Walked around town, it's been a really refreshing stage of life.
We do not have to lose our car that often.
And so one of the places that we walk by pretty much every day is the Peabody Museum.
And sometimes we'll go in and my daughter's just beginning to enjoy seeing the dinosaurs and the other animals.
And the Peabody Museum, in its name, is a testimony to George Peabody.
And you may not know who George Peabody is.
You may know who he is, but probably most of you don't.
And George Peabody was an English banker who made the bulk of his business in an international bond business in the 19th century.
And so he, along with other names you might be familiar with, the Carnegie's, the Duke's, the Stanford's,
he really had a lasting impact donating to, I think, at least a dozen, maybe two dozen different museums up and down the northeast coast.
And one of the things that I learned this week that I didn't know is that the term generous is actually derived from a French word which means a noble birth.
And so the reason I share that is because when we begin to think about generosity and how we're generous,
one of the things that we do is we think about people who are more well-off than we are or have more power or have more money than we do.
That's what generous means.
But one of the challenges, one of the things we're going to be looking at in 1 Samuel 3rd is how we are called generous,
regardless of how much we have.
Ken Stern of The Atlantic puts it this way,
quoting,
if you scanned the press releases or drove past the many university buildings, which is particularly apropos here in New Haven,
symphony halls, institutes, stadiums, named for their benefactors, or for that matter read the histories of grand giving by the Rockefellers, Carnegie's, Stanford's, and Duke's,
you would be forgiven for thinking that the story of charity in this country, the story of charity in this country,
is a story of epic generosity on the part of the American rich.
A story of epic generosity on the part of the American rich.
It is not.
One of the most surprising and perhaps confounding facts of charity in America is that people who can least afford to give
are the ones who give the most,
who donate the greatest percentage of their income.
In 2011, the wealthiest American, and for the purposes of what Ken Stern is talking about,
who uses the wealthiest Americans as those that earn more than 20%,
are in that top 20% income bracket,
contributed on average 1.3% of their income to charity.
1.3%.
By comparison, Americans at the base of the income pyramid,
those in the bottom 20%,
donated 3.2% of their income.
So top 20%, 1.3%.
Lowest 20% donated 3.2% of their income.
And that's the end of the quote,
but what Stern goes on to conclude in this article
isn't that charity is based on how much you earn.
What he finds is that it isn't.
What charity is based on is the proximity to the need.
So, if someone in the upper 20% lives in a neighborhood
where the majority of the people earn in the lowest 20%,
you would find that their income giving actually increases to those around them.
The long and the short of it is we have a generosity problem.
And I don't mean just my wife and I.
I don't mean just Trinity.
I don't mean just Christians.
I don't mean just Westerners.
I mean, we as human beings have a charity problem.
And that's what we're going to be looking at in 1 Samuel 30 this evening.
It's the problem and invitation to generosity.
So you can turn to 1 Samuel 30.
We've been working our way through a study in 1 Samuel.
And so we come to chapter 30, which can be found on page 151,
if you're using the Bible here.
Thank you, man.
And so 1 Samuel 30 is a chapter about what a good king looks like.
We're going to be looking at what David is doing.
This is kind of his final penultimate act before he receives his coronation.
And the long and the short of it is what does David do to be a worthy king?
And what David does to be a worthy king is David is generous.
But Samuel is also, and I've said this before,
Samuel is also a book about who God chooses to use
and what God wants his family to look like.
And so for us, it's also a challenge not just for a Carnegie,
not just for a Peabody, but for us about what our lives should look like.
And so this is an invitation to us to be generous.
It's a long chapter.
It's 31 verses.
And so we're going to be splitting it into three sections.
And so the first section,
the first section is going to be about how we often feel tempted
to think we don't have anything to give.
And that is we're just in survival mode.
We're just trying to make it on our own.
We don't have anything that we can give to anyone else.
And so we're going to be looking at that tendency in verses 3 to 6.
And second, we're going to be looking at how God breaks into that survivor mentality
that we kind of get ourselves trapped into in verses 7 to 20.
And then in verses 21 to 32,
we're going to look at how God's breaking into our world
and breaking us out of just a survivor mentality
should move us to generosity.
So first, reading from verse 3,
and this is when David is coming home to a disaster.
Verse 3 reads,
And when David and his men came to the city,
they found it burned with fire,
and their wives and sons and daughters were taken captive.
David and the people who were with him raised their voices
and wept until they had no more strength to weep.
David's two wives also had been taken captive.
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.
So to refresh your memory,
if you're just coming in for the first week,
last week Nick preached about this tricky situation
that David found himself in.
