Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] You're listening to a live recording from Westside Church in Bend, Oregon. Thanks for joining us.
[00:00:06] Hi, everybody.
[00:00:08] I'm Evan. I'm the other senior pastor. And it's great to be with you this. This morning. Today, we're talking about David and Goliath. We've been going through famous stories in the Old Testament. Maybe if you grew up going to Sunday school or church, you heard these stories. And so we've been revisiting these stories and looking for how Jesus shows up in the text and the narrative in the Old Testament. And I think there is probably no more famous Old Testament story than David and Goliath.
[00:00:36] And this is appropriate because I am in somewhat of a David and Goliath situation myself, as this week, I am facing off with Pastor Ben in fantasy football.
[00:00:49] Ben gets up here every week and he speaks knowledgeably about football.
[00:00:53] I know nothing. Okay. He sets up the league. I think that is kind of rigged, but he sets up the league. And then, you know, each week, your team, your roster goes against somebody else's. And this week happens to be Pastor Ben and I's. And it's not looking good for me. I just can't be honest. It's not looking good. And so as we talk about David and Goliath, would you just pray for me?
[00:01:16] And by the way, I will say this just visually, if anyone is ever going to play Goliath in a musical or a play, wouldn't it be Pastor Ben?
[00:01:28] Just saying. And it is so dangerous to pick on Ben because he's going to be up here with a mic in just a few minutes, and it's a dangerous thing to do. But Ben kind of looks like a Philistine anyway. Going to leave it there. All right.
[00:01:40] You know the story. The Israelite armies under the leadership of King Saul are facing down their enemies, their sworn enemies, the Philistines. And they've been at war. And it comes to this very dramatic moment in a dramatic place.
[00:01:54] The geography is such that on one hill in the valley of Elah is the Israelite army, and across the valley on the other hill are the Philistines. And if one of these armies was much, much stronger than the other, it would not be a standoff. That army would just sweep down into the valley, go up into the enemy's camp, and the battle would be over. But that is not the case.
[00:02:20] The Israelites under Saul and the Philistines are locked in a deadlock. And nobody wants to take their armies and expose their armies to the valley floor and then fight an uphill battle as they would attack their opponent. And so there they stand for months waiting to see what happens.
[00:02:39] And in response to this, the Philistines decide to do something that was common in ancient warfare, which was to send a champion out in the middle of these two armies down on the valley floor and to challenge hand to hand comb to settle this war.
[00:02:56] And this is where we pick up the story of David and Goliath. First Samuel 17, Goliath stood and shouted to the ranks of Israel, why do you come at me and line up for battle? Am I not a Philistine? And are you not the servants of Saul? The Bible describes Goliath as being very, very tall. In the earliest manuscripts, which are the Dead Sea Scrolls, it says he's about 6, 9. In later manuscripts it actually says he's about 9ft. Regardless, he's a big dude, okay? He's scary.
[00:03:24] He's covered in bronze armor with a javelin and a sword.
[00:03:30] He's got so much stuff on that he has to bring a servant to carry his shield for him. This is an intimidating and by design, fear inducing display of power.
[00:03:41] So Goliath begins to taunt the Israelite army and he says, choose a man and have him come down to me. If he is able to fight and kill me, we will become your servants. But if I overcome him and kill him, you will become our subjects and serve us. And for 40 days, the Philistine came forward every morning and evening and took his stand. And whenever the Israelites saw the man, they all fled from him in great fear.
[00:04:06] Goliath's primary tactic, his main strategy, is one of fear.
[00:04:13] The author, Malcolm Gladwell, wrote a book called David and Goliath. And he proposes that actually what potentially caused the height of Goliath could possibly have been a tumor on his pituitary gland.
[00:04:29] It's an actual condition that causes not only incredible height, but also very poor vision.
[00:04:37] And so what?
[00:04:39] It's a fascinating passage and look at this. But what Malcolm Gladwell proposes is that what Goliath is doing is he is leaning on his strengths to make these taunts and create fear. But he has some vulnerabilities and weaknesses that are very real that David is about to exploit, which is fascinating.
[00:05:00] So the story goes on.
