I don't want you to suffocate on me.
All right, you're gonna breathe in, breathe out,
and you just say, God is good.
Okay, ready?
All right, one, two, three.
Breathe in, breathe out, and God is good.
All right, sometimes you gotta remind ourselves of that.
You know, there's so much that happens in life,
and we just gotta take some time to step back
and just say, you know, God's just good,
and I just need to breathe,
and He'll always take care of me.
I'm excited for our message.
Go ahead and turn with me to 1 Samuel 13,
1 Samuel chapter 17, sorry,
1 Samuel chapter 17, teak me on your toes.
All right, we're in our David series,
and what I love about David is,
it's like an action movie, man.
If anyone ever tells you the Bible is boring,
they're just not reading it the right way.
But I was not, not something that we just hear,
that a monotone preacher says, we just listen to,
it comes alive, it's real,
and we see these are real people with real stories.
And what I love about David is his life is crazy.
There's so many up, downs, turnarounds,
that he doesn't expect all the things that are going on.
And I'm excited that we get to go through it
and really highlight how God worked in his life.
They're exciting stories,
but what I think is, it's not as even more exciting
is the applications for us today.
We're in a past description, a book of the Bible,
that was written thousands of years ago,
yet we can still find application and hope from it today,
and that's amazing to me.
Now, we covered last week was Saul
and him being chosen as king, but he disobeyed,
he failed miserably,
and then we have David anointed as king.
And tonight we really get to see David's first full,
our first full interaction with David,
and what that is is where he faces Goliath.
And that's what I want us to get excited for.
I want us to love this, but before we dive into it,
let's make sure we get a point
that Pastor Ben brought to us last week.
It's 1st of January 16th, seven.
It says, but the Lord said unto Samuel,
look not on his countenance,
on the height of his stature,
because I refused him.
For Lord seeeth not as man seeeth,
for man looketh on the outward appearance,
but the Lord looketh on the heart.
You know, David wasn't the guy you expect.
When we hear David, we jump to the very end of David's life,
or maybe the middle of David's life,
when he was right on top of everything.
But that's not how he started out.
He was the man that God used though,
because God was looking on his inside,
inwardly at his heart rather than his outward countenance.
And David really wasn't who you would expect.
He was, a lot of times, what we would call the underdog.
But I wanna challenge that a little bit.
I wanna challenge that with a story.
A long time ago, when I was like, it's not that long ago,
when I was in third grade,
okay, this will be a surprise to my youth group,
that I actually played sports.
I'm not the most sporty person in the world
the youth group can attest to that.
I like sports, I'm just not good at them.
I like watching, I even don't mind playing.
It's just, it's not gonna be a good outcome.
I'm not gonna do great.
But we had this thing at the Christian school I was with,
and it was for, it was intramural.
That means we played amongst each other.
And what we do is we take all the kids,
third through sixth, we split them up into teams.
And I had a team when I was in third grade,
and it was, for lack of a better word, it was really sad.
It was a really sad team.
I think I have a picture up there.
All right, this is me, all right.
I'm the small little kid right here,
making the weird face, not a lot has changed.
But this was our team.
And I actually had my mom go through a yearbook
and actually find this for me.
Because I remembered it, I remember taking the picture
because I felt so awkward, and I look so awkward in it.
But I remember we were called the mean green fighting machines.
And man, we didn't know how to play basketball at all.
Like there were some different teams with these guys
who were tall, even they were like in third grade
and they were tall.
And I remember thinking, I was like,
man guys, we're really not good at this.
Like we're not ready.
We're totally inexperienced.
And we played hard, we fought hard.
I remember there was this one time,
this is like a legendary experience.
Cause I don't do a lot of incredible
and sporty athletic things.
I remember this time in third grade,
the one athletic thing I did was we were all playing basketball,
we were playing the like the red team.
And that was the big team.
They were crushing us like really badly.
And they somehow put me in.
Usually I wasn't put in, I just sat on the bench
and I was kind of happy with that.
But I got put in and I was playing.
I was like, I don't know what to do.
And then someone passed me the ball
and I freaked out even more.
I was like, I still don't know what to do.
What am I supposed to do with the ball?
I don't know, I know we talked about this,
practice, I don't know what the next step is.
But there was this girl in front of me.
And she is a really nice girl.
I know her today, but she was really scary.
And she was like in sixth grade when I was in third grade,
she was tall, she was like powering over me.
And I knew I got to get the ball to my teammates
and knew that at least.
It's like, how do I do it?
And it was really cool.
All I could think of doing, I was like, okay,
I'm blocked, this girl is bigger than me,
I'm a small little thing,
I'm not gonna be able to do anything.
So I got the ball and I just like threw it right under her
legs and I was like, you're all like, oh cool.
He threw it under the leg.
No, it was like really cool for me.
I was like hyped up, I was looking at the crowd saying,
this is me, look what I just did.
I like passed the ball right under her legs
and I felt really cool about it.
And I remember I like, as soon as I did it,
I turned around to my mom and I was like,
look mom, I did something athletic, like it happened.
I actually threw the ball under.
Now I didn't like keep going.
What happened is the other team like took the ball
and then made a shot later on.
So it didn't really help anything,
but I felt really cool.
