Before Victory Comes Obedience Series

Sermon Brief

Date Written: August 28, 2013

Date Preached: September 1, 2013

Where Preached: OPBC (AM)

Sermon Details:

Series Title: A Series in 1 Samuel

Sermon Title: Facing the Giants of our Time

Sermon Text: 1 Samuel 17 [HCSB]

Introduction:

What are the giants of our time? In our society today, the church faces some ‘giants’ that may seem to be over-whelming!

Things like what is going on with same-sex marriages in our country… it is beginning to look like churches and pastors will run into legal troubles if they attempt to deny same sex marriages from happening in their churches or refusing to officiate them…

Doctors who have sworn the Hippocratic Oath to do NO harm, but with the new health care laws that this administration & congress want force on our country… a doctor cannot deny an abortion and he cannot abstain from performing one…based on his religious conviction.

Things like the laws that have been proposed regarding ‘Hate Crimes’, there are laws proposed that would actually make it a criminal offense to speak out against the homosexual lifestyle because that would be considered hate speech… this would extend into the pulpit as well!

The church is up against what would seem to be enormous GIANTS in our country… in our society…

More and more our society is forcing God out of the public eye and they are even beginning to infringe upon a person’s personal beliefs and convictions…

More and more the State is saying you can’t believe like this or you cannot say this is wrong or that this is the only way…

The secular humanism being shoved down our throats today preaches what they determine as ‘tolerance’ which is not tolerance at all… it is simply believe our way or else... they do NOT tolerate the Christian worldview.

BUT this has ALWAYS been the way it was for Christians, there have been times of peace and non-persecution BUT the church has suffered great persecution in the past and it LOOKS as if persecution for being a Christian will happen again… and IN THIS COUNTRY!

So I would say as a church… as a fellowship we see these things rising over the horizon and we see these giants looming over us and many of us are fearful of what may happen!

But not only are there giants in society, but what the giants in YOUR life?

Maybe you are facing a family situation that you don’t see how things can work out…

Maybe you are facing a health issue that won’t go away or you don’t see a happy ending…

Maybe you are facing a financial crisis so immense that you have lost hope…

We face giants every day in our lives!

This morning we are going to take at the classic story of the taking on a giant! In fact it is this story that is used to this very day to describe the underdog facing and overcoming tremendous odds against them…

But for us here at Oak Park I can point out one very specific ‘giant’ looming in and around our fellowship! This is a giant that has ‘bullied’ us for many years. This is a giant that has many names and many faces…

We know him as the changing community… this place is not what it USED to be…

We know him as the shrinking congregation…people just don’t want to come, we don’t have anything to offer people!

We also know him as smaller offerings…we cannot afford to do ministry, we can barely keep the lights on!

We also know him by the name of ‘not enough volunteers…’ – Have you ever heard of the 90-10 rule? It is where 90% of the work gets done by 10%of the people/members… it leads to burnout and discontentment!

This giant of many faces is looming around many churches, and he is threatening our fellowship! Many of us may look at him and say, “WE JUST CAN’T BEAT HIM!”

We may think, "We cannot minister to this community, we are too different from them!"

We may think that we don’t have enough people to do ministry that we need more people in our congregation before we can be effective in to ministry;

We may believe that we cannot minster to this community because we don't have enought $$...

We just CANNOT beat this giant!!

This giant places great fear & dread in the hearts of our members! This giant causes great disappointment & leads to a sense of hopelessness when it comes to our church growing back to the levels where it once used to be!

In the past, Oak Park represented Christ well BUT as a fellowship today we cannot focus or pine for the past… BUT we ALSO cannot continue to focus on this ‘giant’ that is looming here in the present!