[00:05:02] David is the son, the youngest son of a man named Jesse. They live in a nearby village called Bethlehem of Christmas fame.
[00:05:13] And so Jesse has seven sons that are in the army. So he sends his youngest son David to the front lines with supplies.
[00:05:22] Now, in ancient warfare, these are not, well, resourced armies that have plenty of food for all their men. And so if you wanted your guys to stay strong and healthy, you'd have to send supplies to the front lines from home. And so he loads up David with flour and cheese.
[00:05:39] Come on, somebody. Aren't we glad when cheese shows up in the narrative of Scripture?
[00:05:44] Like, two things I'm looking for in the Old Testament. Where does Jesus show up, and where's the cheese?
[00:05:50] I just. I love cheese.
[00:05:54] So David is sent to the front lines to support his brothers. And when he gets there, he sees what's going on. And he sees this giant standing in the valley every morning and every evening, taunting of the Israelites.
[00:06:07] And something in David is not only offended by the taunts of the giant towards the army, but he's offended that the giant would be allowed to stand and offend God himself.
[00:06:24] And so his response is something really profound. For someone who has not seen battle, who is not part of the army, who is the youngest in his family, and who has just shown up to deliver the cheese.
[00:06:36] He declares boldly in verse 26, he says, who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God?
[00:06:46] I just. I hope that there is something in me that when the world is breaking, that something would rise up in me and rise up in you? Not to lash out at other people that are made in the image of God, but to rise up against those things that. That stand in opposition to the way of the coming of the kingdom of God.
[00:07:13] When things like mercy and compassion and righteousness and justice and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, when those things are opposed, there should be something that rises up in us that says, who dares defy the way of the living God?
[00:07:33] David has this thing that rises up in him when he sees Goliath taunting, and he goes to the King. In verse 32, David said to Saul, let no one lose heart on account of this Philistine. Your servant will go and fight him. And Saul replied very logically, you are not able to go out against the Philistine and fight him. You are only a young man. And he has been a warrior from his youth.
[00:07:56] Verse 34. But David said to Saul, your servant has been keeping his father's sheep.
[00:08:02] So that answers it.
[00:08:05] That's David's response to, you have no chance against that intense, tall, strong warrior. He says, well, I've been with the sheep.
[00:08:17] I'm a shepherd. But then he goes on and he explains. He says, when a lion or bear came and carried off the sheep from the flock. I went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it, and killed it. Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear. And this uncircumcised Philistine will be. He really focuses on the uncircumcised part, doesn't he? Keeps bringing it up.
[00:08:40] This uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them because he has defied the armies of the living God, the Lord, who rescued me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will rescue me from the hand of this Philistine. And Saul said to David, go, the Lord be with you.
[00:08:56] And then what happens is Saul tries to put his own armor, the king's armor, on David, and it doesn't fit. It weighs him down. He's not used to it. He can barely walk under the weight of this armor. And so he says, I can't go like this.
[00:09:12] So he takes off Saul's armor, and instead he takes the tools of the shepherd. He takes a staff in his hand and his sling in the other, and he goes down and he finds five smooth stones from the brooks, and he puts him in his shepherd's bag. And then he goes and faces Goliath.
[00:09:32] And this is such a key principle in the way of Jesus that we are all pursuing in our faith is that we don't put on somebody else's tools for the battle, that God has maybe positioned you and brought you to a place in your life where he has equipped you in the way that you need to face the giants that you face. And I've preached from David and Goliath many, many times for many, many years. And I remember years and years ago speaking this to a group of middle school students, you know, and you're like, so whatever giants you face. And you're like, what giants are you facing? And some kids, like, I got a C on a quiz.
[00:10:09] Okay, yeah, that's a giant. Or, you know, I didn't get invited to homecoming. Okay? These are the giants that we're facing. And listen, I have lots of compassion on middle schoolers. I love middle school. I have a middle schooler that lives in my house right now.
[00:10:25] But we know this, that as life goes on and some kids are facing incredible odds that are stacked against them.
[00:10:32] And many of you in this room, like, we're facing things that look like they could be the end of us.