And I remember we played so, so hard.
And in each one of us, we were fine for it.
And we got to the playoffs,
which everyone got to the playoffs.
And we played the game so hard.
And you know what happened?
We lost so badly, just really badly.
Like there was no chance.
I don't think we won a single game.
I don't think we came close to winning the single game.
And what I remember thinking while we were doing that,
I was like, man, we are the underdogs.
Like we are literally the underdogs and we lost.
And we love a good underdog story
because the part we love it is that
they're the least likely to do it.
And then they somehow turn around and end up doing it.
But that doesn't usually happen.
It does, there's plenty of stories for that.
But the story tonight, we oftentimes call it
an underdog story.
And I believe if we look with just our human circumstances,
what was going on then, I believe it would be.
But I think if we really think about it today,
it's not a real underdog story.
Because an underdog is someone who is unlikely to win.
But when David came up to face Goliath,
there was no question if he was gonna win.
And that's not because David is up here
and David is better than Goliath necessarily.
What it was is David went out
and he was confident in his God.
There was no doubt in his mind
that when he went before this Goliath,
now that's not to say he wasn't scared,
that's not to say he wasn't nervous.
But this man had resolved that not that he could do it,
that he had a God who could.
And that gives us our main point today.
David displayed courage in the midst of a giant problem,
pun intended, because of his faith and trust
in the sovereignty of God.
This is a story about the power of God
that is true no matter the situation.
What I want us to dive into
and look at is two different viewpoints.
We have a wrong viewpoint and a right viewpoint.
The first one starts right out the gate
with the fear of man.
Now what is the fear of man?
The fear of man, the best way to find it
is that you're putting others, putting men above God.
That you're focused on what men can do.
You're focused on gain approval for men.
You're sometimes focused on getting protection from men.
That you're all about others.
And the idea is that you're making God small
and you're making everything that's happened in your life,
the people around you,
you're making them the biggest priority.
That you're focused on the fear of men.
It's not necessarily a scare,
but it's even this reverence idea
that you're putting men before God.
And that's a lot.
That happens a lot.
That our ideas, our mindset is about men
and focusing on what pleases men,
what gives me approval,
what keeps me protected.
And what we see in Israel
is they were at this moment completely man centered.
They were all about themselves
from the point of choosing to king,
even up into this battle.
Now let's look at the context
where we go into this battle.
Okay, a lot of you know this story,
but I wanna give some more details
to round it out a little bit.
We have the setting and we have the Philistines,
which is a foreign army.
They were coming and invading Israelite territory.
They were in the place that says in
verse one through three of Saka'a.
And I believe I got a picture up there
of the valley that they were at.
We have the Israelite camp and we have the Philistine camp.
So what was happening, Philistines were invading
and their goal was to get to Saka'a, to get to Azika.
And what their ultimate goal was to get to Judah.
Because if they got Judah, man,
they had a big portion of what made Israel Israel.
That was their goal.
But they were at a standstill right now.
They were on top of the hill
and this is a satellite view,
so it doesn't look as big, but it is.
We have a Philistine hill.
We have the valley of Elah separating.
And then we have the Israelites camping.
They were both on two different sides.
And it was this standoff.
Because neither one wanted to move.
Because it was literally gonna be an uphill battle, right?
If the Philistines went down their hill
and tried to go up to Israelite camp,
they were gonna get slaughtered.
It would have been very easy.
The same way for the Israelites.
So they're all standing there and saying,
hey, you move first.
No, you move first.
All right, we're not going anywhere.
We're gonna stay here.
And they stayed for a while.
And they had this idea.
A lot of times when there was this standstill,
when they were deadlocked,
they would have the idea of single combat.
That's how this came out.
They said, all right, no one's moving anywhere.
We got a nice little arena right in the middle there
in the valley of Eila.
Just send out your champion.
Send out your best person.
The Philistines kind of initiated this.
And they go, and they send out, as we know, Goliath.
And what we see is that Goliath
had this intimidating presence.
Scripture is very clear and very careful
to explain what Goliath was like.
Look with me in 1 Samuel 17, verse four.
I wanna get this description of Goliath.
And see how the Scripture shows us
that this man was intimidating.
And there went out a champion
out of the camp of the Philistines named Goliath of Gath,
whose height was six cubits and a span.
And he had a helmet of brass upon his head,
and he was armed with a coat of mail,
and the weight was a coat, was 5,000 shekels of brass.
And he had greaves of brass upon his legs
and a target of brass between his shoulders.
And the staff of the spear was like a weaver's beam,
and a spearhead weighed 600 shekels of iron.
And one bearing of shield went before him.
All right, let's take this apart a little bit.
Okay, we have verse four.
We see that this guy is a champion.
Okay, he's not just some random guy that pulled out.
This is a guy who was a famed warrior.
He faced so many people, so many armies,
so many single combat, I would assume,
and destroyed all of them.
There was no doubt.
This guy was a warrior,
and he would destroy anyone that's standing his path,
and he was confident of it too.
And what we all know is that Goliath was huge.
Okay, I wanna make sure we see how big Goliath was.
Okay, all right, let me give one of my teens
Anna, come here for a second.
Yeah, I know, you're the first person I saw.
