How God Produces Champions – Part 2
1 Samuel 17:12–39

We are continuing what I started last time. We will have a review as we look at these two champions that are going to engage in one-on-one combat between the army of the Philistines and the army of Israel. As we have seen in the past, and most people are familiar with in the history of David and Goliath, Goliath is this huge 9’6” to 9’9” giant coming out every day in the style of this one-on-one combat that was typical in ancient cultures, especially Greek cultures.

 

Remember, the Philistines were part of this massive migration of what is known as the Greek sea peoples that occurred in the period from about 1400 BC to 1000 BC as they established their cities and colonies. The Greek influence is very prevalent here. It is very much like the kind of one-on-one battle that is told in the story of the Odyssey and of the Trojan Wars. This is that kind of typical battle.

 

We see David who is not a military man. He is not trained yet. He is under age for going into military service in the army of Israel, which was 20 years old. He is probably 18 or 19 years old. But he is prepared mentally because that is where the battle ultimately takes place. It is in the mental attitude of the individual. What we have to decide spiritually is the answer to these questions:

 

Jesus uses the term in the New Testament to be a “disciple.” A disciple is more than someone who has believed that Jesus died on the cross for their sins. A disciple is someone who goes to the next step and says I want to be a student. I want to be a learner. I want to grow to the fullest extent that I can as a believer. I want to glorify God with every ounce of my being, no matter what that costs.

 

Again and again in the Gospels Jesus was challenging His disciples, as well as those others that He taught, with the commitment involved in being a disciple. It was not for those who were sissies. It was not for those who could not take it. It was not for those who could not make up their mind. Often when we think about this I think about the passage with the Laodiceans where the Lord says in Revelation 3:16, “because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of My mouth.”

 

That Scripture is not talking about a loss of salvation. That is talking about believers who are not useable. Some people mistakenly think that hot water is bad or cold water is good, but hot water is useable. We all like hot coffee, hot tea, hot water for any kind of hot drink we are making. We like cold water. We like a cold beverage. Both hot and cold are useable, but lukewarm is nasty! It is not useable. We want to spit it out of our mouth.

 

We set our coffee cup down for a while and forget about the passage of time. We pick it up and take a drink and it is “Oh, lukewarm!” We do not want that! That is the point of that analogy. God is not pleased with believers who opt for mediocrity. Yet we live in a culture today that has majored in mediocrity. I remember hearing a Bible class when I was a teenager all about the failures of mediocre Christians. I thought, “That is the last thing I would want to be.”

 

I would hear this in the first church I pastored. I would hear people say, “Oh, I do not care if I am living in the slums of Heaven …” It is always said with a self-righteous tone. “… whether I am living in the slums of Heaven or living in some spiritual mansion, as long as I am there.” Trust me, when you get there it will make a difference.

 

That is what happens at the Judgment Seat of Christ. We are told in 1 John 4 that we do not want to have shame at the Judgment Seat of Christ. There will be those who lose rewards at the Judgment Seat of Christ. They will not experience all that God would give them because they are opting for mediocrity. What we see here in this chapter is a great example in David of a young man who is a spiritual champion.

 

David has reached spiritual maturity at an exceptionally young age. That does not mean that David does not have a lot of room to grow. It does not mean that he is not going to be a failure. We know that happened several times later on in his spiritual life. But David excelled. I have heard people say, “I have been listening to doctrine for 25–30 years. I do not know that I will ever reach spiritual maturity.”

 

Paul told the Corinthians that after three years they were failures because they were not mature yet. They were living like mere men. By that he meant that they were living like carnal Christians. They were living their life not on the basis of the Word of God. They were not spiritually mature. They were living in no different fashion than they had all of the years up to that point.

 

We live in a generation today where Bible churches, Baptist churches, traditional evangelical churches have made the same mistake that the Israelites made in the ancient world. They wanted to have what everybody else had. They wanted to have a lot of people. They wanted to have big buildings. They wanted to have the numbers and the money—the numbers would bring that so they could have the glitz and façade of success.

 

This is all superficial because inside those walls these churches are falling apart. The absence of Bible teaching in our churches today is atrocious. The fact is that it is the old analogy that you have heard many times, “How do you boil a frog?” You do not put a frog in hot water because it will immediately jump out. You gradually increase the temperature. The frog will not jump out. You will boil the frog to death.

 

That is what has happened to churches over the last 40–50 years. Evangelical churches, Bible-teaching churches, churches that were historically verse-by-verse expositional Bible-teaching churches began to look at these so-called “church growth” principles. Church growth became a big thing. It started back in the late 1960s coming out of Fuller Seminary.

 

I do not want to get sidetracked into a whole history of the negative influence of Fuller Seminary on evangelicalism, but it was out of the Missions Department at Fuller Seminary that you got these ideas. The two major thinkers at the time, in my opinion, were responsible for some of the greatest apostasy and heresy to be taught in the church.

