Having Confidence in God When Facing Giants: 1 Samuel 17:32-58

You're listening to The Bible Guys, a podcast where a

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And then Bridget m says love when Chris sings good morning, Wow,

there love love when Chris says good morning, sings good morning. Well, well,

thank you, Bridget I guess I should do with you. Well,

I think he's kind of good morning, good morning. We

talk whole not through good.

Morning, good morning to you.

I don't know why I laugh every time, but every

time you do that, I laugh.

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And then you got compliments and as soon as you

get compliments, you can't stop doing it after that.

That is not something, right now, that is not I

kept doing it.

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that would be. I thought that was it.

That is not the reason why. Okay, I think it's because.

I'm goofy, goofy. Yeah, because you're goofy, not like like

not that goofy, okay, but the other yeah, just goofy. Yeah.

So all right, Well that we get through that pretty quickly,

Yes we did. And uh, it's okay because today we

have a pretty epic big story story, maybe the biggest story,

uh in the Old Testament.

But exactly because it's the biggest story in the Old Testament,

because it's Goliath. That's to be.

It's gotta be.

Now, you tipped our hand well on the didn't let

us get to just drag people along and let them

figure it out? Big story Cliath, it'sliethie okay. People on

the edge of their seat, that's right. We were going

to kind of just draw them along. And yes, okay, anyways,

it's Goliath.

David wins, he kills them.

Spoiler alert, Okay, sorry to ruin the whole thing for you,

For those of you that are going through this for

the first time.

There's no way, do you think.

No, yes, no.

Even in society, people used to phrases like like, that's

a David Goliath story. It's the classic.

I was a college pastor for a while and I mentioned,

you know, the story David Gliath, and this guy in

the room goes no, I had like thirty something.

Yeah, but that guy have subscribed or listened to the Bible, guys, though.

Probably he was sitting in church. All right, all right.

Sorry with the spoiler fage fall fall.

Okay, So anyways, we are reading, and if you don't know,

first Samuel, chapter seventeen is where the story of Goliath is.

And up to this point, Goliath has already been challenging

the Israelites. He's just so you know, he's this giant guy.

He's over nine feet tall. He's got a bronze helmet

and a bronze coat of mail that weighed one hundred

and twenty five pounds. Just his armor it's one hundred

and twenty five pounds. He's got a javelin that's made

that looks like a Weaver's beam. His shield is so

big that his armor bearer had to go out in

front of him carrying his shield.

Yeah, and it said the tip of a spear weighed

fifteen pounds.

Yeah, yeah, just the tip of the spirit. Yeah. Just crazy.

And he's out there mocking the people of Israel and

he's challenging them to the idea that hey, instead of

thousands of people dying in this battle, let's just out

your champion to fight against me. Whoever wins, Yeah, that's

the army that wins.

And there's so there's so many things to learn in

that because Goliath is saying to them with his voice,

you are just the servants of Saul, and I am

a warrior for my youth. And he's trying to tell,

you know, he's trying to tell the people who they are.

And then David comes along and says, who's this philistine

that defies the living army or the army of the

living God. Right, you know, so David has the right perspective, right,

he said, we're not the servants of Saul, We're the

servants of the living God.

So that's whe're at we're going to start off. Then

in verse thirty two, and we'll read to I think

the end of the chapter. But here's just says David

comes and he says, don't worry about this philistine. David

told Saul, Saul's the king. I'll go fight him. Don't

be ridiculous. Saul replied, there's no way you can fight

this philistine and possibly win. You're only a boy, and

he's been a man of war since his youth. But

David persisted, I'd been taking care of my father's sheep

and goats, he said. When a lion or a bear

comes to steal a lamb from the flock, I go

after it with a club and rescue the lamb from

his mouth. If the animal turns on me, I catch

it by the jaw and club it to death. I've

done this to both lions and bears, and I'll do

it to this pagan philistine too. Frize defied the armies

of the Living God. The Lord who rescued me from

the claws of the lion and the bear will rescue

me from this philistine. Saul finally consented. All right, go ahead,

he said, and may the Lord be with you. Then

Saul gave David his own armor, a bronze helmet, and

a coat of mail. David put it on and strapped

his sword over it, and took a step or two

to see what it was like, for he'd never warn

such things before. I can't go in these, he protested

to Saul. I'm not used to them. So David took

them off again, and he picked up five smooth stones

from a stream and put them into his shepherd's bag. Then,

armed only with his father or with his shepherd's staff

and sling, he started across the valley to fight the Philistine.

