Where's Your Trust?

Well, good morning.

It's great to have you with us today.

I'm thankful that you've come in out of the smog and smoke to breathe a little filtered air and enjoy this opportunity we have to worship together and to look at God's word together.

Whether you're here in the auditorium or online, we are just glad that you're spending this time with us.

We're in week one of a series that we're calling Hard Won Wisdom.

And it's a look at the life of David, one of my favorite Old Testament characters, one of the most compelling men of the Old Testament.

David's life was marked by extraordinary victories, by some really painful failures, by seasons of waiting, but through it all, an unwavering faith in God.

It's the kind of life that you and I wish that we could sometimes have.

And in this series, we're going to explore five life-changing events with the lessons that come from David's life and experience.

We're going to discover what successes and mistakes teach us about trust, about regret, about revenge, about leadership, and about disappointment.

To begin with, we're going to go to one of the most familiar of all the Old Testament stories in the Bible: the story of David and Goliath.

Most of us, even those of us who haven't been raised in the church, have somewhere along the line heard about the story of David and Goliath.

We're familiar with this shepherd boy who kills the giant with nothing more than a slingshot and a stone.

It's become the primary story in Western culture for describing any individual or any group that overcomes seemingly insurmountable odds or rises to defeat an oppressor or some kind of a challenge.

I was reminded of that again just a few weeks ago when watching some of the action taking place in the FIFA World Cup, and I heard people talking again about the David Goliath story when they started to talk about the Cape Verde team.

The Cape Verde team, this first time ever in the FIFA World Cup, they come from this tiny little place, a population which is actually less than the population of the Greater Grand Rapids area, somewhere underneath about maybe a half million or 525,000.

They're a small place.

Most of us would struggle to find it on a map.

It's an archipelago of islands.

And they sent their team to the FIFA World Cup.

And their first match, their first match in the whole tournament is against Spain.

Spain plays today in the finals.

So you've got this team that's never been there before, playing Spain, who is everything that they want to be.

And what did they do?

They played them to a draw.

They played them to a draw, zip zip.

They went on to again play Uruguay to a draw, two to two.

Then they went and played Saudi Arabia and played them to a draw, zero to zero.

They finished second in their group, which means they got into the round of 32.

They're in the knockout stage.

This tiny little country, these guys were playing way above their weight limit.

They were the Davids against the Goliaths.

Now, unfortunately, they get into the round of 32 and they lost to Argentina.

Whoa.

The other team playing Spain today?

I mean, really?

But they lost them 3-2.

It wasn't like they got blown out.

It was amazing what this team did.

And they began to be talked about as the David versus Goliath Tournament.

Now, again, it's amazing what happened there.

But I want you to know at the outset that this whole account of David and Goliath is not primarily about human courage and effort.

This account of David and Goliath, this encounter that takes place, is not a focus, is not focused on overcoming life's obstacles and somehow with your skills and abilities rising above.

Which, by the way, if you're a Malcolm Gladwell fan, if you've ever read his book, David and Goliath, he's just got a lot of feel-good stories in there about rising above the obstacles, rising above the challenges.

He totally misses the point about what David and Goliath is all about.

As interesting as that book is, as fun as it is to read, it is not why the book, or excuse me, it's not why that story is included in Scripture.

Rather, the encounter between David and Goliath teaches us what life looks like when it is built on a foundation of confident trust in God.

Let me say it again.

The story of David and Goliath teaches us what life looks like when life is built on a foundation of confident trust in God.

Let me set the stage for what's happening in this story, which you may or may not be familiar with.

It seems that after years of relative peace, the Philistines are threatening the Israelites.

And as would be the case in those days, the armies line up on the hillside with a valley between them.

The Philistines on one side, the Israelites on the other side.

They're separated by the valley of Elah, which is about 15 miles west of Bethlehem in Judah.

Before the battle starts, they offer an option to the Israelites.

The Philistines are very strong, they're a warrior nation.

The Israelites are more agrarian, they're more agricultural.

And so the Philistines come and say, look at how about we do this?

Why don't we choose someone from our side, you choose someone from your side, they'll meet down here in the valley, they'll do battle, and whoever wins that one-on-one battle, that MMA fight, then that will be the winner for both armies.

We all agree to that.

By the way, if our guy wins, you will become our slaves, and if your guy wins, ha ha ha, we'll become your slaves.

It's not going to happen.

But the Israelites, feeling already a bit overwhelmed, agree to the battle.