And the tricky situation that David found himself in was,
he found himself living in his enemy's lands,
he found himself living in Philistine lands,
and so one of the things that he had to do
to be able to live in those lands
was he had to fight for the Philistines.
And so he finds himself across the battlefield
from his own people,
about to engage with the people
he is supposedly supposed to be the king of.
And so Nick looked at how God delivers him from this situation
and this battlefield in the northernmost part of the nation of Israel.
And so in the intervening time,
David has marched,
he and his men,
basically the entire length of the country,
from the northernmost part
to the southernmost part where he lives.
And so they're tired,
they're expecting to come home,
and they're expecting to be refreshed.
But what do they find?
Well, what we know as the readers,
and we didn't read this in verses 1 and 2,
but what we know is that the Amalekites,
which are another people group living in the land,
while David and his men were gone,
raided and burned to the ground his home.
But David and his people don't know this,
and this is one of the things that's valuable about splitting this.
It's a long passage,
but it's also helpful to split it up
because it helps us to keep the narrative drama in place.
David doesn't know who's done this.
We know, but David doesn't know.
And so David comes home,
and he finds all of their families gone,
taken captive.
He finds everything burned to the ground
while they were out.
And at this point in the story,
we're not quite sure that the theme of the story
is really generosity, right?
Because David is,
David has come home to a burned home.
He has come home when his entire family is gone,
and so really David's just trying to survive.
He's trying to think about how can I save my family.
Generosity should be the furthest from his mind.
And I think we get stuck in this survival mode as well,
as if we have nothing to give,
and we're only trying to survive.
Now, I'm a big sports fan.
If you name the sport, I like it.
And one of the things I've noticed in strike after strike
is a reporter will ask an athlete,
you know, you make $8 million a year,
why are you going on strike?
And the thing you hear over and over again,
and this is a human response,
not just a wealthy response,
is that, well, you know,
I've got to feed my family.
And I always wanted to ask in a situation like that,
like, what are you feeding your family
that you need to have more money?
But I think we all get stuck in this.
We get into this mentality of,
I have to save for my kid's school,
or I have to save for my retirement,
or I have to save for a house,
or I have to save for my kid's school, right?
Or I have to save for my kid to have enough money
to start a business or start a job.
It's this never-ending mentality.
We never get out of it.
You never really have enough.
We get stuck in a survival mode.
In 2013, there were a number of films that came out
that dealt with this basic human instinct
of just surviving.
There was Captain Phillips,
which was about a ship being kidnapped
off the coast of Somalia,
and Captain Phillips is stuck
in this really drastic situation.
And he's just really letting his instincts take over
and trying to survive.
That's all he's trying to do.
Another one that came out that year was Gravity.
And Gravity is a movie about,
I don't remember the name of the character,
so we'll go with Sandra Bullock.
Sandra Bullock's floating around in space,
and she's just trying to figure out
how to get back to Earth, how to survive.
And the theme of these films,
a common theme in the stories that we tell
is that survival is the most basic human instinct.
Cormac McCarthy is a writer who has written
many famous books.
He's written No Country for Old Men,
which was made into a film.
He wrote The Road.
And Cormac McCarthy has really explored
this natural human instinct of survival,
and how we really have this absolutely necessary urge
just to survive, to keep ourselves alive,
and how this often is really a tragic instinct.
But an interesting thing has happened
in his thinking as he's written his books
that you can track in the progression of the books,
and that is that he's begun to ask the question,
well, why survive?
And so in The Road, The Road is this post-apocalyptic book.
It's this post-nuclear disaster sort of situation
where the father and son are walking on a road,
and it's a very minimalistic book.
And they're just walking on a road and trying to survive.
And so this father feels the pressure just to survive
and to make sure that his son survives.
But what his son begins to realize as the story unfolds
is his son begins to ask the question,
well, again, why survive?
And maybe it's worth, despite the risk,
to try to reach out to these people
that are on the periphery of their lives
as potential threats.
And the son begins to realize,
well, maybe it's worth the risk of not surviving
to reach out to those around me.
Survival cannot be the end game.
And so this is what we find in 1 Samuel 30,
is that David still needs his men,
and his men need him.
And so in the second part of our story,
as we come to it, God breaks in
and intervenes in this nasty self-perpetuating cycle
of just survival that we have as human beings.
God provides.
Verse 8 and continuing.
So David inquired of the Lord,
shall I pursue after this band,
that is the raiding party that has raided his family's home,
and will I overtake them?
God answered him, pursue, for you will overtake them,
and shall surely rescue.
