David and Goliath: "Giant Slaying"

Many of you know that in our sermons just now we're looking at a different book of the Bible each month and this month we're looking at 1 Samuel from which we've read both of our Scripture readings today. 1 Samuel is one of the two books (2 Samuel is the other) that tells us about the life of David who was to become the greatest king in all of Israel's history. He reigned 1000 years before the time of Christ and was the model king, after whom God's "true king," the Messiah, was to be patterned in the days to come: here was the one who would rule over God's people and through whom God's kingdom, God's realm would extend from sea to sea.

We have looked so far this month at the ancestors of David, -- Naomi and Ruth. And we have looked at the call of David, a call to leadership. And we come today to the story which is, perhaps of all the stories in Scripture outside the stories of Jesus, the best known story of all. We come to the story David and Goliath. The story of a shepherd boy, a mere boy, a musician, a poet, a songwriter, a singer, this one who cared for sheep, the underdog, taking on and killing the giant Goliath: before whom all the armies of Israel trembled, before whom they were paralyzed with fear.

What can beat that? The story of a giant and an underdog. It touches our human lives. There may be some of us who see ourselves as the Goliaths of this world, but most of the time, most of us in some situation or another see ourselves as a "David." We're the underdog, fighting against some giant or another that is in our path - standing between us and success, between us and peace, between us and the fulfillment of God's will in some way, shape or form.

Sometimes the giant is a literal giant. If you were playing in the NBA playoffs just now, you'd be facing some of those giants. Anybody who plays against the Los Angeles Lakers has to be prepared for Shaquille O'Neil, towering over everybody else. Glad I'm not on the same court as he is!

But, of course, most of the time, the giants that we face aren't physically giants. They are mentally giants or emotionally giants. They are giants in our hearts and in our minds.

Sometimes the giants are people. There are people who are obstacles against which we seem to be able to make no progress whatsoever. They stand in our way and we don't know what we are going to do to deal with them. Difficult people! Allow your minds to wander to your families, to your places of work, your colleagues, people around about you. Who is it in your life, who seems to dog your steps every way you go? They may be small of stature, but they fill their mind and in your mind, they're just like a giant. You can't get rid of them. There they are, every turn. And you don't know what to do. Just like the armies of Israel, such people can paralyze us!

Sometimes the giants are situations. Think about situations that arise in our lives. That rise up like mountains. Seemingly impossible to deal with. So enormous, so huge, that we don't know what way we're going to turn.

I read recently the story (in Guideposts) of a woman by the name of Jan Kilic who went to Turkey last year in August with her children, with her five children. Her husband was Turkish and her parents-in-law were there in Turkey and had invited them over. Well, if you remember last August, the huge earthquake struck Turkey and the buildings were not prepared for it at all. This is a woman who was caught in the midst of the earthquake with her children. Four of her five children were killed. Her mother- and father-in-law were killed. She barely survived. They heard the cry of one of her daughters, Natalie. They heard that cry and knew that she was alive. She survived herself. She probably wished she had died when she came to realize that four of her five children were dead and gone.

Some of us carry a burden of grief, a mountain of grief, a giant-sized grief in our hearts and souls and we don't know how we're going to move ahead but how does this woman move ahead, day after day, as she looks back to what was taken from her?

Just this past Friday, my wife Currie and I were talking to a good friend who lives in Los Alamos. Nancy called and it was a good call to receive. We had called earlier in the week to see if their house had been burned down in the fires that had been raging and we had no answer. We phoned and left a message with Nancy's mother just on the answering machine. Nancy got the message and called on Friday and said that they were fine, their house was safe.

But what she said very quickly was this: The tragedy, she says, for those who lost their houses is that many of them were the people in their community who were struggling already. Single-parent families. Hourly people. They weren't those who immediately knew, as she said that they did, that they would be fine whatever would happen -- because they had a network of resources to take care of them. But the people who suffered were those who did not have that same network or those same resources: - how were they going to rebuild? Even if the money was there from the government, there was still the need for time, energy, effort. It was just like facing a mountain, facing a giant!

Which is just like what so many people, millions of people, faced in Honduras when Hurricane Mitch struck.

Sam has remained in the contact, as have some others in our congregation, with our missionary partners in Honduras since a group from our church went to a work camp there a few years ago, just before Hurricane Mitch struck. The country was devastated. Not just one little thing here or one little thing there, but the infrastructure of a nation was torn away. Ripped away. How do you even begin to face such a mountain, such a giant as that? How in all the world do you do it?

When we look at our own lives, we will no doubt be able to name some situations which we've faced with equal fear and trepidation. Some that we've just pushed to the side and said, "Can't do it. Can't be done. We cannot win."

