Thank you, friends, for your ministry tonight.
It's always a joy to see you and to hear you.
We love you.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mary and John, as well.
Thank you for praying this last week for the meetings in New Hampshire.
I think the meetings went well.
The weather back there was gorgeous.
We had Indian summer in New England and the leaves were right at the peak of their color.
So if there's any time, I'm glad the Lord would call me to New England for a meeting.
It was this last week.
It was great to be there.
A friend of mine who's in the church drove me around a little bit to see some of the
color and some of the sights.
My first time back there in 19 years.
One day we went to Newburyport, Massachusetts to see the Old South Church.
I had not heard of the church, but it is the last church in which George Whitefield, the
famed evangelist and revivalist, preached.
Just three doors down from there is where he died of asthma.
His body is buried under the pulpit of the Old South Church.
So the pastor kindly took us down into the basement under this church that's 220, 230
years old and showed us the crypt where the first pastor of that church from back in the
1600s is buried along with George Whitefield.
Interesting experience.
A little eerie down there, to be frank with you.
Not the kind of place I would want to spend midnight, that's for sure.
And then the next day, or excuse me, that same day we drove on down to Boston to see
the Old North Church.
Had to be fair, North and South.
The Old North Church, of course, is where Paul Revere hung the lantern in the belfry
and warned of the British coming.
That is located in a section of Boston called Little Italy, a fascinating place to visit.
As you walk down the street, you actually feel as though you've been transported into
Italy, or maybe to Sicily, if you understand what I'm saying.
All of the lovely aroma of Italian food was in the air and people speaking Italian sitting
out on the street playing their games.
And it was just as though you were transported to the old world.
And I said to my friend, is the Godfather anywhere around here?
Is there any mafia?
And he said, oh no, there's none around here at all.
And I was glad, though, as we were walking up the street, a jackhammer went off right
beside us.
They were repairing the street.
And I was certainly glad I had seen that ahead of time, or I think I would have died of a
heart attack thinking I'd been shot with a machine gun.
I said, Lord, if you'll just get me out of here, I'll serve you the rest of my life.
Wherever you send me.
And he got me out.
Would you take your Bible and turn, please, to 1 Samuel chapter 18.
We want to talk tonight about the tests of a giant killer's faith.
I would hope that that includes all of us, because we face giants in our lives, as we've
talked on previous Sunday evenings.
I trust that those giants are coming down one by one as we, by faith, attack them.
David exhibited a great and yet simple faith in the slaying of Goliath.
In fact, when David approached that Philistine, he said, you come to me with a sword, a spear,
and a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies
of Israel, whom you have taunted.
This day the Lord will deliver you up into my hands, and I will strike you down and remove
your head from you.
David's faith was in the Lord to give him the victory in that battle.
Faith is only as valid as its object.
David's object of faith was the Lord God of Israel, in whom he trusted.
You'll notice that David did not say to Goliath as he approached him, I am praying that God
will give you into my hand.
He said the Lord will give you into my hand.
I wonder sometimes if we don't couch statements in such a way that we have a way out in case
God doesn't do what we believe God should do.
We pray about something, and we say we trust God for this particular thing, and we tell
other people I am praying that so-and-so will happen.
There's nothing wrong with that statement.
But is there ever a time when we by faith can say as David did, the Lord will do this
or that?
We seem to leave ourselves a way out in case God doesn't come through, don't we?
I wonder if that is real faith.
What was it that enabled David to say the Lord will deliver you into my hands?
It was not a prayer request with him.
He said the Lord will do this.
I believe that David was able to speak with that kind of faith for a couple of reasons.
First, his motive was entirely the glory of God.
David was not out there for some selfish purpose.
He desired for the name of the Lord God of Israel to be exalted among his people and
among the nations, for God's name was being blasphemed by this unclean giant.
And then secondly, I believe that David's faith had grown from his walk with God to
the point that he knew that God was going to do this.
I wonder sometimes if our statements like, I'm praying that, isn't really an evidence
of little faith, when in fact God would rather have us say the Lord will do this, as did
David here.
Well, it was a great victory that day when the giant fell and his head came off.
As somebody said to me after the service when we preached about this, David knew how to
get ahead, and he did that time.
Satan will not allow a victory, however, to go unchallenged, really.
He will not allow the steps of growth to go without a challenge to them.
The victory of faith will be opposed.
Satan will seek to divert our progress, to reverse our advance, to short circuit the
victory in any way possible.
Perhaps the most dangerous time that we face spiritually is after a victory in our lives.
