Hard Mode Pt 5 - A Naked Prophet
This sermon was preached at Immanuel Fellowship Church in Ellisville Missouri as part of our "Hard Mode" series within 1 Samuel, exploring David’s trials and growth from the time he was anointed King until he took the throne. For more resources on faith and Christian living, visit our website or connect with our community. You can email us at hello@ifcstl.com or call/text us at 636-431-4708
Finishing "Hard Mode" and Looking Ahead
We're finishing out our series Hard Mode today. We've been in this short little section of First Samuel, where we've been talking about this very specific moment in David's life when he's been anointed to be the next king of Israel, but Saul is still reigning. There's just this tension. David is kind of laboring away in obscurity, unknown, in difficulty. And we've been talking about how God uses these times of obscurity—these times of trial and difficulty—to sanctify and prepare us for the call that He's put on our life.
Next week, we're going to move to a different section of the story, and we're going to start a new series within First Samuel that we're calling Exiled. God's path for us in the badlands. We're going to be talking about the time when David lived in complete and total exile for the rest of his time—from this point in the story until he becomes king. He's an outlaw. He is living his life on the run.
There's a nuanced difference between this season of his life as a young leader being raised up, and that next season. The big difference, guys, is how known he is. We're seeing David rise to prominence and rise to notoriety in our part of the text. In this next series, it's still really hard—his life is still on hard mode—but now he's this exile living out of his land.
So as we finish up today, I want to remind us of just some of these truths we have seen in David's move after his anointing from obscurity to prominence in the nation of Israel:
We've talked a lot about God's provision for us in the midst of difficulty and trial.
We've talked about how God sees you even when you feel unseen.
We've talked about how God goes ahead of you into the difficulties and trials of life to prepare a way for you.
We've talked about how it is actually God's strength that empowers us to win the battles of this life.
We've talked about how it is Christ Himself who empowers us to live as men and women of integrity.
And today, we land out this section of the story by talking about friends. And I don't mean the sitcom; I mean the concept. We're talking about friends.
The Need for Good Friends
We'll be in 1 Samuel 19 today if you want to go ahead and turn there. If you don't have a Bible with you today, we have physical copies of God's Word around the room—just look under the chairs. We really believe in the importance of access to God's Word here at Immanuel Fellowship. I say this every week, but if you don't own a Bible, please take one or talk to us. Let us get you a nicer one. It's really, really beneficial for your faith journey to have access to God's Word.
Okay, 1 Samuel 19. We're going to be talking about friendship, and my point today—the whole thing we're going to see in this narrative—is about as simple as the point of a sermon could be. It's just going to be this: You need good friends to survive hard mode.
You do. You just need good friends. Life is difficult. Life is painful. It's really hard. If you're going to survive in this world, you need great friends on your side. I think that's why, on some level, we're drawn to these epic, grand stories like Lord of the Rings. It's why we dig in deep on network sitcoms like Friends or New Girl or The Office or whatever. We know that we need a good team around us. We need a tight circle. We need people we can rely on, right?
And yet, if we're willing to be honest, how's that working out for us? How is that actually working out in your life? How often do you specifically, beloved, feel alone and isolated in this life?
This is so drastic in our society right now that the CDC, for literally almost a decade, has identified loneliness as a mental health epidemic in our society. There's actual research on it. There are CDC articles on it because it has real consequences. Loneliness raises one's risk for addiction, raises your risk for heart issues, and even for stroke. It's wild. It's wild how concrete the consequences of continued experiences of isolation and loneliness affect us.
But it raises a really important question: Why?
Why do we live in such isolation and loneliness in the nation, in the culture, in the age within which we live—the Information Age—where we have continual access to high-speed internet? Where you can literally do Star Trek stuff right now, right? You have a magic metal rectangle in your pocket right now that you could pull out and type some random numbers into, and a person on a different continent could pull the magic metal rectangle out of their pocket and hold it up, and you could see each other's faces live, right now, having a conversation with a split-second delay. That's possible right now.
Do you know how we talk to our mission partners around the world? Do you know how they send us updates? They text me from wherever they are, or they go, "Hey, can you jump on a FaceTime call?" And I jump on a FaceTime call with my magic rectangle and talk to missionaries in the rainforest in Peru, right? Because we live in Star Trek times and we can do that kind of stuff. It's really, really crazy.