FACING UP TO GIANTS. But what, what are we going to do to change that situation? . . .to come face to face with our giants. . to come face to face with those mountains. . to come face to face with the Goliaths in our life? What are we going to do? Not just to run away from them or to bury them, but to move on from them, past them, and when it comes right down to it, to kill them: to kill that thought, that idea, that idea about another person which is in our lives and stands before us as Goliath stood before David?

Very briefly this morning, I want to point to four things that David did when confronted by Goliath. Four things that you and I can do as well. And I'm going to go through them this morning very quickly. You may want to come back to them. They're all there in our passage of Scripture in the 17th chapter of 1 Samuel for you to see. Four things that David did.

1. He called out this giant's name. He called him by name. He gave a name to this enemy that stood in his path. And that's a critical thing to do with those obstacles in our lives. Sometimes they are only here in our lives at the level of emotion. We never fully speak about them, bring them to the surface, but how critical that is if we are to deal with the obstacles and the giants in our lives.

Some of you have read the Harry Potter books and they really are books about David and Goliath. Harry Potter is "David" and Voldemort, I think his name is, is the archenemy, "Goliath.". Nobody will speak Voldemort's name. Only Harry Potter will do that. And every psychologist knows that when you name something, you can begin to get a handle on it.

Everybody in Alcoholics Anonymous knows that until you name your problem, you cannot begin to deal with it, so name your giant. Call it out by name. "Who is this uncircumcised Philistine who defies the armies of Israel, the living God?" And all of the sudden that giant shrinks down to size. A critical thing for us to do, for you and me to do, as David did.

2. The next thing David did was to cast aside the naysayers. To cast aside the naysayers. His brothers spoke to him as only older children can do to their younger siblings: they can put you down, tell you you can't do this, you can't do that. And there are all kinds of people who will do that. This is quite different from those people with whom we disagree, whose opinions we need to hear from time to time. We surely need that in our lives and in our congregation, but there are some people who are saying all the time, "You can't do this. You can't do that."

Robert Kennedy suggests and I don't think he had the Gallup Poll to prove it, but he suggests that one-fifth of the people all of the time are against everything. And that may well be true.

That's what we're talking about here and they're against you and they're saying you can't do it.

Ben Carson has been the chief of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins University. Grew up in the inner city in Detroit. If he had listened to some of those in his classroom, to his results in class in his early years, to some of his teachers, he would have said he couldn't do it! But he listened to his mother who said, "You can. You can." And he could.

Be careful who you listen to in the face of the naysayers around about you and the giants you have to face. We can do more than we think, you know: we really can. Far more than we think.

3. Which leads to the third thing that David did. He created comparisons. Comparisons by which to compare this unique situation that he had to deal with, to compare it with other situations he had dealt with in his past. "I killed lions. I protected my sheep. I've dealt with the bears. It's not quite like Goliath, but it's close enough to know that I can do it again." Close enough to know that we can do it again. He used his mind to take this situation and say, "I can get this far. Maybe I can get the whole way."

And if we work hard with whatever obstacle, our giant is in our way, we can do that as well.

A soldier who was in a prisoner of war camp in WWII was placed in solitary confinement for escaping. He'd been in this box-like crate for two weeks and he said he couldn't take any more. He began to mumble and groan as I know I would have done, and he said he began to hear somebody next to him who began to speak. It was a Frenchman who spoke some English and he said, "What's wrong?

-- He said, "I just can't take it any more."

"Oh," said the Frenchman, "I think you can."

-- "How do you think I can?"

"Well, I've been here," he said, "for five years."

When we sometimes look at the comparisons with others they overwhelm us: we may not make five years, but on the other hand, even if we are overwhelmed, if they can do five years, surely we could do two weeks or four weeks or more than where we are? So often with a comparison we realize we can go further than we could have ever gone before.

4. David created those comparisons and finally, finally, I say finally, but that's not quite it. Over all, under-arching everything, around everything, he counted on God. He called out the name of this giant. He cast aside the naysayers. He created comparisons and he counted on God to do what he could not do by himself. What wonderful words those are towards the end of our chapter. "You have come to me with a sword and with a spear and 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."

Do we count on God? In the face of all the other things we trust in, is God underneath and around in everything we do? Or if we do and there are giants in our lives that can be and need to be killed, if we are to walk further on the path that God has called us? To count on God in David's case was clearly not an excuse for not playing "his part" or ours:

We are to name the giants in our lives.
We are to say, "No" and to cast aside the naysayers.
We are to work with our minds to do what we can to move ourselves ahead.

But why? Because above all we do, the living God is at work.

This is the story of David and Goliath and it is, I believe, not just an old story, even a favorite story -- but it is to be a story that God wants to be part of the story of our lives as well.

Let us bow before God in prayer.