 

This is the Fuller Seminary that was originally founded on a solid doctrinal statement. It was named in honor of a well-known radio evangelist by the name of Charles Fuller, but within ten years they watered down their doctrinal statement so that they took the inerrancy and infallibility of the Word of God out of that doctrinal statement. Then it dominoed from there.

 

The academic influence that brought a lot of erroneous teaching in the area of the spiritual life, especially in this area of church growth seeped out and influenced all of the major seminaries. You could trace the whole rise of the Emergent Church Movement today, and all of its heresies, you can draw a direct line back to the shifts that took place at Fuller Seminary.

 

We have a strong Bible-teaching evangelical church in the 1950s and 1960s and through gradualism it gets down to the point where there is only a handful of expositional verse-by-verse teachers in Houston. I remember Harry Leafe, who was pastor of Tomball Bible Church and later Grace Bible Church. He ordained me back in 1981.

 

Harry Leafe’s son is a graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary. He is a businessman, but he goes to a church that when without a pastor he would fill the pulpit. Harry told me only weeks before he died a couple of years ago that his son was the only person who filled the pulpit every week to every other week that taught by exposition. His son went verse by verse. Harry said that nobody else that had ever come to that church to fill the pulpit ever taught verse by verse.

 

You can go to numerous Bible churches in this city that once were well known for their expositional verse-by-verse Bible teaching. It does not happen anymore. If you do not get verse-by-verse Bible teaching, then you are going to drift in your spiritual life. You are going to become extremely mediocre because you do not learn the Bible. It is the Bible that under the ministry of the Holy Spirit of God that changes lives. That is exactly what we see with David.

 

1. The first example that I talked about last week under Five Tests that Produce Champion Believers, the first test was the test of training. The test of preparation, 1 Samuel 17:34–36, where God provides perfect training in terms of the tests He provides. The test He is providing here for David was really timed for David. Goliath did not get born the year before. He had been around for a number of years.

 

In all of Saul’s wars against the Philistines we did not hear Goliath mentioned or see anything about him. God held him in reserve for David. This battle is taking place to the west of Bethlehem in the Valley of Elah.

 

You can see the tiny blue line on the map. That is the intermittent stream that runs through the Valley of Elah.

 

Looking at this map you can see that this Valley of Elah runs west to east going across to Bethlehem. This incursion by the Philistines was such that if Saul did not stop them then they would have a wide-open path to Bethlehem and on up to Jerusalem. They would cut Israel in half.

 

This is the overview of that area. The Philistines would be on the south of the Valley of Elah and Israel on the north. It was out in the middle of the valley that you had these champions meet.

 

A. The Test of Preparation, 1 Samuel 17:34–37

 

David has met the test of preparation (review). What I pointed out last time by jumping ahead in the story to 1 Samuel 17:34–37 to learn that David was asked by Saul why he, being young, not a warrior yet and not having been in combat yet, not combat tested, what made him think he could do battle with Goliath? David had to talk about how he had trusted God as a shepherd in protecting the sheep.

 

There is another implied criticism of Saul here, because the image and metaphor of a shepherd throughout the Ancient Near East was typically applied to leaders and to kings. What David is talking about is that as a shepherd, and by analogy that could apply to a king, he had learned to consistently protect the flock that was his responsibility despite the overwhelming odds against him.

 

David talks about as a shepherd, 1 Samuel 17:34, when he would keep his father’s sheep, whenever a lion or a bear came and took a lamb out of the flock, he would not sit back and say “Oh, well, what can I do to stop a lion or a bear?” That is probably how you and I would respond, because we are thinking, “Well, unless I have a .30-06 or some other high powered hunting rifle, there is nothing I can do.” But that was not the mentality in the ancient world.

 

1 Samuel 17:35–36, David went after the lion and would strike it, deliver the lamb from its mouth. He would take it out of its mouth. He would catch the lion by its beard and hit it over the head, beat it with his shepherd’s staff, and kill it. He had trained to do this. He is trusting God.

 

We know from ancient inscription, such as some of these slide images that I showed you last time, the panels describing the Assyrian lion hunts. You can see how close they were in fighting and killing lions with spears from horseback, with bow and arrow. Also in hand-to-hand combat as pictured in both of the upper panels. This was not something that was unknown at that time. David has been prepared. He was prepared by having been given responsibilities that he learned to carry out, long before he was going to apply those things he learned and he was responsible.

 

We can think about ways that we can prepare for future tests in the Christian life. That means studying the Word of God, knowing the Word of God, and being prepared. The major tests that might come in your live may not come for 5 years, 10 years, or 15 years down the road. But the time to prepare is before those circumstances hit.

