David, God’s Hero

Today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. This book that we talk about every week, this book, first and foremost, is not a book about you. It's not even a book about your life. 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. Welcome to Summit Life, the Bible teaching ministry of J.D. Greer.

I'm your host, Molly Vidovitch. You know, doesn't everyone love a good underdog story? The protagonist who's up against impossible odds yet somehow manages to pull through? It's no wonder Hollywood is always doing a take on this theme. The awkward guy gets the girl. You know, the less athletic team wins the championship.

The small company beats the tech giant. So when most of us picture David and Goliath, that's kind of how we think of it as another inspiring story about overcoming obstacles. But today, Pastor J.D.

suggests that we might actually be missing the main point. Let's join Pastor J.D. in a message he titled, David, God's Hero.

If you have your Bible, I'd love you to take it out now and open it to 1 Samuel 16. As you are opening there, I would say the last year I read a book called Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose. It was about the Lewis and Clark expedition of the early 1800s. Lewis and Clark had set out to find what they just thought was one contiguous waterway that connected the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans.

For two years, these two men and their team battled through hunger and fatigue, enemies, desertion. All the information they'd receive up to this point made them think that once they crossed the Continental Divide, they would face about a half-day's walk down to the Columbia River, which they would then be able to ride kind of coast lazily downriver all the way to the Pacific Ocean. The story goes that as they approached the Continental Divide, Meriwether Lewis was the first in the group to run up ahead to try to be the first one to get a glimpse of this huge plane he thought that would lead to the Pacific Ocean. Instead, he didn't see the Columbia River.

He didn't see a gradual downward glide. He became the first non-Native American to lay his eyes on what we now call the Rocky Mountains. Can you imagine what that moment felt like to him? Stephen Ambrose, the author of the book, shows how somehow Lewis and Clark were able to deal with disappointments and setbacks like that and keep pressing on. And because of that, on November 5, 1805, Lewis and Clark put their feet into the Pacific Ocean. And then they turned around and started the journey back.

Here is what I want you to consider as we get into things today. How do you or are there places in your life that you feel like that? Like you just encountered a Rocky Mountain moment when you were not expecting it. Maybe it's a Rocky Mountain moment in your marriage. Maybe you suddenly got a health report that you just were not prepared to receive. Maybe it's a Rocky Mountain moment in your job. Maybe it is an unexpected delay that's taken place in something and you can't figure out why things aren't happening more quickly.

Or maybe it was a sudden problem that you've developed with your kids that you just didn't see coming. What I want to show you today is that God has a very special way of preparing His people and that these kinds of things, these Rocky Mountain experiences are always part of His plan. What we want is an easy downriver waterway into eternity. But what God usually does is He sends us into the Rocky Mountains instead. And y'all, that frustrates us. I know it frustrates you.

It frustrates me. But God sees these things totally different than we do. Hardships and mountains are never a problem to God.

God can fling them out of the way whenever He wants. God's biggest objective in this journey is not to get you to a destination. He could just rapture you out anytime He wanted. His biggest objective in this journey is preparing you individually. It's like I've often told you, His primary objective is not just to get you into heaven. It's to get the heart of heaven into you.

It's to put His heart into you. And so what He's going to use are these moments like this. And you're going to see that in 1 Samuel 16 and 17.

Let me just take a moment to catch you up on the bigger story. After the terrible downward cycle of the book of Judges, Israel, the nation of Israel, decides that what they really need is a king. And God says to them, but I was supposed to be your king. And they said, well, yeah, but we want one that we can see and touch somebody who'll make us proud, somebody who will take care of us and lead us into battle. And God says, you know, you're going to end up regretting that.

But He agrees to it. So He tells a prophet named Samuel to go find a king. And Samuel chooses a man named Saul. Now Saul really was an obvious choice for king. He was tall. He was charismatic. He was good looking. He would have been a great warrior. He was a great warrior. He was very smart.

He would have gone on full scholarship, any college that he had chosen. Nobody was surprised when Saul was chosen to be king. And he started out pretty good, but he turned out to be a king like most kings. Power corrupted his heart. He became proud and self-willed. He used his position of power not to serve the people he was leading, but to serve himself. He began to use and abuse people rather than serve them.

