Renewed Passion (July 29th, 2018) - Myles Holmes

If you have your Bibles, and I hope you do, you can open them up to 1 Samuel chapter 16.

1 Samuel 16 · chapter mention

We're gonna uh undertake the easy task of preaching all of the life of David in one message.

All right, and so I'm thankful to be here, but I can't say much by way of introduction because we've got a lot to say.

Now I know you guys as a church are working through a series right now called Unsung Heroes, and you can imagine that this series is almost or this uh message is almost the exact opposite of the unsung hero, okay?

I want you to think for a moment of the type of person that comes to mind when I ask you to think of someone who you would consider to be great.

When you think of a great person, maybe the greatest person that ever lived, someone that you exalt in your mind as someone who's of significant usefulness.

Often the people that come to our minds are people that excel in various categories.

Maybe it's a poet or a writer that you think of, maybe it's a musician for the fairest, best band ever.

Maybe it's a politician, not so often these days.

Maybe it's a military leader, maybe it's just some sort of business leader or guru, that that when you consider someone who is of extreme usefulness in this world and of extreme greatness, this person comes to mind.

Well, this morning we're gonna be thinking through the life of David, and as we think through the life of David, each of those things that I mentioned, you can make an argument that David was the greatest there was.

Think about this for a moment, okay?

King David, as a poet, would be the poet that God used to write nearly half of the Psalter.

As a musician, God would use David as the personal musician to the man of the highest authority, King Saul.

As a king, David's reign would be so exemplary that in the time of the New Testament, even the reign of King Jesus would come to be associated with it.

In fact, his reign would be viewed as the completion of David's reign.

The prophets write of a day that they await when a king like David would reign again.

As a military commander, David would lead Israel into the golden age.

During his reign, the nation of Israel would be would come from a relatively small piece of land to a massive nation.

Under David's leadership, this small monarch would be a leading human power.

This is a man of extreme greatness.

This is a man who, when you read of his story, you want to ask God to make your life like his, that we might have lives of usefulness like him.

David was a man of such extraordinary usefulness that the scriptures reserve the title alone for him, a man after God's own heart.

And so our question this morning, as we consider David's usefulness, is this What made David so overwhelmingly useful in the hands of the Lord?

And then the question is this how can we have those things in our life?

Now, as we zoom into three specific stories in the life of David, we're gonna be refreshed by this truth that if we desire to be used by God, we require a supreme passion for God.

If you're a note taker, I want you to write that down.

That's very important.

If we desire to be used by God, we require a supreme passion for God.

See, usefulness in God's kingdom ought to be of importance, important value to us.

Now, I my uh job at Harvest Durham is to direct the youth program, and I've committed my life right now to that task.

And the reason I do that is because I look at these youth and I see such a future before them, and I recognize this truth.

There is a way that you can live.

There is a path that you can walk.

And in walking it, you will get to the end of your life, and you will look back on all the things that you have done, all the time that you have spent doing things, all the passions that you've had, all the desires that you've uh accomplished.

You will look back on it all and you'll say, These words, I've wasted it.

See, there's a way to live your life that in the end your life will have been of no use in the hands of the Lord.

And yet there's another way to live, and this is what I want to plead with you this morning, and plead with my own soul this morning, that we might live in a way in which God would use us, that we might live in a way that when we look back on our life, we look back and we say it was so hard, but it was so worth it because God used me so mightily.

And I'm telling you this that if we desire to be used by the Lord in that way, we require a supreme passion for God.

And I want you to see this in the life of King David.

And the first thing I want you to see is that David had a supreme passion for God's pleasure.

David had a supreme passion for God's pleasure that we need to imitate.

Now things go well for the people when they listen to Samuel, David's forebearer, when they listen to him urging them to follow the Lord, but the larger story shows that the people of Israel for a long time have been on a slow drift away from God.

And as you read through the story of the Old Testament, you start to get this uh narrative of their not heading in a good direction.

Their obedience, uh, it comes, but it goes quickly.

It's a glimmering and fading ray.

And as people increasingly turned away, instead of blaming themselves, instead of putting the blame on their own shoulders, instead they blame the system.

And so one day they come to Samuel and they beg for a king.

And so you can read this in 1 Samuel 8:5.

1 Samuel 8:5

That people ask for Samuel, they ask for a new king, saying, Behold, you are old.

Now, how many people in here would love for their kids to just come up and tell them that straight to their face?

You're old.

And your sons do not walk in your ways.

Now appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations.

Now, Samuel was not happy with this.

And he wasn't just happy because they called him old.

He wasn't even unhappy because they wanted a king.

The reason that he was unhappy with their requests is because they wanted a king that would lead them in their own way, according to their own pleasure.

See, they didn't come to Samuel asking them, asking him for a king that would lead them in the ways of the Lord.

They wanted to be led according to their own way.

They wanted to be satisfied with their own pleasures.

They wanted their own passions to be fulfilled.