All right, so grab this for me, okay?
All right, I'll switch with you.
You stop it when it's nine feet, okay?
Ready?
Keep going, oh, you want me to move.
Okay, I got you, all right.
Good, we're there?
All right, so we got nine feet, about nine feet and nine inches.
All right, thank you, Anna, beautiful.
Okay, all right, this is pretty long.
Sorry for my sad little thing here.
Here, Anna, come here, hold it for me.
Make it long, you're awesome, okay?
All right, so we got this, okay?
This is tall, this doesn't look super tall,
but this is pretty tall.
Okay, this is taller than all of you,
this is taller than anyone could be today.
I think, who's the tallest person in here?
Who we think?
See, Dave, would it be you?
Dave, stand up for us, okay?
If you don't mind, all right?
Okay, we're gonna put this by Dave.
Okay, now Dave's pretty tall, okay?
All right, let's see.
Okay.
Six, four and a half.
Let's see, all right, this is very scientific
what I'm doing right here, okay?
All right, see, that's pretty tall.
Dave's a tall guy, like, he's being me, okay?
But Goliath is way up here.
Thank you, Dave, you're awesome, okay?
All right, so what I want you to see
is this Goliath is no like small guy.
He was a giant, he was a tall giant too.
And he was intimidating by the standards,
but he didn't just have height, he also had armor.
He had, let's see if I, I bet I'm gonna trip over that later.
All right, but he also had armor.
He had a helmet of bronze that was probably
about 30 pounds of weight.
Imagine having to have 30 pounds of weight on your head,
all right, and then you have this scale of armor
that's about 125 pounds.
Then you have bronze shin guards that are right at your legs.
You have this other breastplate that's between your shoulders.
Then you have a spear, and just the spear head itself
is about 15 pounds.
And then you have this giant shield
that he can't even hold,
which means it's pretty heavy,
that he says, hey, shield bearer,
you're gonna come out with me and hold the shield for me.
This guy is strong, he's buff, he's powerful,
and there's, I wanna picture this for it.
I think I gotta picture up there of Goliath, right?
This guy was ready for war.
If this guy walked into the back right now and said,
hey, I challenged one person to come and fight me, okay?
We're not gonna wanna fight the guy.
So then I was like, man, it was like,
just go and fight the guy.
Come on, stop being wimps, you know?
Yeah, I would've been scared, if I'm gonna be honest.
Like, if I go up to Goliath like, hey, man, I can take you,
it's gonna be like two seconds,
and then I don't know what's gonna happen,
but it's gonna be great, right?
Goliath was this powerful, powerful guy,
and it's even scarier when that powerful guy wants you dead
and one of these Israelites gone.
And now Goliath continues,
and we got a description of him,
and he starts to speak,
and he's basically saying, who's ready to rumble, man?
All right, verse eight, choose a man.
Choose someone to come out and fight me.
And Goliath says, he gives the terms of the battle.
He says, if you kill me, all right,
then the Philistines will be your slaves, okay?
But if I kill you, and this is what Goliath is banking on,
if I can kill you, Israelite,
then all the Israelites, you're right under us.
And Goliath was confident.
We see in verse 10, he says,
and the Philistines said, I defy the armies of Israel this day.
Give me a man that we may fight together.
Goliath's like, come on, give me somebody.
Who's going to fight me?
And what we see later on in verse 16
is that he's there for 40 days.
This isn't like a one-time thing.
He leaves, and then he comes back,
and he leaves and comes back.
It's probably about the same time of the day.
They know what's gonna happen.
Everyone's waiting for it.
But what is the people's reaction?
Well, it's verse 11.
When Saul and all of Israel heard those words
to the Philistines, they were dismayed and greatly afraid.
They're like, nope, nope, no, we're not doing that.
We're gonna go hide in our camp,
or we're just gonna hope this problem disappears.
This is what we call the fear of man.
They literally made this man out to be bigger than God.
They're like, he's like nine foot and nine inches.
Do you not understand that?
Like, how are we supposed to take him down?
What they've done is they've made man so big
and that God was put aside.
And what we see is that their leader,
Saul, was so cowardly in this.
It says, Saul and all of Israel heard those words,
and they were dismayed and greatly afraid.
Saul, we see in 1 Samuel 9,
was supposed to be that tall and strong person.
I believe that he was older right now,
but he would have still been the person
that everyone's looking to, saying, go fight him.
You're our king, man, go lead.
Saul says, no, I'm not gonna do that.
I'm gonna go hide,
and we're just gonna hope this problem disappears.
Now, meanwhile, the narrative shifts,
and it introduces us back again to David.
And it describes who David is again.
It says, it's the youngest son of Jesse, verse 12,
and that three of Jesse's sons go to bow,
three of his oldest.
And David's job was to go
and to deliver that food to his brothers.
And David arrives around the time
that Goliath is coming out.
He brings the food, and he actually says,
he darts, and he says, hey, guy, who's with the food,
you stay there, I'm gonna go check out who this guy is
that's yelling and making this ruckus.
And David goes in verse 23 and witnesses it.
And men are truly fleeing and hiding,
and they're saying, just,
we don't wanna deal with this giant problem.