And he bent the laws of God whenever it would serve him. And so God rejected him as king. And he told Samuel to go and look for a new king. And so God sends Samuel to the house of a man named Jesse to anoint one of his sons to be king.

That is Jesse, the grandson of Ruth, the Moabite. Well, Jesse answers the door and there's Samuel. And Samuel says, God told me Jesse, that one of your sons is supposed to be king.

And Jesse thinks, oh, I know exactly which one you're talking about. If there were one of my kings or sons that were going to be a king, it's going to be my oldest Eliab. And so he went and gets Eliab and brings him out.

Verse six, when they came, Samuel looked on Eliab and he thought, surely the Lord's anointed is before him. Eliab looked kingly. He was tall. He had a commanding presence.

He had those blue steel eyes. I know you're expecting me to put up a picture of Nicolas Cage here, but I'm not going to do it. Verse seven, but the Lord said to Samuel, do not look on his appearance. Do not look on the height of his stature because I have rejected him. For the Lord, Samuel sees not as man sees.

Man looks on the outward appearance, but God, the Lord looks on the heart. Now y'all, Samuel really should have known better, should he not? Samuel, don't you remember Saul?

Remember Saul? Are you really going to make that mistake again, Samuel? You're going to choose Eliab just because he looks kingly? If you trace the story of Eliab on from here, you're going to see that he turns out to be really critical and arrogant and very untrusting of God. God says to Samuel, I'm looking for something different in my king. Listen, y'all, when God looks for leaders, he doesn't look at what we look at.

And he rarely values what we typically value. He's not after the pretty face. God never looks at somebody and says, wow, that he's a great dresser or impressive resume or what a nice body. He looks at the beauty here.

That's the only place he looks at it, the beauty here and here alone. So let me just ask you before we move on, how much time do you spend preparing the beauty of this right here? I know some of us spend so much time working on the exterior part of our lives, which has no value at all to God. So we spend our time working out, making sure we dress correctly, saying all the right things. Some of you spent a significant amount of time this morning getting that part ready.

Do you come in today with this prepared? Because what God looks at is purity and humility and compassion. People who are quick to ask for forgiveness, quick to admit when they're wrong, quick to forgive others when they have been wrong. Well, like I said, Samuel should have known all this, but even the best prophets forget things from time to time. So God says to Samuel, nope, I've not chosen this one. And so Samuel then says to a very surprised Jesse, well, God has not chosen this one.

Do you have another son? Verse 10, and Jesse made seven of his sons pass before Samuel. And Samuel said to Jesse, the Lord has not chosen any of these. Then Samuel said to Jesse, are all your sons here?

Now that kind of seems like a dumb question to me. Are there any kids that you have forgotten about? And Jesse starts counting, he's like, oh yeah, there's one more. But he is no king, I promise you. There remains the youngest and behold, he's keeping the sheep.

Now youngest in the Hebrew is the word haka tone, which Hebrew scholars say literally means runt. He was wimpy and skinny. He's the kind of kid that had to run around in the shower to get wet. And he's out keeping the sheep, which was the lowest of all the low jobs in Israel.

This was the equivalent of the toilet cleaning job. And Samuel said to Jesse, send and get him for we will not sit down until he comes here. Now, is it me or does Samuel strike you as a little bit ornery as an older man? He's kind of like, how many sons did I ask you to get Jesse? All of them. We're not even going to sit down until you get this one back.

So we're just going to stand right here until you bring them to me. And so some guy goes tearing out across the field to find David gets him verse 12 sends him and brings him in. Now David was ruddy and he had beautiful eyes and was handsome. Ruddy, some say this means in Hebrew that he was redheaded and freckled. Others say that that word means that he was dirty, disheveled, tanned, and smelled like the pasture.

How one word could potentially mean both things, I have no idea. But we at least know we had pretty eyes. The point is, he doesn't look like a king. He doesn't look like a ferocious man of war, which is what they wanted in a king. He looks like a runt kid with a baby face.