 

What we also see in this situation is a picture of what a lack of preparation looks like. In 1 Samuel 17:23–24, as David is talking to his brothers. The champion, David, is there at that right time, early in the morning, because he is responsible. He wanted to get there and have time to get back to the sheep. He was there early in the morning when Goliath came out and gave his challenge. David heard him, but the others, his brothers, the other soldiers in the army “fled from him and were dreadfully afraid.”

 

That is the contrast between a champion and the mediocre believer. It is that the champion is going to look at the situation through God’s eyes and through the Word of God, but the mediocre believer reacts in fear, worry, anxiety, and depression. They opt for some panacea other than trusting God and looking at the circumstances as a tremendous opportunity to see God intervene, to trust God, and to glorify Him.

 

The same thing that was stated in 1 Samuel 17:24 is repeated from 1 Samuel 17:11, “When Saul and all Israel heard these words of the Philistine, they were dismayed and greatly afraid.”

 

The questions that come out of this in terms of preparation are:

 

Let me tell you that whatever the test is:

 

Today I think it is a horrible environment in a lot of work places. Maybe not in Texas, but I know in a lot of places in the country there are very liberal policies that are enforced by Human Resources. It is very difficult. I was talking with another pastor last week who had spent about 25–30 years in a corporate environment. He was telling me that he did not know if he could go back and work in a corporate environment today.

 

There are so many little things that you can do as a man and as a Christian that can be taken in an offensive way by any number of people who will bring you up on some complaint to Human Resources, and you are gone. You are out of there. With that blight on your record you may never get another job again, because if you have to fill out on an application of what your job history is and you have been let go because you said something that somebody took offense over, then that is going to be discovered.

 

It will not matter what the circumstances are. You will have a difficult time finding another job. It is a tough environment today. Those may be the external circumstances of the test, but the real test is whether or not you are going to apply the Word of God to that financial crisis, health crisis, job crisis, or to those people who are treating you in a way that you do not think you should be treated. We have to be prepared through the study of the Word of God. That involves three basic things that are very practical:

 

I am so encouraged by the number of people that I hear talk about what they are doing as they have taken up the challenge to read their Bible through in a year. We have that information up on the Dean Bible Ministries (DBM) website. We have the reading plan up there. People are reading the Bible. They are constantly relating biblical circumstances, events, and stories to present-day problems.

That is the issue. That is the pattern.

It is not to know psychological principles, not to understand sociological principles, but to know what the Word of God says. We have to start with basics, reading the Scripture daily.

Taking the promise book that we put together and memorizing those promises as they are categorized.

 

You can podcast. You can get it on your smart phone, your iPad, your computer. You can listen to it on the radio in your car. All kinds of things you can do 15 minutes a day, 10 minutes a day, as you are driving to work or driving home. This is to put your mind into focus on the Word of God, and that God is always faithful. He always sustains us.

 

Five tests that produce champion believers

 

B. The Test of Discernment, 1 Samuel 17:25–27

The second test that we see that David has learned is the Test of Discernment. This is seen in 1 Samuel 17:25–27. The word in the Hebrew that is translated “discernment” is the word bîn. It is pronounced like the English word bean. We are not talking about a pinto bean or a lima bean.

 

A memorizing device that we would learn in Hebrew when we were memorizing vocabulary, bên is “between”. You are learning to make a decision “between” two options. Discernment is understanding how to make wise choices. It involves understanding the issues.

 

Many times the Hebrew word bîn is translated “understanding”. It has to do with being able to see what the real root issues are, what the spiritual issues are that lie behind a physical situation. We see this with David.

 

When Goliath comes out to challenge the men of Israel, 1 Samuel 17:25, they flee in fear. They are trembling. They say to David, “Have you seen this man who has come up? Surely he has come up to defy Israel; and it shall be that the man who kills him the king will enrich with great riches …”

 

There is going to be great reward for the champion. The king is going to shower him with wealth. He is going to marry off his daughter to him. Saul will also make his whole family, all of his clan, free from taxes. That is always a great reward.

 

But David’s response does not focus on the reward. He is not motivated by wealth. He is not motivated by property. He is motivated by the honor of God. That is also important. If you are going to be a champion the focal point of your life needs to be theological. It needs to be on the character, honor, and glory of God. That underlies your thinking. That is what motivates your choices.

 

When David hears Goliath come out and make this challenge his question is:

 

“What shall be done for the man who kills this Philistine and takes away the reproach from Israel?”

 

This is an affront to Israel, God’s people. David reveals his thinking in the next question. He says:

“For who is this uncircumcised Philistine?”

 

Circumcision is the sign of the Abrahamic Covenant. In the Abrahamic Covenant God promised Israel this land on which they were standing. The “uncircumcised Philistine” has no right to this land. Let’s look at the problem biblically and doctrinally.

