You'll be in an eternal kingdom in your presence forever. We thank you that that experience has started now, but we thank you that one day we will receive it in all its perfection when he comes. Open our eyes to behold things from your word we pray this evening in Christ's name. Amen. We should never start a sermon with an apology, but I owe one because I was supposed to ask the music, the singing group to come out and lead us in that last hymn that we've just sung, because it's not a particularly easy one, but it is a lovely, lovely hymn. And I apologize because I wasn't quite with it in time, but thank you for being here and supporting us in the singing. This story of David and Goliath, which you'll find on page 254 of the Pew Bibles, if you want to follow the bits of it that I refer to, page 254. The story of David and Goliath is one of the most famous stories ever told throughout the world. It continues as part of our evening series that we've been going through, and we'll continue over the next few weeks through one Samuel, through the first book of Samuel. It's a quite amazing story of weakness conquering strength. It's a story of evil beaten by good. It's a story of the bully being defeated by the tit. It's a story with a ridiculous beginning of a young man trying to put on a suit of armour, far too big for him, and an amazing ending as he becomes a giant killer. It has all the hallmarks of a good short story. It makes a wonderful children's story. In fact, it makes several wonderful children's stories. I can remember a long Greyhound coach journey all across the southern states of the United States with a two-year-old. Greyhound coach journeys are something to be avoided at all costs anyway, particularly when you're going all the way across Texas or Arkansas and Louisiana and Texas and New Mexico over to California. Don't do it. But don't do it in particular with a two-year-old. Well, our two-year-old loved to hear these stories. And in that extraordinarily long coach journey, I lost count of the number of times that we told the stories of David and the lion and David and the bear and David and Goliath and how many times we swung our arms much to the amusement of fellow passengers as we slung the stone from the sling. But many people didn't realise and don't realise, of course, that this is not a short story. It's part of a much longer story, a story about God and His plans, a story in which God reveals Himself as the living God, God who will deliver and save His people. What a contrast there is here between David and Saul who was the king of Israel. Saul had started out trusting in this God but he had become arrogant and proud. He'd become disinterested at best and at sometimes actually antagonistic to God. And so God had left him to his own devices and what we're confronted with now is a king who was a shivery massive frightened jelly waiting for a single rather large man, certainly to crush him in a duel. David was a young man. And although Samuel had already anointed David to be king, that was yet to be several years ahead. He wasn't to become king yet for several years. For now David was still a shepherd. Really he was nothing more than an errand boy. If you look at verses 17 and 18 you'll find that he came to the battlefield. The only reason he came to the battlefield was to bring food to his older brothers. David young though he was. Really did however believe that God was powerful and that God was truly in ultimate control of everything. God meanwhile wanted a king but not Saul. Saul had deserted him. God wanted a king who would carry forward his great purposes and David wanted to honor and to serve God. You see God's purposes were much much more than simply making sure that the Philistines were defeated. It was God's purpose to make sure that everyone knew what David knew. Verse 47, that the battle is the Lord's. That was God's purpose here, immediate purpose. That everyone should know that the battle was the Lord's. That the Lord God would be the savior of his people. That of course God's long term purposes were even more significant than that. Because he would use the throne of David when David eventually became king. He would use that throne to bring deliverance from a far more intractable problem than Goliath. One day the one who would sit on David's throne would bring deliverance from sin and from judgment. That was God's long term purpose in choosing David as king and in using David at this stage. But let's take a quick look at David in this chapter. It makes fascinating reading. I'm glad it was read the way it was. It's a long chapter but I think you'll agree with me. There's no way you can split that chapter anywhere. It's one long story that we need to hear the whole off. But the first thing we learn about David surely here is the depth of his faith. The depth of his faith. See his concern is not for himself, is it? But for the good name of the Lord God. In the second part of verse 26 after his brother has dismissed him as skyving off work and as a troublemaker, David asks some of those around a rather sarcastic sort of question. Who is this uncircumcised philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God? Well that's good old testament language isn't it? Uncircumcised is a description of those who refuse to serve the living God. And David's horror you see is that Goliath is being allowed to defy the living God and to challenge the true God and no one is doing anything about it. That is the horror for David. Facing God you see is not just a matter of trusting him to do things for you when there's an emergency. That's how many people regard God. People say to me well I believe in God and then what they mean is that they only turn to him when someone has died or when circumstances seem to get out of their control. Perhaps when life seems hopeless. Well if people begin to have faith and to commit themselves to God at times like that, that is good for everyone has to start somewhere. But true faith that the thought that we see here in David is to be so committed to God that you're prepared to stand up and be counted. You're prepared to fight for him, to speak for him. That was David. That was the sort of person God wanted. That was the sort of person that Saul should have been. It was what David's brothers should have been. How David's faith contrasted with Saul. Saul who was so much bigger, who stood the Bible, tells us hidden shoulders above the rest of the Israelites. Perhaps not as big as Goliath. But certainly very tall, very big, a real king. And David, a young man, a man who had not been prepared to fight. So the first mark of this person of faith David in this passage is that he or she, if we're talking generally about people of faith, is that there will be people who will stand up for God. They will defend the honour of God. But of course that can hardly be separated from the second thing we learn about David in this passage because David knows and trusts God as the deliverer. Listen to the depth of his faith in verse 37. The Lord who delivered me from the poor of the lion and of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Palestine. David you see trusts God to deliver him personally. But he also trusts God to vindicate himself in front of his enemies. David is a person of faith. He's zealous indeed for his God. Zealous for God's honour and he trusts entirely in the deliverance of God. Is it any wonder that this is the sort of person who is going to make such a great king of Israel later on? But I said at the start of this that the story