Gliath walked out toward David with a shield bear ahead

of him, sneering in content at this ruddy faced boy.

Am I a dog? He roared at David that you

come at me with a stick, and he cursed David

by the names of his gods. Come over here, and

I'll give your flesh to the birds of wild animals,

Gliath yelled. David replied to the Philistine, you come to

me with swords, spear and javelin, But I come to

you in the name of the Lord of Heaven's armies,

the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have

defied today. The Lord will conquer you, and I will

kill you and cut off your head, and then I'll

give the dead bodies of your men to the birds

and wild animals, and the whole world will know that

there's a god in Israel, and everyone assembled here will

know that the Lord rescues his people. But now with

sword and spear, this is the Lord's battle, and he

will give you to us. As Goliath moved closer to attack,

David quickly ran out to meet him, and reaching into

his shepherd's bag and taking out a stone, he hurled

it with his sling and hit the Philistine in the forehead.

The stone sank in and Goliath stumbled and fell face

down on the ground. So David triumphed over the Philistine

with only a sling and a stone, for he had

no sword. Then David ran over and pulled Goliath's sword

from his sheath, and David used it to kill him

and cut off his head. When the Philistines saw that

the champion was dead, they turned and ran. Then the

men of Israel and Judah gave a great shout of

triumph and rushed over after the Philistines, chasing them as

far as Gath and the gates of Akron. The bodies

of the dead and wounded Philistines were strewn all along

the road from Shareem as far as Gath and Akron.

Then the Israelite army returned and plundered the deserted Philistine camp.

David took the Philistine's head to Jerusalem, but he stored

the man's armor in his own tent. As Saul watched

David go out to fight the Philistines, he asked Abner,

the commander of his army. Abner, whose son is this,

young man? I really don't know, Abner declared, Well, find

out who he is, the king told him, and as

soon as David returned from killing Goliath, Abner brought him

to Saul with the philistines head still in his hand.

Tell me about your father, young man, and he replied,

his name is Jesse, and we live in Bethlehem. There

you go, I'll tell you what.

There are at least twenty sermons this one chapter. You know, like,

I mean, think about it. I mean, you've preached on

all of these, right, I'm sure, or at least you've

heard of that.

I think twenty two sermons.

You find more truths than me I thought I find

a lot of truths. Jeff, you me, you mean, okay,

so uh so. So the first thing that stands out

to me is, here's Saul parroting Goliath, right, So he

has been so convinced that, you know, he's forgotten completely

that God is with them and that God's going to

win the battle and everything else, that he's repeating what

Goliath said. You know, that's what That's what we do,

don't we when the world tells us we're no good?

You know, we listen to the voices of Sometimes parents

are coaches, or people that don't believe in us. Maybe

perhaps you've heard a promise from God and somebody around

you uses logic over faith and they say, no, you

can't do that. That's a that's a terrible idea. What

are you thinking? That's crazy? And so what we do

is we listen and we start to parrot that advice

over the promises of God. That's what Saul's doing. And

then what else stands out to you?

All the soldiers were terrified, Yeah, and you know, these

are fighting men, and Goliath is such an intimidating person

and he's kind of, I don't know, his pr is

kind of out ahead of him, and he's like, oh

my goodness, everybody's terrified. But I think it's funny that David,

who's not a professional fighter, he shows up and he's

not thinking from a warrior standpoint. He's just looking at

this giant going he's too big to miss.

Right, right?

Why are you guys afraid of this guy? And there's

a note here in the Life Avabication Study Bible that

talks about the fact that David saw a mortal man

who was defying the God of the armies of Israel, right,

and the soldiers forgot about God, forgot about who they were,

their identity in God, and instead and the fact that

God was one who always went and fought their battles

for them, right, And instead they for some reason they think,

well I got to fight this one. And they were

terrified of what they could see. And David's like, Hey,

if God's forest, this guy's too big to miss. Yeah,

And I love that.