And yet, it doesn't do anything for us. Research shows that doesn't actually help us feel more connected. In fact, one of the key takeaways from the CDC research on loneliness was this: Loneliness is about the quality of your relationships, not the quantity or the availability.
It's why we can feel lonely in the middle of a party. It's why you can feel alone even as your phone and your social media accounts connect you with more people than any individual has had access to in all of human history. Something misfires today, and even with all the connection, with all the information, with all the access we have, loneliness is literally killing people in our society. It's having dramatic impacts on human flourishing.
Why? That's what we're going to dig into today.
And I just want to say this: If that's you today, if you are someone who is struggling with connection—even right here in our church family—I want to encourage you to jump into this text with us. I genuinely, in my heart of hearts, believe God wants to speak a word of life and healing and hope to you today. So let's pray and jump into this text and see what God has for us.
Jesus, we need You today. Holy Spirit, we just need You to minister to us through Your Word, through this gathering. Jesus, You talked about the ministry that Your Spirit will do for us, and we ask You to do it today: to remind us of these truths of the gospel that we've forgotten in the difficulty and busyness of life; to challenge us and convict us in the areas of sin and rebellion where we are hard-hearted and put calluses over our need to repent. Lord, we ask that You would encourage us, teaching us new truths of the gospel that draw us to hope and to life. Above all, Jesus, we pray that You would make Yourself known to us in the way that our hearts need today. Father, You are the only one who can do this work. We can't muster it up on our own. We need Your help. So we pray this in Your name, Jesus. Amen.
Step 1: Human Friends Are Essential (1 Samuel 19:1–7)
Let me remind us of the story we're stepping into. We're stepping in mid-narrative here. Essentially what's happened is this: David has been anointed king of Israel. But we have a slight problem, right? Saul is still the king. God is using this season of David's anointing—but not yet ascension to the throne—to train and prepare him for his call and his rise as king.
And in that, it all had kind of seemed like it worked, and it was over just a few texts ago, because David stepped from his obscurity as a shepherd and functionally an intern into being one of the most well-known men in all of Israel when he stepped up in bravery and faith and met a real and present need for Israel by slaying the giant Goliath through the power of God, right?
He did this thing, and all of a sudden, all the work, all the stuff—it seemed like it came together. He was finally raised up as this known and powerful leader within Israel. And as you read it—we know the story—the text is written in such a way that if you're reading it cold, you just kind of go, "Okay, cool. Finally, he's breaking out. It's finally happening. It's finally going to be good for him."
But it doesn't go that way. There's this moment when David moves into the court of the king, and he's finally famous, he's been promised a princess for a wife, he's got money, and he's got success. You just kind of go, "Everything's finally coming up David." (And if that brings you to a Simpsons meme, then we are joint spirits, and I appreciate that. If it didn't, it's okay; I still love you, but that is where my mind went.)
The problem with our story is that everything wasn't coming up Milhouse for David. All this attention and all this success because of God's blessing actually drew Saul's jealousy. In his anger, Saul begins plotting to get David killed. Because he knows David is so popular, he can't just do it outright, so he tries to put together various foreskin-related schemes to get David killed by the Philistines. (If you don't get that reference, you just have to go back and listen to last week's sermon, because I'm not going to explain it again. We've been down that road, and I got enough emails this week!)
God protects David from all these problems, and he ends up married to Saul's daughter, Michal, who actually loves him. And he ends up best friends with Saul's son, Jonathan.
But as we step into our text today, we see that Saul is about to up the game. He's going to move from scheming to outright open hostility. We're going to look at three specific scenes in the story today, and in each of these scenes (I'm showing you my cards ahead of time), God is going to provide a friend who intervenes for David at the moment he needs it. Each of these scenes is going to have this awesome reveal of help, but it's also going to show some shortfall or failure. It's all going to culminate in the scene that brings out our main point right at the end.
So let's jump into this. 1 Samuel 19, starting in verse 1:
Saul ordered his son Jonathan and all his servants to kill David. But Saul's son Jonathan liked David very much. So he told him, "My father Saul intends to kill you. Be on your guard in the morning and hide in a secret place and stay there. I'll go out and stand beside my father in the field where you are and talk to him about you. When I see what he says, I'll tell you."