So David sets out,
and 600 men who were with him,
and they come to the brook Besor,
where those who were left behind stayed.
David pursued, he and 400 men,
but 200 stayed behind,
the ones that were too exhausted to cross the brook Besor.
And they found an Egyptian in the open country,
and brought him to David,
and they gave him bread, and he ate.
They gave him water to drink,
and they gave him a piece of a cake of figs,
and two clusters of raisins.
And when he had eaten, his spirit revived,
for he had not eaten bread or drunk water
for three days and three nights.
And David said to him,
to whom do you belong,
and where are you from?
He said, I am a young man of Egypt,
servant to an Amalekite,
and my master left me behind
because I fell sick three days ago.
We made a raid against the Negev of Caleb,
and we burned Ziklag,
Ziklag is David's home,
with fire.
And David said to him,
will you take me down to this band?
And he said,
swear to me by God that you will not kill me
or deliver me into the hands of my master,
and I will take you down.
And so skipping to the conclusion of this,
in verse 18,
David recovered all that the Amalekites had taken,
and David rescued his two wives.
Nothing was missing,
whether small or great,
sons or daughters,
spoil or anything that had been taken.
David captured all the flocks and herds,
and the people drove the livestock before him.
Now that's a long section of text,
but here's the most important thing.
David asked God to help him,
and so God does.
But what God's provision looks like,
and this is important because this is what God's provision looks like
for in our lives,
is a happenstance encounter with a foreigner in the wilderness.
Now 1 Samuel is a book filled with foreign places,
and foreign people,
and foreign names that we've never met.
And so we can get into the tendency of beginning to feel like it's irrelevant,
irrelevant, or too foreign,
or abstract,
or even unreal.
Our eyes can begin to glaze over as we read all these unknown details.
But the point to take away here
is that God is working in a real world,
with real people,
who have real needs like you and I.
Now for a long time,
many scholars thought that David was just a fabrication,
that David was a fictional character made up in 1 and 2 Samuel.
But in a dig in 1993 in Israel,
archaeologists came across a small piece of pottery,
and this was significant,
but it may not seem significant to you.
They came across a small piece of pottery that said,
from the house of Israel,
from a king of Israel,
from the house of David.
And that's all that the inscription said,
and the inscription has come to be called the Tell Dan inscription.
That's just where they found it.
They found it in the city of Dan.
And it was significant because what it was,
was it was the first extra-biblical confirmation
of 1 and 2 Samuel,
that there was actually a real David.
And it was,
there was a king of Israel
that came from the house of David.
And this was significant because it was
from the family dynasty of David
exactly when and where
you would expect to find that piece of evidence
if 1 Samuel was telling the truth about David.
That is,
this story is a story about real people
living in real life.
And 1 Samuel is a story that is full of real facts, right?
They find this Egyptian man,
and they say what?
They say that he was eating a cake of figs.
They say he was eating two clusters of raisins.
This was a real story.
And in this chance encounter
with a real person,
this is how God is providing for David.
He provides him all the tactical information
he needs to score a stunning victory.
And this is the way that God provides.
God doesn't necessarily provide in our lives
in a stunningly successful way like this.
But how he does provide
is he provides in concrete and human ways
through relationships and people
in specific places
like at your home or your work
or here at Trinity.
I have actually driven over the Wadi Basur,
the Wadi Basur,
and I say Wadi because Wadi
is just a dry riverbed
that fills up in the rain season.
And I have a map up here
that you can look at.
You probably won't be able to see it now.
Now, the area that we're looking at today is here.
And so you can come up after the service
and look at this if you want.
But I share this,
not so you have a knowledge
of where the particular things were happening,
but just to show you
that this is a satellite map from our time.
Okay?
This is a map of our world.
And these events that are talking about David
are happening in real life
in a place you can go to today.
The other key thing we need to take away
from this story
about David's providential counter
with the Egyptian
is that God's people, us,
are to be a people of charity.
Now, the Amalekites,
when they stole from David,
didn't kill his family,
which might tempt us to think that,
oh, these people are somewhat of a merciful people.
But we're disavowed of that tendency
when we see David running into the Egyptian.
This is an Egyptian who was a servant
that was discarded.
And so we learn that
what the Amalekites want to do
with the captives that they've taken,
with David's family,
is they want to use them as slaves.
And they want to use them
as literally disposable commodities.
But in the midst of David's desperate situation,
right,
in this desperate race
to get his family to survive,
they stop and they feed a stranger.
Half the story is spent
describing feeding
a random Egyptian in the wilderness.
They're generous.
And because of that,
God will bless them.
