Pastor Edgar Mayer;
For more sermons and other writings check out pastors homepage: http://www.geocities.com/mayeredgar
You
Are Not Goliath
Goliath is a name that stands for
opposition that outguns you in terms of size and strength and sheer supremacy.
We know about the original Goliath from the Bible and there he is the giant
that intimidated an entire army of Gods own people. I read from 1 Samuel
17:3-11: The Philistines occupied
one hill and the Israelites another, with the valley between them. A champion
named Goliath, who was from
What a lengthy description of the man
with all of his weaponry but wouldnt
you agree? (unlike few other opponents) Goliath
deserved the attention. He was a monster three metres tall, 126 pounds of
solid bronze body armour, fifteen pounds of iron at the point of his spear. Goliath was a most formidable man
especially when he rose up as the determined enemy of Gods people.
I continue reading from the Bible 1
Samuel 17:3-11: Goliath stood and
shouted to the ranks of
Goliath the champion of the Philistines sought to combat the champion of the
Israelites. He taunted them Goliath mocked them saying: Give me a man and let us fight each other man-on-man
for the fate of our nations. This day I defy you. This day I defy
you. There it was: the challenge, the outsized predicament,
the near-certain death sentence, the worst nightmare and not
surprisingly in the Bible the
Israelites were terrified. What can you do against a giant? Man-on-man isnt
fair when the other man is Goliath.
Have we ever been challenged like that?
Have we ever by any chance come up against our own Goliath? Maybe. In our own
private lives there may be the Goliath of a failing marriage or job loss or
bankruptcy or addiction or low self-esteem or the Goliath of a severe sickness cancer even. Any
of those obstacles can easily rise up with overwhelming might and then mock us:
Hello, little Christian, what can you do about me? This day I defy you.
Then together as a church we can face
Goliath in the form of persecution. Overseas every day people like us are
thrown into jail and put to death for their faith. In a newspaper article last
month an Iranian pastor said: Treatment of Christians in jail follows a
customary pattern. Authorities put them in jail for a few weeks and beat them
in an attempt to get information about other converts.
This is a long way from Toowoomba but
even here the church faces Goliath. For instance, who would want to face the
financial heartache of the Rangeville Community church? They had bought their
land on
Goliath is real. We face Goliath. Yet,
in the Bible the situation is not hopeless. A young teenager a shepherd his name was David brought food to his three brothers who were
serving in the army and when he was there, he overheard Goliath shouting his
usual defiance.
David pricked up his ears, reacted to
the sneer and insult and asked 1
Samuel 17:26:
What will be done for the man who kills this Philistine
and removes this disgrace from
Them were fighting words from a teenager
but young David picked up on something that seemed to have escaped all of the
others. When Goliath mocked and defied the ranks of
David seemed to have known that. He was
the first to say that Goliath not only defied mere men but the armies of the
living God. Listen to the battle description 1 Samuel 17:42-47: Goliath looked David over and saw that he was
only a boy, ruddy and handsome, and he despised him. He said to David, Am I a
dog that you come at me with sticks? And the Philistine cursed David by his
gods. Come here, he said, and I will give your flesh to the birds of the air
and the beasts of the field!
David said to the Philistine: You come against me with sword and spear
and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God
of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the Lord will hand you
over to me, and Ill strike you down and cut off your head
and the whole
world will know that there is a God in Israel. All those gathered here will
know that it is not by sword or spear that the Lord saves; for the battle is
the Lords, and he will give all of you into our hands.
Goliath did not know what he was doing
when he cursed David by his gods, saying:
Come here and I will give your flesh to the birds of the air and the beasts
in the field! However, David knew
how much God loved his people and he knew how much God would be affronted by
Goliaths blasphemy and therefore the teenager replied confidently: I
come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of
Israel, whom you have defied. This day the Lord will hand you over to me, and
Ill strike you down and cut off your head
and the whole world will know that
there is a God in Israel.