 

Later David makes this famous battle cry that “the battle is the Lord’s.” That reveals David’s thinking at this point. This is a spiritual issue. Behind every physical battle there is a spiritual issue. Discernment is understanding how to look at the problem spiritually and from the spiritual framework.

 

In the Proverbs we have several passages that talk about the importance of acquiring discernment, but you do not get discernment coincidentally. You do not get discernment by chance. You do not get it by going through experiences in life. Biblical discernment is the result of biblical study. In order to develop discernment, the first step is to go back to the first test, the test of preparation.

 

 

Otherwise we will never develop discernment. Discernment is what develops in our soul as we come to a greater understanding of the Word of God. But at any moment the details of life can distract us. We can be overwhelmed by all of our responsibilities, the expectations of school, job, career, family, and all of a sudden the Bible is not a priority anymore.

 

Sometimes people get bored. They have been in the same church for a long time with the same pastor. They have heard the same thing. They cannot make the transition. I learned a long time ago that if you are a young believer then a lot of your motivation is to learn this new stuff about the Christian life. You want to learn the right stuff. You want to get answers to your questions:

 

 

But if you have been listening to the Word for more than 3–4 years then you should have most of those questions answered. If you have been sitting in church for 10–15–20 years, you are probably no longer motivated to find out the answers to these questions. You have gotten those answers to your satisfaction. Now you have to change your motivation.

 

Do you have an answer to those questions to where you now have the ability to answer others? That is what Peter talks about in 1 Peter 3:15, to “always be ready to give an answer for the hope that is in you.” It is one thing to have our questions answered to where our soul is satisfied. It is another thing to be able to articulate the answer to those who might ask.

 

We have to be motivated from a different direction. As you move toward spiritual maturity a lot of the reason you come to Bible class is not to learn new material. It is to be reminded of material that I have already learned that I am constantly in danger of forgetting. It is to be reminded of the love of God, the faithfulness of God, the power of God, and the provision of God. It is so that I can wake up tomorrow morning and refocus on my spiritual life and continue to press on and not fall by the wayside and settle for whatever is, to be a mediocre believer.

 

This is how that attitude is described in Proverbs 2:2. It says that you are to “incline your ear to wisdom.” There is action there. You have to move your ear to a place where you will learn wisdom. You have to: turn on your phone, turn on a recording device, or turn on the media.

 

You have to make it a point to listen to the teaching of the Word. Then apply your heart to understanding. You have to think about it. You cannot let it come in, take notes, go home, and say “boy that was good. What is on television tonight?”

 

 

In Proverbs 2:3 the writer goes on to say, “Yes, if you cry out for discernment …” If you scream for it like a baby desires the sincere milk of the Word. “… if  you cry out for discernment and lift up your voice for understanding …”

 

You say, “Pastor, I want to learn the Word.” I do not hear that from a lot of Christians in a lot of what is going on in evangelical churches today. They are starving to death, but they have lost it. They are so consumed with activities, small group fellowship, and all these nonessentials that they have forgotten the importance of the Word of God.

 

Proverbs 2:4 says, “If you seek her (wisdom and understanding) as silver.”

 

If you are digging for the Word of God, for wisdom, like a miner digs for silver. He studies the ground. He learns engineering techniques. He figures out the efficient way to get through the hard rock and to be able to identify the ore that is embedded in the rock deep below the surface.

 

“If you seek her as silver, and search for her as for hidden treasures.”

 

You are making an intentional concentrated effort. It takes discipline. It means you plan your schedule. You plan your work. You plan everything around the most important thing, which is getting the Word of God into your soul and applying it.

 

In Proverbs 4:5 we read, “Get wisdom!” That is a command. “Get wisdom! Get understanding! Do not forget, nor turn away from the words of my mouth.”

 

It is so easy to forget. That is our default position, to go to the sin nature. I have often compared the spiritual life to running a car uphill. You have no brakes. You only have a gear to go forward and neutral. That is it. As soon as you take your foot off the accelerator you slip into neutral and you start going back. You never stay in one place. You are either going forward and learning and maturing and growing, or you are slipping backward into the mire of mediocrity.

 

Proverbs 4:7, “Wisdom is the principal thing.”

 

This is written by Solomon. He understands that there are a lot of issues in life that we have to pay attention to. But if you have everything in life and you do not have wisdom from the Word of God, you have nothing! You can have wisdom from the Word of God and have nothing in terms of the details of life, and you have everything.

 

I am not saying that we have to give it all up. This is not a message on being some sort of a monk going off into the desert and giving up everything. This is simply emphasizing we have to get wisdom. It is the glue that binds everything else together.

 

Proverbs 4:7, “Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom. And in all your getting, get understanding.”

 

Proverbs 23:23, “Buy the truth, and do not sell it, also wisdom and instruction and understanding.”

This is more important than anything else!

