One of the most famous stories in the Bible is the story of David and Goliath. It's a phrase that's become part of our language. If you refer to a ball game or some other kind of contest as “a battle between David and Goliath”, everyone knows what you mean. Even people who've never read the Bible and don't even know where the phrase comes from know that Goliath represents the giant and David represents the little guy.
Goliath is definitely described as a giant. He's described as being six cubits and a span tall, which would be somewhere around nine and a half feet. Even if you want to say that's an exaggeration, he was clearly way taller than anyone else around.
And not surprisingly, everyone was scared to death of him. King Saul had offered huge wealth to anyone who could kill Goliath. He even offered to let anyone who killed wealth marry into the royal family. And maybe best of all, that person's whole family would never have to pay taxes again. You and your whole family would be set for life and for generations to come if you would just go kill Goliath.
And no one would try it. Think about that. I mean, people are not that different today than they were thousands of years ago. There are always daredevils around. There are people today who'll walk a tightrope over the Grand Canyon. There are people who'll go over Niagara Falls in a barrel. There was a thing on the news last week about some guy at the Sturgis rally who was trying to set a record for riding a motorcycle through a tunnel of fire.
There's always somebody who'll take almost any kind of risk we can imagine, especially if there's money or fame involved. And yet, despite all the wealth someone would get if they could kill Goliath, nobody would even try. It did not matter what King Saul offered, because nobody thought they even had a chance to actually succeed. Goliath challenged them every day for forty days, and nobody dared to even try to take him on.
And then David comes along. Now, the reason David was not part of the army to begin with was that he was the youngest son. The older ones had all gone off to war, but David stayed behind because somebody had to look after the sheep. When Jesse, David's father, sent David out to see his brothers, it was not with the idea that David was going to do any fighting. There's no reason to think David expected to fight, either. He was just supposed to take some supplies out to his brothers, find out how they were doing, and report back to his dad.
And yet, David was the one who ended up fighting Goliath. This young kid, this kid who was not even part of the army, who did not even have his own battle gear, went out and fought this huge giant no one else would fight. And he fought him without a sword, without any armor, without any protection whatsoever. All he had were five stones and a way to throw them.
We talked last week about how God's message to Joshua was that he be strong and courageous. David certainly got that message. I guess we don't know how strong he was physically, but he was certainly mentally and spiritually strong, and he had more courage than anyone else around.
But how did he do it? How was David able to go out and do something that no one else had the courage to do no matter how much they were offered to do it?
David, I think, looked at this whole situation differently from anybody else. [Slide 7--Goliath] Everybody else who was there looked out across the valley and saw this giant. He was huge. He was mean. He was huge. He was fearless. He was huge. He was strong and powerful. And did I mention he was huge? That was what everybody else saw. And it terrified them.
But that's not what David saw. David saw someone who was standing in the way of the will of God. David was convinced that God wanted the people of Israel, his people, to defeat Golaith and the Philistines. And David believed that nothing can stand up to the will of God. David believed that if he trusted God, God would make him able to defeat Goliath, because David would be doing God's will.
That's why it's so important to note that David went after Goliath without any sword and without any armor. The Bible tells us David could not get comfortable in the king's armor, and I'm sure that's true, but I think there's more to it than that.
See, if David had gone after Goliath wearing full battle gear, and if he'd defeated Goliath that way, what would everyone have thought? They'd have thought, wow, David must be a lot stronger than he looks. David must be a really mighty warrior. They'd have given all the glory to David. But when David went out there with no protection whatsoever and beat Goliath by slinging stones at him, well, everyone knew that the only way that could have happened was if God did it. David got some credit, and he deserved it, but everyone knew David had succeeded because God was with him.
Most of us will never have to battle a huge, mean, powerful giant. But we all have to battle something in our lives. Sometimes, we may have physical enemies we need to fight, and that's hard.
There are lots of other types of battles we have to fight, though. Sometimes we fight illness or injury. Sometimes we fight temptation. Sometimes, there are all kinds of obstacles in our path, and we think we'll never be able to find a way around them. Sometimes, we have to battle ourselves, overcoming our own doubts or fears or our own sinful nature. Sometimes, those battles are the hardest to fight of all.
When that happens, it'll help us to remember this story. The temptation is to be like the rest of the army. The temptation is to focus on the size of the enemy or the obstacle. The temptation is to see how huge that enemy or obstacle is and be terrified of it. The temptation is to think that the enemy or obstacle is so huge that there's no way we can ever defeat it. And so, the temptation is to not even try.
What we need to do, in that situation, is to try to find what God's will is. That's not always easy. Sometimes it takes a lot of time in prayer. Sometimes it takes really thinking about the situation. Sometimes it takes really opening our hearts to God and trying to see where God is leading us. It can take time, but if we truly seek God's will, rather than trying to get God to do our will, God's will eventually gets revealed to us. Not everything, but enough to show us what we're supposed to do.
But then comes the hardest part of all. After we've seen what God wants us to do, we need to actually do it. We need to have the faith to trust that nothing can stand up to the will of God. We need to have the faith to believe that no battle is too hard for God to win. We need to have the faith to believe that no obstacle is too big for God to overcome. We need to have the faith to believe that, if we trust God, God will see to it that we win the battle and overcome the obstacle, because we're doing God's will.
It can be hard to have that much faith. It can be hard even if we believe in God. David's brothers believed in God, but they did not have that much faith. Neither did anyone else in the army. Even King Saul, who certainly believed in God, did not have enough faith to do what David did.
David had nothing on his side. No physical power, no weapons, no nothing. All David had on his side was the will of God. And it was enough.
I would guess that everyone here is facing an obstacle of some kind in our lives. It may look like a giant. It may look huge. We may feel like we have nothing to fight our battle with, no way to overcome that obstacle. We may be terrified, just like King Saul and all of his army was terrified.
But we do have something. We have God. If we seek God's will, and do God's will, God will be there for us. And we'll overcome the obstacle. We'll defeat the giant. Because nothing can stand up to the will of God.
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