When Jesus offered himself as a
sacrifice for our sins on the cross, he bore many insults but at that time did
not retaliate. The Bible records
Luke 19:34-39:
The people stood watching, and the rulers even sneered at
him
The soldiers also came up and mocked him
One of the criminals who hung
there hurled insults at him
Yet
Jesus said: Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are
doing. In the same way another
Bible passage explains 1 Peter 2:23-25: When they hurled their
insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats.
Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly. He himself bore our
sins in his body on the tree [of the cross], so that we might die to sins and
live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed
God with an amazing long-suffering patience is offering salvation to you and I. Many a time our sin and our
stubborn attitude towards repentance and forgiveness is insulting to his grace
and the enormity of his sacrifice God becoming tortured flesh but he doesnt give up on us. Even today is
another chance to come to him, be accepted by him, become holy and righteous by
the blood of Christ,
God is willing to do anything for you.
Yet, there are instances of people
directly challenging God like
Goliath- when God is drawing a line. The
Bible warns us Galatians 6:7: Do not be deceived. God cannot be
mocked. A man reaps what he sows. And
then the Bible records some telling incidents in the early life of the church.
I read Acts 12:1-3: It was about the time that King Herod arrested
some who belonged to the church
He had James, the brother of John, put to
death with the sword. When he saw that this pleased the Jews, he proceeded to
seize Peter also. King Herod had
one church leader killed and put another in prison with no apparent ill
effects to his health or fortune but
then the following happened Acts 12:20-23:
the people of Tyre and
Sidon
asked for peace, because they depended on the kings country for their
food supply. On the appointed day Herod, wearing his royal robes, sat on his
throne and delivered a public address to the people. They shouted, This is the
voice of a god, not of a man. Immediately, because Herod did not give praise
to God, an angel of the Lord struck him down, and he was eaten by worms and
died.
There came a time when a more direct
challenge to God a mocking an
insult claiming to speak with the voice of God invited immediate and drastic retribution like what the teenager
David dished out to Goliath cutting off his head with his own sword.
In church history there are more
instances of the same dynamic. Charles Finney writes in his autobiography: But in this revival, as in others that I have
seen, God did some terrible things in righteousness. On one Sabbath
as we
were about to leave the church, a man came in haste
saying that a man had
fallen down dead there
Three men who had been opposing the work had met that
Sabbath day and spent the day in drinking and ridiculing the work. They went on
in this way until one of them suddenly fell down dead
Mr Gillet said: There!
There is no doubt but that man had been stricken down by God, and has been sent
to hell! His companions were speechless. They could say nothing, for it was
evident to them that their conduct had brought upon him this awful stroke of
divine indignation (The Original Memoirs Of Charles Finney, Grand Rapids:
Zondervan 1989, p134-135).
Brother Yun a pastor from the persecuted church in China suffered many trials but he also
experienced that God intervened when his honour was directly challenged. I read
from the book The Heavenly Man: The chief guard waved his
electric baton in front of my face and said, Now is the time for you to wake
up! He ordered me to kneel down before him. I loudly protested, I will not
kneel down before you. I will only kneel down before my God! He arrogantly
stated, I am your Lord! I am your God! If you kneel down before me I can
release you immediately. I spoke angrily to him, In the name of Jesus, you
are not my God! You are just an earthly officer. My Lord is in heaven. I am a
heavenly man. He turned on the power switch on his baton and snarled, If you
are a heavenly man then you wont be afraid of this electric baton. Come! Use
your hands to take hold of it!
Several guards grabbed my arms and forced me to stretch out my hand. In
an instant I was stung with hundreds of volts of electric current, like the
sting of a scorpion or as if a thousand arrows had pierced my heart. Feeling I
was about to pass out, I cried out, Lord, have mercy on me! Immediately the
electric baton malfunctioned! They couldnt get it to work! I opened my eyes
and stared at the guard whod dared to call himself God. He was terrified.