Now,
I worked for six years with youth
and I had a mentor there
who had been on the job for 30 years.
And so he taught me a lot.
And he died suddenly from a heart attack in 2011.
But although I was several states away,
I had to go to the funeral.
I just had to go.
I stopped doing what I was doing.
I took days off work
and I just went down to the funeral.
And the thing that struck me about the funeral
is that anyone I had ever seen working there
was there.
There were people that came
from much further away than me.
People that came from California, Virginia,
all over the country.
And there were people that came
from all aspects of the job.
There were ground crew
and there were kitchen workers.
There were temporary staff.
There were full-time staff.
Everyone came.
There were several thousand people there.
And they didn't come
because he had a lot of money.
They didn't come because, honestly,
he was a visionary
or particularly brilliant.
They didn't come because
he was the best man you had ever met.
He could be impatient.
He could be gruff.
He could be stubborn.
But they came because he cared.
He cared about everyone.
And at some point,
he would always sit down with you
and ask you,
how are you doing?
But he would do it in a way
that he expected an answer.
And he had space in his life
for there to be an answer.
Which is to say he was generous.
He shared the space of his life.
And I don't know what that looks like for you.
Maybe it's committing to have someone over
in the midst of your crazy week
once a week for dinner
and sharing the crazy space of your life
with other people.
Maybe it's going on a ride with Greg
or participating in another one of the ministries
here at Trinity
that participates in the community.
But put yourself in a place
to be generous.
And the first step towards that
is knowing what the needs of the community are.
You can't be generous
before you know what your neighbor needs.
And my encouragement to you would be
that being generous isn't an event.
You don't go from being a not generous person
to being a generous person.
It takes a lifetime of small and faithful acts
to be changed into the sort of person
that has the character of generosity.
Back to our text.
Another one of the questions we have to ask is
so what about these Amalekites?
Why does God seem to fixate so much on them?
This small group of people.
We might be tempted to think
that this is an ethnic thing.
That God's for the Israelites
but he's not for the Amalekites
because they just happen to be
a part of the wrong ethnic group.
But we know that can't be the case
and we know that can't be the case
because we find at the end of the chapter
David inviting in many people
who are not ethnic Israelites
to be a part of the nation.
You can look at that list
at the end of the chapter
which we won't be reading this evening.
But David invites many different types
of ethnic people
to be part of the nation of Israel.
So what's going on here?
Why does Saul lose the kingdom
over not finishing off the Amalekites
in 1 Samuel 15?
That's what happens.
Saul is tasked with stopping the Amalekites
from raiding Israel
and he does.
He defeats them in battle
but instead of destroying their animals
he takes them for himself.
And we can get the impression
that God's being vindictive here.
But here's where we have to look
at the bigger story
to understand what's going on.
We first meet the Amalekites
in Deuteronomy 25.
But rather than them being hospitable
to pilgrims that are passing through
that have need for food and water
we find the Amalekites acting like lions.
That is they're waiting in the wings
to pick off the weak and hungry
in the tribe.
And we find them doing the same thing
over and over again
in 1 Samuel to Saul and his people
and so they've done the same thing
to David and his home.
And so this is what is so devastating
about Saul's failure
with the Amalekites in 1 Samuel 15.
Because Saul is as greedy
as the Amalekites.
That is rather than affirming
God's commitment to those
who are weak and hungry
and in most need of protection
Saul looks out for himself.
And so in defeating the Amalekites
in this story in 1 Samuel 30
David is reaffirming God's commitment
to the least of these.
Which is the same danger
we find in our chapter.
Verse 20 continues.
David captured all the flocks
and the herds
and the people drove the livestock
before him and said
this is David's spoil.
This should be an uh-oh moment for us.
Is David going to do what Saul did?
Then David came to the 200 men
who had been too exhausted
to follow David into battle
and had been left at the Brook Besor.
And they went out to meet David
and to meet people who were with him.
But when David came near to the people
he greeted them.
But all the wicked and worthless fellows
among the men
who had gone to battle with David said
because they didn't go with us
we will not give them anything
that we earned in battle
except give each man
his wife and his children
and let them leave.
But David said
you shall not do this my brothers
with what the Lord has given us.
He has preserved us
and given into our hand
the band that came against us.
Who would listen to you in this matter?
For as his share is
who goes down into the battle
so shall his share be
who stays by the baggage.
They all share alike.
And so David made a statute
and a rule for Israel
from that day forward to this day.
And when David came to Ziklag
he sent part of his spoil too
to his friends.
God gives to us
so that we can give to others.