 

Proverbs 9:10, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.”

 

Knowledge of the Holy One is called theology proper. It is understanding the essence of God and all of the verses that relate to that. It is not rehearsing it and regurgitating the information, but it is having it so well known that it shapes your thinking and your decision making.

 

1. To develop discernment it is intentional. It is a concentrated disciplined effort.

2. We have to learn how to respond to trials.

 

This is what James says. It is more succinct. Peter says the same thing in 1 Peter 1 in a greater number of verses. James says:

 

James 1:2–4, “My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.”

 

The image here is that these trials happen to you. You wake up in the morning thinking everything is going great. Four hours later you wonder how your world fell apart. Things just begin to happen. You got in the car. You are out of gas or had a flat tire. By the time you got somebody out there to repair it you are late. You are stuck in traffic. You decide to take a shortcut and have an accident. It is one thing dominoes into another. We have all had days like that. We just fall into these trials.

 

But it is how do we respond? We know something. We know that the testing of our “faith produces patience/endurance.” David understood the principle. He did not have these verses, but he understood that principle. He is passed all these tests with the lions and the bears. He is prepared. Because he is prepared and has prepared himself, he has discernment. He has grown to maturity.

 

This is what David expresses when he hears the challenge of Goliath. He understands that there is a real spiritual issue here. His question:

“Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God?”

 

This focuses on the fact that God is not an idol. He is not made out of wood, metal, or stone, but He intervenes in the affairs of men.

 

This title of God as the living God is emphasized numerous times. In Joshua 3:10 Joshua uses it in encouraging the Israelites as they get ready to go to battle at Jericho.

 

Joshua 3:10, “By this you shall know that the living God is among you, and that He will without fail drive out from before you the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Hivites and the Perizzites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Jebusites.”

 

God is the One who is going to be able to overcome them. Remember, among all those people were the giants. These were the same people. The numerous people of the land that the original spies in Numbers 13 came and said were too great for them. There were too many people and too many giants. They have walled cities. Joshua says, look, the living God is going to be able to give you victory.

 

Paul says the same thing in the New Testament. He says in 1 Thessalonians 1:9 that “you turn to God from idols to serve the living and true God.” That is what happened at salvation when you trusted Christ as Savior. You are going to serve the “living and true God.”

 

2 Kings 19:4, “It may be that the LORD your God will hear all the words of the Rabshakeh, whom his master the king of Assyria has sent to reproach the living God, and will rebuke the words which the LORD your God has heard. Therefore lift up your prayer for the remnant that is left.”

 

In the Old Testament when Hezekiah is shut up in Jerusalem by Sennacherib, he sends out his mouthpiece, the Rabshakeh, to threaten Hezekiah. It is viewed as a reproach to “the living God.” Hezekiah sends his messengers to go get Isaiah. In their report to Isaiah they describe the king of Assyria as the one who is reproaching “the living God.” That is described in 2 Kings 19:16 as the “reproach to the living God.”

 

2 Kings 19:16, “Incline Your ear, O LORD, and hear; open Your eyes, O LORD, and see; and hear the words of Sennacherib, which he has sent to reproach the living God.”

 

It is the same thing. The enemies of God are reproaching the living God. What are we going to do about it? We have to look at everything from the spiritual grid.

 

Jeremiah 23:36, “And the oracle of the LORD you shall mention no more. For every man’s word will be his oracle, for you have perverted the words of the living God, the LORD of hosts, our God.”

 

“For every man’s word will be his oracle” is the relativism that is being condemned in Israel at the time. Every person is looking to his own opinion as having value as the Word of God. This is what happens in so many Sunday School classes today where when you go in they have their Sunday School quarterly or some other book. They read the passage so and so. They ask the next person, “What does that mean to you?” And “What does that mean to you?”

 

It is a bunch of nonsense. It is because no one has studied it. No one knows what it means. They are getting a subjective impression. They are perverting the words of the living God. That is happening in church after church after church in this country. They are perverting the words of God. People do not have the discernment because they are not familiar with the Word, to be able to catch it. We see the reaction that occurs as a result of someone who lacks discernment.

 

Notice how the Scripture shows these contrasts. When David asks who is going to take on this uncircumcised Philistine who is a reproach to the living God? He gets a reaction from Eliab. Any time you take a stand for the Bible, the people who are resisting, the people who are negative are going to react. They are suppressing the truth in unrighteousness. When you point out the truth they are going to react in anger, because they have rejected the truth. You are exposing that. No one likes to be exposed.

 

David’s wisdom in identifying the real issue irritates Eliab to no end. His brother’s “anger was aroused against David.” He immediately reacts in anger and asks David why he came down to the battleground. He implies that David should have stayed with the sheep. Eliab insinuated that David is the runt of the litter and that he was no good.