What was happening is they kept trying to put the problem up
and it was getting bigger and bigger,
and Goliath was getting closer and closer and more confident.
Because think about how Goliath's feeling.
He's like, man, it's not long, they're scared.
We almost got him.
They're in the palm of our hand,
their own leader is hiding in his tent.
We got this.
And the problem is getting bigger and bigger.
You know what happens in our life?
We just keep ignoring problems,
just hoping it'll go away and never does.
You know what I hope goes away?
Dishes.
You know what doesn't go away?
Dishes.
You know what multiplies?
Dishes, right?
It starts growing and growing and growing.
Just because you ignore it,
say it's not a problem,
doesn't make it not a problem, right?
Goliath is still there,
and he says, I'm not going anywhere.
Someone's gonna have to take me down.
We're at a stalemate,
and the only way to get past this,
either you become our slaves or you kill me.
And the people said, we can't kill you.
So what do we do?
And it's interesting in verse 10
where he says that he's defying.
That word define is that he is mocking the people.
He's saying you are nothing, you armies,
you small armies of Israel.
He was mocking God.
He was trying to get them riled up.
And what we see with Saul's cowardly reaction
is first he ran and hid,
and then he says, I'll give him a reward
to someone else who does it.
So it's not about me anymore.
So I'm looking at me,
because you know people are asking,
hey Saul, Goliath's out there,
you should do something about it.
He says, I'll make you a reward.
Instead of me taking the problem,
I'll make you a reward.
And we see that in verse 25.
Verse 25, Saul says,
are more so the people say when David asked them,
is in the middle of Israel said,
have you seen this man that has come up?
Surely to defy Israel as he come up.
And this shall be about the man who killed them.
The king will enrich him with great riches.
Number one, he gets a lot of riches.
Gets a lot of money from this.
And then we'll give him his daughter.
So he gets a wife out of it,
and we'll make his father's house free in Israel.
And now he gets free taxes on top of it.
And this is like the average,
appealing to the average young man.
Okay, imagine being a young man here,
and they're just like, I get riches,
I get a wife, and I don't have to pay taxes.
Man, that's a pretty sweet deal.
But no one's taken up on this,
because they're like, I'm gonna die if I go out there.
And Saul's strategy is saying,
I'm not going out there, you do it.
And it's this cowardice,
this idea of making man so big.
That Goliath was so big.
They knew there was no possible way to defeat him.
And the problem is that they made God so small.
The problem is that they didn't even consider God
in any of this.
The chosen people, these Israelites,
who have been led by God through everything,
who have defeated much bigger than Goliath,
who have been led out of slavery,
they know that there's a God who does amazing things,
but they don't even once think about it.
Saul doesn't even once lead them to think about it.
They don't even think about God much less pray.
It was all about man, it was all about their fear,
it was all about their focus, it was all about their trust,
and this problem and how they could get out of it
by themselves, and why there was fears,
they knew they couldn't get out of it by themselves.
But David was set apart.
The question is why?
Well, that gives us to our second point.
It's the fear of God.
That's the complete opposite of the fear of man.
Fear of man says, man is so big,
and that's what I'm focused on.
The fear of God says, God is the biggest,
the greatest, the most powerful.
It's this reverence, this awe, this intense respect,
this truly trembling before God,
because you see how holy and powerful he is.
And why was David like this?
Well, I think when we go back to 1st January 167,
where it says that man looks on the outward appearance,
but God looked in the heart.
God saw David's inward character.
We see that very clearly in verse 26.
Let's look at it.
And David spake to the man that stood by him,
saying, what shall be done to the man
that killeth this Philistine,
and takeeth away the reproach from Israel?
For who is this uncircumcised Philistine
that he should defy the armies of the living God?
David points out something very interesting.
He says, who's gonna take away this reproach?
Because right now Israel is not looking too great.
You're looking like wimps, okay?
You have this great big God,
and you're not even kind of talking to him,
and now there's shame placed upon you,
and we look weak, we look faithless,
and this uncircumcised Philistine,
this guy over here is just some guy,
is nothing compared to our God, right?
We have Goliath who seems so big,
but he is but a small dwarf
compared to the almighty God who is alive
and leading our army.
David was different than all others.
Why? Because he remembered his God,
he respected his God,
and he trembled before the real God, right?
We had brother Dave who was awesome and stood up for me,
and we saw that Goliath is taller than brother Dave,
and that Goliath is pretty tall.
He's this long, but God, man,
if I pulled that whole tape measure,
I'm never gonna get to the length of God.
As we learned this morning,
God is the one who formed everything, right?
God is above this.
He's above time, space, matter,
because that's how amazing our God is.
But our circumstances so often seem so big,
and we're like, but do you see what I'm looking at?
No, the weird question is,
do you see who my God is who's above everything?
And that's what David was focused on.
He's saying, this guy is coming out,
he's just some guy,
and he's spitting on the name of our God,
and you're just gonna sit back and do nothing?
Who's the character of a man who sought God?
And the people around him still didn't see God,
and they definitely still didn't listen to David.
We see that with David's outward appearance.
David has three big critiques that come from people.
That I think is very applicable.
We see the first and we'll hit these kind of fast,
but we see first in verses 28 through 30.
Let's look at it, let's read it.
