Sunday February 10th, 2008
Series: the Fight is on part 6
Scripture: II Samuel 21:15-17
Sermon: Goliath Had Family
Speaker: Pastor Michael West
Let me give you the scenario: you are in a battle. It’s about sickness, oppression, or some other awful thing that you are just plain sick and tired of dealing with over and over. It’s a struggle, but you have continued to seek God and finally in some way the grace of God breaks through into your life, into the battle and you have a victory.
Your victory came by way of prayer or perhaps a word of encouragement in due season, but you absolutely know for a fact that the Lord delivered you. It may have take your five smooth stones of grace to get it and defeat it, but you did none-the-less. Your goliath is down.
But then, a few weeks, days, months, even years later, wham—there that sucker is again. Those ugly symptoms have suddenly returned with a vengeance and the sickness seems worse than ever, that relationship is in the worst storm thought possible, the progress you made now seems as if you took one baby step instead of a leap, it seems that all that progress you made is gone and you are back at square one again.
Anybody been there??
All this negative gobble-dee-gook is like one big sponge sucking the life right out of you, then rings you out without mercy flushing everything you’ve hoped for down the drain.
You tend to lose faith and the anticipation of power, you get a spiritual paralysis down to the core of your being.
You still attend church, but your faith is unresponsive. Others around are talking deliverance, but inside you secretly think that they too will lose their healing.
For many it’s a faith shaking disillusionment—It is sad not to get what you hoped for. But wishes that come true are like eating fruit from the tree of life.
Proverbs 13:12
This heartsickness is a crippling spiritual disease. It cripples one’s walk with God, but it can be cured, if you want the remedy and will take the medicine.
Remember what Faith is? The substance of things hoped for.
If you lose hope, your faith becomes hollow and how can you then trust God when it seems as though He has let you down? That is the moment when we doubt and ask, did it really happen?
Did I lose my breakthrough? Or did I just deceive myself into thinking I had one but it wasn’t real? I never had it in the first place…
Let me tell you, it is very possible that what you are experiencing is not a loss of God’s provision or miracle, or breakthrough, but what you are facing is another spiritual battle.
A new war. A new enemy to replace the last and this time it brought friends and they are out to wear you down and out so Satan can get a hold of your life again.
Remember, Goliath had family and there is nothing worse than a family feud like a Hatfield and McCoy feud. They want revenge for the death of their dear departed “big guy” who was slain with one of your faith stones.
David became a great hero by trusting God and defeating the giant Goliath—-Do you know Goliath’s last words? "Nothing like this has ever hit my head before"—— but later on four of the giants, even Goliath’s own children and brothers, came to attack David again.
After defeating a giant once, David had to do it again and these creeps probably even looked like Goliath—after all they were descendants. They had a smell like Goliath, and probably fought like him as well. Perhaps they even wore helmets this time, just in case they might catch a stone with their heads.
II Samuel 21:15-22
David even got weary at all this. He got tired. The Bible doesn’t say how what David was actually going through that was wearing him out, but I sure he must have though how long is this going to go on? Didn’t I get rid of this guy once? Why are these people bothering me? I am sick of this.
And so you have had many victories and plenty to tell of what God has brought you through, but just because the current giant you face today looks and smells as bad as the one before, don’t buy the lie it’s the same guy—that one is bound and reserved for the judgment day.
By the strength of God’s grace you, you trusted and defeated your goliath, this thing you are in now, trust God again today and it will have to go as well.
Goliath didn’t get raised from the dead because he was not only slain, but his head was plucked off from it’s shoulders.
What is one of Satan’s titles? Father of lies. He is a deceiver. If he can get you to think and then believe nothing really happened and this is the same former giant you faced once, then you will get hope sick and feel defeated.
It’s just the devils friends masquerading as your former enemy so they can slip past your faith—why do you think Ephesians 6 was written?
Wear your armor. Our faith is the victory that overcomes the world—everyone who is a child of God conquers the world. And this is the victory that conquers the world—our faith.
So the one who wins against the world is the person who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.
I John 5:4-5
II Samuel 22