 

If anyone had a right to a low self-image it is David. David is overlooked by his father. He is rundown by his brothers. But it does not matter what those family circumstances may be, as long as you understand the truth of God’s Word. It does not matter how people treat you, as long as you are focused on the Word of God. Then you can let those things pass.

 

Eliab says, “Why did you come down here? And with whom have you left those few sheep in the wilderness?”

 

Then typical Eliab accuses David of doing exactly what he is doing. You often see this in politics. One person accuses someone on the other side of doing exactly what they have been doing all along. You see this happen on both sides on occasion, but it is more often the left accuses the right of exactly what they are doing. If you want to know what the Democrats are doing, listen to what they are accusing the conservatives of doing. Notice, I said conservatives, not Republicans. There is a difference.

 

Eliab says, “I know your pride and the insolence …” Eliab is the one who is proud and insolent. “… of your heart, for you have come to see the battle.” David handles this in such a tremendous way. He is relaxed. He does not react in anger. He does not strike back. He does not say that Eliab is a spiritual failure. He does not ask why Eliab did not ever listen to those Bible classes we had at home. He never says anything like that.

 

David is very calm. He is modest. He does not justify or defend himself. He does not lose his temper. He focuses on the issue. He asks a very simple question.

 

David says, 1 Samuel 17:29, “What have I done now? Is there not a cause?”

 

Literally in the Hebrew it says, “it was only a word.” It was only a statement. Why are you reacting? Why have you lost your temper? It was just a simple question.

 

1 Samuel 17:30, David “turned from him toward another and said the same thing; and these people answered him as the first ones did.”

 

David is very calm in the way he handles the situation. He understands the principle of Proverbs 15:1, “A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” Rather than reacting in kind, David responds to the situation by asking a question to expose what is really going on.

 

C. The Test of Humility, 1 Samuel 17:28–30.

 

1 Samuel 17:28–30, “Now Eliab his oldest brother heard when he spoke to the men; and Eliab’s anger was aroused against David, and he said, ‘Why did you come down here? And with whom have you left those few sheep in the wilderness? I know your pride and the insolence of your heart, for you have come down to see the battle.’ And David said, ‘What have I done now? Is there not a cause [word]?’ Then he turned from him toward another and said the same thing; and these people answered him as the first ones did.”

 

This is where David shows his humility. He understands humility. He is not reacting in anger. That is the test of humility.

 

In 1 Peter 5:5 we see this emphasized in the New Testament, “Likewise you younger people, submit yourselves to your elders. Yes, all of you be submissive to one another, and be clothed with humility …”

 

David is clothed with humility. Eliab is not. He is arrogant. He is angry with David. Anger is often the result of someone not letting you have your way. You are not able to do what you want to do. Someone is blocking you, or they are exposing you. You react in anger. Instead of being angry David is relaxed. He is humble. Scripture says in James 4:6, “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”

 

1 Peter 5:6, “Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time ...”

 

I always like to put 1 Peter 5:6 and 1 Peter 5:7 together. 1 Peter 5:7 is a commonly memorized promise, “casting all your care upon Him for He cares for you.” But it is the completion of the thought in 1 Peter 5:6, which is “humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God.”

 

The question is: How do I do that?

 

There is a participle of means there in 1 Peter 5:7, “by casting your care upon Him.” That is how you humble yourself. Humility is submitting to the authority of someone. Jesus humbled Himself to the point of death on the cross by being obedient. He humbled Himself by being obedient to God. Humility is the result of submitting to God’s authority. That is what we do. We put it on the Lord. We cast our care upon the Lord. That is how we humble ourselves.

 

D. The Test of Authority, 1 Samuel 17:31–37

 

This is authority orientation. We are studying this a lot on Thursday nights in 1 Peter 2, the last half and on into 1 Peter 3–4. We have to learn to submit to authority. That is the outgrowth of humility. David shows he is humble. He has passed the humility test. He is showing that he applies that humility in the area of authority.

 

1 Samuel 17:31–33, “Now when the words which David spoke were heard, they reported them to Saul; and he sent for him. Then David said to Saul, ‘Let no man’s heart fail because of him; your servant will go and fight with this Philistine.’ And Saul said to David, ‘You are not able to go against this Philistine to fight with him; for you are a youth, and he a man of war from his youth.’ ”

 

David is overheard. The words that he spoke are reported to Saul. We are not sure if someone went to Saul and said, “Hey, we have this guy over here who thinks he can take on the giant!” Or, “We have this guy over here that is making an issue out of this or talking about this.” We do not know the motivation. Whether the report was “Hey, this guy is causing trouble.”

 

We do not know what the motivation was here. It is just the words that David spoke were reported to Saul. Saul calls for David. David comes to the king, but he comes with respect. He comes recognizing that Saul is the king. He is not going to be critical or hostile or reacting to Saul, who has obviously been a failure in pointing out the spiritual issues.