David's faith now, in chapter 18, comes under a period of testing to determine the genuineness
of it, the quality of his spiritual stand.
The tests that David faced are the sum of the same tests that we all deal with in our
warfare.
Let's look at them tonight.
Test number one is found in verse five, the first part of the verse.
So David went out wherever Saul sent him and prospered.
And Saul set him over the men of war.
The first test of David's faith was prosperity.
And this included what appears to be a promotion from a court musician position to the head
of Saul's bodyguard.
He faced a period of prosperity in his life.
And I would submit to you that prosperity is sometimes a great test for our faith.
Because in prosperity there are the seeds which can spring up to choke faith.
Deprivation, poverty, failure, or getting by, as we say it, often provide an atmosphere
in which faith can be exercised and remain healthy and robust.
But prosperity is a test because it tempts the believer to trust in successes, in plenty,
or in whatever the result of our faith might be, rather than in the Lord from whom that
success comes.
Deceitfully, the enemy seeks to focus, to transfer, rather the focus of our faith from
the Lord to whatever it is the Lord has done or provided.
We need to watch out for the time of prosperity.
God is pleased to give those times to us, but they in themselves are a test of our faith.
I have a friend who lives in another state who walked with God for a number of years
and God was pleased to prosper him in his business.
But when he became prosperous, his heart turned from the Lord.
He became cold spiritually.
And the result of that was the loss of his prosperity, even the loss of his family.
And he went through a very difficult and even tragic period.
He came back to the Lord and God restored him to a place again of prosperity because
he walked in faith.
And I'm sad to say that in this time of prosperity, once again, he has fallen away from the Lord.
You see, his faith is unable to take the test of prosperity.
And yet this friend that I mentioned a few moments ago who drove me around Massachusetts,
New Hampshire this week, had the opposite experience in the face of prosperity.
When I knew him in Kentucky, he had recently lost his job.
The area of work in which he was employed did not need as many people any longer.
And he was one of those laid off as a result of a corporation buyout.
And when he met me, he was a man who did not have enough money to put milk on the table
for his children, literally.
Our church prayed for him.
We supported him as best we could.
He reported to me that during that time of difficulty, there were days when he would
go to the mailbox and there would be an envelope there addressed to him with $100 in it.
And it would simply say on the note inside, love in Christ, a friend.
One way after another, God took care of them during that time of difficulty.
And now he's in a place of prosperity again, the third highest man in a corporation that
will have $150 million business this year.
But in this time of prosperity, his faith is blossoming.
It's healthy.
He's passing the test of prosperity.
I don't know where that may find you tonight.
It may be that God has recently brought prosperity to you.
May I say to you that that prosperity in itself is a test from the Lord.
Will you allow your faith to now become focused upon what God is giving you, or will you cause
your faith to remain focused upon the Lord God himself who has blessed you?
David then faced a second test.
We see this in the last part of verse 5.
And it was pleasing in the sight of all the people and also in the sight of Saul's servants.
And it happened as they were coming when David returned from killing the Philistine that the
women came out of all the cities of Israel singing and dancing to meet King Saul with
tambourines, with joy, and with musical instruments.
And the women sang as they played and said, Saul has slain his thousands and David his
ten thousands.
Then Saul became very angry for this saying, displeased him.
And he said, they have ascribed to David ten thousands, but to me they have ascribed thousands.
Now what more can he have but the kingdom?
And Saul looked at David with suspicion from that day on.
Test number two is akin to test number one.
David faced the test of popularity.
Popularity is dangerous because it appeals to pride within us.
It appeals to our human carnality.
We can't always avoid our successes being acclaimed.
But we need to be careful that when they are that we do not always believe what the people
say about us.
What they sang about David here may well have been true, but it undoubtedly presented a
subtle temptation to David's faith.
Faith must do what is right and reflect the glory for any successes or any popularity
to God and not claim it for itself.
There is always the temptation to listen to what the fickle masses have to say regarding
our victories.
We must be careful in that.
If I may be permitted to do so, I want to apply that to our church for a moment.
Occasionally I'm asked the question by someone, why has Grace Church grown like it has?
What are you doing there?
What's happened?
Or someone will come up with a statement of congratulations or of even perhaps appreciation
for what God is doing here.
Undoubtedly you have faced that too.
Dear people, whenever that happens to us, we must be careful to give God the glory and
not take any to ourselves.
How easy it is for our hearts to subtly begin to be proud.
We must be careful of the acclaim of those around us.
And remember that that is not the final test of whether we have been truly successful in
our ministry.
Indeed, Jesus said, beware when all men speak well of you.
As a church and as individuals, we must never live for popularity.