They wanted to be under an authority that was not under the Lord at all, and they were sick of God's system.

They wanted a king that didn't show them how to please God, but showed them how to please themselves by their own actions.

And so in 1 Samuel 8 22, the Lord says to Samuel, obey their voice and make them a king.

Now I want you to notice something, okay?

Whenever God says to a man, obey someone else's voice, this is not a good thing.

This is bad news.

And so notice the irony of the king of the universe saying to Samuel, okay, obey their voice.

I want you also to notice that when God gives people up to their own desires, the Bible says this is God's condemnation on them.

This is the way that God pours out his wrath.

You can read of this in Romans chapter 1, where God says that he gives those whose desires are for the things that are not of him to up to their desires.

Romans 1 · chapter mention

And they experience, like we just sung in that song, they experience the lack of joy that is found when you do not pursue Jesus.

See, we need Jesus for joy.

Now, the first king of the nation would be a king that pleases the people, and this would provide for us a contrast of the king that would one day come, King David, that would be a person who ultimately pleases the Lord.

And so, from the perspective of human eyes, the first king is the right choice.

They picked King Saul, and so Saul comes to them, and scripture says Saul is Israel's most handsome man.

It was voted.

Everyone voted who's the most handsome, and they all said it's Saul.

He was also the tallest of all men by a head's height.

And so his appearance, combined with his towering presence, made him the obvious choice for a king who could lead Israel better than God's appointed judges.

And so Saul comes.

But listen, David's life is gonna teach us this that God doesn't so much care about the resume that the world cares about.

It's not the resume that makes you great in the world's eyes that God desires, it's the resume that makes you great in his eyes.

See what can what the comparison between Saul and David will show us is that God requires to use his servants for his purposes.

When he does that, his resume is not a resume of performances and accomplishments and capabilities, but it's a resume of the heart.

What God desires is for a people to follow him who are following him after his own heart, who desire the things that he desires, who desire his pleasure, who have a passion to please him.

Later kings would realize this, and so King Asa in 2 Chronicles says this for the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth to give strong support to those whose heart is blameless towards him.

And so listen, you can have riches, you can have popularity, you can have looks, yet, in the depth of your heart, if you don't have a supreme passion for the Lord, what God is telling us this morning is that we cannot be used by him.

And in the same way, we can carry nothing in our hands, we can have nothing to our name, and yet if our heart, if our affections are for the Lord, he will use us in mighty ways if we would just set our heart on him.

Now, before a major shift in chapter 16, you'll see at the end of chapter 15 that you'll see these words.

It says this, and the Lord regretted that he had made Saul king over Israel.

Now, immediately in chapter 16, what God had done was say, Okay, if you want a king, fashion for yourself a king.

Make whoever you want king.

And what happens in chapter 16, it's as though God jumps in the driver's seat and he said, Okay, this next king is gonna be a king that I put in place.

This is gonna be to be the type of king that pleases me.

I'm gonna place a man who will lead the nation in uprightness.

And so in verse one, the Lord says to Samuel, How long will you grieve over Saul since I have rejected him from being king over Israel?

Fill your horn with oil and go.

I will send you Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided for myself a king among his sons.

And I want you to notice this king which God is sending Samuel to find, is the king that God has provided for him for himself.

And so in the original language, you'll see that word, uh, you'll see that word that God uh has provided.

And that is the root meaning, or sorry, let me let me say this again.

You'll see the, he says, I have provided for myself a king among his sons.

Now, in the original language, what you would read there is, I have seen for myself a king among my sons.

And what's happening here in the Hebrew language, this is an idiom.

Okay, so a little English language uh lesson here.

I you know you don't want to be in school right now, but just put it on for one second, we'll take off the school hat in like two seconds, okay?

An idiom is something that communicates uh a picture, it communicates meaning through something that doesn't make sense.

When we go outside this week and we said it's raining cats and dogs out here, someone who's not a native English speaker would say, That's very interesting.

I don't see any cats and dogs.

If you tried to say, How are you to someone who's not an English speaker and they tried to understand what you're saying, they'd say, Are you asking how I exist?

What are you what are you asking about?

This doesn't make any sense.

These are idioms, they mean something that if you break down the grammar, it doesn't actually mean something.

Now, this is very important, okay?

So in the original language, to see someone is to anoint that person, is to pick that person.

Now, there are a lot of uh young, maybe single men in this room that wish that dating were like that.

I see it, I pick it, it's mine.

It doesn't work like that.

And so David says, the one that you, or God says, the one that you look upon will be the one that I have provided for you as a king.

And so then Samuel comes to Bethlehem and is with Jesse and his sons, and he gets right to work.

He starts looking at Jesse's sons.

And at first sight, it seems like it's not gonna be hard to discover who's the Lord, who the Lord's choice will be.

The oldest son of Jesse is the perfect candidate.

And so when Samuel comes to look at the sons, the text says he looked.

