David, God’s Hero, Part 2

Today on Summit Life, an encouraging message from Pastor J.D. Greer. Real courage doesn't come from not having difficulties or knowing that the way is going to be smooth.

Real courage is knowing that you have a God that is better than life and a God that is larger than death, who constantly stays beside you and says, Surely my goodness and my mercy are going to follow you. Welcome to Summit Life, the Bible teaching ministry of J.D. Greer. I'm your host, Molly Vidovitch. Today we're continuing our teaching series called The Whole Story. If you're just joining us, Pastor J.D. has been giving us an overview of the whole Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, and we're hitting most of the key stories along the way.

So if you've missed any part of this study, you can find the previous messages at jdgreer.com. Are you up against a giant today? Maybe you're facing a scary diagnosis or a financial crisis. Maybe your kids are rebelling or someone that you love has walked out of your life.

Whatever it is, it feels insurmountable. When your problems seem larger than life, it's hard not to feel like God's abandoned you. Well, today, Pastor J.D.

offers hope that our God is fighting for us, even when we can't see it. We're looking at the story of David and Goliath as we continue our overview of the Bible called The Whole Story. Let's dive right in. Let's look at the story of David and Goliath as we continue our overview of the Bible called The Whole Story. Let's dive right in. Let's look at the story of David and Goliath as we continue our overview of the Bible called The Whole Story.

Let's dive right in. Meanwhile, Jesse sends ruddy David up to see his brothers at the battle with some crackers and cheese. All David's brothers are in the army. His teenage David rises up early in the morning and he leaves the sheep with a keeper and he takes the lunchables that his daddy had given him and takes them to his brothers.

So he brings the snacks to his seven older brothers who were doing the fighting. Verse 23. As David talked with them, behold, the champion, the Philistine of Gath, Goliath by name, came out of the ranks of the Philistines and spoke the same words as before. But this time David heard him. Jump down to verse 32.

And when he arose against me, I caught him by his beard and I struck him and killed him. Verse 37. Then David said to the Philistine, not with sword and with spear. For the battle, David says, is the Lord's and he will give you into our hand.

And he's going to prove that right here. Verse 48. To shout and pursue the Philistines and they plundered all their camp. What is the main point of this story?

Is it that the bigger they are, the harder they fall? How about there's always hope for the underdog, so never stop believing in yourself. Or how about how about this? If you trust God, God will give you victory over all the giants in your life. Like maybe a really good football team that you're about to play or maybe a lousy job or maybe cancer. Are those the main point of this story? No. The story of David, like all stories in the Bible, is not David, you.

That's not the way it goes. In the Bible, it is David, Jesus, you. It is a book about him. It is not written to give you a bunch of heroes whose examples you're supposed to emulate as much as it is to give you a savior that you're supposed to adore and to hope in. Jesus was the small, unassuming shepherd boy who fought the real giant, Satan, our sin and the curse of death.

He fought as our representative on our behalf while we all stood on the sidelines like cowards doing nothing to help him. Our real Goliath was our alienation from God and the penalty we owed because of our sin. And that is something that Jesus knocked out for us on the field of battle all by himself. So David, Jesus, now you. After we do that, now you can understand what it means for your life. Number one, because Jesus has taken out the real giant in my life, I can bravely face all the lesser giants. So write this down if you're taking notes.

Do a little letter A here. In Christ, I don't have to be afraid of death. Y'all, if cancer comes, I don't know for some of you, it has. If cancer comes, ultimately, I don't have to be afraid of it. Because even if it kills me, Jesus has taken the sting out of death.

In fact, King David would write it himself this way. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for thou art with me. You see, Jesus took the real sting out of death, which was alienation and separation, so that now when you go through cancer, when you walk into death's doorstep, what you're going to deal with is only the shadow because Jesus actually took the full impact of it. In Christ, I don't have to be afraid of death. In Christ, I don't have to be afraid of the future flying out of control. So if you lose your job, you've got something more secure than money to hang onto. And that thing that's more secure is God's personal promises to take care of you.

Again, here's how David wrote it. The Lord is my shepherd, so I'll never really be in need. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He prepares a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You know how comforting that is, the moment that all my enemies are trying to kill me?

God's fixing me a five-course meal right in the middle of it, and they can't touch me. Surely goodness and mercy, David says, are going to follow me all the days of my life. I can't get away from it. When I wake up, it's there.

When I get up in the morning, when I go to bed at night, you can never separate me from it. I'll dwell in the house of the Lord forever. I'll never be abandoned. I'll never be alone.

