful. My prayer is that God would show us what we really are in ourselves so that we would be amazed at what God is to us in Christ. God is gracious. Let's look at the front of our bulletin. I have two quotes here, one from J.I. Packer and another one from Jerry Bridges that I want to read to us to drive home this definition of grace and how amazed we ought to be by it. J.I. Packer says, The grace of God is love freely shown toward guilty sinners, contrary to their merit, indeed, in defiance of their demerit. It is God showing goodness to persons who deserve only severity and had no reason to expect anything but severity. It is most certainly true. Once a person is convinced that his state and need are described in the Bible, grace cannot but sweep him off his feet with wonder and joy. And then finally from Jerry Bridges, God's grace addresses itself not merely to the absence of merit, but to the presence of demerit. To understand divine grace, you must see it as more than unmerited favor. The idea of demerit is an essential element in the biblical meaning of grace. Since the concept of demerit is essential to an understanding of grace, I propose the following definition. Grace is God's favor through Christ to people who deserve his wrath. We need to realize that God's favor to us through Christ is bountiful. God receives us into His family as His sons and daughters, opens up the storehouse of His boundless riches to us. He has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in Christ and promised to meet all our needs according to His riches in Christ Jesus. He invites us to come with confidence to His throne of grace, to receive mercy and find grace to help in our time of need. How should we react to this definition of God's grace? We should respond, first of all, with a deep sense of humility. We really do deserve God's wrath. Then we should respond in profound gratitude. Not only have we been spared God's wrath, but we have also been given all his favor. Everything we are and everything we do that is of any value we owe to the grace of God. We're not just undeserving, we're ill deserving. In fact, we are hell deserving. We deserve wrath, but because of Christ, we receive God's bountiful blessing. Only when we understand that do we understand grace. Let's pray. Our great and our gracious God, I pray by Your Spirit and Word that You would help us to understand Your grace. That we would rejoice in it, be humbled by it, and praise and thank You for it. These things I ask in Jesus' name, Amen.