Remember, that's important.

Remember what looking on someone means.

He looked on Iliad.

By saying this word, look, Samuel is essentially saying this, Wow, Iliad, this is the one that I choose.

This is the one that God has provided to be the Lord's anointed, so much so that Samuel says, Surely the Lord's anointed is before him.

But the Lord would reveal to Samuel that he's making the exact same mistake with Iliad that the people made with Saul.

He's looking at the appearance.

And so the Lord says in verse 7, Look, look, do not look on his appearance.

See, you've already done this.

You've already tried to place a man who had the perfect resume.

You already tried to place a man who had everything going for him, but did not have a passion for my pleasure, and it was a complete train wreck.

I'm sure Samuel's response at this point was, Well, what am I looking for then?

I can't find it among these people.

And the Lord responds, This for the Lord sees not what man sees, the Lord looks on the heart.

See, ultimately, David would be the one that the Lord looks upon, because in David, the Lord saw a character that was pleasing to him.

As he looked at who David was on the inside, he saw a great care, he saw a great character that brought him pleasure.

That made David the obvious choice of the Lord over David's brothers.

So much so that David wasn't even brought to the sacrifice.

And yet the Lord would teach us a lesson through the choice of David that God uses those who please him by their character.

Now, this is a stark call to us this morning.

That we, as God's people, are to be a people who are passionate about character.

We are to be a people that are forging character.

See, we can fall into the temptations of this world to have many aspirations in our life, but never actually be working on who we are on the inside.

We can have many desires, many goals.

We can want to accomplish many things.

Maybe it's career advancement, maybe it's a bigger home, maybe it's marriage, maybe what it's anything in this world, and yet so often we fail to look on how we can grow in character, how we can have a heart that desires the things of the Lord increasingly.

See, all these things are good, but none of them, none of them is as important to the Lord as that our character be conformed to Christ-likeness.

And so we understand that God is after a person who cares about character.

God is after a person who wants to form their inner man in a way that pleases him.

And so it's important that we look at the story of David being chosen and we ask, how was God forging in David a character that would please him?

What was God doing in the life of David that would cause David to be the man that God would choose?

And the first was this that God was using the small moments in David's life to make him the man he wanted him to be.

It was not an insignificant thing that David was not with the sons of Jesse when Samuel came.

This is the prophet of the Lord coming.

This is the judge coming to town.

If you are the there's one thing I know about youngest children, okay, I'm a youngest child myself.

They are bratty, and they're always around when you don't want them to be there.

And yet, where is David?

A lot of older siblings saying, Yeah, they're nudging their younger sibling right now.

Where is David?

David's out in the field.

And I'm sure that in many ways he wanted to be there with them, but instead, he's faithfully keeping the flock.

He's been given a job by God, and he's faithful to do it in the small, meaningless moments, sitting with the sheep when there could be millions of other more important things to do.

Here is David faithfully serving the Lord.

In the same way, our character is renewed in the small moments of our lives.

Split-second decisions where we have the choice between kindness and rudeness or anger and patience.

Our day is made up of several moments where we uh are required to redeem for Christ's sake.

And so, one really practical thing you can do is at the beginning of your day, listen, most of you guys know the uh character flaws you have.

And if you don't, if you have a spouse, ask them and you will know in about 10 seconds.

At the beginning of your day, look forward and see what temptations are there for me to have a character that's not conformed to Christ.

What small moments are there?

Maybe it's just at the water cooler at work, there might be an opportunity for you to gossip, and you need to tell yourself at the beginning of your day, I am not going to partake in that.

I want character that conforms to Christ.

I'm committing not to do this because I have a passion to please the Lord.

See, if we desire to have character that pleases the Lord, the question is not what do I need to become, but what needs to be changed today.

What moment do I need to redeem for the Lord today?

And then as we do this, day after day, we will find that we're growing closer and closer to Christ.

The first thing that David did to be used by the Lord was he had a supreme passion for God's pleasure.

And the second thing we'll see in the story of David and Goliath is a supreme passion for God's glory.

And so we flip over to 1 Samuel chapter 17.

1 Samuel 17 · chapter mention

And what was being cultivated behind the scenes in 1 Samuel chapter 16 is put on full display in the popular story of David and Goliath.

1 Samuel 16 · chapter mention

Now, perhaps of all biblical stories, David and Goliath is the most well-known.

You can watch many uh sports games, watch many movies, and the it's brought up as an illustration of something mighty over or something small overcoming something mighty.

But I want to suggest to you this morning that David and Goliath is not so much a story about how you can face massive problems and face obstacles in your life.

This is a story of how God can use the smallest person to accomplish the most mighty task when they have a supreme passion for the glory of the Lord.

When they desire that in their circumstance God be glorified.

See, when we look at men on the outside and we see the story of David and Goliath, what we see is just that David versus a Goliath.

David versus a giant of a man that he should not be able to take down.

