Encouraging The Discouraged: David’s Faith In Action - 1 Samuel 17:22-37 Series

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1 Samuel 17:22-37

David left his things with the keeper of supplies, ran to the battle lines and greeted his brothers. 23 As he was talking with them, Goliath, the Philistine champion from Gath, stepped out from his lines and shouted his usual defiance, and David heard it. 24 When the Israelites saw the man, they all ran from him in great fear. 25 Now the Israelites had been saying, "Do you see how this man keeps coming out? He comes out to defy Israel. The king will give great wealth to the man who kills him. He will also give him his daughter in marriage and will exempt his father's family from taxes in Israel." 26 David asked the men standing near him, "What will be done for the man who kills this Philistine and removes this disgrace from Israel? Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God?" 27 They repeated to him what they had been saying and told him, "This is what will be done for the man who kills him." 28 When Eliab, David's oldest brother, heard him speaking with the men, he burned with anger at him and asked, "Why have you come down here? And with whom did you leave those few sheep in the desert? I know how conceited you are and how wicked your heart is; you came down only to watch the battle." 29 "Now what have I done?" said David. "Can't I even speak?" 30 He then turned away to someone else and brought up the same matter, and the men answered him as before. 31 What David said was overheard and reported to Saul, and Saul sent for him. 32 David said to Saul, "Let no one lose heart on account of this Philistine; your servant will go and fight him." 33 Saul replied, "You are not able to go out against this Philistine and fight him; you are only a boy, and he has been a fighting man from his youth." 34 But David said to Saul, "Your servant has been keeping his father's sheep. When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, 35 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. 36 Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living God. 37 The LORD who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine." Saul said to David, "Go, and the LORD be with you."

Review

It is not easy to do something great in a way that glorifies God rather than yourself. When a football player kneels and prays in the end zone and then points upward to God, the headlines in the paper the next day in the sports page are not rave reviews about God. But David – even though what he did showed great courage, great skill, great initiative, great leadership, intelligence, skill, etc - still managed to do it in such a way as to bring honor to God. So one of the most important things we need to learn from this chapter is how to serve God in a way that really does bring attention to Him rather than you.

1 Pe.4:11 If anyone serves, he should do it with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised

How is that done? I believe there are at least three ways that David did it: 1) by his attitude of faith, 2) by his words of faith, and 3) by his actions of faith. The life of faith is behaving, speaking, and feeling in such a way as to show God to be glorious.

Last week we saw that David’s shock and amazement about the fact that a reward was being offered revealed an attitude of faith. He had such God-ward perspective, and God’s promises were so central and so certain in his mind, that for the life of him, he could not understand why anyone would hesitate to go fight a 10-foot tall, battle-tested champion. To get an attitude like that is the most important step, because the actions and words that we are going to talk about today will only come from that kind of attitude. So we must live constantly in the presence of God and have daily experiences of God’s faithfulness in fulfilling His promises.

Trusting promises

Most people who read this chapter marvel at David’s faith – even non-Christians. However most people do not understand what faith actually is. I think the majority of people in our culture probably think faith is synonymous with confidence. But Goliath was confident.