Jonathan spoke well of David to his father Saul. He said to him, "The king should not sin against his servant David. He hasn't sinned against you. In fact, his actions have been of great advantage to you. He took his life in his hands when he struck down the Philistine, and the Lord brought about a great victory for all Israel. You saw it and rejoiced. So why would you sin against innocent blood by killing David for no reason?"
Saul listened to Jonathan's advice and swore an oath: "As surely as the Lord lives, David will not be killed."
So Jonathan summoned David and told him all these words. Then Jonathan brought David to Saul, and he served him as he did before. When war broke out again, David went out and fought against the Philistines. He defeated them with such great force that they fled from him.
Scene one opens right away with our escalation: Saul has gone from plotting against David to straight-up ordering his death.
It's worth pointing out something here that will be a subtle theme throughout the rest of our time in Samuel with both King Saul and King David. Ancient Israel was a patriarchal, Near Eastern honor-shame culture—a very different worldview than how we live. One of the outcomes of that is that the king's honor was the social focal point for all relationships around him.
Here's what I mean by that: Whether or not any particular action honored or shamed the king was the primary way all the people around the king would determine whether or not something was right or wrong. That's a weird thing for us as Westerners, because—due to biblical ethics—we like to hold the idea that right and wrong are third-party standards sitting above our relational networks. Something is right because it is right; something is wrong because it is wrong. The people involved don't change that.
But that was not the worldview of the people in this story. The normal cultural narrative in the ancient Near East was that the honor of the most powerful person in the room (the king) was the determiner of right and wrong. Something that shames or dishonors the king is morally wrong; something that honors or builds up the king is morally right. That's how they understood the world, and we won't get the text fully if we don't wrap our minds around that. That's going to be under the hood of a lot of the weird stories as we go through the rest of David's life and reign.
What's important for this context is that, in this moment, no one would have blinked an eye at the idea of the king ordering David's death. People wouldn't have sat down and said, "The king is making some evil decisions right now." The norm of the culture would have been to say, "Yeah, some upstart thinks he's all that, thinks he's going to take over. He embarrassed the king publicly, so the king wants him dead. That's how it works."
So when Saul orders David's death, he's playing into the normal cultural understanding of how kings and power operate.
And Jonathan—who is David's friend and has immense loyalty to him—does something insane here. Rather than honoring his father the king and obeying his father the king, he goes and tells David what's going on. He goes straight to him: "Hey, my dad ordered your death to all the guards. But don't worry, I've got a plan. You go outside and hide. I'll take a walk with my dad near where you are, I'll talk to him about what's going on, and then I'll let you know what he said so we can go from there." Jonathan wants to intercede for David.
Now, we have to stop here and acknowledge: Jonathan is an amazing friend to David. This is a wonderful moment. Jonathan, more than anyone else, has the most to gain by David's death. He's the one who, by worldly and cultural standards, should have been in line to succeed Saul. David is a direct threat to Jonathan's reign as the next king. And yet, Jonathan loves David, has loyalty to him, and intercedes to try and save him.
He sets up this plan so David can be near enough to hear the conversation and know, "I'm not lying to you. This is not a trick. You can hear it." And notice the way Jonathan threads the needle when he talks to his dad. Ultimately, his challenge to his dad is: "You are sinning against David by doing this." That is the biblical narrative of right and wrong, counter to the cultural narrative of honor and shame for the king.
So he challenges his dad using theology and biblical ethics, but he still frames it through the honor and shame he knows his dad will understand: "Hey, David hasn't wronged you; he's actually honored you. He's done what he was supposed to do as a good servant. He brought you glory and built you up as a king. Why would you mess that up? Why would you debase yourself by harming him?"
The text lets us know that Saul seems to genuinely heed Jonathan's advice here. He hears him and says, "You're right." It works! He swears an oath. (And again, the bent of the text is that Saul genuinely means this in a moment of lucidity. Saul is a tortured man who is inconsistent, but in this moment, he has clarity.) He hears his son, realizes it's wrong, and swears an oath: "As surely as the Lord lives, David will not be killed."
So Jonathan brings David the report, reconciles David with his father, and says, "Everything can go back to how it was. I fixed it. We're good, David. You come serve and do all your stuff."
But it doesn't last. And it really shows us the failure—the weak point—of Jonathan's ability to help David.
There's no doubt Jonathan is an amazing friend to David in this moment, but his help falls short because Jonathan's solution is to try and get things back to how they were. His solution is to reconcile David with his father and put David back in his old position. But that just won't work anymore.