But when we put on the per the lens of God's glory, when we view this story from a perspective of God's glory, what we see is David and a dwarf.

And God versus Goliath.

Now, scripture, the historical account of David and Goliath begins in verse one.

These two nations have met together for a battle, and in verse four, we're introduced to the problem of the story.

And I want you for a moment just to read this as though you haven't heard it a million times and read it to your kids a million times, okay?

Verse 4 reads this and there came out of the camp of the Philistines a champion named Goliath of Gath.

Now, Scripture gives us an in-depth physical description.

It's phenomenal.

This is one of the longest physical descriptions of a person we have in all of Scripture.

Even if Jesus Christ, we don't have this type of physical description, but it's very important to the story that we understand what kind of man Goliath is.

At six cubits and a span, Goliath would have stood just over six feet, or sorry, nine feet tall.

His armor weighed a total of 126 pounds, and the tip of his spear alone was about 15 pounds.

When you looked at this man, he looked like Superman.

He was towering over.

You could never miss him.

Israelites thought Saul was tall because he was a head higher than them.

This man was feet higher than him.

Not only did he look like Superman, he sounded like a beast, and so he stood in front of the entire army and shouted to them.

Now This was no military cry, this was no military grunt.

What Goliath is shouting is a suggestion that they partake in representative warfare.

This was a common uh thing of the day that when two armies would meet, instead of fighting, they would just have two people come out and they would duel it out.

And it would be winner takes all.

And so he comes and he shouts these words.

Now listen for the glory of the Lord here.

Listen, I defy Israel, Goliath shouts this day.

Give me a man that we may fight together.

Israel's response is in verse 11.

They say this, when Saul and all Israel heard these words of the Philistine, they were dismayed and greatly afraid.

Now listen, when Israel heard these words from Goliath, I defy Israel.

Something should have happened in Israel's mind.

See, Israel should have read over their history.

They should have seen all the times that God had delivered them from the undeliverable.

They should have seen all the times their backs were pressed up against the wall, and yet God still made a way for them.

They should have seen a giant who was defying the glory of God.

They should have seen a God who was infinitely glorious, and they should have done some math.

Okay, here is a man who's saying that he can take down God.

Who's gonna win here?

And yet they never did the math.

They never understood it from a perspective of God's glory.

Instead, they saw this man and they were immediately filled with fear.

They were too consumed with the glory of Goliath and too unconvinced of the glory of God.

See, this is why, as we've looked at the life of David, I put that word before passion, supreme.

See, it's not just enough for you to have a passion for God.

There are many people who have a passion for God, but when you weigh that passion against other things, you find that it's actually not that great of a passion, and they love so many other things more than they love God.

What God desires of us is that we have a supreme passion for Him.

What Israel lacked was a supreme passion for God.

And so, yes, they worship God, but when Goliath came, his glory was greater to them than the glory of the Lord.

Now, listen, this is where our problem lies as sinners is that we are glory seekers, and in our brokenness we will seek glory in the places that glory cannot be found.

That's why I love that song, because it's just an honest confession of how we've sought time and time again, if we're honest with ourselves, joy where joy can't be found.

We love things that are less glorious than God.

See, if we love things more than God, if we have a greater passion for things and we have a passion for God, then all of our uh emotions, all of our desires, all of our affections start to go out of whack.

We begin to fear things that we shouldn't fear.

We begin to love things that we shouldn't love.

We begin to say things we shouldn't say, we begin to find joy in things we shouldn't find joy in.

All because we don't have a supreme passion for the Lord, we have a supreme passion for this thing.

See, the greatest problem with our fear, our lust, our anger, our anxiety, our pride is that we give too much glory to a passion that is not worth our glory.

Now I was reminded of this a few weeks ago when I was at a Blue Jays game.

When you go to a Blue Jays game, you kind of have to take stock of your bank account, don't you, if you plan on eating there.

Like you got to make sure you got some funds saved up if you're gonna have like a hot dog and a pop or something like that.

Because what happens is you're hungry and you're watching the game and it's a long game.

So you go up and you and you say, Okay, I'm gonna get a hot dog, and they say, Okay, that's gonna be$11.

You're like, wow, that's an expensive hot dog.

Maybe I'll just skip it, I'll just get chips and a water, and they're like, Okay, well, that's gonna be$17.

And you're like, oh my goodness, I didn't know that this was worth this much.

And so what you do is you suck it up because it's a hot day, and and maybe you just won't have a full meal, you'll just buy a bag of chips and have a water, and you sit down.

But what happens when you sit down with that bag of chips?

You start doing the math, don't you?

It was$11.

There's about 11 chips in this bag these days, isn't there?

And so you eat a chip, and as you eat it, you're you say, That chip was about a dollar, and you start weighing out the glory of the chip bag that's in front of you.

And you decide that that chip was not worth the dollar that you paid for.

You realize that you paid way too much for a glory that was way too little.

Now listen, this is the problem with our sin.