 

David is the good shepherd who understands the issue. He submits to God. He wants to protect the people. Saul is the picture of the bad shepherd who fails to protect the people. He does not know what to do, because he is not focused on the spiritual issues. David goes to report to Saul.

 

We read in 1 Samuel 32, “Then David said to Saul, ‘Let no man’s heart fail because of him (Goliath).’ ”

 

Saul’s heart is already failing. It has been failing for 15–20–30 days, however long the challenge has been going on. David says, “your servant will go and fight with this Philistine.” No one be afraid. I will go fight him. Saul probably says what he says with a certain amount of incredulity, “You are not able to go against this Philistine to fight with him …”

 

Saul probably sees David as only 5’5”–5’6” and this Philistine is over 9’6” tall. How in the world are you, David, going to take him on? You do not have the weapons or the training of a warrior. How can you do this?

 

1 Samuel 17:33, Saul says, “You are not able to go against this Philistine to fight with him; for you are a youth, and he a man of war from his youth.”

This means that David is probably between 15–20 years old, probably closer to 20 years old. David is still growing, still developing. Saul says, “… you are a youth, and he (Goliath) a man of war from his youth.” Goliath is experienced. He is trained. He knows all the tricks. He has outsized you. This is when David talks about his experience.

 

We have already talked about these verses, 1 Samuel 17:34–36, but this puts them in context. David passed the test of authority. He is going to humbly represent what he has done to Saul. It is how David uses his history that is important here. We use these verses to talk about how it prepared David. But what I am pointing out here is that when Saul asked David the question of why he should allow him to go fight Goliath, David in a very calm objective manner gives Saul’s his resume.

 

1 Samuel 17:34–35, “But David said to Saul, ‘Your servant used to keep his father’s sheep, and when a lion or a bear came and took a lamb out of the flock, I went out after it and struck it, and delivered the lamb from its mouth; and when it arose against me, I caught it by its beard, and struck and killed it.’ ”

 

David demonstrates that he is respectful of Saul’s authority. He gives Saul the information that Saul is asking for and David understands. Then David draws the comparison in 1 Samuel 17:36, “Your servant has killed both lion and bear; and this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, seeing he has defied the armies of the living God.”

 

David brought it right back to the spiritual issue and the spiritual focus.

 

In 1 Samuel 17:37, “Moreover David said, ‘The LORD, who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear, He will deliver me from the hand of the Philistine.’ ”

 

David has been able, by telling Saul about his preparation, to present Saul with a cogent argument for why he should be able to go fight the Philistine. David understands respect for authority. This goes all the way through David’s life.

 

When the Scripture talks about the two episodes in David’s life, the one at En Gedi and the one out in the fields, two different occasions when David could take Saul’s life after Saul had been trying to kill him.

 

David says in 1 Samuel 26:9, “But David said to Abishai, ‘Do not destroy him; for who can stretch out his hand against the Lord’s anointed, and be guiltless?’ ”

 

This is a principle of authority orientation. He is humble. He is obedient to God. He recognizes authorities that have been set over him. Romans 13:1, “Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and these authorities that exist are appointed by God.”

 

E. The Test of Human Good, 1 Samuel 17:38–39

 

Human good is not the good that is produced by the Spirit of God in our life. Human good is the good, the morality, the ethics, or whatever that man can produce on his own. But without God working in you it is the work of the flesh. It is good deeds that does not count for eternity. This is pictured here in this next episode.

 

In 1 Samuel 17:38–39 Saul calls David over and tells him that he is not really prepared. Saul tells David to let him put his armor on you. There are two things going on here:

 

1. Saul stands a head above everyone else in Israel. He is probably a good eight to nine inches taller than David. Saul is going to put his armor on David. Do you think it will fit? No. It is not going to fit very well.

 

2. Saul is probably thinking: “if David is wearing his armor, then when the people see him go out, they will not know who is wearing the armor. I will get the credit.” Saul is crafty about that.

 

Saul is going to clothe David with his armor, but David knows that he does not need Saul’s tools. He does not need to do the right thing, kill Goliath, the wrong way. He needs to go out there with the weapons God has trained him to use, his sling and his shepherd’s staff and his rod. He has those three things. He knows that he can use them.

 

Saul is trying to give David all this stuff that would be counterfeit good. It would make it look like David is finding something else to rely on other than the Word of God. This is one of the most important principles in the Christian life and one that is completely lost today. That is this emphasis on the sufficiency of God’s Word.

 

The Word of God is all we need in order to realize spiritual growth, spiritual success, and happiness in life. God wants us to be happy, not happy as the world sees happiness, but happy as God has defined it for man, real stability, real soul contentment, and tranquility.