It works for a little while, but as soon as Israel goes back to war (and as a side note, back then nations had a "war season" and a "rest season" depending on the weather), David is sent out to do the same stuff he's been doing. He's wildly successful, and Saul's rage, jealousy, and anger immediately spark back up. He's right back in the same place.
Jonathan was a great friend to David, but his help fell short because the best he could imagine for his friend was to just get him back to where they were. And that was no longer an option for David. That's not what God was calling David to. At the end of the day, Jonathan's solution was too short-sighted.
Step 2: Human Friends Will Ultimately Fail Us (1 Samuel 19:8–17)
Read on with me, and we'll see how the text continues in verse 9:
Now an evil spirit sent from the Lord came on Saul as he was sitting in his palace holding a spear. David was playing the lyre, and Saul tried to pin David to the wall with the spear. But as the spear struck the wall, David eluded Saul, ran away, and escaped.
That night, Saul sent agents to David's house to watch him and to kill him in the morning. But his wife, Michal, warned David, "If you don't escape tonight, you will be dead tomorrow." So she lowered David from the window. He fled and escaped.
Then Michal took the household idol and put it on the bed and placed some goat hair on its head and covered it with a garment. When Saul sent agents to seize David, Michal said, "He's sick."
So Saul sent the agents back to see David and said, "Bring him on his bed so I can kill him."
When the agents arrived, to their surprise, the household idol was on the bed with some goat hair on its head. Saul asked Michal, "Why did you deceive me like this? You sent my enemy away and he has escaped."
She answered him, "He said to me, 'Let me go. Why should I kill you?'"
This all goes about how we expected it would, right? Saul may have sworn an oath in a moment of lucidity, but he's not going to hold out. The minute David becomes successful again and Saul is reminded of why he hates him, he goes right back to the same place.
We get this incredibly familiar scene in the throne room. An evil spirit comes upon Saul, he's upset, and David plays his lyre to calm him down. Saul tries to pin David to the wall with his spear. God intervenes, David dodges, and he gets out of the way.
But this time, David doesn't stick around for a second throw! This is the third time this has happened. David says, "You know what? I think I've learned a lesson here. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times... shame on you again, you shouldn't have done that!" So David gets out of Dodge and goes home.
You have to understand that in this day and age, the king's mightiest warriors and most important officials built their homes in a circle right around the king's palace. Especially David, who is married to the king's daughter. We're talking next door or down the street—very close.
David goes home, but that is no protection for him. He's essentially put himself under house arrest. He's home, but he's not safe. This is Saul's city, and Saul sends soldiers to watch the house so they can kill David if he leaves.
Michal knows the score. She warns David, "You can't wait this out. This is not a 'come home and wait for Saul to cool down' thing. You have to leave."
So she sets up a scheme: she lowers him out the window while the guards watch the front door, and David escapes off into the night. Then Michal pulls off what I like to call a "Ferris Bueller." (You guys know what I'm talking about? I put up a picture of Ferris Bueller's bedroom earlier as an age check for myself, and almost no one recognized it! It was rough. Jeremy recognized it, but that was it. We were the only old heads.)
She sets up a dummy in David's bed, puts a wig made of goat hair on it, and when the soldiers arrive to arrest David so they can kill him, she says, "He can't come, he's sick." And they say, "Okay," and leave!
Can you imagine the moment in Saul's throne room when the soldiers come back and he asks, "Where's David?" "Sorry, boss, he's sick in bed." "I sent you to get him so we can kill him! Bring the bed here, we'll kill him in the bed!"
So they go back and find, to their dismay, that it was goat hair on a statue.
(A quick side note: Some of you might read this and wonder, "Why does David have an idol in his house? Doesn't he worship Yahweh? Isn't that a Ten Commandments-level 'no-no'?" There is a lot of debate around this, and the short answer is we don't know for sure because the text doesn't tell us. But my favorite theory relates to the Hebrew word used here, teraphim. It isn't strictly the word used for a religious idol in a shrine; it can just mean a decorative statue. One theory is that wealthy wives whose husbands traveled for long periods would commission statues of their husbands because they were lonely, decorating the house with them to think of their husbands. I just love the idea that Michal loved David so much she had a statue made of him, and she thought it was so good that she could put it in bed and the guards wouldn't know the difference! And they didn't! Regardless, it gave David enough time to get away safely.)