In Eliab, his eldest brother heard when he spake unto the men,
and Eliab's anger was kindled against David,
and he said, why came a style down hither?
And with whom has thou left those few sheep
in the wilderness?
I know thy pride in the naughtiness of thine heart.
For thou art come down, thy might see the battle.
What's so interesting is that David's oldest brother
is saying, dude, why are you here?
Like, this isn't any place for me, you're just a shepherd.
Don't you have sheep?
You're supposed to be taken care of.
Who'd you leave them with?
And think about where Eliab's at, right?
Because he's first a scared,
he's feeling so little right now, right?
He's supposed to be a strong, manly warrior,
but he's like, man, I'm scared of Goliath.
So first that's one thing.
He's like, David, you're not some big, big hot shot, okay?
You're not as great as you think, right?
We're fine, we don't need you here, David.
But if you think even going back to our last message,
that Eliab's probably very upset right now with David,
because Eliab's the oldest,
and he was supposed to be the king when Samuel came.
Like, it was supposed to be him.
He's the one feeling really good about this
when Samuel comes, like, oh, this guy's annoying people.
I might be able to be the king.
This is gonna be great.
And then he gets past, he's like,
well, maybe it's the next oldest, the next oldest.
And it ends up just being the youngest, right?
It ends up just being David.
And the critique here is, David, you're just a shepherd.
What are you doing trying to be here with us men?
Find this battle?
You're just a shepherd.
Go back to the sheep.
This is no place for you.
That's one, he's just a shepherd.
And then Saul looks at him and sees in verse 33,
he has a reaction to this.
Because David says, hey, I'll be the guy.
I'll go.
I will fight this Philistine.
Imagine how bold you have to be.
Now, David is probably about maybe 15 or so.
And if he was at average height
of a normal Israelite male during that time,
he was probably five, five.
Okay, that shifts a little bit.
There's no direct, direct evidence.
But he's like a normal guy.
But he's this young guy who comes to this camp
and he says, I can take him.
And Eliab says, no, you can't.
And Saul says, no, you can't.
You can't do this.
And we see in verse 13 what his direct response is to David.
Saul says to David, thou art not able to go
against this Philistine to fight him.
For thou art but a youth.
And he a man of war from his youth.
Like, David, you're not on the same level with this guy.
You're like 15.
This guy has killed people.
This guy is a warrior, has been trained from this.
Right?
Imagine if we invited,
because I have these direct connections, right?
If I invited Michael Jordan, okay?
I think Pastor Ben used Michael Jordan this morning.
We'll use it again.
All right?
If we invited Michael Jordan, okay?
To come play.
Okay, we used it as a youth event, right?
Okay, people would come for that.
Okay, but the twist is that Michael Jordan
who has been preparing you was practicing,
if you like Michael Jordan now,
you can't just negate that he practiced hard.
The guy was experienced.
He's been practicing from his youth.
He was ready to go at any time, right?
Probably still is.
And I say, all right, our youth event,
we're not only having Michael Jordan come,
but I'm gonna play Michael Jordan, all right?
And we're gonna have this whole event
where I get to just go four quarters with Michael Jordan.
And if you're listening right now, you're like,
no, you're not.
You're not gonna make that with Michael Jordan, right?
He's gonna crush you like 10 seconds.
You just told us a story about you playing basketball.
Like it's not gonna work, right?
You're an inexperienced guy.
What are you gonna do with Michael Jordan?
And this is what's happening now.
So I was looking and saying,
you're not gonna do this, David.
Like you're 15, you're a youth,
and you're just a shepherd,
as your brother already said,
how are you gonna go and do this?
I love David's response.
Because it's just so like, you get Saul,
he calls Saul out a little bit and look at verse 35.
Well, actually verse 34.
And David said unto Saul,
thou servant kept his father sheep,
and there came a lion and a bear
and took a lamb out of the flock.
And I went out after him and smote him
and delivered it out of his mouth.
And when he rose against me,
I caught him by his beard and smote him and slew him.
Thy servant slew both the lion and the bear.
This uncircumcised philistine shall be as one of them,
seen hath defied the armies of the living God.
Did you catch that?
Like he killed a lion and a bear.
Anyone else killed a lion and a bear?
Like, I mean, this guy's 15.
And not only did he kill a lion and a bear,
he went up to the lion,
said, I want that lamb back, please.
I'm gonna take it out of your mouth, K. Lam, you go.
Now I'm grabbing the lion by the beard,
and then I'm just killing him.
It's like, man, I would not have chased down a lion
much less try to save the lamb.
If I was a shepherd, if I was gonna be honest,
and a lion came into the fold,
it'd be like, go ahead, lion, you take it, man,
that's yours, and I'm gonna be gone.
But David has this courage.
He says, no, I'm standing up for it,
I can fight back against this lion,
not just some nobody.
What's interesting is that he's saying,
just because I'm a youth doesn't mean I'm useless.
Or just because I'm young doesn't mean I don't matter.
David shows by this past experience
that he knew what he was doing.
There was some experience here.
He went after and fought lions and bears.
And what he says, very interesting there, in verse 37,
David said, moreover, the Lord delivered me
out of the paw of the lion, and out of the paw of the bear.