[00:10:40] The giants who face are not trivial.
[00:10:43] They're not meaningless. It's not like, oh, I'm having kind of a rough day. No. We face real and threatening giants that induce fear and panic and anxiety all the time.
[00:10:57] And the tools that we are given to look these giants in the eye with confidence, not in our own ability, but in the God whom we serve, like David, it will not come because we've stolen armor and stolen methods and tactics from some other place. We walk in the way that God has. Has brought us to this place. And this is so key for the life of David that when he gets to the front line, what gives him the courage to say to Saul, I will be the one that goes and faces this giant down. Was not that he just woke up that day and decided, you know, maybe I'll try trusting God. It was because he had spent months and years in the pasture with those sheep, learning in complete obscurity, far from the gaze of the armies that would laud him after he kills Goliath long before he gets there, he spends years in the pasture faithfully tending the ground that God had given him to tend.
[00:11:56] And it's in that faithfulness and that serving, in the thing that he was given to do by his father as he's out caring for these sheep, that he learns what it is to trust in God.
[00:12:08] When he sees a bear and a lion, it's in those moments where God begins to prove that he is able to provide and to strike down those things that oppose him.
[00:12:19] So by the time that David gets to the front line and sees the giant, he's not starting from a clean slate. He has experience that tells him that the God that was with him in the past year is the God that will be with him in the valley.
[00:12:31] And so I would encourage you, don't skip over the past year season if you feel like, you know, spending time and really diving into your faith and giving yourself over to prayer and giving yourself over to be formed in the way of Jesus. If you feel like that's a waste of time and we'd be better off just, like, going out and cracking some heads, you know, getting some giants down. I want to tell you that this is your training in the secret place, pursuing God and allowing your faith to be shaped in the way of Jesus. This is what will train you to trust him when the stakes are high.
[00:13:08] And if I could say it this way, I think this is point one.
[00:13:12] Trust is training.
[00:13:15] Learning to trust God in the pasture season is the training you're gonna need to face the giants that are before us.
[00:13:22] Trust is training.
[00:13:24] Don't skip over the pasture season that God has placed you in. It might feel trivial or it might feel like small things, that God has placed you in your job or in your career, or in what you're called to be, in your family or amongst your friends. And in these small and quiet places, God is asking you to serve faithfully in the ground that he has placed you on, to learn what it is to trust Him.
[00:13:52] The second thing we learn about this story is that what seems weak is actually strong.
[00:13:59] We keep reading the story.
[00:14:01] David goes down and meets Goliath. And then in verse 45, David said to the Philistine, you come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied this day. The Lord will deliver you into my hands and I'll strike you down and cut off your head. PG. 13 warning. This very day I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds and the wild animals, and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel. And all those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the Lord saves for the battle as the Lord's, and he will give all of you into our hands. David does something really, really smart here.
[00:14:42] He shifts the comparison between Goliath's strength and his own strength, and he begins to compare Goliath's strength to God's strength. And when you do that, it deflates the fear that the giant needs for you to be weak and to fail.
[00:14:57] As long as David is caught in the fear that has has taken over Saul and Saul's camp, Goliath has a really good shot. But the second that that fear is deflated when David begins to compare the strength of Goliath to the strength of Almighty God, David now has the clarity and the confidence to do what David is actually really good at, which is to use a sling and a stone to take out what stands in front of him.
[00:15:20] Fear is the thing that will keep David shaky. Fear is the thing that will make David, who is expert with this tool, fail.
[00:15:31] And so by comparing the greatness of Goliath to the much greater greatness of Almighty God, what he does is he allows David to stand firm and confident in the moment of the battle.
[00:15:43] And this is something that actually gives David the advantage.
[00:15:50] One historian wrote about this, about how David actually, without the armor, nimble and fast and agile compared to the slow, heavy way that Goliath was approaching this hand to hand combat at a distance. David had the advantage. He says Goliath had as much chance against David as any Bronze Age warrior with a sword would have against an opponent with an automatic pistol.
[00:16:15] David was good at this.
[00:16:17] And so what looks at at first glance like weakness actually becomes David's strength.
