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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.
If you have faith you will be brave and confident, but just because you are brave and confident does not necessarily mean you have faith in God. Faith in God is trust in God’s promises – a trust that shows the God who made those promises to be faithful and good. It puts God’s glory and goodness on display in a conspicuous, obvious way. God had promised victory to Israel against their enemies if they relied on Him. And David was so sure that God would follow through on that promise that in his mind it was more likely that gravity would fail than that a faithful Israelite fighting for God’s name could possibly lose to a Philistine.
The purpose of this chapter is not to teach us that we can overcome the giants in our lives. Most of the time you can’t overcome the giants in your life. If you could, they wouldn’t be giants. So often you hear someone say, “You can do anything you put your mind to.” No you can’t – that’s absurd! At the risk of destroying your self-esteem – You can’t do most things. You are a tiny, weak, frail, limited human being. Most things in this Universe are way too big for you. In fact most things in this world are way too big for you. The fact is, you can hardly do anything – and I’m just as bad. The point of the chapter is God can do anything He sets His mind to, and when someone trusts in a specific promise God has made, absolutely nothing can stop him – not even what would otherwise be an impossible obstacle.
When you “trust” God to do something He never promised to do, that is not faith – it is presumption. So in order for us to follow David’s example of great faith, it is critical that we trust God to do exactly what He has promised to do – not what we decide we want Him to do. For example, suppose you are facing a powerful temptation. It is not enough that you just resist it. You need to find a way to resist it by means of trusting in some specific promise God has made. If you just grit your teeth and say, “I’m going to just say no, because it’s the right thing to do!” - if you succeed, that brings glory to you, not God. It shows you to be strong, disciplined, in control, impressive. It does not say anything about God.
What glorifies God is if you take some promise – say, the promise that is implied in 2 Sam.12:8 that if you refuse to gain satisfaction from any alternative (like sin), God will keep on giving and giving and giving to you until your soul is satisfied. When you take a promise like that, and your soul latches on to it and joyfully clings to it, and the temptation loses its power because you are so desirous of the fulfillment of that promise - that shows God to be reliable and good and trustworthy and glorious. Faith in a specific promise. And when you live your life that way, so that you overcome anger by trusting in some specific promises God has made, you overcome lust by trusting in some specific promises, you overcome fear of man by trusting in some specific promises, you become more loving by trusting in some specific promises, you manage to get all your mountain of work done by faith in promises, you get a good night’s rest by trusting in promises - everything in your life that you accomplish is accomplished that way, then you will develop the attitude of faith that we saw in David last week. (And if you want to know which promises in the Bible will help you with each of those things, I made up a list. It is on the Articles page in the Resource Library on www.TreasuringGod.com. It is called “Promise to trust when…” and it lists some promises from Scripture that will help you with specific sins or challenges. I also printed out a few for those who don’t have Internet service.)
David’s Words: always focused on God
So let’s take a look at David’s words of faith. How does a man of faith talk? There is a key character in this story that is never even mentioned until v.26. In the first half of the chapter there is discussion about Goliath, the Philistines, the Israelite army, Saul, David, Jesse, David’s brothers, but not until midway through the chapter is this character mentioned. The person I’m talking about is God. Why is that? Why is God never mentioned until v.26? The reason is because David never speaks until v.26. It is no coincidence that the first verse in which God is mentioned is also the first verse in which David speaks. David never has to talk long before he says something about God. When David talks to the soldiers he talks about God. When he talks to his brother he talks about God. When he talks to King Saul he talks about God. And even though David’s entire relationship with Goliath only lasted a few minutes, even in those few minutes he talked to Goliath about…God!
Thoughts of God so dominated David’s thinking that they would come out in his speech no matter what everyone else is saying. And not just thoughts of God – but experiences of God. David so frequently experienced situations in which he trusted in one of God’s promises and God proved faithful that the faithfulness of God dominated his thoughts.
And in order for you to have experiences with God that frequently, you have to understand how God relates to everything you do in ordinary life. If we compartmentalize our lives so that God stays in His little Sunday morning box and is not connected with the rest of life - His glory is not the basis for why we do what we do at work, or why we watch a Broncos game, or why we vacuum the living room floor and we have a sharp division between the sacred and the secular in our lives, then there is not going to be much occasion to talk about God outside of church. And even in the church our talk about Him will be mostly vapid, dry, theoretical abstractions rather than the joyful expressions of delight in one we deeply love. But the more God’s glory becomes the reason for absolutely everything we do – from getting married and having children to eating out at a restaurant or putting on your socks in the morning, the more your heart will delight in Him and the more your speech will center around Him. When you talk with people, you usually talk about the things that have happened since the last time you talked. Which means if you’re going to talk about what God has done, you need to be experiencing the things God does in between the times when you talk.
