Exercising Faith, Experiencing God’s Power
Facing Your Giants
1 Samuel 17:1-50
We are never too young to experience God’s Power
To Experience God’s Power…
…We must exercise faith with humility
…We must exercise faith with courage
…We must exercise faith with the gifts we already have
…We must exercise faith for the glory of the Lord
Intro
Announcements/Giving
Slide
Well, I am glad that you are here at our Family Sunday. I always enjoy when our kids are with us. It is a great opportunity for all of us parents to example to them our worship to the Lord through our own singing and through hearing and responding to the Word of God as it is preached.
This morning we are going to talk about something that I believe each of us want, yet are unsure how to experience.
And that is God’s Power.
Now when I say God’s power, what comes to your mind?
I think some people think that God’s power is like having magic powers to do things like we see in the movie Bruce Almighty.
I’ve Got the Power video clip
Slide after video
That is not what I am talking about.
What I am talking about is God’s power as it works in us and through us to accomplish mighty and awesome things that apart from His work in us, would be impossible for us.
How can we Experience God’s power working in us and through us?
Well, today we are going to look at the story of David and Goliath, and seek to find out how we might experience God’s power working through each of us like it did in David.
Turn with me to 1 Samuel 17.
Slide
I want us to see today how no matter who we are, we can experience God’s power and be able to defeat our own Giants.
Now, as we begin the story of David and Goliath found in 1 Samuel 17, we find the armies of Israel and the Philistines squaring off against one another.
And beginning in 1 Samuel 17:4
1 Samuel 17:4-11, 16
4 A champion named Goliath, who was from Gath, came out of the Philistine camp. He was over nine feet tall. 5 He had a bronze helmet on his head and wore a coat of scale armor of bronze weighing five thousand shekels; 6 on his legs he wore bronze greaves, and a bronze javelin was slung on his back. 7 His spear shaft was like a weaver’s rod, and its iron point weighed six hundred shekels. His shield bearer went ahead of him.
8 Goliath stood and shouted to the ranks of Israel, "Why do you come out and line up for battle? Am I not a Philistine, and are you not the servants of Saul? Choose a man and have him come down to me. 9 If he is able to fight and kill me, we will become your subjects; but if I overcome him and kill him, you will become our subjects and serve us." 10 Then the Philistine said, "This day I defy the ranks of Israel! Give me a man and let us fight each other." 11 On hearing the Philistine’s words, Saul and all the Israelites were dismayed and terrified…
16 For forty days the Philistine came forward every morning and evening and took his stand.
Now imagine this scene for a second.
Someone 9 feet tall, a giant, provoking you, taunting you, and the reality is that you have nobody in your army that can take him out.
Some may say you could pull and Indiana Jones on him.
What’s that you ask?
Indiana Jones clip – Guns are better than swords
Slide after clip
Well, you need to remember that this is in an age when there are no guns. Yes you could use weapons that you threw, but Goliath’s defenses, were such that it would have little effect and throwing weapons were not very accurate at all.
You had to have someone that could go at him in hand to hand combat.
This is why Saul and his army were “dismayed and terrified” and this went on for 40 days, day in and day out.
Facing our own Giants
Now, while we probably aren’t facing a 9 foot tall giant who wants to kill us, many of us are facing what seems to be a problem in our life that is impossible to defeat and it seems like each day, it is there to mock us.
Lack of a job
Maybe the giant you are facing is your lack of a job.
You get up everyday to go look for a job, but it seems the want ads taunt you. You are under qualified, You are over qualified.
It seems you have filled out a thousand job applications and yet you still can’t defeat this giant of unemployment.
School – Bullies or unpopular
Maybe your giant is at school. Maybe you aren’t the most popular kid at school. Maybe you are someone who has been bullied or picked on. Maybe you are someone whom the other girls have ridiculed and you just can’t seem to make friends. Going to school each day is overwhelming. Maybe you feel dismayed and terrified.
Addiction
Maybe your giant is some addiction. Drinking, smoking, drugs of some kind. You didn’t start out to get addicted. It just seemed to happen. Now the thought of overcoming and quitting is scary. It would be hard, very hard. You feel you don’t have the strength to defeat this Giant, so you just cower in fear of it and it continues to defeat you.
Hope with the Lord
I want to offer you hope today that facing the giants in your life is possible with the help of the Lord.
We may not have the strength to overcome on our own, but as we exercise the faith we have been given, we can experience God’s power and face and defeat the giants in our life.