When we worship the things that are not God, we always pay too much.

This is why the smallest sin is significant to God, because when you have done that sin that you consider small, what you have said to the God of this universe, the one who created you, the one in whom all joy is found, you have said that there is something better in this world than you.

And so it doesn't matter what that sin is, it matters that you've said there's something better than God Himself.

See, your problem is not that God is not glorious enough.

Your problem is that like the Israelites, you were wowed by something that was infinitely less glorious.

Now, up until verse 11, if we were to read this story without knowing the end, we would have great fear.

What is gonna happen to Israel?

But in verse 11, David appears.

Now, when we hear the name of David, we're reminded of chapter 16, where we were told of this man that he would was a man after God's own heart.

We were reminded that God desires to use those who please him.

And we know when David comes that something amazing is going to happen.

That this is the boy that God has promised to use.

And so verse 16 tells us that Goliath made the same offer, the same offer morning and evening for 40 days.

He stood in front of the army and he said, Send a man to fight me.

Meanwhile, David is currently among the sheep and serving King Saul and his father, and his father sends him on an errand to go and take food to his brothers and to go and take a gift to his brother's commander.

As David enters the story, what we're gonna see is David encounters a series of people that tell David he could never defeat Goliath.

He has a series of encounters in which David will have to prove that the battle against Goliath is as good as done because Goliath has stood against the glory of God.

David is the only one in this entire army who believes that God is more glorious than Goliath.

And he will prove to many of them before he slays the giant that he believes this to be true.

And so the first encounter he has is with his brothers.

When the army saw Goliath, they were filled with great fear.

We talked about how they had too much reverence for Goliath as a man and not enough passion for the glory of the Lord to know that if someone stands up against the glory of the Lord, then surely God will wipe them out immediately.

Yet in verse 23, when David comes, we have a very different first encounter of Goliath's words.

In verse 23, David hears Goliath for the very first time, but I wanted to quickly point out a few differences of when David hears Goliath versus when Israel hears Goliath.

And I want you to see the difference of a man who has a supreme passion for the Lord's glory.

See, first when David heard Goliath, the text said this, and David heard.

Remember when the Israel heard the Philistine it said they heard and they were filled with great fear.

And yet there's David, this small boy, he hears Goliath, and the text simply leaves that.

He heard.

There's no indication that he was filled with fear.

There's no lack of faith.

He knows that God will deliver him.

Not because he's great, but because his God is great.

In verse 26, David categorizes Goliath.

He isn't a giant, like Israel said.

Instead, he's an uncircumcised Philistine.

Another way to say that is he's God's enemy.

This is God's enemy.

If someone's standing up against God, surely God can destroy them.

And so where the army saw a fearsome giant, David sees an enemy of God who has the audacity, as the end of verse 26 says, to defy the armies of the living God.

David knows what this man stood up against, and he knows who the winner is going to be.

And so in verse 31, David meets his next encounter, the next person who doubts him.

This is King Saul.

See, Saul is like David's brothers.

He doesn't believe he can take down the giant.

But again, listen, David is not relying on his own power.

He is firmly believing, firmly trusting in the glory of the Lord to overcome all of God's enemies.

And so David, in response to Saul, points back to his previous victories, previous ways that God has delivered him.

And as Saul questions David's ability to take down the giant, David says this in verse 34.

He says, But David said to Saul, Your servant used to keep sheep for his father.

And when there came a lion or a bear and took a lamb from the flock, I went after him and struck him and delivered it out of his mouth.

And if he rose against me, I caught him by his beard and struck him and killed him.

Your servant has struck down both lions and bears, and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be like one of them, for he has defied the armies of the living God.

See, for David, the battle was already as good as done.

For David, the stone was already sunk inches deep into Goliath's head.

Goliath was as good as dead, because he had stood against the God who delivers.

He had stood against the God who has strength to overcome his enemies.

Now it doesn't take much to convince Saul.

In fact, likely what's going on here is Saul's a little scared and has been waiting 40 days for someone to go and at least just be killed by the giant.

And so in verse 38 to 40, what he tries to do is he tries to clothe David in his armor and tunic.

Now, when we read this at first glance, it kind of seems like Saul's trying to watch out for David.

Okay, David, well, if you're gonna go into the battle, if you're gonna fight with the giant, why don't you take my armor?

Okay, you don't really you don't have metal on, maybe you won't be that well protected.

Take my armor, you'll be a lot better.

And we get this funny picture of David trying to put this armor on, and he's it's way too big for him.

And he can't move around.

But what Saul's really trying to do here is get the glory for this battle.

See, if you wanted to have the glory of a battle, of a duel, what you would do is you would uh clothe that person in your own tunic.

It functioned like a jersey.

When I put on my leaf jersey and I go and play hockey, I'm representing the leaves.

And that is why they're very poor hockey players.

And in the same way, when Saul offers David his tunic, he's saying, David, go and represent me.