Despite the temperature, he was sweating! He turned and ran away as fast as he
could (Brother Yun with Paul
Hattaway: The Heavenly Man, London: Monarch Books 2002, p86-87).
What is this telling us? Do not fear
Goliath. Fear God. There may be threats. There may be trials. There may be
suffering a few of us may even
given their lives but in the end God
will protect his honour and therefore will protect you because you are his
pride and joy. Especially when Goliath begins to mock you and taunt you and
defy you, curse you by your God, take courage: He is digging his own grave. He
is mocking God and God is not to be mocked.
I want to read again the fuller version
of how God dealt with King Herod
Acts 12:22-24: They shouted, This is the voice of a god, not of a man.
Immediately, because Herod did not give praise to God, an angel of the Lord
struck him down, and he was eaten by worms and died. Now listen to the next verse: But the word of God continued to
increase and spread. But the word of God continued to increase and
spread. God knows how to protect
his own and expand his kingdom.
God can strike down anything addictions, unforgiveness, pride, low self-esteem,
shortage of funds, broken relationships,
Take
courage. Do not be intimidated. Be like the teenager David and take on Goliath.
God is on your side.
Now how did David win the fight? The
three metre giant wasnt impressed by his size. He looked David over and saw that he was only a
boy, ruddy and handsome, and he despised him. He said to David, Am I a dog
that you come at me with sticks? David
also wore no body armour. Earlier on King Saul had offered him to wear his
tunic and then put a coat of armour on him but with miserable results. David
could not walk with the unfamiliar army gear and therefore said 1 Samuel
17:39: I cannot go in these because I am not used to them.
Thus, he ended up facing Goliath only
with a shepherds sling and five smooth stones which in a subtle gesture of reversing the table proved to be an insult to the giant. Am
I a dog that you come at me with sticks? Yes it was time to deal with the creature that defied God.
Here is something else that David knew.
I repeat some more verses from his speech: You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come
against you in the name of the Lord Almighty
This day the Lord will hand you
over to me
and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel. All
those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the Lord
saves; for the battle is the Lords, and he will give all of you into our hands.
David had made his battle preparations.
He was good with the sling and chose carefully his smooth stones but he did not
trust in them. He trusted in God and he knew that when you fight on the side of
God, you do not win by the might of the sword or the might of the spear but by
the might of God who saves his own. The battle is his.
For instance, we also learn in Zechariah
4:6 how God dethrones giants: It is
Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord Almighty.
And the Spirit of God does use
loves using teenage Davids you and I rubbing
it in to the Goliaths of this world. The Bible encourages us in 1 Corinthians
1:26-29:
Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were
influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things to
shame the wise
to shame the strong
to shame sneering Goliath.
You and I we can
overcome any obstacle with God. Trust
him. Be faithful. Pray and take courage. You will break down the opposition. Do
not size up the three metre giant but the awesomeness of God. Trust him. Be
faithful. God will make use of what you have: your sling and smooth stones,
your faithfulness in little things.
In our own Lutheran heritage we have a
lowly monk who became a lecturer in a non-descript university somewhere in the
backwaters of Germany Wittemberg: a
place smaller than Dalby and yet, God
used this teenage David Martin Luther to take on the combined forces of the known world the Goliath of
church and state. Luther was on his own
and he faced death but armed only with the sling of Gods Word and faith
he felled the giant. He was
excommunicated and assassins chased him. He should not have survived but God was
with him and the world became free from paying money to the church for what God
bestows freely by grace namely forgiveness. The world became free to read the Bible for themselves in their own
language.The world became free from religion and church rules to be in touch
with God himself.
Show movie excerpt. You and I
know whom people are defying when they defy you. You are with God and God is
not to be mocked. And then armed with nothing but a sling know that the battle is his. Not by
might nor by power, but by my Spirit, says
the Lord. The world will know that there is a God who loves his church. Take
courage. Be faithful. You are David and not Goliath. Amen.