Good Morning All,
1
Samuel 17:46a; “This day the Lord will deliver you into my hand, and I
will strike you down and cut off your head.”
This is part of a verse from the story of
David and Goliath. There is a lot about
this story that intrigues me. One of
those things is the tremendous detail that the writer of Samuel goes to in
describing Goliath. Goliath was nine
feet tall, his chest plate armor alone weighed 125 pounds and the head of his
spear weighed 15 pounds. The shaft of
the spear was big enough to use as the main frame of a weaver’s frame. This was one big, mean, ugly dude. He struck terror into the hearts of the
entire Israelite army, king and all the people.
He had challenged the Israelites to send out their best soldier. That best soldier and Goliath would fight;
one on one and the winner of that battle would be the winner of the war. If the Israelite won the Philistines would be
the slaves and if Goliath won then the Israelite would be the slaves.
For forty days, Goliath mocked the
Israelites and their God. For forty days
his challenge went unanswered. On the
forty first day, David, a little shrimp of a kid, came out to do battle with
Goliath and killed him with a stone and cut off Goliath’s head with Goliath’s
own sword. This is quite a story.
This is one of those stories that many
people know but always seem to fixate on the wrong part of the story. Many people will latch onto the idea that someone
was nine feet tall. Once they read that,
the entire Bible is dismissed. Now if it
matters to you, there are some older translations that have Goliath about seven
foot tall and there are some commentaries that suggest that the way we convert
the ancient measurements to our known measurements of today is off; to me it
doesn’t matter because that is not the purpose of this story. The really important part is that Goliath was
a big, mean, nasty thing to meet in the dark.
We all face “Goliaths” in our life. It might be changes at our workplace; it
might be the prospect of getting married and moving away from Mom and Dad to a
new place with this somewhat new person.
It might be the health of our parents or siblings or spouse or even our
own health. For most of us the biggest
Goliath we face is our own mortality.
Someday, I will die and for many people nine feet isn’t tall enough for
that Goliath. These are just a few
things in our lives that strike terror into our hearts and minds. There are many others some of which may be
your Goliath.
David gives us a clue to our answer. Before the battle begins, Goliath gives the
“trash talk” speech about how he will leave David on the field of battle for
the birds and animals to pick clean.
David responds with a statement of faith. “This day the Lord will deliver you into my
hand.” We will face many Goliaths but
God has promised to deliver them into our hand.
God has promised to guard and save us.
Not matter what comes our way, we rest securely at the foot of the cross
looking at the empty tomb. God has
already delivered us up from the bondage of sin and the guilt and pain that sin
causes us. So as we face our “Goliaths”,
we can do so with the same confidence that David did and be certain that God will
deliver us as well. Faith that God would
deliver him the victory over Goliath is what carried the day for David. That same faith will carry you through as
well.
Dear Father, we face many “Goliaths” in our life and on our own we
would fail. Yet you sent Jesus to do
battle with all the Goliaths we face and defeated them and then gave that
victory to us. Remind us of this truth
as we cling only to you. In the precious
name of Jesus we pray, amen
God’s
Peace,
Pastor
Bret
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