[00:16:24] We finish the story here.
[00:16:27] As the Philistine moved closer to attack him, David ran quickly towards the battle line to meet him. Reaching into his bag and taking out a stone, he slung it and struck the Philistine on the forehead. The stone sank into the forehead and he fell face down on the ground. So David triumphed over the Philistine with a sling of stone and without a sword in his hand, he struck down the Philistine and killed him. And David ran and stood over him. He took hold of the Philistine sword and drew it from his sheath. And after he killed him, he cut off his head with the sword. And when the Philistines saw that their hero was dead, they turned and ran. Then the men of Israel and Judah surged forward with a shout and pursued Philistines to the entrance of Gath and to the gates of Ekron.
[00:17:05] Man, we love underdog stories, don't we?
[00:17:08] And, I mean, there's no more famous underdog story than David and Goliath.
[00:17:14] Some of the stories you might think of, a lot of them, you know, our favorite movies come to mind of these underdog stories, I was thinking back to the 90s when I was growing up as a kid. You remember Cool Runnings?
[00:17:29] Jamaica's got a bobsled team. Such a great.
[00:17:34] Was that John Candy?
[00:17:36] Yeah.
[00:17:38] If you're not into bobsledding, how about this one, babe?
[00:17:42] The Pig.
[00:17:44] That'll do. Pig.
[00:17:46] That'll do. Yeah. See, if you were more into that, I might do the whole. Bahram you. Bahram you to your house, your sheep be true. Sheep be true. Bahram you. I won't do that. Because it seems like he doesn't like that movie. So we love underdogs. I mean, as a nation, maybe some of you are old enough to remember miracle on ice, 1980, right? Soviets are hands down the favorite to win hockey and usa. Come on. We come out and we defeat the Soviet Union. I mean, this is like, we love these stories. This is what makes us rally and feel just such inspiration, right? When someone rises from obscurity like David, he's overlooked and he's the youngest and he's too small and he's kept far from the battle, yet he rises up and he slays Goliath and then becomes king. We love these stories of underdogs.
[00:18:42] And anytime we read these stories, often what we want to do is we want to put ourselves in the shoes of the underdog, Right? This is very natural. I did it about fantasy football. How stupid was that?
[00:18:56] But we wanna put ourselves in the shoes of the underdog. But as we've been discussing, when we look at the stories of the Old Testament, we're actually not looking for ourselves in the story as much as we're looking for who.
[00:19:08] For Jesus.
[00:19:11] So when we look at the story of David and Goliath, the temptation might be to say, like, where are the giants that I need to go face? That I need to have the confidence and I need to have the courage.
[00:19:23] And when. Surely we can learn lessons about what it is to trust God and what it is to take on the tools that he's given us and not anybody else, how our weakness can be made strong in him. But I think the story that we find Jesus in, in this passage is actually that this is true for me and I think it's true for you. That there are giants that we will face that are just too big for our faith to hold up under that we're gonna face things that we look at and we say, david might have courage for this. David might trust in God for this. I don't know if I can.
[00:19:57] I don't know if I can stand up against that diagnosis. I don't know if I can look at my past and where I've been and the mistakes I've made. And I don't know if I can face the future.
[00:20:07] I carry too much shame. We look at the giants that stand in front of us, and oftentimes we come to the conclusion that we don't have what it takes to trust God in the face of these giants.
[00:20:19] And it's in those moments that we need a champion.
[00:20:25] And what we have in Jesus is a champion who stands in the valley on our behalf.
[00:20:31] He is the one who faithfully and perfectly walked to the cross and. And stared down the giants of sin and death and the grave that were too great for us.
[00:20:45] And he looked them in the face and he said, who dares defy the name of the living God?
[00:20:51] And if you remember Jesus, he bows in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night he's betrayed. And he's in this wrestling with the Father, with God. And he says, if there's any way I don't have to do this, please let me out of it. But it's not my will, it's yours that I want done.
[00:21:08] That is the moment when Jesus is standing looking down into the valley, staring at the giant that we will all face and say, I'm gonna go down there for their sake.
