Well, we know the story, don't we, about David and Goliath? In fact, the story is so well known that even in most Australian sort of conversations or, you know, language, we can talk about a David and Goliath situation. My poor Lions last night playing against the Tigers, I was at a David and Goliath battle. This time, David didn't win, but we'll try next week. So we understand this idea of a brave, small hero against a very likely winner as a giant?
Well, this morning, we're going to look both at the children's account, the story account, but also have a read of the biblical historical account of what happened nearly three thousand years ago. And as we do that, I just want to reflect on a few thoughts about this story that I think is helpful for us to understand that God is the God who does the impossible, and how we interact with this God is through a thing called faith. And I just want to share three thoughts about this concept of faith, a real life living active thing. The first thing I want to share is the idea that faith reacts. Archaeology tells us that these pitch battles that we sort of find the Philistine army and the Israelite army facing off against one another actually took place.
And often in these pitch battles, they would also have this scenario that we find where a single champion would fight against a champion of the opposing army and they would settle the battle through just these two warriors. That was actually not an uncommon thing to have happened in that time. This all happens at a place called the Elah Valley, and ten years ago, I was fortunate enough to have been there. To this day, it's just a rural place, farmland, but it's amazing opposing hillsides that face one another. You can just imagine the Israelite army on the one hill and the Philistine army on the other hill looking at each other.
Now the only problem with this situation is the fact that the Philistine champion is no ordinary soldier. The Bible tells us, in fact, that he is quite an impressive specimen. Verses 4 to 7 of the chapter that we read, 1 Samuel 17, tells us something of this man's stats. He is about nine foot tall. He wore armour according to verse 4 that weighed approximately 80 kilograms.
He carried a spear that weighed 15 kilograms. A spear that you throw. Now imagine the carry-on luggage that you take onto a plane. That's seven kilograms. So double that and that is the amount that he could throw.
This is no ordinary soldier. Now every day for forty days, as these armies were sort of preparing and collecting their troops, for forty days, this man stood before the armies of Israel and taunted them, daring them to take him on. And everyone was terrified. No one in the whole army was willing to take on the champion. And so the mocking intensifies.
Goliath begins paying out not only the weak willed Israelites, but he starts paying out the God that they worship. Surely, this God can't be real if the Israelites who have such faith in Him cower in their tents. And the Bible says he did this taunting every morning and every evening for a whole month, forty days. Every day, the soldiers of Israel and their king, a man named Saul, trembled in their boots and no one dared to take on the giant. Now in this brutal attrition-like war of these pitched battles, army morale was a big thing.
Once an army broke and started running, that was the end. And so you can almost begin to understand how significant this fear that was gripping the army was to the likelihood of them winning a battle at all. To the Philistine army, however, it looks like a surrender is only days away. But about this time, a young man named David, who we've already been introduced to in the previous chapter, chapter 16, comes to the front line and he had been sent by his dad to bring his older brothers some supplies. Verses 12 to 18 tells us that David arrives in the camp as Goliath is saying these things, taunting these Israelites.
And by this time, we know that things are going to be different. This time, Goliath and his taunting is heard by a man who believes, has true genuine faith in God, which leads us to this first point, that genuine faith reacts. David hears, as he comes into the army base, these things that are being yelled across the battlefield. But these things that are being said is about a God he loves. A God who is very, very precious to him.
A God he cares about. And David said to himself, this is not going to do. And David's faith would not allow him. David's faith would not allow him to stand idly by while Goliath defied the God of heaven. We may think that faith is a very personal thing.
It's a thing between me and God. It's a thing that I can have as some sort of a philosophical intellectual thing that I think a God exists out there. That is what faith is. But faith, according to the Bible, is linked far more to our English word, which is faithfulness. And faithfulness is an active thing.
It is a thing you choose. To be faithful to your wife or your husband is to choose one thing over another thing. To have faith is to be faithful to God. And so this faith is not passive. It's not like this position of, yeah, I think there is a God that exists out there.
It is proactive. And so in David's case, this faithful faith cannot let things just be like this forever. He doesn't sit on his hands. This faith that he has intermingles with his decision making and so it drives how he responds and reacts. Now I don't think the Bible is necessarily suggesting that we must go out there with slingshots and, you know, pelt anyone that says anything about God or who opposes or doesn't believe in God or whatever.
I don't think that is what the Bible is suggesting at all. What I think we do see an example of David is a faith that makes us do things. It acts. It responds. So the deeper meaning here is the point that while the Israelite armies had a belief in God, these guys were part of God's people.