Another sermon in there is here's David risking his life

for a sheep, and it's just a testament about how

much he puts himself into his work. I mean, think

about it's a whole sermon on work isn't that. It's

like here he is at his job, they're not. I mean,

I guess they are his sheep, and they're connected to

his prosperity, I guess. But really, ultimately he's so young.

He's still a teenager at this point. It's you know,

you know how it is when you're that age, how

many people think like an owner. You know, when they

work at a business. You know what Chick fil a

kid or McDonald's kid who's sixteen's working there, you know,

takes such pride in that business that they would do

the same thing that an owner would.

But here's the ones that are going to be successful

when they're old, correct, That's who does that?

That's right? And so what does he do? He risks

his very life for the sheep and says, oh, I've

done this with.

A bear and a lion and the lions.

Yeah, that's right. Multiple and then another sermon in there

is the faith that he has. But I mean, think

about just you know, he's like, hey, I know who

I am. I'm I'm chosen by God to be king.

The promises of God say one day I'll be king.

Well I'm not king yet. Guess what I'm going to live.

So I have no problem facing this bear and lion.

This isn't going to be my end because I'm trusting

in the promises of God. I sometimes think that. I

sometimes think he's like, I know, I'm going to be okay,

you know he is.

Well, you're not going to get to heaven one minute early, right, right, right,

So there's nothing to fear. Yeah, I love that the

conversation that you were having about work. I did a

message series one time called Hidden Valleys, and there's an

old song that says hidden valleys turned shepherds into kings.

And what David did in those valleys, those hidden valleys

where he's walking around with his sheep, taking care of

the sheep, set him up for the rest of his life. Right,

So it was his faithfulness, it was his character. A

number of the psalms, especially the praise songs that were

written in the Book of Psalms, were written during that

time before he was famous. His skill set with the sling.

It's not like suddenly he was miraculously good with the sling,

you know, laser focused and that accurate. He developed that skill.

He became a great musician while he was in these

hidden valleys, and nobody else could show him nothing. But

he squared off with lions and bears, and he tested

himself physically, and he did hard things. And I've talked

about that before. One of the big challenges I had

when I was in my very early twenties was to

read this book called Do Hard Things, or I'm not

sure if the book was called it, but that was

the big theme. The subtitle was do hard things. And

there's something to that. Challenge yourself and then you succeed.

It stretches your capacity and you can do harder things

now because you did hard things before. Right.

Right.

You lift heavier things tomorrow because you lift heavy things yesterday. Right.

That's how your muscle builds all these things. And so

he was not just sitting around on a rock, bored

to death, mad that his dad seems to think that

he's the lowest of the eight sons. He's not pitying himself.

He's not like, oh, you know what, I'm a victim

of my circumstances. My dad gives my brothers great opportunities.

He never none of those things. He just kept refining

his skills and getting better and better and better and better,

and so then he shows up. So the hidden valleys thing.

Hidden valleys turned him into a world class musician. He

winds up playing for the king. Hidden Valley's turned him

into a great warrior. The hidden valley when nobody else

is watching, is what turning I think set him up

to become a great king. And it references his character.

There was a famous preacher used to say, the test

of your character is what you do when nobody's watching.

Right, that's awesome, and.

There's something to that. David was great before he showed

up this day. He didn't become great on that day.

He was already great.

That's great. And then another sermon hidden in here is

Saul trying to give David his own armory.

And David, which makes sense, by the way, that makes sense, right,

you don't know what you're doing here. Use my armor.

It works for me, it'll work for you.

Yeah, and and and yet David says, hey, this isn't mine.

And you know, I remember we used to use this analogy.