And when David rejects it, what he's saying is this I'm not doing this to glorify you, Saul.

This will all be for the glory of the Lord.

I will enter this battle with nearly nothing, because God will get all the glory.

See, David refuses this because it's not gonna be a belief in man's equipment or in man's confidence, but in God's glory that will win the battle.

David's last encounter is with Goliath himself, and in every way, David shows what he's already displayed confidence in that because of God's glory, Goliath will fall.

And so look what he says in verse 45.

He says, You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied.

This day the Lord will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you down and cut off your head, and I will give the dead bodies of the host of the Philistines this day to the birds of the air and to the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel.

See, David shouts back at this giant, you have no idea who you're up against.

You are up against the God of Israel.

And in a few short moments, all the world's gonna know how small you are compared to this great God.

Now I want you to notice how quickly this battle is over.

When we think about David and Goliath, we often make the whole story about the battle, but the battle's only three verses.

And so in 48 it says, When the Philistine arose and came near and drew near to meet David, David ran quickly towards the battle line to meet the Philistine.

And David put his hand in his bag and took out a stone and slung it and struck the Philistine on the forehead, and the stone sank into his forehead and he fell on his face to the ground.

If we were watching this in a movie, we would say this plot was really slow and the climax was really quick.

It's over before it even began.

But I want you to understand why this is, because this isn't a story about a really cool battle.

This is a story about who is more glorious, the greatest of all men or the God of this universe.

Now, as we look back on the story of David and Goliath, many of us have probably heard messages about this, and the messages have sometimes gone something like this that if you just have faith in God, you can face your biggest mountains.

Now, I want you to know that that's true.

But I want you to know that I think that there's something way bigger happening in the story of David and Goliath.

See, when we ask, who are we in the story of David and Goliath, the answer is not David.

When we ask who we are in the story of David and Goliath, the answer is that we are Israel.

We're the ones who could not overcome our greatest enemy, sin.

See what David does to Goliath is a shadow of what God is going to do to an infinitely greater enemy for us, our sin.

The enemy that we faced in our sin, the death that it was leading us to, was a greater problem than a nine-foot giant.

And just as Israel would have to find salvation in David alone, who would march forward and uh gain victory for Israel, so we the church find victory in Jesus alone, who by himself marches to the cross.

And on the cross he dies a death, defeating sin forever.

Just as Israel would do nothing in order to attain that victory, so the church does nothing because Jesus has done it all.

Jesus has overcome death.

Jesus has overcome the greatest enemy, sin.

And by himself he has brought glory to God by suffering on the cross.

See, the battle that Jesus brought to an end on the cross was far greater than the battle Israel faced with Goliath and the Philistines.

See, this battle goes all the way back to Genesis 3.15, when Adam and Eve sinned, a cosmic battle begun in the garden.

But because God is infinitely glorious, the battle was over before it began.

And so in Genesis 3.5, God curses the serpent and he says to him this that he's gonna send a seed of the woman, and he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.

Now listen, I don't know, I don't know need to know much about fighting, to know that if I see a fight and someone's head is bruised and the other person's heel is bruised, the person whose head is bruised has lost the fight.

And from the very beginning, what God says to the serpent is you're done.

You're done.

There is a day coming where you will be cast away forever.

The battle is as good as done because you've stood against the glorious Lord of the universe.

Now listen, if you and you are here and you're not a follower of Christ, you need to know that the battle is as good as done.

There is a day coming, we sung it this morning, will where all will say that God is glorious, where every knee will bow before Jesus and recognize his authority, recognize his glory.

When you realize that the battle is done, what you also realize is that God is gracious to you this morning to have you in a place where you can hear of his love for you, where you can hear of the sacrifice that his son made that you might have eternal life with him.

And the only thing you need to do is be like Israel and find salvation in one man Jesus Christ who delivered you from death.

Thirdly and lastly, and we're gonna do this really quick, you can open up your Bible to Psalm 51.

If we are gonna be used by the Lord, we need a supreme passion for his presence.

And as we think about David being a man that's used greatly by the Lord, I'm sure that something that uh went off in the back of your mind, and I know it was preached here last week, and so it's very fresh in your mind, was that in many ways David is a very poor example of extreme usefulness.

And one of the darkest places in scripture, in fact, is uh the story of David and Bathsheba.

And uh in many ways, if David's used by the Lord, then you can't help but talk about this moment.

And yet, what we see is that even in the darkest moment of David's life, when he commits adultery with Bathsheba, when he murders Uriah, even in the darkest moment, he is a man after God's own heart, and he models for us how to overcome our failure through repentance.

He models for us true repentance that leads to restored presence with God.

And so while we see David exceedingly fail, we also see a supreme passion for God's presence drive him back for true restoration.

And this can be a powerful reminder for us that even uh when we have a supreme passion for the Lord, we will fail and we will fall short of God's glory and we will sin and we will need repentance, and yet God still desires to use us.