I'll never be forsaken. So if I lose my job, it's not the end of the world. Because you want to know what really would be the end of the world? Losing your relationship with God and standing in judgment before Him.

And since Jesus took care of that, you can be confident that He'll take care of this situation too. Just ask yourself, what would feel like the end of the world to you? What would feel like the end of the world? Losing a job? Losing a loved one? Maybe getting hurt in a relationship? I know people in our church who pull back from being in relationships because they got really hurt in a relationship, and they think, I just can't have that ever happen to me again. And so their heart's damaged, and they can't trust. They can't love. But see, in Christ, you can go. You can go back into those relationships. Because listen, even if you get hurt again, that won't be the end of the world.

Why? Because Christ took into Himself the real end of the world for you. Christ has given you true life. A life that joblessness cannot threaten, a life that friends cannot damage, and a life that cancer can't even kill. So yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, or the valley of joblessness, or poor health, or a bad marriage, I will not be afraid because thou art with me.

Your rod and your staff, which are instruments of protection, they're the ones that bring comfort to me, and they're always fighting for me, and you never go to sleep. Here's this, let her see, in Christ, I don't have to fear the disapproval of others. I have the absolute approval of the only one whose opinion really matters. I've told you all before that for most of my life, I have been captive to what other people thought about me.

Well see, in Christ, I know that even if people reject me, even if people don't like me, I have the absolute approval of the only one whose opinion really matters anyway. Sometimes, even as I preach, even in the very moment of preaching, I will have these thoughts, and partially it's some of your faults, because there are some of you that are extraordinary sermon listeners. There's about five of you in every audience, and what I mean by that is you smile, and when I make eye contact, you nod like this, and I'm just like, I feel awesome right now. And I always figure out who you are, and I just look at you the entire time, and maybe right between you and the next person like that are a bunch of really bad sermon listeners. And they just kind of sit there like this, and they get this kind of look on their face, and I'm like, are they mad?

What's going on here? And I start feeling like, I think I'm really terrible at this. Based on that person's expression, I am a very terrible preacher. I think I should probably do something else in my life.

And I just get kind of overcome with this. I don't think these people, I don't think that guy right there likes me. I think that guy's mad at me.

That guy might come up and punch me after this thing is over. And in the middle of that kind of thought, when the Holy Spirit helps me, I get this other quick glimpse. You're like, what is all happening in your head as you preach?

You preach the same thing five times. You watch what happens in your mind. So, as I'm seeing this, I'll get this image of God the Father, like right here, just kind of in heaven. He's standing right up there, and I get this image of Him looking out over heaven, watching me preach. And then I kind of picture Him like calling the angels, like blowing a whistle, and I'm like, hey guys, come here, watch this. He gets them all around, and He's like, y'all look, it's JD. He's trying to preach again.

And as usual, He's going way too long, and His production team's going to kill Him. But, that's my boy. That's my boy, and He's doing exactly what I told Him to do, and I'm proud of it.

And I suddenly get this big feeling of confidence again, and I'm like, if He's smiling at me, I don't even care about your frown. So, go on with your bored self. Put your head down.

I don't even care what you do. Because He's happy. He's listening.

He's into it. And if I got His respect, I can endure your scorn. See, in Christ, I don't have to be afraid of the disapproval of others. By the way, this is also how you gain the courage to be honest about your faults. To admit that you don't always have it together. Let me tell you the secret of those people who can admit that they're messed up in front of everybody else. The secret is they know that they're accepted by Christ. And I know that if I'm confident in Christ, I don't need you to think that I'm perfect and awesome in order for me to know you.

Why? Because Christ accepts me. And so, I can be weak and I can be vulnerable because ultimately, your admiration is not my life.

Jesus is my life. Real courage is not the assurance that everything's going to go smoothly. Real courage doesn't come from finding your inner awesomeness. So, you're a snowflake. You're a rainbow.

You're a skittle. It's not finding that. Real courage doesn't come from not having difficulties or knowing that the way is going to be smooth. Real courage is knowing that you have a God that is better than life and a God that is larger than death who constantly stays beside you and says, surely, my goodness and my mercy are going to follow you.

You can't get away from it all the days of your life. Wherever you go, that's where I'm going to go with you. Now, y'all, before I go on to the second thing here, let me ask. Do you know Christ like this? Because, see, He's your representative.

But you've got to receive Him as your representative. He went out on that field and He fought for you. He restored God to you, but you have to personally receive Him as Savior and Lord. Here's the second big thing. Number two, because Jesus won these battles, I can trust God to fight my lesser battles for me also. You see, Old Testament stories like this one do two things as I showed you. First and foremost, most importantly, they point us to Jesus. Secondarily, they give us an example for how we should live.

