15-17 War broke out again between the Philistines and Israel. David and his men went down to fight. David became exhausted. Ishbi-Benob, a warrior descended from Rapha, with a spear weighing nearly eight pounds and outfitted in brand-new armor, announced that he’d kill David. But Abishai son of Zeruiah came to the rescue, struck the Philistine, and killed him.
Then David’s men swore to him, “No more fighting on the front-lines for you! Don’t snuff out the lamp of Israel!”
18 Later there was another skirmish with the Philistines at Gob. That time Sibbecai the Hushathite killed Saph, another of the warriors descended from Rapha.
19 At yet another battle with the Philistines at Gob, Elhanan son of Jaar, the weaver of Bethlehem, killed Goliath the Gittite whose spear was as big as a flagpole.
20-21 Still another fight broke out in Gath. There was a giant there with six fingers on his hands and six toes on his feet—twenty-four fingers and toes! He was another of those descended from Rapha. He insulted Israel, and Jonathan son of Shimeah, David’s brother, killed him.
22 These four were descended from Rapha in Gath. And they all were killed by David and his soldiers. The Message (MSG)
The Israelites had a constant rivalry against the Philistines, it seems that they were always at war with them. In fact, they battled against each other a total of 13 times. The 6th battle was the most famous battle because that’s when the Philistines used their number one champion by the name of Goliath. Everybody knows about Goliath, because he was a giant. We all know that he’s the one that came forward and said to the Israelites he would fight anybody one-on-one and if he lost the Philistines would become their slaves. A small, young shepherd boy named David came forth and defeated Goliath using only a sling and a stone. However, after this great battle between the Israelites and the Philistines there were 7 more battles between them. The Israelites won a few, and the Philistines also won a few.
But in our text, we are dealing the 13th and final battle. And this is the battle where the giants came back with a vengeance. What a frustration it is to have gone through a trial, and just when you think the trial is over here comes yet another trial. I know of people who suffered unemployment for a year or so, and later on a company hired them for a little while only to be laid off and pushed back into ranks of the unemployed. And for a while rather than apply for something else they decided that it would easier to just give up looking because when the giants of life make a reappearance it just looks like it is always with a vengeance trying to get you to give up.
When it comes to fighting the giants of life, we really can’t give up, because the fact is no matter what we do those ol’ giants are gonna keep coming our way until the day we die. The truth is this morning; no one will ever go through life with only one giant to fight. I don’t care how old we get; there will never be a time when we can let our guard down. Look around you this morning, and I guarantee you—you will find somebody who has been saved for many years now. But they’re still fighting giants. They may know the Word of God and they have served Him faithfully—but giants don’t care about that because they keep on coming. What I’m trying to say is that none of us are untouchable! And we will be fighting giants from here on out. We’ve all been to the place where we’ve had to deal with giants, not physical but spiritual and emotional giants; giants like worry, doubt, fear, anxiety, depression, poor health, and insecurity. A giant is anything in your life that stands between you and where God wants you to be. The truth is, the real battle is between God and Satan, because the devil has taken it up on himself to be God’s rival, and because we God’s children we have inherited this rivalry. Giants are one of the weapons in Satan’s arsenal to keep us down. And I pause to ask a question this morning: What are the giants in your life? What are the obstacles that leave you dismayed and discourage? Just take your pick, unemployment, debt, disease, depression, bills, broken relationship, and addiction? Whatever it is, you’ve been struggling with it for years & years. You’ve done everything in your power to fight it (mortgage payments and car bills and doctor bills) you’ve tried to fight it. People mistreating you, lying on you, criticizing you—you know sometimes those two-legged snakes come with the giants in order to make sure that when you are down, you stay down. You know who they are.
They are people that will do their best to destroy your destiny and wreak your future and sometimes they come hand and hand with the giants, in fact, giants begets giants. But I want to remind us today that no matter what, the bigger the giant the greater the victory. Here in battle number thirteen, David was definitely in the September of his life, he was in retirement age at seventy eight, you would think that life would give him a break and allow him to retire peacefully, but the truth is as long as the devil is the world, as long as he is your rival he’s not about to take a vacation.
When the devil tried to tempt Jesus in the wilderness—the Bible says, “When the devil had ended all the temptation, he departed from him for a season” another version of the Bible says that, “…he left Him until the next opportunity came.” The devil is an opportunist, and he doesn’t play by the rules; you would think that David would have been able at least to relax after a long and fruitful life, but our text tells us that this was not so because Goliath wasn’t the last giant, and as big as he might have been was not the largest giant David had to face.