is primarily about God. Who is this God? Verse 26 we learn there that he's the living God. He's not just some God who stood up at the beginning of history and created the world and set it going and then steps back and lets us get on with it. He's not that sort of a God. He's neither the God of the gaps that sometimes people call God. He's not the God who fills in when we can't cope. The God that David believed in, the God described in this passage, is a God that Christians believe in today, the one who is living and active in his world, one who is still involved with his purposes for us. In this world that you and I have mucked up, that we have distorted, that we have abused, and he is not a silent God. So many people have silent God's these days. God's of their own imagination really. Because this God, the true God is active and he hears those who have faith in him and he answers them as he answers David. And he brought deliverance because David asked him to. And he seemed to be then a deliverer God, a living God and a deliverer God, a God who saves his people. Well, as the greatest story moves on, as I said, this is not a short story, it's a long story, and as this story moves on through the Bible, we find that this is how God reveals himself again and again and again and again. He delivers himself and is a living God. In the Old Testament, with Moses, he delivers Moses and the children of Israel from Egypt. Later on here, he delivers the Israelites and David from the hands of the Philistines. Later on, he delivers as a living God. God, he doesn't just live in Israel. A God who even lives right over in Babylon and he delivers his people from captivity in Babylon. And as it moves on, we find that God has his plans, plans that could only come from a living God, a God who cares for his world, even though sinful people have mucked it up. And he's seen to be a God whose long-term plans are to deliver anybody. Who wants deliverance? Who wants salvation? And how does that work out? Well, eventually Jesus himself came to this earth as a descendant of David. He came to be king not quite a king like David, but a better king, a king who lives forever, who sits on the throne that is his by right because he is the final and the greatest deliverer of all times, the great living God himself. That's what the priest Zachariah remembers and thinks about in the New Testament when he hears that Jesus is going to be born. Do you remember what he says? He says, blessed be the Lord God of Israel for he has redeemed. He's delivered his people and raised up salvation in the house of his servant David.
God is the Savior for David. God is the Savior in the house of David as Jesus comes to be born a king, a king in the line of David but all so much greater. Saul had rejected God. David accepted him and trusted him and believed him and committed himself to him. And God let Saul go his own way and yet he delivered David just as David believed he would. And all of that was just a slight fortest of what was for coming God's greater plans for this world. His plan that he was working towards right back from the beginning was a plan to save not just the Israelites, not just David, not just certain shepherd boys in Israel. His plan was to save people from all over the world, people like you and me. And it's pointed to right back there in David as David believes in this delivering God. And when God sent Jesus to this earth, that plan came to fulfillment. Here was the eternal king. Here was the king who brought deliverance. This time not from Goliath. Nowadays youngsters would tell us what we could nuke him if it was Goliath. Now this is far, far deeper than that. God sent Jesus to deliver us from sin and from the judgment that we all deserved and from which there was no escape. King David had known that even with faith he still needed all those years ago to be forgiven by God for the wrong things he did. And when Jesus came, he died as a sacrifice for the sin of all who will commit themselves to him. It was one sacrifice, one that would last forever and forever and would never need repeating because Jesus is indeed our delivering God who delivers once and for all. For what is our response to be to this God? God who has proved in history that he is a living and a delivering God. When David saw the proof of God as the deliverer when he was up against lions and bears, David was prepared to tell others that God could be relied upon to do the same with Goliath. And what is to be our response to a God who came to this earth so that he could deliver us from the consequences of our sin. In other words, from judgment. What is to be our response to the King who died on the cross to take our sins so that we could be saved from that judgment? How are we going to respond? What is to be our response to a King who is alive now? And with us now if we trust him. A King who has promised that one day we shall inherit his perfect kingdom forever. Where we can be like Saul and some people even hear this evening will be like Saul. And it doesn't matter what I say from up here but some of you will be like him. Because even tonight you can act arrogantly. You can say I'm alright God. Thank you. Which is what Saul did. Saul didn't say it in so many words. Some of you won't say it in so many words. You'll just do it as Saul did it by his actions. That's what he was saying to David. That's what he was saying to the Israelites. I'm alright God. Thank you. I'm actually a shivering mess of scared. I'm thoroughly scared. But I won't turn to you God. I don't really need you. I've conquered other people before. And we can respond that way. And it is arrogance. It's real arrogance to say that we don't need God and we don't need salvation. But then we are a sinful people. And we are arrogant. Or we can do what David did. We can commit ourselves entirely to him. You can ask his forgiveness of your sins. Ask him to help you put aside the arrogance that we're all tempted to have. And ask him to help you and to deliver you from sin and its judgment which is death. Do you know the living God, the God who saves? Well that is the God, the God of David, and the God who reveals himself to us in Jesus Christ. Do you know him? Do you know that he brings real true forgiveness? And if you trust him and commit yourself to him, he also gives you the right to be sons of God, to have an everlasting inheritance in his kingdom. Now those who know this message by heart, be challenged. Be challenged again tonight. Are you fearful for the honour of God? Do you love God that much, the way David did? And for those of you who don't know it, but who are thinking about it even as I speak, for the first time perhaps. Then ask the Lord God to come into your life and to forgive you today. And do come and have a word with me afterwards or someone else beside you who knows and loves the Lord. As some booklets we can give you, I gave the booklet to somebody not so long ago and they said it's a booklet that takes my question seriously. So perhaps it'll be the right booklet for you to take. But by all means speak to us because we want to share this faith with you just as David wanted to make sure that everyone knew, everyone that God was a God who delivers and saves. Let's pray. Our Father, we ask that you will move in our hearts today. Help us to love you more. Help us to honour you better. And Father, we ask for those who perhaps have not come to know you yet, that they too will commit themselves to you in faith and in love, in Christ's name. Amen. And we're going to sing our final hymn.