So for 40 days, for 40 days, morning and evening, the Philistine warrior, a guy named Goliath, comes out and he shouts across the valley these things, this word.

Choose a man and have him come down to me.

If he is able to fight and kill me, we will become your subjects.

But if you overcome him and kill him, you'll become our subjects and serve us.

But Goliath was not just any man.

If you know the story, you know that he was huge.

And he was strong, and he was intimidating.

He's probably somewhere around nine feet, nine and a half feet, which for scale, I'm six foot seven.

So add another two feet, or alternatively, next time you look at a gymnasium and you see the basketball net, the bottom of the net is about nine feet.

That's how tall this guy is.

He is gigantic.

He's also super strong.

His armor that he wears weighs 125 pounds.

Guys go to the gym, bench press 125 pounds, and then walk around carrying that for a while.

You get an idea how much how much strength this man has, how much he's able to take.

His his spear had a head on it that was 15 pounds.

I mean, it goes on and on and on.

This is one giant of a man.

The Philistines were very confident that Goliath was going to defeat anyone who would come out to do battle against him.

So how do the Israelites respond to Goliath's challenge?

Day after day, morning and evening, day after day, morning and evening.

Not very well.

On hearing the Philistines' words, Saul, he's the king, right?

He's the guy in charge.

He's the one everyone looks up to.

Saul and all the Israelites were dismayed and terrified.

Whenever the Israelites saw the man, they all fled from him in great fear.

It's almost comical, as I imagine, the scene, okay?

Picture this with me.

Every morning and every evening, the two armies, after breakfast, get their gear and they kind of wander on, rush on down to the battle line.

And across the valley, the Philistines are doing the same thing.

And for a little while, they all shout at each other, I'm gonna get you! They shake their spears, they shake their swords, you're dead meat, I'm got you down, man.

But they're also what, a few hundred yards apart?

It's pretty safe to shout.

It's like taking my dog to the dog park.

I got a 22-pound dog.

She barks like she's 400 pounds until another dog comes at her.

And the next thing you know, she's between my legs.

That's kind of what I picture here.

Because you see, what happens as this goes on?

Goliath comes out and he shouts his message, and the next thing you know, everybody's running back to their tent.

They're all leaving the battle line.

They want nothing to do with him.

Saul, who has no desire to do battle with Goliath himself, comes up with a plan to try to entice someone to actually do battle with this guy.

He promises great wealth.

He promises no taxation for the warrior's family.

That would sound appealing to me.

He also says, I'm gonna give you my daughter in marriage when you defeat Goliath.

He makes the best offer he can possibly come up with, but the soldiers are not stupid.

They recognize that the odds are stacked against him, that they are more likely to be killed than to kill.

And as a result, no one volunteers for this suicide mission.

I think it's pretty clear what the problem is.

The army trusted their king, but he failed to lead them or even to inspire them.

And when they trusted their most able warriors to defeat the giant, well, they wanted nothing to do with it either.

In the end, the ones that were being trusted to lead them to victory are the Philistines, their king and their most able warrior, proved to be untrustworthy.

Enter David.

David is the first one to express a willingness to do battle with Goliath.

David's the first one to step up to the line, not because of what Saul is offering.

He's not there because he wants to get the wealth or the bride.

He steps forward because of what Goliath is saying.

Listen to what David says.

Who is this uncircumcised Philistine?

You can talk about what that means at lunch today with your 12-year-old.

Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God?

Let no one lose heart on account of this Philistine.

Your servant will go and fight him.

David steps up because Goliath is defying the armies of the living God, and by extension, he is defying God.

David is offended by Goliath's words.

He's not afraid of his size.

Whatever his size, David sees him as nothing more than an uncircumcised Philistine.

Well, Saul immediately rejects David's offer, reminding David of some pretty obvious facts.

You are not able to go out against this Philistine and fight him.

You're only a young man.

And he has been a warrior from his youth.

He doesn't point out the obvious size difference.

He simply says, look it, you're young, he's mature.

You're inexperienced, he's experienced.

Saul's royal rejection of David's claim, you would think, would just shut down the process right there.

However, David's trust in God causes him to come back to the king and say something that changes the king's heart.

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, 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.

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.

The Lord who rescued me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will rescue me from the hand of this Philistine.

David's trust in God was extraordinary.

And his logic was very simple.

The king, listening to David, was impressed by what he was saying and what he had experienced.

And he decides that maybe I need to let this kid have at it after all.