Do you want to improve your apologetics skills (your ability to prove Christianity)? Learning some classic arguments will help some, but one incredibly powerful argument is when people look at you and see exuberant joy in Christ even in the midst of pain, quiet, peaceful confidence in the most threatening circumstances, fearless boldness in serving Him, eager desire to be near Him, and a mouth that is constantly talking about what God has done.
His glory is relevant to every circumstance in life, and His grace is foundational for any and every matter at hand.
David has 4 conversations in this chapter and each one gives us more insight into the words that come out of the heart of faith.
Conversation with the Soldiers: handing temporalism (reframe everything in a spiritual perspective)
We’ll start with his first conversation beginning in v.25. Listen to the difference between the speech of the soldiers and the words coming out of David’s mouth:
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."
Everything they are saying is completely secular – nothing about God at all. Now listen to David:
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? For who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God?"
They refer to Goliath as "this man," David calls him "this uncircumcised Philistine." They see the human part only; David looks at Goliath from the perspective of where he fits into the world theologically. They say that Goliath has come out to "defy Israel," David says that he has come out to "defy the armies of the living God." They refer to Goliath's potential victor as "the man who kills him," David refers to him as "the man who … removes this disgrace." David is simply restating what they said, but from a totally different perspective.
Hard to talk to lukewarm about God
It easy to talk about the Lord with some people – people who are really interested in talking about God. But it is a lot harder to bring Him up in conversation with unbelievers when God is the farthest thing from their mind. And even harder still, in my opinion, is talking about God with people in the church who aren’t really interested in talking about God. When you are around people who profess Christianity who are talking about secular things all the time, sometimes it feels more awkward to bring up spiritual things around them than it does around an unbeliever. You run the risk of them thinking that you are trying to come off as super-spiritual or holier-than-thou or whatever. I love to speak about God when I’m around others who are interested in speaking about God. But when I’m with people who are speaking only about temporal things, I’m so prone to just follow along and join right in with the secular flavor of the conversation. No one in this chapter, besides David, is interested in God. And yet David talks about God to all of them. One thing David did not do was make anyone feel comfortable in their condition of ignoring God. And if they thought he was being “holier than thou” so be it (the fact is, he was holier than them).
What foolishness it is when we avoid pointing to God in our speech because we are afraid it will sound too pious. What on earth is wrong with sounding pious? Why should I fear talking too much about God? He is my very life! He is everything to me. He controls all things and is more important than anything else. It would be impossible to make God too central in your conversation. If people think I am a phony who is trying to impress them with how religious I am, let me solve that problem by the genuineness of my life, not by eliminating God from my speech.
So what I am trying to learn to do is to get to the point where my thoughts and affections are so centered around God that when I speak to anyone in any context my speech is theo-centric. So that if they say something and I repeat what they said back to them like David did, my version of what they said focuses on God even if their statement didn’t. I tried practicing this last week. I looked up some news headlines and tried to restate the headline from a theological, Christ-loving perspective. And I found that exercise harder than I expected. In David’s case, his response came immediately and seemingly effortlessly. It made me realize again how far I have to go to get to the point where my experiences with God are so frequent and so profound that they shape all my thinking and speech. So how do you handle profane or secular speech that focuses on temporal, earthly things? Respond back with God-centered speech.
Conversation with Eliab: Handling hostility (walk away)
David’s next conversation was with his oldest brother – Eliab.
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."
Why is Eliab so mad? He’s mad because he, along with every other soldier there, has been publicly branded a coward and utterly humiliated by Goliath every day for the last 6 weeks. You can live with something like that when you are surrounded by other cowards. But when someone like David comes along, and there is genuine shock in his voice when he is asking about why someone doesn’t just go down there and shut Goliath’s loud mouth, that kind of attitude we saw last week exposes the cowardice for what it really is. He is mad because David’s faith is exposing his cowardice. I do not know if David even realized that was what he was doing. He was just expressing the amazement that was genuinely in his heart. But when you are afraid to do something and your littlest brother comes along and is shocked that no one has the courage to do it, chances are you are going to get mad.
It just bothered Eliab that David wasn’t afraid. When they were standing there and Goliath came out and made his threats and it says the men of Israel turned and literally ran in fear - can you just picture the scene? Big, tough, firstborn Eliab stands there as a soldier talking to his annoying little baby brother, and when Goliath makes a move, Eliab flinches and David doesn’t. Eliab maybe even cowered away or took a few steps back, and David doesn’t even budge. In fact, he probably turned toward Goliath and scowled at him.