Man, he's gonna deliver me out of this Philistine.
And Saul said to David, go and Lord be with thee.
He says, why would this be any different?
I have a great God, I have a powerful God,
I have a sovereign God who's above all,
who got me out of the lion's mouth,
who let me conquer a lion, get the lamb out of the lion's mouth,
let me conquer a bear.
What's different about this Goliath?
He's just a man, he's nothing compared to the God.
And Saul's still skeptical, right?
He says, okay, Lord be with thee,
but put on some armor, and maybe that'll help.
And David says, no, I'm not gonna use that,
it's clunky, I haven't tested with it before.
I'm gonna grab my staff, I'm gonna grab my five stones
and my sling, and I'm going out.
And this is where the face off comes.
This is where it gets exciting.
Okay, we see this in verse 41.
David approaches, and he's getting, imagine this,
we saw that picture of the Valley of Elo, okay,
picture this, use your imagination, right?
Now we have this small David guy coming out,
okay, he's not super, super tall,
like his normal average looking guy.
And he have Goliath, and Goliath sees this
and has reaction, and Goliath doesn't mince his words either.
We see this in verse 42.
And when the Philistine looked about and saw David,
he disdained him.
For he was but a youth and ruddy and a fair countenance.
And the Philistine said to David, am I a dog
without comes to me with staves?
And the Philistine cursed David by his gods.
The Philistine said to David, come to me
and I will give thy flesh into the fowls of the air
and to the beasts of the field.
Goliath's looking at him and says, this is a guy,
this is the best you got, this is, okay,
I'm going to destroy him, and then I'm gonna leave
his body out here and we're not gonna give him
a proper burial or anything.
And back in those times, that would have been
a really big insult, right?
To just leave your body out there with no respect,
no care, whatever, just leave it out there to rot.
That's what Goliath is saying.
I'm not only gonna kill you, I'm gonna disrespect you,
and I'm gonna disrespect your gods on top of that,
then I'm gonna go and slave your people.
You got nothing, David.
And he's feeling so big and powerful,
and what we see is that he's looking at this David guy,
he's saying, that's just a nobody.
Where'd you come from?
Who's this guy?
Give me a real challenge.
And I know Goliath is thinking and is proud,
he's a champion, and he wants someone
that's gonna give him a challenge.
And he says, David, you don't have any challenge,
what are you gonna do?
What we see through all this is that according to E-Lab,
David's brother, David is just a shepherd.
According to Saul, David is just a youth.
According to Goliath, David is just a nobody.
You know, we live in a world where people
are so quick to judge and discount,
but it's so easy, just be like, oh, you're just that.
You just have that job, you're just a teacher,
you're just a teen, you're just a third grader.
You're just a nobody.
What power do you have?
What influence do you have?
What are you gonna do with your life?
But what's amazing is that, you know,
something's, I am just a nobody,
but I'm a nobody that Jesus loved and cared for
and wants to use mightily.
What changes is when you let yourself be set apart
and be used by God, you're not only just this, right?
You are seen, cared for, and used by the mighty,
loving God overall.
What you see is that when you no longer just try
to define yourself and allow God to define you instead,
you see that he shapes us into something amazing.
You know that you have the God of angel armies on your side
more so that you're on his side, right?
That he's the greater one.
We see as these people are so quick to discount, David,
and say, you have no value because you don't look
like you're supposed to.
You're a youth, you're a shepherd, you're a nobody.
But God's in the business of using a lot of nobody
to do great things because God changes our identity
when we are saved and we believe on him.
And everyone here has an identity
and everyone here who's believed in Christ
knows that God doesn't see you as a nobody,
he sees you as somebody that he can shape
and grow into his image.
Whether you're the youngest here, probably over here,
or whether you're the oldest, God sees you
and you can do great things, but it's not by your power,
it's by him.
It's by God defining you.
Okay, so let's step back, let's see.
Here with that next slide.
We got David and Goliath.
Let's compare these, okay?
David we have as an Israelite shepherd,
Goliath is a Philistine warrior.
David is a teenager.
Goliath is a nine foot champion.
David has no armor going out.
Goliath has all sorts of armor and a heavy armor.
Like nothing was gonna appear.
So he was trying to get out every possible scenario, right?
He was ready for if an archer came,
he was ready for if an infantry man came,
he said, nobody's gonna stop me.
I got the armor, I got a shield bearer right here.
I'm not even alone, I have a guy that can take
a blow for me if I want him to.
David comes and he carries out a staff
and five stones and a sling,
and what Goliath has is a sword, spear, and javelin.
Let's take a pause, okay?
Because sometimes we're like,
oh, David, you didn't really bring a lot there, okay?
This is not a sling shot.
This is the random thing I found in the youth room,
but it'll work, all right?
But this sling shot here would have been
kind of similar to this in some ways of that.
He would get a rock as he got from the book that was nearby
and he was a professional with the sling shot.
Like it wasn't just some random guy
with the random sling shot.
Like if you gave me a sling shot, I'm not gonna hit anything.
This guy could target anything he needed to.
He knew how to use it.
Those things would fly and they would penetrate
and they would hurt.