Michal is a great friend and a great wife to David in this moment. She is proactive, and she risks harm to herself by defying not just the king, but her father. That is great love and loyalty. We should all hope to have a spouse who genuinely loves us and forms their primary allegiance with us and our marriage. Leaving and cleaving—marrying your spouse, not your parents—is a beautiful thing.
And yet, simultaneously, Michal is not enough.
Like Jonathan, she was God's provision for David in the moment, but she didn't solve David's real problem. His home isn't safe now, and even with her help, the best he gets is running off into the night by himself.
Step 3: God Is the Friend We Truly Need (1 Samuel 19:18–24)
Look at how the story lands in verse 18:
So David fled and escaped and went to Samuel at Ramah and told him everything Saul had done to him. Then he and Samuel left and stayed at Naioth. When it was reported to Saul that David was at Naioth in Ramah, he sent agents to seize David.
However, when they saw the group of prophets prophesying with Samuel leading them, the Spirit of God came on Saul's agents, and they also started prophesying. When they reported to Saul, he sent other agents and they also began prophesying. So Saul tried again and sent a third group of agents, and they began prophesying.
Then Saul himself went to Ramah. He came to the large cistern at Secu and asked, "Where are Samuel and David?""At Naioth in Ramah," someone said.
So he went to Naioth in Ramah, and the Spirit of God also came on him as he walked along. And he prophesied until he entered Naioth in Ramah. Saul then removed his clothes and also prophesied before Samuel. He collapsed and lay naked all that day and all that night. And that is why they say, "Is Saul also among the prophets?"
What a strange way to end this particular chunk of text!
After being lowered out the window of his own home, David runs straight to Samuel at Ramah (about three miles away—like going from here down Manchester Road). David doesn't go home to his father; he knows nowhere is safe. What's his dad going to do against the king's army? Samuel, at least, is the prophet who anointed them both and holds spiritual authority.
Samuel takes David to Naioth, a place in Ramah where a group of younger prophets trained by Samuel were staying in tents. Samuel takes David in and hides him. He's a good shepherd and does what he can.
But immediately, we see that Samuel's friendship is also not enough.
Saul quickly finds out explicitly where David is hiding and sends troops after him. It's another picture of how human friendship—though necessary—falls short. Samuel, like Michal and Jonathan, does what he can, but Saul still finds out and sends troops. David needed his friends, but he needed something more: He needed God's direct, supernatural intervention.
And that's exactly what he gets in what might be the weirdest way possible.
God intervenes to save David by making the soldiers sent to arrest him get "in the Spirit." Samuel and his prophets are prophesying, and as the soldiers approach, the Spirit of God sweeps over them, and they begin prophesying too! The experience is so powerful that they can't or won't arrest David, so they just go home.
Saul sends a second group, and the same thing happens. He sends a third group, and the same thing happens. All of Saul's guards are slowly being converted to real worship of Yahweh!
Eventually, Saul says, "Fine, I'll do it myself." He marches toward Ramah, but on the way, the Spirit of God sweeps over him. Saul begins prophesying, strips off his royal clothes, collapses, and lies naked on the ground all day and all night, raving.
This event gives David the time and clarity he needs to flee. The story ends with Saul lying naked on the ground, leading to the proverb: "Is Saul also among the prophets?"
There are two details here we shouldn't miss:
The Call-Back: Way back in 1 Samuel 10, Saul had a similar experience where he prophesied, which was seen as divine confirmation of his kingship. It is tragic and ironic that Saul's reign is bookended by these experiences—the first confirming his call, and the last with God opposing him to protect the true anointed king.
The Wordplay: In ancient Hebrew, the word translated "prophesy" (naba) can mean to act as a prophet, but it can also mean to "rave like a madman." Context tells you which is which. When Saul was following the Lord, he prophesied and people praised God. Now, having rejected the Lord, he raves like a lunatic in the dirt.
Things worked out for David to escape these terrifying circumstances. But notice this crucial nuance: David didn't get out of it because of how awesome his friends were.
Jonathan, Michal, and Samuel were amazing friends—the kind of people we all want in our corner. Yet none of them could ultimately get David where he needed to be. Jonathan naively thought he could patch things up. Michal could only get him out of the house. Samuel made space for him, but couldn't keep him hidden.