And so Eliab does what most people do when they are angry over something they shouldn’t be angry about. He makes it sound like it is something else. He goes on the attack against David about the sheep and his motives and everything but the real issue. (Remember Eliab was the guy Samuel was sure would be God’s choice as king. It turns out he is nothing but another Saul.) So his attack on David is no doubt a combination of both guilt and jealousy.
28 … Eliab burned with anger at him and asked, "Why have you come down here?
That question, spoken in an angry tone of voice, amounts to an accusation. The implication is that David came with bad motives.
And with whom did you leave those few sheep in the desert?
That’s a double stab. First he is belittling David’s work. “Those few sheep.” What relevance does the number of sheep have in this context? David had a lowly job out in the desert, and Eliab is trying to rub that in.
And beyond that he is implying that David is being irresponsible. He probably did not make adequate arrangements for someone to watch the sheep, and so he is neglecting the tiny little responsibility he had. But remember back in v.20 it says that David left the sheep in the hands of a shepherd.
He goes on:
I know how conceited you are and how wicked your heart is; you came down only to watch the battle."
That’s not true. He came to bring food. He came to supply Eliab and his brothers with gifts, and to express family love and concern. He came out of obedience to his father who sent him.
If that happened to me I think my first inclination would be to say, “OK, let’s take these one by one. First, the thing about the sheep, and then launch into a full defense of each one of the accusations. Let’s look at how David handled it.
29 "Now what have I done?" said David. "Can't I even speak?" 30 He then turned away to someone else
He doesn’t say a word in his defense – he just walks away. David is furious and incensed about Goliath slandering God’s name, but when his own good name is attacked he’s not interested in dealing with it at all.
When the heart of faith talks to temporal, earthly-minded people, it helps them along by speaking from a spiritual perspective. But when the heart of faith encounters irrational hostility, so that whatever you say is just another occasion for the person to sin it is usually best to just walk away.
Mt.7:6 Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and then turn and tear you to pieces.
When people reaction violently or with irrational hostility – just go find someone else to talk to. When you give people like that the holy pearls of God’s Word, all you are doing is providing an occasion for them to blaspheme. Just move on to someone else – and people take notice.
Conversation with Saul: Handling discouragement (encourage)
Saul’s Discouragement
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.
They could tell by the way David was asking that he wanted to go fight Goliath. And so they bring him before Saul. And so here comes conversation #3. There is little David standing before big, mighty king Saul, who is more than a head taller even than Eliab. And the king is decked out in all his armor and surrounded by his entourage of the most important and famous men in Israel. This would be an incredibly intimidating situation.
So far the response to David’s idea about fighting Goliath has not been well-received. And if Eliab’s response wasn’t discouraging enough, listen to Saul’s:
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."
Saul’s judgment about David - NAAR
Saul uses the Hebrew word NAAR to describe David. The NIV translates that “boy,” but the word doesn’t usually describe a child. It just points to David’s relative youth and inexperience.
Some people have been perplexed over the fact that one of Saul’s attendants referred to David as a warrior in ch.16. That word “warrior” is the same word Saul uses here to describe Goliath. So how is it that the attendant calls David a warrior, and Saul says David is a mere youth and unfit to go against a warrior? That is not really a very hard problem to solve. The answer is this – The attendant’s impression of the David was that he was a warrior, and Saul impression of David is that he was a mere youth. Is that so surprising that two men would have two different assessments of the same guy? And that Saul’s impression would be the inaccurate one?
One of the main lessons of ch.16 was the fact that only God can accurately assess a person, because man can only see outward appearance. So you can’t judge a book by its cover. But some people are better guessers than others. And in this case Saul’s official was a lot more insightful than Saul.
David is undaunted – don’t let people discourage you
So how does David respond?
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."
…and David ran back to his tent crying and said, “Nobody liked my idea! I quit!” No – he didn’t get discouraged at all. I’m sure glad David was not one of those types who need constant affirmation and encouragement all the time. If he was, this chapter would have been a lot different. There are some people who, if everybody doesn’t jump on board right away and encourage them and affirm them and help them, they just want to quit. But David was like the Apostle Paul – once he felt the pull of God’s calling it did not matter if the entire world and the entire church were against him nothing could stop him.
People who live for the praise and honor of men become pathetic, needy parasites who will fall apart if you let up even for a moment in affirming and encouraging them. But people who get their affirmation from God are so confident and joyful and encouraged that they have an overflowing abundance of extra encouragement they can share with everyone else.