Let’s continue reading and see what we can learn from David’s battle with this Giant and how he experienced God’s power.
In this story we find that David is the youngest of 8 sons. His 3 oldest brothers were with Saul fighting against the Philistines.
David was not old enough to fight and he was back caring for the families sheep. David’s father, Jesse, used to send David to the battle lines to bring his brothers some supplies along with something for their commander as well.
1 Samuel 17:20
20 Early in the morning David left the flock with a shepherd, loaded up and set out, as Jesse had directed. He reached the camp as the army was going out to its battle positions, shouting the war cry. 21 Israel and the Philistines were drawing up their lines facing each other. 22 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."
38 Then Saul dressed David in his own tunic. He put a coat of armor on him and a bronze helmet on his head. 39 David fastened on his sword over the tunic and tried walking around, because he was not used to them.
"I cannot go in these," he said to Saul, "because I am not used to them." So he took them off. 40 Then he took his staff in his hand, chose five smooth stones from the stream, put them in the pouch of his shepherd’s bag and, with his sling in his hand, approached the Philistine.
41 Meanwhile, the Philistine, with his shield bearer in front of him, kept coming closer to David. 42 He looked David over and saw that he was only a boy, ruddy and handsome, and he despised him. 43 He said to David, "Am I a dog, that you come at me with sticks?" And the Philistine cursed David by his gods. 44 "Come here," he said, "and I’ll give your flesh to the birds of the air and the beasts of the field!"
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. 46 This day the LORD will hand you over to me, and I’ll strike you down and cut off your head. Today I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth, and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel. 47 All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the LORD saves; for the battle is the LORD’s, and he will give all of you into our hands."
48 As the Philistine moved closer to attack him, David ran quickly toward the battle line to meet him. 49 Reaching into his bag and taking out a stone, he slung it and struck the Philistine on the forehead. The stone sank into his forehead, and he fell facedown on the ground.
50 So David triumphed over the Philistine with a sling and a stone; without a sword in his hand he struck down the Philistine and killed him.
Pray
This morning there are several lessons that I would like each of us to learn about Exercising faith and experiencing God’s power in our lives to defeat the giants that we may face.
The first is that
We are never too young to experience God’s Power
Slide
This morning, I want our powerzone kids, as well as our jr. high and high school students to know that you don’t have to wait until you are an adult to exercise faith or experience God’s power.
I think we believe that we can only be used by God if we are older.
We may think we need more skills.
We may think we need more experience.
We may not have all the skills as people older than us.
We may not have all the experience of those who are more mature, either, But that does not discount us from being used by God.
Throughout the Bible and throughout history, young people have been used in powerful ways by the Lord.
David
In our story from today, David was only a boy.
1 Samuel 17:33
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."
David was facing a man who was 9 feet tall and he was only a boy (perhaps in his early to mid teens).
But David exercised faith as a boy and he experienced God’s power in defeating Goliath
Timothy
In the New Testament, Paul’s companion Timothy was also young. Paul told him in
1 Timothy 4:12 - Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity.
Just because you are young, don’t think that God can’t use you or that you can’t experience God’s power to do amazing things.
Youth missions trip – kids step out in faith
LWN Bible study – girls step out in faith
We will have to wait and see what God does though this study, but these kids are stepping out in faith.
Jesus said in
Matthew 17:20
I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ’Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you."
It is though exercising our faith that we are able to experience God’s power through us.
But there are some specifics that we need to know in exercising our faith. It is not just believing something in our heads, but exercising that faith in specific ways.
What are those ways?
Well, first, we see through the story of David and Goliath, that
To Experience God’s Power…
…We must exercise faith with humility
Slide
David recognized that it was not he who was able to defeat the giant. He recognized that it was the Lord who had delivered him before.
He recognized that it would be the Lord who fought this battle as well.
1 Samuel 17:34-37, 45-46a
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."
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. 46 This day the LORD will hand you over to me
David did not think more highly of himself than he ought. But he did think very highly of the One in whom he had put his faith.
We need to recognize that apart from the Lord we can do nothing (John 15:5) and that "Everything is possible for him who believes." (Mark 9:23)
Humility does not mean that we don’t think we can do anything. It means that we recognize that we can’t do anything of real value apart from God.
David recognizes that it is the Lord’s battle and it is the Lord who will deliver the giant into his hands. Not his superior skills, not Saul’s weapons and armor, not his youthful agility, but the Lord.
We can’t just believe that we can do something and we will be able to do it. We need to in humility recognize that we can’t do anything and then step out in the faith that the Lord can use even you, even me, to accomplish powerful things.