And what he would do is he put the rock
and he'd get it in at the perfect measure
and then he would just start twirling, twirling,
twirling, twirling, twirling, twirling,
and it makes that really cool noise where it's like,
whisping and then he'd let it go and that rock would fly.
And it would hit usually what he wanted to
because he's not, again, just some guy.
He's a guy that's been using, he's a guy that's experienced,
too, so just wanna add that little idea there
that this sling was a powerful weapon, right?
But still, Goliath, you got a sword,
you got a spear, you have a javelin.
But we see that David was defending
the armies of the living God
and Goliath was defying.
No, it really sets David apart here
because you look at this and look at these stats, right?
If Goliath seems bigger, he is bigger than David.
But what set David apart was this very last point,
that David was relying on the power of God
and that Goliath was relying on his own strength
and own ability, that David had this upward trust
in his God, in his great God who was above all.
We see that David was above,
not because he was some great guy,
but because he had a God who was above
who was strengthening him.
And I hope that you're getting this point,
I've said it a few times and I wanna keep saying it,
is that it's all God working here.
And it's that David who had upward trust in his God.
David feared God over man.
We see this in verse 45.
Then David said to the Philistine,
thou comest to me with the sword,
in with the spear and with the shield.
But I come to thee in the name of the Lord of hosts,
the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied.
This day the Lord will deliver thee into my hand
and I will smite thee and take thy head from thee.
And I will give the carcasses of the hosts
of the Philistines this day unto the fowls of the air
and to the wild beasts of the earth,
that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel.
And all this assembly shall know that the Lord
will save us not with the sword and spear,
for the battle is the Lord's and he will give you
into our hands.
David's looking at Goliath saying,
yep, you have a sword and you have a shield
and you have a few other weapons, great job, it's good.
I come in the name of the living God who is above all.
I come in the name of the Lord of hosts
who's above, has heavenly armies
and has this army of Israel that he's given victory
after victory.
Goliath, you are the underdog, you are truly outmatched.
There's no way you're gonna win.
That's what he's saying.
Because Goliath is talking this really big game
but all that David needs to say is, yeah, I have God
who I trust in who gives me strength.
And he challenges Goliath.
I mean, think about this.
This is a 15 year old boy talking to this champion
and he's not backing down
because he had confidence in someone that was greater.
And he says, the Lord will win in verse 46.
And he says, I will kill you
and then I will cut off your head
and I will leave you here to rot.
That's a little insulting.
But right for David,
because he's making the challenge,
he's making the point, he's confident.
He's not backing down here.
He's not just intimidated because Goliath was a bully.
Like Goliath wanted everything possible
to be able to crush David down.
But we see that David's not backing down
because he knew his God wasn't going to back down.
He knew his God, the God was above all.
And the finale closes.
The finale comes.
David runs closer, puts the stone in a sling
that he's got, he's prepared.
He goes and he twirls it and he twirls it
and he twirls it.
And you know what happens?
It flies.
And it hits him like right in the place
that needed to hit Goliath.
You know, I don't know if that immediately killed Goliath
or not.
I don't know if that just knocked him out.
I know it did some damage though
because it's just knocked down this big guy.
And I love that because it's just a small little rock.
That's all God needed.
Because God was above all.
There was no question if it was going to hit or not.
God had it all under control.
It flies, knocks Goliath down and David runs over immediately.
He says, oh, I don't have a sword,
but I'll use Goliath's sword and then chops off his head.
And I was kind of like, oh, okay.
But he's making this point.
He's saying, you know, this guy was nothing.
Where's Goliath's talk now?
Where's his power now?
What is he doing now?
You know, David properly feared God alone.
His faith gave the courage to step forward
and proclaim God's name.
These Philistines, they book it out and they're gone.
They're like, we've just lost our biggest guy.
I don't know what this guy did,
but he can slow slingshots and hit people.
We're running.
And there's like, say, we won.
We won.
And they run and they go right after the Philistines.
And David is rewarded plentifully for that,
bountifully for that.
But let's bring this to us.
Okay, so what does this mean for us now?
Because all of you, when I was telling that story,
you know the story of David and Goliath.
But you also know that you're not an Israel.
You also know that you're not David
and you also know that you're not facing the Goliath.
What I believe is a legitimate application
is that we do have giant problems in our lives.
There are things that are hard.
There are things that are scary.
There are things that are intimidating.
And it's just, you can think for a moment,
you can think of something that's scary.
Maybe you're manlier than me,
but there are things that are scary in life.
It could be an emotional problem, it could be a physical problem,
it could be financial, it could be relational,
it could be spiritual, it could be mental,
it could be worry, it could be depression,
it could be enemies, it could be addiction,
it could be stress, there are things that are hard.
And what happens is, is that our thoughts
become so filled with them,
and that's the only thing we can focus on.
And then we say, I don't wanna deal with that problem,
so I'm either just gonna try to hide from it,
or I'm trying to get others to deal with it,
as Saul was doing.
He don't want anything to do with this.
And hard challenges are not something
we necessarily wanna face, but they're there.
And it's a lot easier to try to hide from them,
but we peek our head right out and their problems
are still there and they're growing, and we're scared.
Like, how are we supposed to deal with this?
You know, this typical devotional application.
And this, I'll read it to you.