I worked at a church where there were you know,

bits of big church, several campuses, a lot of lead speakers,

and what would happen is like, for instance, I would

write a message and then somebody else would try to

preach the message that I wrote, right and and but

but then sometimes it just didn't work. The reason why

I couldn't work is because it wasn't their message, It

wasn't something, it wasn't theirs. They had to work on

it to make it theirs. And so the analogy that

we used to use is we used to say, hey,

don't you don't have to wear Sal's armor. You just

have to come back with Goliath's head right, right, and

so just go out there and get the victory. So

you don't have to be somebody else or not, you know,

don't don't worry about wearing Sal's armor. Just get the victory.

And so it's a pretty gruesome analogy, but it translates

into our you know, our lives as well. Like your

parents' faith doesn't have to be your faith, you know,

you know, your faith can be your own faith, but

you can have the victory yourself. And I'm sure that

you know. There's more sermons in here, but one of

the questions I'm going to ask David when I get

to Heaven, because I believe we will be able to

ask questions heaven, did you believe that.

Yeah, as I'm going to ask him, I'm planning on it.

Is it true that the reason why you chose five

smooth stones was because Goliath had four brothers? Because I've

always heard it in sermons. Yes, it's true that Goliath

had four brothers. We find that out later, and so

therefore we're connecting the dots, right. It doesn't say why

we can't. We can't definitely say why. We don't know

the heart's intent. God didn't include that. But there's a

pretty strong chance that that's, you know, based on custom.

You know, brothers were avenging their other brothers. Right, there's

a pretty strong chance that the reason why he chose

five wasn't because he needed five shots, but because he

knew that Goliath had four brothers. Pretty cool.

I think that's probably, yeah, very likely.

Yes, it'd be one of my questions, one of your questions. Sure,

I was just wondered because you know, I yeah, I

also have a thing. Side note, this is a sidebark.

I also have a thing. I have a thing where

when preachers act like they know something when they don't,

and I just can't stand it. You know. It's that

whole scripture where it says don't add a jot or

tittle right where preachures like, this is why he did it,

And I'm like, what you meant to say was there's

a really good chance this is why he did it

because you don't know. You just you just correct yourself

just a little bit, because we shouldn't add to God's word. Right.

So I have this thing where I remember one time

I listened to a guy preaching. He says, let me

tell you why Jesus turned around. Is he turned around?

Not because of this?

Because of this?

And after the sermon, I go, did you really just

pretend to assume God's motives? Because that's kind of not

in the scripture.

Okay, so don't do that people, Well stop it, yeah,

stop it, stop it. Yeah. And so then there's two

things here for me. One, I love the description that

Saul says, you're a boy, you're only a boy.

Yeah.

And Goliaths been a man of war since his youth,

right right, So you ever, I remember when I was

in high school, my best friend was so much bigger

and stronger than everybody else. He was. He was a

man among boys. You know, we were all about the

same age. But I remember he could bench press three

oh over three hundred pounds, and he didn't work out

like he wasn't a muscle guy. He wasn't. He was

just like I don't even work off right. He was

just a monster of a human. His shoulders were like

twice the width of my body. And he was just

this incredibly strong guy. And his dad used to make

jokes because all the all of his sons were big

and strong like that. His dad was a truck driver

and they were they were just all tough men. Uh

And he said, oh, yeah, he's been manned strong since

he was five, right, that's that's what you say. The

first time every went over to their house, he and

his brother pulled a uh the block of an eight

cylinder Ford engine out of the out of the front

of a truck, just the two of them. They both

stand in the wheel well and they lifted it up,

set it out of and yeah, they're just monster men.

You know, it's teenagers. And that's what I think of is,

you know, he's man strong since he's a boy. So

it's not that he's saying you're a boy and he's

a man. It's that you're still only a boy and

he's been manned strong since he was a kid, right,

because it says since he since his youth. So that's

when the end of the chapter also really speaks a

lot about Samuel. So what we didn't cover in chapter

sixteen about Saul, Yeah, yeah, I said Samuel, I'm sorry

about Saul. In chapter sixteen, the Bible talks about how

Saul had some mental instabilities, really struggled, and they would

bring in musicians. David was one of the musicians that

got brought before King Saul to play to bring peace

to Saul. His beautiful music. He's playing on the harp

and it would calm Saul down, right, So he played

in Saul's court for an extended period of time.