Do not let people discourage you. If God calls you to do something and you do it and I come along and scold you for doing it, what does that matter? I’m just a man. My judgment is nothing. Now, if I provide you with a biblical reason so that you are able to see for yourself in God’s Word that I am right, then you need to heed the Word of God. But otherwise just take my advice, or anyone else’s, for the mere human opinion that it is. If God gives you a task and you show up on Judgment Day with that task still uncompleted, and when asked to give an account you say, “I was waiting for the approval and encouragement of men,” I don’t think that excuse is going to fly.
1) Avoid discouragement by trusting in God, not yourself
So how do you avoid getting discouraged in a situation like this? From a human point of view there really is some logic in what Saul is saying. No doubt Saul had lost a lot of good men to this huge Philistine in battles over the years. When Goliath was David’s age, he was already a proven warrior in the military – not a shepherd. David has no training for this kind of thing. When the heart of faith talks to temporal, earthly-minded people, it helps them along by speaking from a spiritual perspective. But when the heart of faith encounters irrational hostility, so that whatever you say is just another occasion for the person to sin, it is usually best to just walk away. Think of fighting against someone half your height and less than half your weight. That’s what it would be like for Goliath to fight David.
So David gets this bold idea, Eliab hates it (and in that culture the oldest brother was a significant authority), and the very first words out of the king’s mouth were “You’re not able to do that. You’re inadequate.” Does anybody here know what it is like to get a bold idea that you are excited about, you finally get up the courage to tell someone, and everyone you tell just immediately shoots the idea down? “It will never work. Forget it. You don’t have what it takes. Wake up and smell the coffee – you’re in a dream world.” Why is it that most of us get stopped in our tracks by that kind of discouragement, but it did not even faze David?
I think the reason we get so discouraged when people around us don’t think we are up to the task is because our faith is in ourselves. When you are looking to your own resources for a task, and the people around you who know what they are talking about are certain that you don’t have what it takes, the wisest course is to abandon the idea.
But David’s faith was not in himself. So when Eliab and Saul or anyone else thought it was a bad idea because David was not up to the task, that didn’t bother David because he knew that whether he was up to the task or not was irrelevant. Imagine someone broke into your house and stole some things, and I found out where the guy lived and told you, “I’m going to go get your stuff.” And you take one look at me and say, “I don’t think you’re strong enough.” That might discourage me if my plan was to go overpower the guy myself. But if my plan was to go with a SWAT team, then your assessment of my strength is as irrelevant as it can be. That’s not going to deter me, because I’m not depending on my strength. My strength has nothing to do with whether the SWAT team will be able to overpower this guy. David is thinking that God is going to kill this Philistine, and Saul is mumbling something about David’s fighting ability, and that has no impact on David’s resolve at all.
What should you do if you are one of those people who are easily discouraged? If you get discouraged easily, it may very well be that you are trusting in your own strength and failing to take into consideration the power of God. And if you are one of those people who discourages everyone else all the time – same thing. You are probably looking at everything from a human point of view. There are some Christians who might think about trusting God in their own lives, but it never seems to occur to them to trust God to work through the lives of others.
2) Defeat discouragement by encouraging
So how does the heart of faith deal with discouraging words? What do you do when everyone shoots down your ideas? Instead of pitching in and helping you, they just tell you that you are going to fail. How should you respond when no one around you is encouraging you? Encourage them. If they can not see what you can see – help them see it.
32 David said to Saul, "Let no one lose heart on account of this Philistine; your servant will go and fight him."
This teenager is telling the king of the nation of Israel not to lose heart! “Hang in there big guy – don’t be afraid. It’s OK – I’ll take care of you.” This little shepherd had more courage than all the mighty men of Israel. And he has to encourage them. It should be the other way around – the king should be the one doing the comforting and reassuring the delivery boy. But David’s concern is not over what Saul should do but over what he should do. So he encourages Saul. When you are dealing with discouraging people – encourage them. How do you do that? Take a look at v.34.
Argument for trusting God
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."
Lions and David and bears – track record
David ends up being able to convince Saul that God can indeed be trusted. And he does it by describing some amazing things God has done in the past that can be explained no other way than by the power of God. He tells two stories – one about a lion and one about a bear. Both were prevalent in Israel in that time. Here is what happened: David is out there with the sheep one day, hears a commotion, looks over – and there goes a lion with a sheep. Lions cannot run very fast when they are carrying sheep in their mouths, and so when David saw it, he took off running after the lion. And when he caught up to it (or when the lion stopped to try to eat the lamb), David hit the lion - hard. (Hard enough to get the lion to drop the lamb and turn on David.)