If you look at the typical everyday David and Goliath story,
what they'll say is sometimes God puts a Goliath in your life
for you to find the David within you.
And what this is saying is that you have a giant,
and you need to defeat it.
Search within you, and Goliath stands no match.
I don't like that, because what that's saying is,
is that I have to find the power within me,
and if I can do it and get big enough, and strong enough,
and courageous enough, then I can face my giant.
False, if you go out and try to face all your giants,
by yourself, you will get squashed like a bug.
And you will feel discouraged, you will feel hopeless,
and you will say, why am I failing even more now?
If David ran out and faced Goliath saying,
look how amazing I am, I am going to be king,
it's all you have, nothing, I got this.
David would have been squashed and killed.
I have no doubt.
Why? Because that's focusing on the fear of man
and what I can do.
Let me be very clear, you can do nothing
whether fight a giant or a liver religious life
without God.
Saying I can be David, I can muster up the strength,
and I can fight my giants, misses the point entirely.
Because that leaves us feeling like we have to do it all,
and we can't.
If you go out after this and say,
David beat his giant, and so can I,
you're gonna fail and be discouraged
and back to square one.
You say, I just need to defeat this giant,
this one giant, and everything will be okay.
What we see actually in David's life is he defeated
that giant and everything was not okay.
He faced more and more giants afterwards.
And there was tension, there was heartbreak
in David's life as will show.
But you'll see when David faced those different giants
in his life, what caused the difference
was when he was trusting in his God to get him through.
What got him through, what gave him victory.
We'll look at verse 47.
And all this assembly shall know
that the Lord saveeth not with sword and spear,
for the battle is the Lord's, and he will give you
into our hands.
What's really important about that,
that we have to pick out is the battle is the Lord's.
And I'm not saying that this removes us our responsibility,
I'm not saying it's a bad thing to try to aspire to be,
have David like qualities.
What I am saying is don't leave out the main point,
that the battle is the Lord's.
And it's the Lord who gives us strength.
This battle with Goliath, the Lord brought the victory.
David won the victory because God brought it to him.
You know, I believe this story has a beautiful connection
to the gospel really.
Because instead of placing myself as David,
let me place the son of David there, place Christ there.
Say what Christ did is he defeated the biggest giant possible,
the giant of sin and death.
If I was gonna be anybody, I was on the side of the giant.
I was the sinful person.
There was this giant that was keeping away
from having any peace in my life whatsoever.
And the only one who could defeat it,
the only one who wanted to defeat it,
the only one who cared enough about me to defeat it
was Christ.
And Christ courageously came,
having faith in his father's sovereignty
and died on the cross for you and me.
And what I see is that Goliath has been defeated,
both in David's story and in our life,
of the sin and death that seems so insurmountable.
But Christ defeated it.
We see in 1 Corinthians 15, 55 to 57.
Oh death, where is your victory?
Oh death, where is your sting?
The sting of death is sin.
The power of sin is the law.
But thanks be to God,
who gives us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Victory in Jesus, my savior forever,
who bought me and sought me with his redeeming blood.
I find victory because of him.
And these giants that I face,
they are nothing because I serve a great God
who's bigger than all of those.
That's what we focus on.
The battle belongs to the Lord.
And the war has already been won.
You have battles in your life.
But never forget that the Lord won the war.
You have victory.
Nothing can ever take that victory away from you
when you believe on Christ and believe in him.
And you know, I don't always feel as though the war is won.
What about the battle right here, my house?
Like it's hard.
What we gotta make sure we do
is we don't focus on the fear of man
that we start fearing God and make God big,
make God greater.
You know, our job as pastors
is not to just give you motivational help, right?
That's not the big goal.
Our job is not to just give you necessarily a pep talk
so everyone feels more necessarily encouraged.
I want you to feel encouraged when you leave, of course.
But that's not my end goal.
My goal, what I want you to believe with is Christ.
See that Christ is the only way,
and I believe you have giants that seem right
at your doorstep that are intimidating,
that are insulting, that are insurmountable.
And I can't give you a five step program
based on the five stones.
I can't do that, but what I can do is point you to Christ
and hope and help to stand before the giant
because it is nothing before my God, the God.
So what I encourage you to do,
what I encourage myself to do,
instead of trying to hide from my problems,
instead of trying to fight them on my own,
give your giants to the one, the one, the God.
The battle is his.
He will give you all you need
because he already conquers the giants of sin and death.
And all I need to do is, we learned this morning,
is have faith, have faith in him
and know that he is working,
that he will carry me through.
And if you're unsaved here tonight,
you haven't believed in what Christ has done.
If you haven't believed in what Jesus has done on the cross,
how he came down and lived a perfect life,
was killed on a cross,
that you could have everlasting life.
And then rose again from the dead, conquering sin and death.
So I can have peace forevermore, just surrender.
Know that he defeats those giants of sin and death
that are just looming.
That I can have joy in hoping him.
You know, this is a great story.
It's got great action.
It's got a great guy.
Dave is a pretty great guy.
But it's got a greater God, D God,
who's greater than us, greater than our giants.
And I know that the battle is the Lord's.
So I want you to say with me, okay?
I want you to say the battle is Lord's.
Ready? Go.
All right, let's pray.
All right.