 

I want to read a couple of excerpts from an article that came out at the end of August in American Thinker by Bruce Davidson called “The Death of Evangelicalism.” In a summary, what he is saying is what I have said for forty years, is that evangelicalism has died because it has lost the sufficiency of God’s Word. You no longer believe it is the Word of God and the Word of God alone.

 

Some people think that maybe I am overstating the case and being hyperbolic. So I thought I would read this from somebody else. I have never heard of him before. I do not know anything about him other than he is a good clear thinker. He talks about the death of evangelicalism. He says, “At one time, evangelical meant a clear commitment to biblical authority and historic Protestant doctrine.”

 

There were five things that were said that were the slogans of the Protestant Reformation. They are all in Latin. They all begin with the word Sola. Sola is where we get our word “solo.” Sola means “alone.” The first is Sola Scriptura, by the Word of God alone, Scripture alone. Not Scripture plus psychology or sociology or any of these other things. Not Scripture plus the latest polls or anything like that. It is Scripture alone. The second is by faith alone. The third is by grace alone, and so on.

 

These are the important things, but I want to focus on the Bible, Scripture alone. This is what Bruce Davidson points out that “At one time, evangelical meant a clear commitment to biblical authority and historic Protestant doctrine, but now the term is applied to a wide range of people, from bizarre TV faith healers to religiously affiliated social justice warriors. Evangelical no longer represents any consistent body of beliefs or even political commitments.”

 

I might add the Bible church, too. In fact, when I was at Dallas Theological Seminary I do not think that there was one faculty member who would vote for a Democrat. Now I wonder if there is any that would vote for a Republican. You start drifting liberal in your theology and you will drift liberal in your politics. That will happen.

 

Davidson goes on to say, “Some blame recent secular trends for this change, such as leftism and postmodernism, but the evangelical world has been committing slow suicide for a long time. Forty years ago, my own evangelical seminary had already opened its doors to the forces that would one day seriously undermine its own basic beliefs, and today the doors of evangelical institutions are open even wider to the same corrupting influences.”

 

You ask: What are those corrupting influences? Davidson tells us, “Others could be mentioned, but perhaps the greatest factors in evangelical decline are psychology, sociology, and politics.”

 

Psychology, when the evangelical churches started having Christian counseling classes instead of teaching men to trust the sufficiency of the Bible, they signed their death warrant. You go to these big churches today. What they have done is use a mix, a blend, of psychology and sociology.

 

These churches have blended these together and developed techniques for how to get a lot of people to church. I remember Harry Leafe told me, “Robby, anybody in the flesh can build a big church and a big organization, but that does not mean the Holy Spirit had anything to do with it.”

 

Davidson goes on to say, “The greatest force to remold evangelicalism may be psychotherapyism. In the past, many evangelical institutions slammed the door shut on humanistic theological liberalism. Ironically, they then let the same way of thinking in by the back door, in the shape of humanistic psychology.”

Davidson continues, “Evangelical institutions largely abandoned an emphasis on Bible exposition (that is why you cannot find pastors teaching verse-by-verse anymore. They abandoned an emphasis on Bible exposition), doctrine, and moral living in favor of promoting therapy for practical problems and emphasizing self-actualization.” You can find this article on American Thinker. Read the whole article.

 

What Davidson said there in the last part is that you look at these churches. They are not doing verse-by-verse exposition. All these messages on Sunday morning are how to have a better marriage. There is nothing wrong with that, but you have to learn the Word of God. That gives you the answer. You have got to learn these things. You do not ignore this and develop a free-floating self-help motivational style of preaching.

 

This is what is going on in churches. That is human good. That is the armor of Saul. That is not teaching people to think that the “Battle is the Lord’s.” David’s conclusion is “I cannot walk with these, for I have not tested them.” But I tested the Lord. I tested Him with the bear. I tested Him with the lion. God gives me the victory. I know the Word of God is true.

 

This is a chart of our sin nature diagram. Personal sin is what we normally think of as the product of the sin nature. But the person who is an unbeliever can produce a lot of morally good things. But it is a wrong way of doing things. If you do a right thing in a wrong way it is wrong. If you do a right thing in the power of the flesh it is still wrong. That is what David was dealing with here.

 

Zechariah 4:6, “This is the word of the LORD to Zerubbabel: ‘Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,’ says the LORD of hosts.”

 

It is not by technique. It is not by learning the right sociological principles or building your church on the basis of the latest polls. It is not by being psychological in your teaching. It is “by My Spirit, says the LORD of hosts.” Therein lies the importance.

 

What we have there in the last test is the test of human good. It is passed by David. He is now prepared to go face the giant, because he understands the battle is not his. It is not based on his technique. It is not based on his getting the right degrees. It is not based on sociological and psychological principles. It is based on complete, 100%, exclusive trust in the Word of God and the power of God. It is the sufficiency of Scripture. Let’s close in prayer.

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