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.
I’m guessing he used his staff – like Barry Bonds swinging for a home run – smack – right in the head.
Probably what usually happened at this point was the wild animal would get scared and just run away. And if it didn’t, David would hold it off, using his staff until it gave up - or maybe even bean it with a shot from his sling. But a couple of times he got an especially aggressive one and it turned on David so fast that David ended up grappling with it. And that is what happened with this lion. It drops the lamb and turns on David. And so now David is in trouble. He needs to be delivered from the paw of the lion. (That is the word he uses in v.37 – it means “rescued”.) So David is on the ground fighting this lion, looking to God to rescue him, and
35 …When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair
Literally “I seized it by its beard.” Some translations take this to mean throat or jaw – or it could just be the fur on the chin. Anyway, David grabbed hold of that and struck it and killed it.
The same thing happened with a bear.
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."
The bear and lion did not even really do anything wrong. They were just following their instincts. And if God enabled David to kill them how much more is this Philistine – who has defied the living God - going to have to pay with his life? So David offers that as an argument 1) for God’s power and 2) for David as an instrument of God’s power. And Saul is convinced.
Build a track record
He did not think David would be able to handle a one-on-one fight to the death because of inexperience, but it turns out David did have some experience with mortal combat. He was in a 1-on-1 fight to the death twice – once with a lion and once with a bear. And those nights David had lion chops and bear ribs for dinner. (Not really – lions and bears would have been unclean animals, so David would not have eaten them.)
When you talk to people who have an earthly, temporal perspective, let your speech back to them be filled up with the things of God. And when you talk to people who are irrational and hostile or violent, turn away and talk to someone else. And when you talk to people who are discouraging, encourage them. And you do that by describing to them God’s track record of faithfulness.
If you want your words about God’s goodness and glory and strength and faithfulness to be persuasive, tell them the story of the other day when you were tempted with anger, but you remembered the promise of Ps.63:5 and the angry impulses evaporated. Recount the time last week when Satan tempted you with worry and anxiety, but then you experienced the faithfulness of God to fulfill His promises in Mt.6:25-34 and worry was defeated. Boast of how faithful God has been so many times when you had low desire to read your Bible, but then you banked on the promises of Ps.19 and the desire returned. Describe what it was like when you leaned on the promise of Ps.89:15,16 and overcame boredom. Or when the enticements of earthly pleasures lost their power when you clung to the promise of Isa.55:2. Fill them in about how the temptation to become discouraged over your failures was eradicated by the promises in Ps.32. Or how your reluctance to forgive someone melted into love as soon as you took delight in the promise of Mt.6:14. You can prove from your own experience that God is totally reliable and will come through in His promises of guidance, justice, companionship, strength, motivation, insight, love, inner peace, rest, success, restoration – all the things He has promised. I want to urge you this week to begin each day by picking a particular sin or challenge you expect to face, as well as a particular virtue you expect you will really need that day, and look it up on that sheet – pick one of the promises for each and just lean on that promise all through the day. And by the end of the day you’ll have a story you can tell about how God proved Himself faithful.
So when David talked to the Israelite soldiers he talked about the LORD. When he talked to Saul he talked about the LORD. Now in vv.43-47 he’s going to have a little chat with a big, tall Philistine. And guess what he’s going to talk about? It did not matter who David was talking to, and it did not matter what that person wanted to talk about – David was going to talk about the LORD. That conversation is really a lot of fun. We will get to that next time.
Conclusion
Everything out of David’s mouth made it clear where his trust was. When speaking with secular talkers he recast what they were saying in spiritual terms. When someone tried to pull him into bickering, he turned away to be about God’s business. When Saul was discouraging, David encouraged him with stories of God’s power and faithfulness. When David applies logic, the basis of his reasoning is the promises and power and faithfulness of God. David wasn’t kidding in Ps.9:1 when he said…
Psalm 22:22 I will declare your name to my brothers; in the congregation I will praise you.
Psalm 51:13 I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will turn back to you.
Psalm 9:11 proclaim among the nations what he has done.
Brothers, the church, transgressors, sinners, godless Gentiles - it does not matter if it is a dear Christian brother, or a lukewarm phony in the church, or a complete pagan in the street. The heart of faith, when it opens its mouth, will speak about the matter at hand from the perspective of the marvelous glory of the God he loves. Let’s live this week by faith in God’s promises, and let’s show up next Sunday with some stories about God that we can talk about in our small groups.
Benediction: Ro.15:13 May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