But believing David needs his help, he said, Well, wear my tunic.

He put on a coat of armor on David and a bronze helmet on his head, and David fastened on Saul's 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'm not used to them.

So he took them off.

You see what Saul did there?

He said, if I were to go out and do battle with Goliath, I'd want my armor on, I'd want to be armed to the hilt.

So therefore you should have my armor on, and you should be armed to the hilt.

David says, uh, no protective gear, no sword.

I'm gonna go with what I know.

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, he approached the Philistine.

I can only imagine the conversations in the Israelite camp as they see this happening.

Who does this kid think he is?

He's gonna go out there, he's gonna get killed.

And when he gets killed, they're gonna come and kill all of us.

And if they don't kill us, we're gonna end up being their slaves forever.

This is stupid.

This is not going to end well.

Meanwhile, the Philistine looked at David over and saw that he was little more than a boy, glowing with health and handsome, and he despised him.

He said to David, Am I a dog that you come to me with sticks?

And the Philistine cursed David by his gods.

Come here, he said, and I'll give you, I'll give your flesh to the birds of the air and all the wild animals.

David's not afraid.

He's not impressed with Goliath's bravado or with his threats.

And he's not going to back down from this uncircumcised Philistine.

Instead, he tosses something back at Goliath.

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.

This day the Lord will deliver you into my hands, and I'll strike you down and cut off your head, and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel.

Then, as Goliath gets a little closer, David ran quickly toward the battle line to meet him.

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 face down on the ground.

David had achieved a stunning victory.

A young boy defeats a seasoned warrior with nothing more than a sling and a stone.

But this is not just about someone, even someone as great as David, defeating a giant of a warrior.

This is not a story about overcoming great odds.

This is really a story about David's absolute unfailing trust in God.

And it serves as a challenge to all of us to cultivate a life of complete trust in God.

But it also raises a basic question that you and I have to wrestle with.

How do I cultivate a life of complete trust in God?

Isn't that the question?

That should be the one that rings true for us as we sit here and listen to this amazing story.

As we think about David having this absolute complete trust in God.

How do I cultivate a life of complete trust in God?

It's an important question that we ought not just let hang there.

So I want to offer three principles that come out of this account of David and Goliath and things that David did, and what I believe we can glean from this account that will help us to cultivate a life of complete trust in God.

Because that's what I desire for my life.

That's what I desire for your life.

Not occasional trust, not trust in critical moments only, but a life of complete trust no matter what the circumstances.

Let me start with this principle: trust builds through experience.

Trust builds through experience.

When David stepped forward that day and said that he would fight Goliath, he was trusting God, who in the past had shown himself faithful.

There were experiences in David's life where he saw God provide exactly what was needed every step of the way.

That bear, that lion that came to do damage to the flock, the flock that David was responsible for.

There he saw God's faithfulness as he trusted God for the ability to get that sheep back from the bear or the lion.

He had come by experience to know that he could trust God because God had been trustworthy in those experiences.

He had shown himself time and time and time again that he was absolutely trustworthy.

The decision to battle Goliath was not a rash one.

It wasn't something he did without thought.

Neither was it done in a moment of some kind of enthusiastic faith that caused him to stand up and say, I'll go, I'll do it.

He knew God was trustworthy because he had experienced God's trustworthiness.

And as a result, he was certain he could trust God now.

How about you?

How about you?

Have you been building trust in God through the experiences of doing life with him?

Are there times when you look back and you can see how God had guided you or kept you from something, how you trusted him, or maybe even without knowingly trusting him, you found him faithful?

I want to challenge you to think back.

To call to mind and reflect on the ways that God has shown himself faithful in your life in the past.

The ways that he has proven himself to be trustworthy.

Trusting God does not happen all at once.

Trust builds as we experience and remember God's grace and faithfulness over time.

Trusting God does not happen all at once.

It's not like yesterday you didn't trust him and today you do, and you have absolutely step into any circumstance full of faith and trust in him.

It builds over time.

To cultivate a life of trust in God requires us to think about and reflect on and remember his faithfulness and how he has shown himself trustworthy in the past.

God is consistently showing himself trustworthy.

We just need eyes to see it and a mind that will remember it.

And maybe you need to start writing it down so that when the difficult times come.

Your trust is already there.

The foundation is laid because you have the experience of God's trustworthiness in the past.

Well, that's the first principle.

The second one is that trust needs the right focus.

You've got to have the right focus if you're trusting God.