At every step, human effort fell apart because David needed God's intervention. He needed the Lord to step in beyond what his earthly friends could do. David needed a friend beyond his earthly friends—he needed the Lord to be his friend.
Jesus: The True Friend of Your Soul
This is foundational to how we understand the gospel story itself.
The God who made us, who sustains the universe, the Creator and perfect Judge of reality—Yahweh—is not distant and detached. He doesn't view us from afar. He is intimately involved with us. He treats us, considers us, and loves us as friends.
That is mind-blowing. That the almighty God does not consider you a peon or a pet, but calls you a friend!
Jesus said this Himself in John 15:11–16:
"I have told you these things so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete. This is my command: Love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this: to lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants anymore, because a servant doesn't know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me, but I chose you."
Jesus Christ is the friend of your soul.
To think that God even sees you is incredible. To think that He knows you is amazing. To think that He loves you is overwhelming. But to know that He loves you as a friend—as a best friend—is beyond comprehension.
That affection is what motivated His sacrifice on our behalf. "No one has greater love than this: to lay down his life for his friends."
Jesus jumped headfirst into this sinful, broken world so that we could have forgiveness for our sins. It was His perfect life, His unjust death, His supernatural resurrection, His ascension, and His promised return that bring us from death to life.
David needed a better friend than his awesome earthly friends, and God was that friend to him. You and I need that same Friend today: Jesus.
Have you experienced the friendship of Christ that saves your soul? Have you considered your own sinfulness, your inability to fix what is broken, and turned to the love of God that drove Christ to the cross for you?
The late pastor Tim Keller used to say that being loved without being known is shallow—it's like cotton candy. But being known without being loved is our greatest fear. To be fully known and fully loved—that is what our souls long for. And that is exactly what God offers you in Jesus.
Being the Hands and Feet of Christ to One Another
Here is the whipped cream on top: Do you know the primary way David experienced the love and friendship of God? Through the love and friendship of his earthly friends.
As flawed as Jonathan, Michal, and Samuel were, they were windows into God's love. They were the context through which God worked to display His care for David.
Similarly, the primary way we experience the friendship of Jesus today is through one another. When we love one another as friends, we display Christ.
If you are in Christ today, you are the primary method God uses to display His friendship to the people in this room.
I know many of us might hear that and think, "But I'm the lonely one! I'm the one struggling with connection. Why isn't anyone reaching out to me?"
I empathize with that. But you have to understand: Isolation and resentment are tools of the enemy to hamstring the local church. If Satan can get us so focused on who isn't pursuing us that we stop pursuing others, he neutralizes our effectiveness.
When we love one another as friends, we are living as the hands and feet of Christ. Yes, all of us are busy, tired, and stressed. We all want to be sought out. But biblical friendship in the church is a mutual experience.
The way we heal loneliness in our church is when we all decide to participate in pursuing one another. When you pour the love of Christ into someone else, God fills your tank in return.
How Can You Take a Step Toward Your Church Family This Week?
Be the friend someone else needs. When someone pops into your mind this week, text them, call them, or write them a note.
Open your home. Invite someone over for dinner—even if your house is messy or your dishes aren't done. Order Domino's pizza and just be tired together.
Plug in and serve. Join the greeter team or the kids' ministry team. Show up an hour early to make coffee and welcome people so they know they are seen and loved.
Invite someone to lunch today. Literally right now—ask someone near you, "Hey, what are you doing after church? Let me buy you a taco."
Pray for one another. You can pray for every person or family in our church by name throughout the year.
Adjust your schedule. Making time for community requires saying "no" to good things so you can say "yes" to biblical friendship.
Loneliness is literally killing people in our world. The narrative of our culture is that we are stuck, isolated, and doomed to die alone while doomscrolling on a screen.
The Gospel of Jesus invites you into a better story. It invites you into a family where you can be known and loved, where you are safe and seen, and where you belong. We aren't perfect, but through Christ, we can show up for one another and experience the true Friend of our souls together.
This sermon was preached at Immanuel Fellowship Church in Ellisville Missouri as part of our "Hard Mode" series within 1 Samuel, exploring David’s trials and growth from the time he was anointed King until he took the throne. For more resources on faith and Christian living, visit our website or connect with our community. You can email us at hello@ifcstl.com or call/text us at 636-431-4708