How amazing is that that we can be used by the Lord, even though we can look back in our life and see so many failures, see so many reasons why we shouldn't.

Listen, if if a perfect person uh could only if only a perfect person could be used by the Lord, this pulpit would be empty every week.

That's not to bash Pastor Mike while he's gone, okay?

Don't like go to Pastor Mike and say, hey, that guest preacher was bashing you.

I'll never get invited back again.

And I want to, all right?

But but that's to say that we when we fail and we uh have character like God's own character, when we are passionate for the Lord, then repentance draws us back to him and we can be used by him again.

Now, as we think about the story of David and Bathsheba, I want you to notice something right after the bat.

That what eventually ends up happening with Bathsheba isn't a one-time event, it's a series of small, sinful choices made by a man who had clearly lost his passion for the Lord.

In uh 2 Samuel chapter 11, we read this in the first verse.

2 Samuel 11 · chapter mention

You don't have to turn there, you can stay in Psalm 51, but it says this in the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab and his servants with him in all Israel.

Now there's something really wrong with this picture.

It's the fact that the kings are supposed to go out to battle, but instead David's sending someone for himself.

But not only does he stay home, verse 2 says, it happened late one afternoon that when David arose from his couch, he was walking on the roof.

See, David not only stays home, he stays home and he does nothing.

This can be a lesson for us that our passion will die out when we fail to when we do nothing for the Lord.

When we fail to commit our ways to him.

And so you can have a passion for the Lord, you can have a heart that's lit on fire for him, but if you stop living for him, this will lead you down a road of disobedience.

The Christian life is like you're biking uphill, and if you stop, you start going backwards.

And this happens in the life of David.

See, I'm sure that David could have thought of something to do when he was a boy and he had no responsibility.

He was faithful to shepherd the flock.

Now he is the king of a nation.

And what is he doing?

Nothing.

He is doing nothing.

He stops committing his ways to the Lord.

I love what Spurgeon says.

He says, lazy people tempt the devil to tempt them.

See, what we do know is this that just because we have a supreme passion for something doesn't mean that it's always going to be easy.

There will be times when you don't want to serve the Lord.

But a passion for God's pleasure and a passion for God's glory drives you to do it anyways.

This happens so much in our lives, doesn't it?

So often we we know that we need to read the Bible, and at times in our lives where we are faithfully reading the Bible, it's often hard, isn't it?

John Piper says that when he wakes up in the morning, that he feels like Satan is sitting on his face.

And so many mornings it feels like that, doesn't it?

The alarm goes off, and we know that we should read the Bible, we know that we should get out of bed, we know that we'll be overwhelmingly blessed if we just sit before the Lord and listen to him.

But it's hard.

And so we hit snooze.

And yet, what happens those mornings that we do drag ourselves out of bed and get to the coffee pot and pour a cup of coffee and sit down before the Lord?

It's so hard to get there.

But what you know what happens as soon as you open God's word, it's for me at least, and I'm sure it's for you've experienced this, this refreshment comes over you.

And sometimes you don't even have to read a word, you just sit before God's open word, and the position of your heart is so refreshing to you, and you realize this is why I'm doing this.

It's the same with our church's prayer meeting.

Uh, I don't know if your church is like ours.

Maybe you're you're uh much more spiritual than us, but we struggle to get attendance at our prayer meetings, and there have been seasons in our church where it's really amazing, and seasons where I'm like, what is going on here?

And yet, so often, isn't it hard at the our church, uh, we have our prayer meeting at the end of the night, and it is very hard sometimes in the middle of the week, at the end of a long work day, to convince yourself that prayer is a priority for you.

And this is what I see so often at our prayer and praise nights is I stand outside the door and I see a hundred tired parents walking in, looking like they're gonna fall asleep as they're walking.

And yet they've made it because they have a passion for the Lord.

You know what I see walking out?

Time and time again, people who are lit up for the Lord, who are so passionate for him, because they followed through on their passion.

They followed through on it and they were overwhelmingly blessed.

But this is not what David does.

He doesn't commit his way to God, instead, he pursues Bathsheba, and this leads him down the road of sin that he will walk for a year until Nathan the prophet stands in front of him and reveals to him through the Lord's blessing his own sin.

When Nathan shows David his sin, David says these words.

He says, I've sinned against the Lord.

And notice that the convicting part about a sin is that it's against the Lord.

It's against the Lord.

David recognizes that he's taken the life of a man, that his situation is messed up, and yet the worst part of it for him is that it is against the Lord.

Now Nathan responds with these words.

He says, The Lord has put away your sin, you shall not die.

And we know that David's uh repentance was genuine, and so my question for us this morning is this what makes genuine repentance?

And we find it in Psalm 51.

Look at Psalm 51.

I want you to see four uh things that are required if we will have a restored relationship with the Lord through repentance.

The first thing is this that a passion to be restored requires that we take the personal blame.

Look at Psalm 51.