Those are the two purposes of these stories in that order. So, really quickly, what is a giant in your life? Let me give you a definition of a giant.

A giant is anything that prohibits the advance of the will of God in your life. You see, Satan will oppose all the good things God wants to do in your life. He'll do it in your marriage. He'll do it in the lives of your kids. He will do it in your job.

He will even do it in your health. How do we overcome the giants that Satan uses to impede the progress of the will of God? You do it like David did, running confidently toward them, believing that God will fight for you. Listen, the Christian life is not just learning to endure defeat well. There's a lot of Christians that talk like that's what it means to be a Christian. You've just got to walk through life and learn to endure suffering.

Yes, you need to learn to endure suffering well, but the Christian life is also seeing the power of God and His salvation break into different spheres of your life. Again, let me just use David to teach this to us. This is an all-David weekend. Psalm 27, 13. I remain confident of this. David said, watch this, I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the... Where?

Say it, say it, say it. Living. I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the... In other words, not just in death. I'm actually going to see God's goodness in life. A lot of people think it's only going to be in death.

It's only going to sweep by and by. No, God says, I want you to see it now. You see, I think of this when I pray for my kids and I pray for their salvation and I pray for the salvation of their future kids. I'm like, God, I want to see your goodness break into my family. I think about it when I pray for this church.

I'm like, God, yeah, I understand that you could give us a difficult, you could make this church fail and fail and fail and you would still be good and I'd still be heaven, that'd be awesome. But God, I want to see you use this church to reach people in Raleigh-Durham and I want to see us baptize 50,000 people. I want to see us reach an entire generation of teenagers and college students. I want to see us actually transform this community. I want to see us plant a thousand churches around the world.

I want to see us take countries like the Dominican Republic and so flood them with leaders like Samuel that they unite and change the entire face of the nation. I think I want to see God's goodness in the land of the living and I'm not going to be satisfied until I see him break in and transform everything. It is perfectly fine for you to pray for victory over cancer so that you can keep serving God and blessing others who need you. Yes, God might have a different and a better plan, but you can ask him for the outbreak of his goodness in this area. It is perfectly fine for you to ask God to bless you in your career so that you can give glory to him and use your prosperity to further the cause of his mission. It's okay for you to say, God, multiply what you're giving to me so that I can sponsor 100 compassion kids. You can be asking God to move. You should be asking God to move powerfully in the lives of your friends and you should be expecting him to do so.

God, I want to see your goodness in the land of the living. Y'all are when God doesn't do what you think he should do. You just know that it has nothing to do with him not caring or forgetting about you.

How do you know that? Because you saw him face the real giant. You saw him take out sin and condemnation and death and you know that if he did not default from you, if he did not run away when he faced that giant for you, surely he's not going to abandon you when you face these lesser ones.

Where do you see the kingdom of God needing to advance? Have courage. Don't look at the size of the giant. Look at the graciousness of God. Listen, giants are not a problem to God.

They never have been. What kills us is the giant of unbelief that resides right here, which brings us back to the last question I want to ask. Where do you learn this kind of courage? Where do you learn to listen to God's voice and act in faith? Let's go back real quick to chapter 16 verse 13 to where the Spirit of God first rushes on David.

This is so important. Where do you learn this? Right after verse 13. Here's my Bible.

I know you can't see this rule well. There's verse 13 right there. Verse 14 is right here. In between verse 13, verse 14 changes the subject and starts to talk about Saul again. So David just got anointed. David has been chosen to be king.

Then we change the subject. And this little itty bitty thing between verse 13 and 14 is a white space about that big in my Bible. What do you think that white space was like for David?

Because that white space lasted about seven years. After David gets anointed to be king, what's he do? He doesn't run down to the palace and start doing an intense, elite king training program. He doesn't go down to Hosanna Republic and try on robes. Sorry.

But he doesn't do any of that. Back to the pastor. Now I'll tell you guys.

I went to seminary and in seminary they taught us how to exegete heiress tense of Greek verbs and Hebrew cognates and blah, blah, blah. They never taught me how to exegete a white space. And a white space is the most difficult thing in the Bible to interpret. Because it's that space where you think God ought to be doing something and he's not. Right?

It's a white space where you're like, God, I don't understand. What was this like for David? God, did you forget? You anointed me to be king and I went back and I started to shovel sheep dung. Did you make a mistake?