David here has a faith that causes him to respond in a certain way, in a faithful way. So I think there's something firstly to learn here about how faith infuses and empowers even our daily decision making processes. So genuine faith reacts. The second thing we see is that faith remembers. David says to himself and to those watching, something needs to be done about this.
And so he goes to King Saul, we saw that in the video. He's sort of in King Saul's tent there. And he says, I want to shut this guy up. Can you imagine the scene? This scrawny little shepherd boy in rags comes and stands in front of the king and says, I want to take on this guy.
The little boy that's practically brought his older, stronger brothers packed lunches. The little messenger boy. He says, I want to put up my hand to fight this experienced, terrifying warrior. In the mind of the king, it spells certain death. And he tries to persuade him.
Tries to say, don't do this. It's crazy. And then when he sees he's not going to persuade David, he says, okay. Well, try all my gear. Try my armour.
Try my weapons. Here. Have a go. And David puts it on and he says, I can't fight with this. But David remembers something as he's talking to King Saul in that moment.
He thinks back on something in his past, something that he experienced and then treasured about his relationship with God and it was the way that God had worked in his past life as a shepherd boy. He tells King Saul in verses 34 to 35 that as a shepherd, he faced a bear and a lion who had come to kill his sheep, come to eat the sheep. And he says that I fought them off. I killed these beasts that took on my sheep. But he recognises in this that it was God that had given him the strength.
It was God that had given him the power to do this. And he says in verse 34, the Lord who rescued me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will rescue me from the hand of this Philistine. The same God. David remembers. A genuine faith is something that does look back and sees what God has done for us and then treasures that, remembers that, holds on to that.
Genuine faith stores it up in a deep, deep place in the heart. The truth is God is at work a 100% of the time in our lives, but we only see it 1% of the time. Now that 1% that God allows us to see, that is very important for us to remember, to store up. Because life is funny in the way that it can often make us forget. When something happens, something unsettling, we can ask the question, is God really that powerful that He can do something in this situation?
Does God really care? Can I trust Him today? Can and should I obey Him regarding this situation? The moment we let go of God in unbelief is that moment that we forget what He's done in the past for us. But genuine faith, this faithful active faith is also a faith that chooses to remember the things that He has shown of Himself in the past.
And those things, those things that He has done for us gives us strength to face our present and our future. David says, if my God was strong enough, if He cared about me enough back then against the lion and the bear, my God will help me today. And I think we can do well to take more stock more often about what God has done in our past, to remember that and to use that. And so faith remembers. But then our last point is that this faith relies.
The king of Israel hears nothing is going to persuade this young boy. David is going to fight this giant. And so as he tries to load David up with all this sort of stuff, David says, I can't use it. I'm just going to use my sling. Now this is a fascinating thing.
This sling is the same type of sling that shepherds to this day in Israel use. Again, when I was there ten years ago, they did shepherding in exactly the way. It hasn't changed. But these shepherds who have done this for their whole life are so skilled with that sling. They not only use it to scare off predators, you know, foxes and whatever that might be coming, and they can hit these animals to scare them off, but they use it in a way to steer the sheep as well.
So if the sheep are sort of getting too close to a cliff or a hill or something like that, they will launch a rock that will scare them away from that area. They are so incredibly accurate with this. I've seen footage of these expert slingshot users that can have done sort of target practice with clay jars and absolutely blast them apart, these clay jars from 15 metres away. Incredible power and accuracy. And so David, the shepherd boy, collects five pebbles, walks onto the battlefield in front of Goliath, and when Goliath sees this young man coming out to fight him, he's insulted.
How dare these Israelites send a boy to fight me? He says, am I a dog that you come to me with sticks and stones? But Goliath's speech is short one. As Goliath begins to advance toward David, David pulls that stone from his pouch. He slips it into his sling.
And as Goliath starts moving from a walk into a sprint, David steadies himself, takes a breath. He winds up the sling, releases that stone. And that smooth stone whistles through the air directed by the hand of God as David had trusted and the stone flies straight and true and hits Goliath in the only part that would not have been covered by armour, which is on his forehead. Goliath falls face forward. As you can imagine, the momentum carries him.
This stone, the Bible says, it crushes into his skull. It is a terrible blow. But he's probably not dead. David has to go and finish the job. But the rest is history.
As soon as the Philistines see this happening, they turn and they run. And again, as the tables had sort of just immediately shifted, the Israelite army morale going down down down every day, it just flips completely and these guys run. And the Israelite army is probably still cowering in their tents, scramble for their weapons, and they run after these Philistines. They win the day. But it was ultimately this act of incredible faith of David entrusting his life into the hands of God that won that moment.