We must never live that we might hear people praise us and acclaim us for our greatness,
our successes, our victories.
For whatever we have and whatever we accomplish here is by the grace of God.
Let us never forget it.
And to God be the glory for the great things He has done.
Let that always be our attitude and our spirit.
It seems to have been David's.
He was aware of this subtle temptation and the popularity of the women singing regarding
his successes did not cause his faith to be undermined.
Test number three is found in verses 10 and 11.
Now it came about on the next day that an evil spirit from God came mightily upon Saul
and he raved in the midst of the house while David was playing the harp with his hand as
usual.
And a spear was in Saul's hand.
And Saul hurled the spear for he thought, I will pin David to the wall.
But David escaped from his presence twice.
The third test is the test of danger.
You see here David faced a second giant and that giant is Saul, not Goliath.
Saul pretended to be a friend of David and yet he had become an enemy because of the
jealousy which bubbled in his heart.
Please notice in our text that there are three common emotions that are associated with jealousy.
In verse eight we find Saul became very angry.
He was an angry man because of the praise that David received and he did not receive.
That led in verse nine to suspicion.
He watched David closely, suspecting him, wondering if in fact this was the man that
God was going to place on the throne after him.
He was wondering if David was somehow going to usurp the throne and take it from him.
He was suspicious from that day on of David.
And then in verse 12 it developed into fear.
Now Saul was afraid of David for the Lord was with him but had departed from Saul.
David did not succumb to the test, to the fear rather of danger.
Rather he trusted God.
He did not retaliate for the spear being thrown at him.
He did not seek in some way to gain revenge.
He did not seek to use that incident to overthrow Saul but rather he evidenced his great faith
and placed himself again in the hands of God and believed that God would bring to pass
his promise in his time.
He trusted God in the midst of danger.
He had faced danger before but here's another test and he passed.
I don't know what danger you may be facing.
Will you trust God in it?
Will you leave yourself in his hands and allow him in his time to bring to pass in your life
his perfect will?
Test number four is in verses 12 and 13.
It is the test of demotion.
We've already read verse 12.
It goes on in verse 13 to say, Therefore Saul removed him, David, from his presence and
appointed him as his commander of a thousand.
And he went out and came in before the people.
There are some commentators who feel that this was a promotion and yet it seems to me
that the context indicates the opposite.
For David was no longer in a privileged position in the court of Saul.
Instead of being over Saul's bodyguard, he was placed in charge of a thousand men.
It seems as though this was a kick back down the ladder.
And so you can imagine the possible questions that went through David's mind.
What will the people say?
How can I explain why I am no longer in the court but over a thousand men?
Or perhaps he said to the Lord, why me, Lord?
I do my best.
I wait upon you.
I trust you in danger.
Yet I'm not appreciated.
I'm distrusted and I am put down.
Have you ever faced a time like that in your life?
Remember Joseph?
Joseph was demoted from the favored son to a sold slave.
Another time in his life he was demoted from a trusted steward to a prisoner.
He knew the meaning of demotion.
And yet you never see in the life of Joseph either a word of complaint.
But rather there was that quiet faith in God's sovereign and good hand upon him.
That should be our attitude as well.
It should be the attitude which the Apostle Paul expresses in Philippians chapter 4 as
he writes to the dear people in Philippi who had cared so much for him.
He says, I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am.
I know how to get along with humble means and I also know how to live in prosperity.
In any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry,
both of having abundance and suffering need.
I can do all things through him who strengthens me.
That is David's attitude.
It may be that you are facing a period of demotion in your life.
You're losing out on some things that have been yours or perhaps should be yours.
You know what it is to be kicked down the ladder.
How are you responding to it?
I have another friend who has experienced this in his life.
His place, his company for which he worked was sold to a larger corporation and twice
he was one of the executives who was axed.
And today he no longer goes to church.
He lives at home encapsulated in bitterness of heart because of the severe test of demotion
in his life.
My friend, all of us go through periods like that.
It is important that during those times our faith passed the test.
Test number five is found in verses 17 through 19.
Saul said to David, here is my older daughter Mirab.
I will give her to you as a wife.
May be a valiant man for me and fight the Lord's battles for Saul thought my hand shall
not be against him but let the hand of the Philistines be against him.
But David said to Saul, who am I and what is my life for my father's family in Israel
that I should be the king's son-in-law.
So it came about at the time when Mirab, Saul's daughter, should have been given to David.
She was given to Adriel the Moholythite for a wife.
This test is the test of disappointment.