So, we must exercise faith with humility.
Not only that, but
To Experience God’s Power…
…We must exercise faith with Courage
Slide
1 Samuel 17:8-11, 32
8 Goliath stood and shouted to the ranks of Israel, "Why do you come out and line up for battle? Am I not a Philistine, and are you not the servants of Saul? Choose a man and have him come down to me. 9 If he is able to fight and kill me, we will become your subjects; but if I overcome him and kill him, you will become our subjects and serve us." 10 Then the Philistine said, "This day I defy the ranks of Israel! Give me a man and let us fight each other." 11 On hearing the Philistine’s words, Saul and all the Israelites were dismayed and terrified…
32 David said to Saul, "Let no one lose heart on account of this Philistine; your servant will go and fight him."
This is one of the very hard things for us. We have to step out and exercise our faith without 100% certainty of the outcome.
Sometimes we sense the Lord leading us to do something, but we are unsure exactly how the Lord is going to work things out and we don’t exercise our faith.
Often, we want the Lord to consult us with his plan and we want to see the end result before we take the first steps.
That is most likely not going to happen.
The Lord wants us walking by faith, not by sight. Knowing how things are going to work out requires no faith.
It takes courage to step out into the unknown and
We need to exercise our faith with Courage.
Not only that, but
To experience God’s power…
…We must exercise faith with the gifts we already have
Slide
Look at 1 Samuel 17:38-40
38 Then Saul dressed David in his own tunic. He put a coat of armor on him and a bronze helmet on his head. 39 David fastened on his sword over the tunic and tried walking around, because he was not used to them.
"I cannot go in these," he said to Saul, "because I am not used to them." So he took them off. 40 Then he took his staff in his hand, chose five smooth stones from the stream, put them in the pouch of his shepherd’s bag and, with his sling in his hand, approached the Philistine.
Saul tried to give David his armor to help him, but David wasn’t able to use them because he was not used to them.
God has given every believer a gift. (1 Corinthians 7:7; 12:7-11)
Our job is to use that gift. As we use our gifts and develop our abilities, we step out in faith into circumstances with unknown outcomes trusting the Lord to guide us and use what He has given us.
David just didn’t show up on the battlefield. He had honed some of the skills and gifts that the Lord had given him in his use of a sling and a stone and in his experiences against a bear and a lion.
The Lord gave David opportunities to use those gifts and talents and to develop them.
Are you using the gifts that God has given you?
Too often we think that if only we could sing like Carrie Underwood or one of the American Idols, then God could use us to really help people worship through song.
Or we think we need to have the leadership gifts of a John Maxwell or Bill Hybels to really be used powerfully by God.
Or if only we had the writing skills of a J.R.R. Tolken or a Max Lucado, then we could help people grow in their faith through our writing.
Use your gifts where you are at with humility and courage as the Lord leads and he will develop those gifts within you and use you powerfully to accomplish His will.
Transition
One final thing we learn from this passage.
To Experience God’s Power…
…We must exercise faith for the glory of the Lord
Slide
1 Samuel 17:46b-47
Today I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth, and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel. 47 All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the LORD saves; for the battle is the LORD’s, and he will give all of you into our hands."
David was not doing this for his own glory but for the glory of the Lord.
David exercised his faith in humility and courage using his gifts for the glory of the Lord, and He experienced God’s power in an awesome way as he defeated someone who appeared undefeatable.
Are you exercising your faith?
Are you doing it in humility and with courage?
Are you doing it for the glory of the Lord or your own glory?
What are the giants in your life that need to be defeated?
What is the step of faith that God wants you to take not knowing exactly where your foot will land?
We are going to close in a song. It is a new song called “What Faith can Do.”
I want to read some of the lyrics and as Paul to put them up as I read.
Here is the second verse and chorus.
“Everybody’s scared to death
When they decide to take that step
Out on the water
It’ll be alright
Life is so much more
Than what your eyes are seeing
You will find your way
If you keep believing
I’ve seen dreams that move the mountains
Hope that doesn’t ever end
Even when the sky is falling
I’ve seen miracles just happen
Silent prayers get answered
Broken hearts become brand new
That’s what faith can do”
God works through faith.
Peter walked on water through faith.
Daniel overcame the lions den by his faith in the Lord
David overcame the Giant through faith.
What Giant do you need to face and overcome?
Exercise your faith and experience the Power of God to overcome.
Stand with me as we sing and respond to God by exercising your faith.