Did I make a mistake? No, David, no mistake. It's that God uses the pastor to prepare his king. It's only in the pastor that God's going to build into you his skill, his patience, endurance and character. Y'all listen, Chuck Swindoll says that three words characterize David's time in the pastor.

I would encourage you, if you can, to write them in that little tiny white space in your Bible. Write these three words. The first word is obscurity.

Nobody paid any attention to David during that time. Obscurity. Second word, monotony.

Monotony. What'd you do today, David? I watched the sheep.

They went from here to there. What else did you do? I practiced with my slingshot.

Could knock that apple off a tree. Want to see? Nope. I don't care, David. What else did you do? I got so bored I played a harp. Wrote a song. You want to hear it? I call it the 23rd song. Not really, David.

Do I want to hear a song written by a blue collar worker who's not skilled at all? Not particularly. Anything else, David? A bear attacked the sheep. I grabbed its beard and killed it with my knife. Its beard, David? Do bears even have beards, David?

Can anybody verify this? Nope. Obscurity. Monotony. You see, there's a third word. Reality. And that third word is that in the pasture, the reality is that God, though nobody else was paying attention to David, God the master builder was using every moment, every second to shape him with a slingshot.

Right? That was going to come in handy. With the harp, David's going to write the most famous song ever written. The song that brings more comfort to Christians in the hour of trial than any other song that's ever been written. In the pasture, God honed David's courage. In the pasture, David learned to forgive and be patient. In the pasture, he learned humility.

You can only be so proud when you spent the majority of your life shoveling sheep dung. David never really forgot where he came from. And that's going to be the secret to his success because he never forgot about how small he was and how much he owed to God.

This is how God works in your life. Already in the series, we've seen it, haven't we? We saw it with Joseph. We saw it with Moses.

We saw it with Joshua. When God calls somebody, he trains them in the pasture. Hey mom, what'd you do today? I changed diapers.

Your children rise up and call you blessed? Nope. Hey teacher, what'd you do today? I tried to teach some kids long division. They appreciate it?

Nope. One tried to flush his math book down the toilet. Hey, business professional, what'd you do today? I settled some accounts.

Hey student, what'd you do? Some nonsense and calculus and history that I'm never going to use. Obscurity, monotony. See, the reality is, is that God's at work in it all, shaping you and moving the mission forward.

Do not despise the pasture. Do not despise suffering because these are God's laboratories for forming in you the heart of a King. That's what he does. So let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus. See, let this mind be in you. That was also in him that though he was in the form of God, he did not choose equality with God as a thing to be clung onto, but he made himself of no reputation, took the form of a servant and humbled himself and became obedient, even obedient to the point of the cross. Therefore, therefore God has also highly exalted him and given him the name that is above every name that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth. That's not just about Jesus.

It's about you. It's telling you how God will exalt you. You want to be exalted by God. You want to be used by God. You want to have the spirit of God rush upon you.

It means that the way up is the way down. You become a servant, you become humble, you become obedient, and then God raises you up in the power of his spirit. So don't despise your pasture because what God is doing is he's putting into you a power you can't get any other way, any other way. What are the giants in your life? Are you learning to trust God through your giants and your pastures? You're listening to Summit Life, the Bible teaching ministry of pastor and author J.D.

Greer. You can always find more information about Pastor J.D. and this ministry at our website, Jdgreer.com. The online resources and these daily messages are available thanks to listeners like you who give generously to keep Summit Life going. We are committed to bringing you gospel-centered Bible teaching without finances getting in the way, but that's only possible when we all work together to keep this ministry funded. So if you've given to support Summit Life, let me say thank you so much.

And if you haven't, then consider yourself personally invited today. When you give today, we'll say thanks by sending you a brand new resource called the Books of the Bible Cards. This set of cards will help you as you read and make connections with the context of the original audience. There's a card for each of the 66 books, and they each include details about when the book was written and to whom, three key truths gleaned from the book, where the book points to Jesus and the good news of the gospel, and a reflection question to help you apply the book's message to your life. This resource comes with our thanks when you donate today at the suggested level of twenty-five dollars or more. It's the Books of the Bible Cards when you call eight six six three three five fifty two twenty.

That's eight six six three three five fifty two twenty. Or it might be easier to give and request the book online. Our website is J.D. Greer dot com. And if you aren't yet signed up for our email list, be sure to go online and do that today. It is the best way to stay up to date with Pastor J.D. 's latest blog posts.

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Well, King David can sometimes seem like the larger than life hero, but next time we'll learn about David's biggest failure. So we'll see you right back here Monday on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.