Saul apparently had promised in those days when Goliath was challenging the armies that
whoever would defeat that giant would be given the hand of his eldest daughter.
It appears that that involved an implied right to the throne should something happen to the
sons of Saul.
If his sons should not follow him to the throne, that is if they should somehow be killed perhaps,
it seems as though the husband of his eldest daughter would have the next right to the
throne.
Thus Saul initially seemed to be keeping his word to David and he offered the hand of his
eldest daughter to him.
David was reluctant because he was not the first born in his family.
Indeed, he was the youngest and his was not a great family in Israel.
Saul for some reason took advantage of that and gave the hand of his daughter to another
man even though it had been promised to David.
Thus David suffered a disappointment here.
All of us go through periods like that, don't we?
When someone says something to us and then they don't come through.
Folks, we cannot allow our faith to depend upon the word of another person.
If we do, we will surely fall into disappointment.
In fact, the Lord seems to take this disappointment in David's life and turn it for good.
For in chapter 19, verses 11-17, we learn that the wife that he did receive from Saul,
Michael, saved his life on a certain occasion.
And so God took this disappointment in marrying Michael instead of Mirab and brought good
out of it in that David's life was later spared through Michael.
Sad to say, however, the union beyond that seems to have been a very, very unhappy one.
During this time of disappointment, we do not see David collapsing.
Every evidence from scripture is that he trusted God during that time.
Can you trust God in your disappointment?
Whatever it is that has come into your life that has caused your bubble to be burst, can
you look to the Lord and say, Lord, I don't understand it.
I'm disappointed in my emotions, but I want you to know that my faith is firmly fixed,
that you are in control.
It may be that you've been complaining to the Lord, or perhaps you've been enjoying
a pity party for yourself.
Will you tonight turn to the Lord and say, forgive me, and thank him that in that disappointment
he is working in some way for your good?
There's one final test that we want to look at, and that is found in verses 20 through
29.
Michael, Saul's daughter, loved David, and they told Saul, and the thing was agreeable
to him.
And Saul thought, I will give her to him, that she may become a snare to him, and that
the hand of the Philistines may be against him.
And so he seems to renew here his scheme from before.
Notice what he says.
Therefore, Saul said to David, a second time you may be my son-in-law today.
Saul commanded his servants, speak to David secretly, saying, Behold, the king delights
in you, and all his servants love you.
Now therefore, become the king's son-in-law.
In other words, he began to scheme through his servants to get David to say yes to this
marriage.
So Saul's servants spoke these words to David secretly.
But David said, Is it trivial in your sight to become the king's son-in-law, since I am
a poor man and lightly esteemed?
In other words, he's saying, I don't have the proper dowry for the king's daughter.
I'm a poor man.
The servants of Saul reported to him according to these words which David spoke.
That was what Saul wanted to hear.
So Saul then said, Thus you shall say to David, The king does not desire any dowry except
a hundred foreskins of the Philistines to take vengeance on the king's enemies.
Now Saul planned to make David fall by the hand of the Philistines.
When his servants told David these words, it pleased David to become the king's son-in-law.
Before the days had expired, David rose up and went, he and his men, and struck down
two hundred men among the Philistines.
Then David brought their foreskins and they gave them in full number to the king that
he might become the king's son-in-law.
So Saul gave him, Michael, his daughter, for a wife.
The test that David faced here is the test of deceit.
For it is clear that the real point in this was the maneuvering, the intrigue in the court
of Saul to cause David to be either killed by the Philistines in the initial battle or
to cause him to be so hated and despised by the Philistines that they would hunt him down.
And so there was deceit to get David to be killed.
David may or may not have been aware of all that was taking place behind the scenes.
But nonetheless, in this time when deceit was being used against him, his faith in the
Lord remained strong.
Despite the motives, despite the sin of Saul, David's faith persevered.
His faith was not affected by the motives of the king.
Is your faith ever affected by the motives of someone else?
Perhaps you learn something about them or you hear something about them and that causes
your faith to be put in the test.
Maybe you learn that someone has been dishonest with you or has tried to deceive you to accomplish
their own good.
Does that cause your faith to collapse or does that cause your faith to become even
stronger?
In this test of deceit, David passed with flying colors and God blessed him.
It says in verse 28, when Saul saw and knew that the Lord was with David and that Michael
Saul's daughter loved him, then Saul was even more afraid of David.
Thus, Saul was David's enemy continually.
Saul was so sure this scheme was going to work and David would be off his hands and
out of the picture, no longer a threat, that when he came back with twice the evidence
he demanded of the Philistines being killed, he was even more afraid of David because he
knew that the hand of God was upon that young man.