How many of you are dealing with a giant in your life right now? Well, our normal reaction to giants in our lives is to get discourage (that’s actually normal). Our normal reaction to giants is to feel hopeless under its shadow, and the feeling of giving up stays constantly on our mind, especially when the giant is larger than the one before, when you’re confronted with a nine foot nine situation or circumstance that you know you can’t handle—that’s when the devil taps you on the shoulder and whispers in your ear and says now is the time for you to go ahead and give up. Without giving much thought on the subject, we concluded that David’s battle with giants ended right there with his defeat of the giant Goliath.
But our text tells us that Goliath had a few relatives, he had some descendants and they were giants too. After all these years…he even became king of Israel and giants kept on coming. Time and circumstances have changed, and now David is a mature and seasoned warrior no longer responsible for watching sheep in the pasture…. and giants kept on coming. Isn’t that something, he still had struggle and battle with giants! Seems like he should have the luxury of retirement, if he had not dealt with the giant Goliath those many years ago Israel would have long been a defeated nation—seem like to me he would have been able to rest on that great victory alone and not have to fight anymore.
But that’s not what this text says, it says “war broke out again” it’s like de ja vu –I’ve been through this before and here I am going through again. Can I tell you something? No one goes through this lifetime with only one giant. It takes only one giant to stop you if you look at life in flesh, and not spiritually. I often wonder how David felt about it? Because David was always in some kind of battle, some of us are like that aren’t we? Always fighting some kind battle, not so much in the physical sense of the word—but spiritually & emotionally we’re always fighting some kind of battle. And a lot of the battles we are fighting are not little battles but they are gigantic circumstances and situations. The lost of a loved one, the lost of job, a broken marriage, a wayward child, health problems and they’re all gigantic in nature.
Not just once or twice but, over and over and over again! It doesn’t matter how young you are or how old you are—the Christian’s life is a race; it is a struggle with one battle after the other. And the thing about it these battles they will wear you out. David in our text was now up in age, he was a member of the Seasoned Saints ministry and he was weary, he was faint and exhausted—he was tired of fighting. He was just like us, I don’t know about you but I get tired sometimes, with struggling and fighting with the trials of this life. David was tired and exhausted; even though he had gotten old he still stood up to the giants. Although we may get tired sometimes we can’t give up, we still have to stand up to the giants of life. But I’ll remind you once again, that the bigger the giant the greater the victory. There are three things that we need before we leave this earth, and that is first and foremost a relationship with Jesus Christ, and then we need money (I know it’s the root of evil) I understand that. But try to live in this world without a dollar in you pocket and see how far you get. And you need a friend; even if it’s just one friend you still need a friend. It’s just good to have a friend to help us do better. Look at the text; David was ready to fight; you and I know that he has experience in fighting with Giants.
Here is a seventy eight year-old man, ready to try and do, what he used to do once again. But he fainted, he didn’t run, but he was old and feeble—his strength failed him, but he still stood his ground. Thank God almighty, as I continue to look at his text. I see David had some supporters; he had some friends that were ready, willing and able to assist him in fighting those giants. Did you know that it is important to God that we support one another? He wants us to be unified and willing to carry the load, when we see that there’s a load that needs to be carried.
David had some support, look at verse 17 they (his friends, his servants) said “no more fighting on the front lines for you, unless the lamp of Israel goes out.” Moses had some support, as great a man as he was—God used him to deliver the Israelites out of Egypt, God used Him to divide the Red Sea, but as a great man as Moses was—he still needed some human help, he still needed a little help from his friends. In Exodus 17, Moses sent Joshua to fight the Amalekites, while he stood on top of a hill to raise the staff of God—as long as Moses raised up his hands, the Israelites was winning, but when he got tired and let down his hands—the Amalekites started. However, Aaron and Hur stand him down on a rock, Aaron stood on one side and Hur stood on the other side and they held up Moses, and Israelites overcame the Amalekites, the enemy was defeated. We need great friends to help us in dealing with the giants of life. But we also need some faith in the battle.
It was David’s faith that helped him fight giants, when he stood up against Goliath he was the only one in Israel that had enough faith. Saul was the king, but he didn’t have the faith; I guess his faithlessness rubbed off on the rest of the Israelites because they wanted to run away from one giant. But don’t get mad with them this morning, because some of us want to run away from our giants too. Some of us have a giant that is standing at the gate, and he’s probably bigger and the worse of them all—and that’s the giant of unbelief. And particular giant has a twin brother by the name of Doubt, and together like to curse you out and discourage you.
In fact, it was a giant that cursed out David, before he was struck down and laid out on the ground. Oh yes! Giants still cuss us out and mock us every once in while, in order to get us to lose our faith. They say things like: You’re not qualified for this job! You’re not good enough; you can’t pay your bills! You can’t save that marriage it’s over! You can’t control those children! Nobody cares about what you’re going through! You ought to just give up, that’s the kind of things that the giants of life will say to you in order to get you to doubt God, and live a life of unbelief.