[00:21:19] And it's into the valley of the shadow of death that Jesus, our champion, has walked on our behalf.
[00:21:27] And why this gives me confidence is because, man, I hope my faith holds up on the darkest days. I hope I can stare down every giant and say, my hope is not in myself, but it's in the name of the Lord whom I serve. I hope that that is my story. But I know that when my faith fails, I have a champion who's gone before me.
[00:21:51] It was David who famously wrote Psalm 23, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
[00:21:58] Certainly David was writing that, remembering the long days and the long nights, faithfully caring for and loving those sheep.
[00:22:08] And then I can't help but think it's probably after he faces down Goliath that he writes the later verses in Psalms 23 where he says, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil because you are with me.
[00:22:23] Certainly he would have remembered standing on the edge, on that hill overlooking the Valley of Elah, looking down at a giant who more than likely was going to take his life.
[00:22:34] And yet he walked down into that valley knowing he was not alone. And this is our story that the greatest opposition we face to our faith and our hope and our lives, those opposition, that opposition that meets face to face with our champion on the cross, that on the cross, Jesus takes on himself the shame and the humiliation of the cross and what looks like total weakness. And we miss this in our modern understanding of how things work. And we've had 2,000 years of crosses on walls and in paintings that cause us to think of salvation and power and life change when we see the cross and grace. But for the earliest Christians, for those who followed Jesus and walked with him, the cross was not a symbol of power or salvation or the cross was a symbol of humiliation and shame for those who walked with Jesus. To see him crucified on a Roman cross was humiliating and embarrassing.
[00:23:43] If you're working to market a new religion, you don't start in those days with, like, hey, our guy was crucified. Come follow us. It was a laughingstock.
[00:23:53] And so this is why Paul again and again is saying, like, this is foolishness to follow after a crucified Lord.
[00:24:02] But what is so subversive about the way of Jesus is that by embracing the shame and the humiliation of the cross, he flipped it on its head.
[00:24:14] And what was shame and foolishness and embarrassment and humiliation becomes for us the power of God for salvation.
[00:24:22] It's in First Corinthians, chapter one, that Paul would write, for the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. Verse 27. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, and God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. This is what Jesus and his way will lead us into, is to embrace those things that look like weakness so that Christ's power may rest on us.
[00:24:52] And to follow after Jesus is to follow after someone who. In Hebrews, chapter 12, it says, for the joy that was set before him, he endured the cross scorning its shame. He embraced the shame of the cross. Why? Because the joy that was set before him was that you would be free of the shame that would make you feel less valuable and less worthy than everything that he has made you to be.
[00:25:14] And I know this, that millennia after Jesus went to the cross, we are still dealing with shame in our lives.
[00:25:21] This comes up, maybe more than any other thing pastorally when I meet with folks is this gnawing sense that they're not enough and the shame that they're never good enough for God. And that God can never accept and never love them fully and truly because they know what they carry on their hearts and their lives. And it's like a heavy weight. And can I tell you that Paul would tell us today that Jesus went to the cross and embraced its shame so that we would no longer have to live under the weight of it.
[00:25:51] That today the promise of our champion who faces down our giants is one that whatever shame we feel can be thrown off and cast off because he has embraced it and he struck it down.
[00:26:08] I think sometimes we feel like we deserve shame.
[00:26:14] It's because of our mistakes and our bad decisions in our history that the shame has come onto our lives. And it's kind of, well, I deserve this. And this is the price I pay for the life I've lived today. I want you to know that actually shame is a giant that comes to stand against what God has spoken over your life.
[00:26:38] And my response to this sense of I'm not worthy and I'm not good enough. And my response today is the same as David's. Who dares stand against what God has spoken over us today? If we're feeling that shame, the invitation is to throw it off and allow Jesus to face that down today. If we're feeling uncertain and anxious and fearful about what's next, or maybe it's the state of the world today, if we're facing a marriage that's falling apart, an addiction that has got us today, if there are cycles of destructive patterns in your life and you feel like you can't get out and you're drowning under the weight of it, come on. Today we have a champion who stands in the valley of the shadow and faces our giants when we don't have the strength, we have a champion in Jesus.