The army of Israel had put their trust in the king, Saul.

And when he failed to lead them forward, they were frightened.

And then they said, Well, we'll trust now our strongest warriors.

And when they refused to step forward, they hung back in fear.

When King Saul agreed to let David do battle with Goliath, he showed where his trust was.

It was in armor and in a sword.

And David said, No, no, no, no, that's not going to work here.

He thought because that's what made him successful, it would make David successful.

And David said, No.

We don't trust in a man.

And we don't trust in what we can bring to the cause.

We trust in God.

That was the focus.

David doesn't decide to fight because of what the king offers him.

He decides to fight because his focus is on someone who is defying the armies of the living God.

He was defying God.

And David said, that cannot be tolerated.

What offends David is that God's glory and God's honor were being defied.

He was there to honor God.

That's his focus.

He is there to stand up for the truth of who God is.

That's his focus.

Too often, our trust in God is focused on what we want him to do.

What we need him to do, to solve our problems, to grant us health, to give us a clear path for a decision we have to make.

Listen, cultivating a life of complete trust in God means we begin by asking God how we can bring him honor and glory.

Not just asking him for our comfort and satisfaction.

That's a harder step for us.

How do we trust God?

By focusing on his honor and his glory first, not just getting him to do something for us.

Which brings us to our third principle, and this is the hard one.

Trust doesn't guarantee your desire.

Because David chose to put his trust in God and was able to defeat Goliath.

It's easy for us to assume that if I just trust God, then he'll do what I want.

Because that's what it looks like happens here.

I think the challenge is deeper than that.

When I'm trusting God, am I trusting God to do what I want?

Or am I trusting him to do what is best?

Trusting God is not transactional.

If I pray, you will grant me what I pray for.

If I trust, you will give me what I'm asking for.

Trusting God is not a bargain between the two of you, and it's not a contract that you both must uphold.

Let me put it this way: Trust is saying, I will choose to believe that you, God, know what I need and will provide it.

And that you know what is not needed and will withhold it.

I will choose to trust you because I know that you love me.

Isn't that what we do as parents?

Aren't there times we say to our children, yes, you can do that.

Yes, you can go there, yes, you can have that.

And there are times when we say, No, you can't, because I know it's not what you need now.

I know it's not good for you now.

I know it's not the best for you now.

And yet we think that God always has to do what we want him to do.

Otherwise, he's not good.

God is always good.

And God always loves us.

And because he loves us all the time, there are some times when he gives us what we need, and there are some times that he withholds from us something that we think we need, but he says, No, you don't need that.

I have more for you, I have better for you.

In the end, trust is only as reliable as the person or thing in which you place it.

Your trust is only as good as what you choose to put your trust in.

Trusting in God, that's where our hope lies.

That's where our future lies.

I love how David, in one of his Psalms, states his absolute trust in God.

In Psalm 56, this is what he says.

In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust.

I want to suggest that maybe that's a verse that you ought to just put on a three by five card and place it on your bathroom mirror and see it every day, or put it on your dashboard and see it when you get in the car, or put it someplace where you are reminded daily that trust is a choice.

But no matter the circumstances, trust is what you want to choose.

It's my prayer that God will help each of us this week as we seek to cultivate a life of complete trust in God.

Because that's what happened way back when, as David and Goliath did battle in the Valley of Elah.

And we saw the difference that a complete life of trust in God makes.

May that be your life and my life.

We're going to continue there next week as we continue to dig into the life of David and see what more we can learn from this man who lived so long ago, but whose lessons are so very real and practical for even the 21st century.

In a moment we'll close with prayer, but I want to remind you that if you would like someone to pray with you today, there'd be some folks over here under the screen on my right, your left, who would love nothing more than to sit with you and pray, and maybe pray that God would help you to cultivate a life of complete trust in Him.

But as we head into our week, I invite you to stand as we close our service in prayer.

Father, we thank you for David, whose life, though flawed and as well as exemplary, reminds us that by trusting you, by trusting you with a life that is built on experience of your faithfulness, by resting in the fact that you love us, we can walk forward in confidence.

Father, as we take steps forward this week to cultivate a life of complete trust in you, I pray that you will help strengthen our trust where we are weak.

Remind us of those places where you've been faithful to us, and help us to live the life that reflects our trust in you, the God who loves us and gave himself for us.

These things we pray in the strong name of Jesus, our Savior, our Lord, and our coming King.

And everyone said, Amen.

Thank you.

God bless you, have a great week.