When David and his men
returned from the victory
the ones who did the actual fighting
say to those who were too tired
after three days of marching
they shouldn't get anything.
Give them their families
but give them nothing else.
Let them pack their bags
and be on their way.
Now we have to remember
that these are the same men
who wanted to stone David
the day before.
But David does something
really sad and he says
no.
No we're not going to do that.
Because technically
they all came out
to the battlefield.
Some were fighting
but some were watching
our gear.
But they were all
on the battlefield
and so everyone shares equally.
And so then also
David from his own keep
his own earnings
which Saul before him
was condemned for keeping.
David gives gifts
to all the neighboring communities.
And this is what that does.
In giving to all the neighboring communities
what David does
is he allows safe passage
for all of his men.
His men can come and go
as they please
without being harassed.
This is the act of a good king.
Of a person worth being a king.
Now we do have to ask
and I think it's fair to ask
that David is a very savvy man.
And so we can ask
is David doing this
to maintain an army
and expand his own influence
and increase his own reputation?
Absolutely.
That is the motivation
for all that he's doing
in this chapter.
But what God's saying
to us
is that a good king
is a generous king.
As far back as chapter 8
Samuel had warned the people.
The whole theme of 1 Samuel
is about a king.
And Samuel had warned the people.
You're asking for a king.
But when I give you a king
this is what's going to happen.
The king's going to get greedy.
And you're not going to be able
to stop the king.
And so the king's going to take
whatever he wants from you.
This is the fear we have
of a king, isn't it?
Can we trust someone
who has power over us?
But here David is giving back.
David is sacrificing
for the sake of his people.
Because in a damaged world
people need a ruler
who will sacrifice
to knock us out of our orbit
of only surviving
to a place of being generous
and caring for others.
Consider the jack pine tree.
The jack pine tree
is one of the most prolific trees
in the world.
It survives in exceedingly
cold climates
and in areas where other plant life
can be decimated
by forest fires.
Now the way it does that
is its lowest branches
fall down.
So fires can't catch
onto the lowest branches
and eat up into the higher parts
of the tree.
And as its bark sheds
the bark will burn so quickly
that a fire can't build up
enough heat and pace
to make it into the higher limbs
of a tree.
But if a forest fire
doesn't hit a jack pine area
for a long period of time
and so the bark falls
and builds up
at the base of the tree
then when a forest fire comes
the fire is hot enough
to quickly leap up
to the highest branches
of the tree.
That is the tree
will be burned and die.
But an interesting thing happens
when a forest fire
actually does get
a jack pine tree
and that is that
the pine cones
of a jack pine
will literally explode.
And they'll explode
because the resin
in a jack pine cone
is highly flammable.
And so the jack pine cone
will explode
when a forest fire
finally gets
a jack pine tree.
But inside
that pine cone
the cork keeps
the jack pine seed
safe
up to 900 degrees Celsius.
900 degrees Celsius
not Fahrenheit
900 degrees Celsius
the cork will protect
the seed
after the cone explodes.
And so
when the forest fire
is done
these seeds
gently fall
into the mineral rich
wiped clean soil.
What we learn
from the jack pine tree
is that in a world
that burns
the way to live
fruitfully
the way to live
generously
the way to give back
for a head of grain
or a jack pine cone
or us
is through sacrifice.
And that's what we find
in our king
Christ doing for us.
He comes into
a burning world
I'm sad to admit it
but a burning world
to a scared
and defensive
and angry people
that's us.
And he exposes himself
to our needs
and pays the consequence
the death
that we
the human race
inflicted upon him.
We stapled him
to a tree.
We saw him
gasp
to his last breath
and he endures
all of that.
He sacrifices
for us
because in a broken world
sacrifice
is the only thing
that unlocks
the seed
of our generosity
of moving us
beyond this nasty cycle
of just surviving
in life.
We can give
because God
has given to us.
And he's not given us
his sloppy seconds.
He's not given us
what was left over
from his plate.
He's given us
his very own son.
He's given us
his very own life.
Let's pray.
Father God
we have so much
to be thankful for.
We
thank you for life.
We thank you for
the beauty
of this world.
we thank you for
your sacrifice.
We thank you for
your son.
We thank you for
your spirit.
We thank you for
faith.
We thank you for hope.
Most of all
we thank you for love.
All that we ask
this evening
is that you would
continue to mold us
small step
by small step
to people who
are not afraid
but people who
are generous
that
to people who
give out of
a
overflow
of feeling full.
Father we're so
thankful for
all that you do
for us.
Mold us more
into your image
we pray.
In the name of
your son we pray.
Amen.