She has to be pretty good.

Yeah, yeah, he well, he was world class at what

he was the best in Israel, one of the best

because he's playing before the king. But at the end,

it goes when you get to the end of it,

as as David goes running out to the to the Philistine,

Saul says, as David watched, As Saul watched David go

out to fight the Philistine, he asked Abner, the commander

of the army, Abner, whose son is this young man,

and Abner the general goes, I don't know, so we

should find out. So David's been in front of Saul

on many occasions, and Saul still doesn't know who he is, right,

he's just so narcissistic. Now, yeah, he's so self centered.

He's so just wrapped up in his own problems and

his own struggles. He's not noticing or recognizing other people

around him at all. But now you know, if David

wins this fight, he's gonna his family will be free

from taxes for life, and he gets to marry the

king's daughter. So at this point he's going, hey, we

should find out who that kid is, Right, he's gonna

be He's gonna be my son in law. And it

turns out he'd been around him a lot. But you know,

it's just the kind of leader Saul was. Saul was

pretty much wrapped up in his own thing and not

paying attention to who was around him or the people

he was serving.

And another sermon is it says that David ran out

to meet Saul or to goodliath I.

Mean favorite phrasing the whole story.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, he runs around. Yeah, he has no

fear whatsoever. Yeah. And then Goliath says, am I a dog,

right that you have sent this this? And so so

here's Goliath. That's that's a sermon on over confidence, right,

it's a sermon on not leaving the power of God.

God's not going to come through, right, I'm going to

defy God. So you know, Goliath has all those kinds

of attitudes. It's like, you know, who is this God

of Israel's He's a nobody, right, So so you know,

he doesn't believe that David's gonna, you know, be even

a threat. And then uh, and then David what does

he say? He says, today, let me tell you what's

going to happen. And so David prophesies and he has

so much confidence. He's like, this is this is exactly

what's going to happen.

I think of that Tosh talking. They're both yeah, because

he's like, I'm going to feed your body of the dogs.

That's nothing. I'm gonna feed you and your people to

the dogs.

It rids me. That movie. Everything roused me of a movie.

But there's a Jack Reacher with Tom Cruise and he's

going up against five men and he and he goes,

he goes, uh, pay your bill before they take him outside,

and he goes, uh, what do you mean. He goes,

I'll pay when I come back, and he goes, you

won't be able to. So so Tom goes out faces

five guys and he goes, remember you wanted this. This

is your last chance to back out. And he goes,

what are you talking about? He goes, it's five against one.

He goes, it's three against one. He goes, Once I

take out the leader, which is you, he is, I'll

contend with two or three other ambitious wing men, and

the last two they're gonna run. You know why they

always run.

That's what he says.

That's that's really what what David's doing here. He's like,

he's like, I'm gonna cut your head off, and I'm

gonna I'm gonna you know, all these things are gonna happen.

So and it does happen exactly the way you know

that that David predicts.

And uh and then.

Let's not look past the fact that uh, that strikes

fear into the other uh, you know, members of the army,

and they run. So think about this, Think about how

the odds were so unbelievably against David that when they

saw that they weren't just fearful of David's sling. Why

were they fearful. They were fearful, fearful because the things

that they had heard about the army me of the

Living God, they're actually true.

Right, They're not afraid of a teenage boy with a

piece of leather in his hand, no, right, they're aware

of the fact that we just lost to the God

of Israel, right.

Yeah, And so then they run and God strikes fear

into their hearts and they run. And it just goes

to show you that when when we sit back, it's

not our job to defend God. We don't have to

defend God. We don't have to stand up there and

you know, convince everybody else that God is real or

worthy to be praised. We just have to serve God.

And then eventually they're going to see the evidence of God,

and then you know, God will be seen. God's going

to show himself. You know, we just serve God and

allow God to do the convincing.

R that's good.

Yeah, Oh wow, we're out of time, so that there's.

A lot more even in here, tons.

Yeah, so we don't have time for it. But it's

a great chapter, and hopefully we'll see you next time

on the Bible Guys.