David says this, have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions.

Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, cleanse me from my sin, for I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.

Take note of the nature, uh, the personal nature of David's sin.

He recognizes that this is his fault.

And yet, so often in our repentance, we can't we blame it on the circumstances?

Oh, well, if things were just different, I wouldn't have gotten angry with my wife.

Well, if that person was just different, I wouldn't gossip about them.

Well, if I wasn't in this situation, I wouldn't have to lie.

We blame our circumstances and try to take the weight off ourselves.

And yet, if our repentance is to be genuine, it must start with uh understanding that our heart is corrupted, that at our very deepest nature, our passions are broken, that we love the things that are not God.

Genuine repentance begins with taking the personal blame.

The second thing we must do is think of the great sorrow of sin.

See, through the story, sin is grievous to David, but once he sees sorry, sin is grievous to David once he sees it from God's perspective.

And so in verse 4, he says these words against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgments.

I wonder if Uriah had heard those words, what he would have thought.

Uh he probably would have said, David, you killed me.

I think you sinned against me as well.

And yet what David recognizes is that the greatest sorrow of sin is that it's against the God of this universe.

The greatest problem with sin is that it grieves God, not because it comes at a great personal consequence to us.

Psalm 51 was likely written in one of the seven days following Nathan's confrontation with David.

And during this time, David was fasting and praying that the Lord would deliver his child.

Eventually, David's child would die because of this sin that David committed, and yet, even after that, David would be able to say that the worst part about his sin was that it was against the Lord.

It was not the earthly consequence that he despised, it was the fact that it grieved the Lord.

I wonder how this should rebuke our repentance.

How often we hate our sin, not because it grieves the Lord, but we hate our sin because it cost us something.

Or maybe other people found out and we have great shame because of it.

And yet rarely it's because we fear the Lord.

And so in verse 7, he says these words, words that you can only say if you believe that God is gracious.

He says, Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean.

Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.

See, David prays, believing that God can deliver him.

He prays knowing that God can purge him with hyssop and wash him whiter than snow.

And I wonder how this might be rebuked to us.

How many of us pray knowing that God is willing to forgive?

How many of us in this room are holding on to sin say that we can't forgive ourselves for?

That we aren't bringing to God because we say, God, you could never forgive me for that.

I'm too great a sinner.

And yet God calls us to confess with our mouth before him, and he says that he's faithful.

He is faithful to forgive.

His grace is abundant for you.

It's abounding towards you.

The last thing we must do if we desire true repentance is to long for his restored presence.

And so David prays in verse 10.

He says this create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.

Cast me not away from your presence and take not your Holy Spirit from me.

See, the joy of repentance is that it restores our relationship with the Lord.

I love a sermon illustration that I heard from Pastor Robbie Simons of Oakville, and it's been so helpful to me.

And so I share it with you to help you in the battle against sin.

And he was uh saying that repentance is much like uh little product you probably have in your bathroom called draino.

Something that happens, especially if you have a wife with really long hair, it happens a lot.

Uh something that happens is that your drain gets clogged up, doesn't it?

And one day you just notice that it's emptying slower and slower and slower.

And so there's this amazing product that you take a spoon in and you don't breathe in because if you do, you feel like you probably just took a few years off your life.

But you put it down, sometimes it smokes up, but then something amazing happens, doesn't it?

When you turn on that water a few minutes later, it runs clean again.

Now, sin is much like that clog for us.

When we when our lives are filled with sin, when we're pursuing the things that are not of God, we feel so far from God.

We read the Bible, we pray, but we feel like he's not listening.

And what repentance does for us is it restores God's presence.

It opens up that line of communication that we might have fellowship with him again.

And I wonder if there's sin in your life this morning that you have not brought to God for whatever reason, and yet you long to experience his presence again.

You need to hear this morning through the life of David that it can be experienced as you repent.

As you repent and that relationship is restored.

See, this is what Christ invites us to do on a daily basis.

I love what Martin Luther said.

He said the Christian life is a life of repentance.

And you need to be thinking in your life, if you have not repented recently, that uh you're probably not in a good place.

See, we are constantly missing the mark.

We're constantly walking off the path.

Yet when we repent, we say that we believe that Christ is great enough to forgive the greatest sinner.

As we close, as we consider David and the great sin of David, perhaps an argument could be made that he's not a great example of true passion.

Yet even in this fall, it models for us what God desires to do for his own glory.

You know what God wants before him in heaven on that final day is a ton of people, his church, who say, I could not make it on my own.

See, in heaven, we'll share stories of the way that God brought us through his grace.

None of us will say, I made it here on my own.

My road was perfect, I did everything right.

Instead, our road will be marked by failure after failure, and yet it will be marked by grace after grace because of who God is.

And we will stand there in that last day and we will say this together I don't deserve to be here, but by the glory of one man I am, Jesus Christ.

We'll all proclaim together that Christ is great enough to use the greatest sinner.