He had a faith that relied on God. Now again, we can have deep philosophical positions of God and His existence, whether or not we can believe the God of the Bible is this God, but that sort of faith is almost useless. That sort of faith doesn't change or impact our lives. It doesn't change or impact the lives of those around us. It's only when we have faith, where we entrust our lives into the hands of God that things really start changing in our life.
This active faith, this faith that responds, reacts, remembers, and then relies is what actually makes a difference in our lives. And friends, I want to tell you this morning that this God, as the object of your faith, is worthy of your trust. He is worthy of your reliance because He is the greatest thing you will ever know. He is the biggest comfort that you will ever experience. He is the greatest joy that your heart can find pleasure in.
There's a story of a famous British army officer, Lawrence of Arabia. Maybe our older generations will know who that is. He was a man who fought in the British army while stationed in the Arabian state. And they were fighting in World War One against the Ottoman Empire that doesn't exist anymore. Now after the war, Lawrence, who had lived for a significant part of his life in Arabia, visited Paris with some of his Arabian friends.
He thought he'd show them Europe. And while in Paris, he took them to all the famous sites of Paris, to the Eiffel Tower, to the Louvre Museum, to the Arc de Triomphe. But none of these monuments seemed to have impressed his guests. The thing that really interested them was the indoor plumbing in the hotel room. They loved spending their time turning the bathtubs on and off.
Having water at any point in life just there available. And having come from a dry environment, you can understand why. Having come from humble backgrounds, you can understand why this was so amazing. You can turn a handle and have all the water that you want. Now later on when it was time to leave Paris and return to the Middle East, Lawrence found them in the bathroom with wrenches trying to disconnect the taps, put it in the bag.
They said to him, we need these in our country. If we have them, we'll have all the water we want and need. Now, of course, Lawrence of Arabia had to explain to them that the effectiveness of the taps or the faucets didn't lie in themselves, but in the immense reservoirs of water to which they were attached. If faith is the copper tubing that connects us to God, God is the limitless reservoir of power, of life quenching, thirst quenching love and joy. And I want to tell you this morning that God is the one that we should be proactively pursuing in our lives.
He is a great source of power which actually enables all of us, whether we trust Him or believe in Him or not, that enables us to do anything in our life. If we're tempted to look at other people, perhaps other Christians and think, wow, I could never be like them. I could never trust or believe in God like they do. You are forgetting that they and you are simply faucets to the incredible power of God behind them. There's nothing in them that has any power.
They are just simply the channels or the recipients of that power. And so this morning, I want to say to begin a life of faith in God, it starts by simply being willing to receive that power, to take hold of the hand of God. And so this morning, I want to ask you if you have never done that before or if you have done that and you know it wasn't real, why not make it this morning? Why not make that decision this morning? That moment where you entrust yourself, where you rely in faith on God because this God is limitless.
His love is bottomless. You cannot search the end of Him. And this was displayed most clearly in what He did for humanity two thousand years ago, in the death and the life of Jesus Christ. This is actually the moment that He showed how much He loves us, how much He was willing to do in order for us to be with Him. He comes to us in human form, in Jesus form.
He lives the perfect life that we can't live in order for God to warrant His love for us. And then He experiences the rejection and the punishment that we should bear because of our inadequate love of God, our inadequate respect of God, our inadequate faith in God, faithfulness. And by experiencing this punishment in our place, He rises three days later to show that it was sufficient. That penalty has been paid on our behalf. And so when He rises, it's like a billboard that says it is finished.
It is available. Just take it. It has been done. And the reason it has been done is for every single person that sits here this morning. This is the type of God I want to know.
This is the God who we can know through faithful faith, active faith that responds to Him, that remembers what He's done for us, that draws strength from that, and that is willing to risk and rely on the work of Jesus on the cross believing that it was sufficient enough for you. And so this morning, will you place your faith in God? Make Him the object of your heart. Make Him the power of your life. Make Him the joy of that heart.
Let's pray. Father, we thank You that this morning we can just hear and in our minds, I imagine this incredible act of faith. And Lord, You may not call any of us to be David's, but we see in David a faith that we know is available to us. And so Lord, we pray that You will be working in our lives even from today onwards to grow our awareness of You, to grow our love of You, to grow our trust and our dependence upon You. We pray for active faiths.
We pray for faiths that will remember what You have done for us in the past. Even the things right now that we have forgotten about, years later, to call them out up out of our hearts and minds. Thank You for Your faithfulness even when we have not been faithful to You. Thank You for Jesus Christ who has made it possible to know You and love You. We thank You for all these things in Jesus' name. Amen.