August 7, 2026

Today's Reading: 1 Samuel 21:1-9

Daily Lectionary: 1 Samuel 21:1-9

“So the priest gave him the holy bread, for there was no bread there but the bread of Presence…” (1 Samuel 21:6a)

In the Name + of Jesus. Amen.

Holy things for unholy people. That’s what happens in our text for today.

If you remember, David is on the run. Saul doesn’t like the man; he never has since that whole Goliath thing when the crowds gave David the king’s welcome. He already tried to pin David to the wall with his spear, then seemed to come to his senses by giving one of his daughters in marriage to him, then went a little crazy again and tried to devise a plot for Jonathan and his servants to murder him.

David evades the assassins (with the help of Saul’s son and daughter) and heads for the hills. Which brings him eventually to Nob, where the tabernacle sits, and before the High Priest Ahimelech. There are a lot of moving pieces by now, and I’m not too sure Ahimelech was all that keen on helping David out, at least not initially. But by the end of it all, David receives five loaves of the Bread of Presence.

This bread was only meant for the priests. Twelve loaves were made weekly and laid before the Lord in the tabernacle. On the Sabbath, the holy priests (made holy only by the designation of God) would consume the old bread and present the new. …David was no priest. He was not consecrated as holy, and yet Ahimelech superseded the Levitical Law for the sake of David’s well-being.

Fast forward 1,000+ years, and Jesus uses this very example to help show that man is not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath is made for man. Meaning, God desires to give His good Gifts to His people despite the fact that we are unworthy to receive them. And that’s the whole thing about God: He is always the one at work, always the one making us worthy, always the one giving of Himself for our good.

Receiving the Gifts of God is not about cleaning yourself up first in order to make yourself worthy to receive His Gifts. If that were the case, they wouldn’t be Gifts, and they wouldn’t be given; they would be wages earned. But we can never earn the things of God, can never make ourselves worthy enough or holy enough. But Christ has already done that for us, for you. He, through His holy, bitter suffering and precious death, has done it all, which is what makes you worthy to receive His good Gifts of life and salvation through Word and Sacrament.

In the Name + of Jesus. Amen.

My Lord, You here have led me To this most holy place And with Yourself have fed me The treasures of Your grace; For You have freely given What earth could never buy, The bread of life from heaven, That now I shall not die. (LSB 642:2)

Rev. Eli Lietzau, pastor of Wheat Ridge Evangelical Lutheran Church in Wheat Ridge, CO.