In verse 30 it says, then the commanders of the Philistines went out to battle and it
happened as often as they went out, that David behaved himself more wisely than all the servants
of Saul and so his name was highly esteemed.
And so are the blessings of the man who walks by faith.
I don't know what test you may be facing in your life, but this I can say to you without
fear of contradiction, that we need never be afraid of the tests that God puts us through.
So we can do what James exhorts us to do, we can count it all joy when we fall into
various kinds of trials.
And why?
Because we know that God is using that to produce perseverance, patience in our lives.
God is putting a foundation under us by the tests that we pass through.
What does it work in your life tonight in the tests in which you find yourself?
We also need not be afraid of the tests because God has made a way of escape, as he puts it
in 1 Corinthians 10, 13.
That does not mean that we're going to have an escape hatch to the test itself necessarily,
though that may be so.
But if we don't have that kind of an escape, God has promised us grace in the trial, so
there is that kind of an escape.
Furthermore, we are told in that verse that God carefully monitors the tests that we pass
through so that they do not surpass our capacity to endure them.
We can never legitimately say to God, you have put more on me than I could bear because
God just doesn't do that.
He doesn't do it.
Therefore we need not be afraid when the tests come to us.
The pastor of this church where I was this last week is a dear brother in Christ.
When he went to that little church in New Hampshire where he is serving the Lord, he
had a very difficult beginning to the ministry, which I will not go into tonight.
But it was a period of time when some men would have thrown in the towel and said, this
isn't worth it.
But he persevered through that test.
He hung in there as it were, and God caused him to grow and bless that ministry.
And then last December, he passed through a different kind of test.
Their young daughter came running into the bedroom where mom and dad were and they said,
something's wrong with Eric.
He's sick.
Eric was their eight-year-old son.
They came into the living room where he was, and Eric was unconscious.
They could not awaken him.
They of course called the ambulance, tried to keep him breathing, his heart beating.
They rushed Eric to the hospital, and they were able to reestablish a heartbeat, but
only briefly, and Eric died.
Eric died.
They're an eight-year-old boy, that fast, not sick a day in his life.
They discovered that he had an aneurysm that burst suddenly, and he was gone.
That happened in December, and I'll be quite honest with you, when I was talking to him
this week, it was all I could do to keep my tears back, because I felt so much for Dan
and Sheila.
But you know, it blessed me to see their faith.
Even after all they'd been through in trying to get that struggling church up on its feet,
they passed into the deepest valley that any parents can enter into, and they have come
through that valley with their faith intact and victorious.
God has not laid upon them more than they can endure, and he has given them grace.
I don't know what test you may be facing, but I know this, that God is there with you,
and he will not fail you.
As we shall see in the weeks ahead, David did not always pass his tests, but these he
did.
David's heart was to follow the Lord wherever he led.
Like Abraham, his ancestor, he too looked for a city whose builder and maker was God.
He had the long-distance vision, the eternal perspective, and did not focus his life on
the things and the circumstances of this life.
I hope tonight that in our faith and in our walk with God, we can do the same.
Let's pray.
With our heads bowed and our eyes closed, I wonder if where you are sitting there, you
have to honestly say, yes, I have been in a period of testing.
It may be one of the tests we have talked about tonight, or it may be a totally different
kind.
You want to say by the uplifted hand, Pastor Cole, I want you to know that in this test
God is being faithful, and my faith is strong in him.
Could you lift your hand to that?
Not as a testimony to you, but to God.
Amen.
I praise God for that.
That's marvelous.
Yes.
But I wonder if there is someone here who would say, Pastor Cole, I too am in a test,
but I have not been very victorious.
My faith hasn't been intact, and I failed.
Oh, my friend, how much the Lord loves you, even in your failure.
And we have all been there.
We have all been there.
Will you by the uplifted hand say, Pastor, pray for me that my faith may be restored
and be healthy again, that I may pass this test in which I am and not fail it completely?
How about it?
Would you lift your hand to that?
Yes.
A number of you.
God bless you.
Father, by faith tonight we say thank you for the tests of our faith.
And I pray especially for these dear ones who are experiencing difficulty and whose faith
perhaps has failed or is faltering.
Would you tonight undergird and restore that loved one of yours?
Would you draw him or her close to yourself so that they'll be able to feel your heart
of love beating for them?
Father, would you undergird them with your eternal arms of love and tenderness and draw
them close so that tonight they may begin again a walk of faith, trusting you in the
midst of this trial?
Thank you for meeting with us tonight and for instructing us from the life of David.
In Jesus' name, amen.