Unbelief, that’s a big bad giant—he’s got a lot of people bowing down to him, I’ll tell you how bad he is, he’s even got some people in the church to answer to him. In your Bible there’s a story about how the disciples attempted to cast a demon out of a boy but couldn’t. And out of desperation the father goes to Jesus, and asked Jesus to help with his son, but he said, “If you could”, now, don’t get mad with this boy’s father. Because the truth is, some of us are saying this same thing to Jesus today. “Lord, I need help but I’m not sure if you can help me. Because I’ve been going this thing for a long time and nothing seems to work, I guess my problem is just too big. But I do need your help Lord, that is, if you could.” And if you ever happen to read this Scripture, you’ll see for yourself that Jesus didn’t get mad with him. Jesus knew he was dealing with the giant of unbelief, you know what Jesus said in answer to his faithless request? Jesus said, “If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes” –and then the man asked Jesus to help him with his giant, actually what he said was, “Lord I do believe, but help with my unbelief.” I believe, but I also have to admit that there’s a giant of unbelief standing in front of me and he’s so big until he is blocking my view. There is no doubt in my mind this morning, that there are those of us in this room today that believe in Jesus, that believe the Words in the Bible, and they really do believe in miracles. But there are times in our Christian walk when God asks us to do something that appears to be too large for us to handle, something that makes us feel like grasshoppers, we look at the task at hand and then look in the mirror and say I can’t handle this because the problem is just too big, we begin to doubt, or just flat out suffer from unbelief. Because we’re so scared to look the giant in the face. The giant of unbelief is invisible; sometimes you don’t even know he’s there. But there are some other giants that we are also afraid to look at in the face. There is the giant of unemployment, the giant of sickness, the giant of fear, the giant bad habits and frustrations. So many big giants to choose from today, but the question is not how big is your giant, the question, is how big is your God?
I heard somebody say, never tell God how big your storm is. But tell your storm, how big your God is. If your faith in God is strong enough, you can bring any giant down to size. When I was a young man attending Antioch B/C in San Antonio, I used to love the choir sing—I woke up this morning with my mind stayed on Jesus. And it’s sad to say that we don’t sing that song much anymore. I think I know why, I think it’s because now days there are very few people waking up in the morning with their mind stayed on Jesus. So many of us are too busy today—with our mind stayed on those giants. After the feeding of the multitude, Jesus sent his disciples in a boat to the other shore. You’ll find this in the fourteenth chapter of Matthew; Jesus then climbs a nearby mountain to pray into the evening, meanwhile the disciples ran into a storm.
During this storm the wind was against them and the boat was being battered by the waves. (And what was so scary about it) the boat had traveled about 3 to 4 miles out into the sea, Jesus allowed the disciples to struggle all night. But when the time came Jesus walked out to them on the water during the fourth watch (between 3 and 6 am in morning) in other words it was dark. The storm was raging and it was dark are you getting the picture? When the disciples see Jesus walking on the water, they cried out in fear because they thought a ghost was approaching them, and right there they were dealing with the giant of fear. What they thought was a ghost, was actually Jesus. And He called to them to take courage that it was He and there was no need to be afraid. But Peter being who he is said,” Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” Because Peter knew that all he needed was the beckoning of the Lord, and His will would be done. Peter knew that a “thus saith the Lord” was really all he needed. Jesus gave Peter the command that Peter wanted – and He said, “Come.” Peter steps out of the boat and walks on the water, but he did not get far before he began to sink. Why did Peter sink? Was it because he couldn’t walk on water? No, he did walk on water for a while. Was it because he lacked interest or effort? No, he did asked for permission and he was in the process of walking on the water. Peter started to sink because he took his eyes off of Jesus, and then placed his eyes on the storm. You see, we got take our eyes off those giants—and keep our eyes focused on Jesus in order to fight these giants of life.
CONCLUSION
Life is full of giants; many of you have come to church time after time. The man of God has preached, the Spirit of God has moved, and by faith you have reached out for a better understanding in the face of these giants. And I’ll close by saying that you can see your giants defeated, the giants of Unforgiveness, bitterness, sickness, and on and on. God wants to kill those giants in your life just like He destroyed every giant in the life of David. You may say to me, “You still don’t understand, you don’t know just how big this giant really is!” But it does not matter how big the giant is in your life! The bigger the giant, the greater the victory the Lord Jesus Christ wants to give you! Make up your mind right now to be like David, step out and say, “There is a reason! There is a cause! And I am not going to allow that giant to live in and control my life anymore. In the name of Jesus, I am going to take the Word of God, which is the sword of the Spirit, and just like King David I will cut off the head of the giant.” And it is all because the bigger the giant the greater the victory. Amen