Think Justin Bieber or Bow Wow or a Jonas brother or our own Jonas brother that we have our own Justin Bieber. Um, this was King David verse 12. And the Lord said, arise, anoint him for this is he verse 13. And from that day on the spirit of the Lord rushed upon David. David's strength was not going to come from any inward awesomeness that he has. In fact, he doesn't have that much inward awesomeness. God chose him because he was going to be weak in himself and therefore he could be full of the spirit of God. Because when you're full of yourself, you're not going to be full of the spirit of God.

And when you're empty on yourself, you can be full of him. And that's why God chooses him. First Samuel 17. This brings us now to the most famous Bible story of all time. The story of David and Goliath y'all everybody thinks they know this story. Everybody thinks they know the main point of this story, but I am telling you, um, there are some deep Bible things hidden in this story that will unlock not just the meaning of the Bible, but the entire meaning of your life.

And in my experience, not trying to be critical, but very few people understand what's actually going on in this passage. First Samuel 17 verse one. Now the Philistines gathered their armies for battle.

All right, really quick. Who were the Philistines? The Philistines were the bad guys. That's the short answer, but they were a group of people still living in the land of Canaan that Israel had failed to drive out.

Ironically, in our culture, when we say so-and-so is a Philistine, we mean that they are culturally backwards. That's ironic because in those days, the Philistines were the most culturally sophisticated advanced civilization of the time. They were the first ones to ever work with metal. That's why it was the iron age and they were at the forefront of that. So they had metal for their weapons. They had metal for their chariots, which gave them superior weapons. The Israelites are all fighting with rocks and wood and slingshots. Um, so Israel was intimidated by them. Verse three, and the Philistines stood on the mountain on the one side and Israel stood on the mountain on the other side with this big valley between them. I've actually been to this place. It's a pretty unbelievable spot. Verse four, and there came out from the camp of the Philistines, a champion named Goliath, whose height was six cubits and a span, which would have made him in our measurements about nine foot six.

He would have barely missed the basketball goal with his head when he walked by. Verse five, he, Goliath, had a helmet of bronze on his head, and he was armed with a coat of mail, which didn't mean that he had a bunch of postcards attached to him. It meant that he had a shirt on that was made out of metal, in case you didn't know that. And the weight of the coat was 5,000 shekels of bronze, and he had bronze armor on his legs and a javelin of bronze slung between his shoulders. Now, why does it keep bringing up bronze and metal?

Because Israel doesn't have any of that at this point. This guy is superior in every possible way. The shaft of his sphere was like a weaver's beam, and he stood and shouted to the ranks of Israel, why have you come out to draw up for battle? Am I not a Philistine? This is, this is, meet the Philistine right here. And are you not just servants of Saul?

Choose a man for yourselves and let him come down to me. And if he is able to fight with me and kill me, then we'll be your servants. But if I prevail against him and kill him, then you shall be our servants. This is what they called representative warfare.

One person fights on behalf of the army, and if your representative wins, you win. Verse 16 says that every morning and every evening, Goliath did this for 40 days. Every morning at breakfast, verse 10, give me a man that we may fight together.

And at night when they're on their campfire, roasting s'mores or smoking their pipes or doing whatever, give me a man. He comes out and says again, it was really intimidating. Verse 11, when Saul and all Israel heard these words of the Philistine, they were dismayed and greatly afraid.

All right. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, verse 20, Jesse sends ruddy David up to see his brothers at the battle with some crackers and cheese. All David's brothers were in the army, which is how we know, by the way, David was a teenager because the cutoff for the army age in those days was 20 years old. So David's not old dump being the army, which means he was a teenager. His teenage David rises up early in the morning and he leaves the sheep with a keeper. He finds a sheep sitter, like a responsible young man would, and he takes the lunchables that his daddy had given him and takes them to his brothers. He is essentially a teenager making a donut run for his daddy. That's what's going on here. So he brings the snacks to his seven older brothers who are doing the fighting.

And to be technical here, fighting is probably not the best term because up to this point, their fighting consists basically of yelling insults at the other team. 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 David said to Saul, let no man's heart fail because of him. Your servant, me ruddy little David, I'll go fight the Philistine. And Saul said to David, you got to hear the condescension in this.

You are not able to go against this Philistine to fight with him for you are but a youth. And he has been a man of war from his youth. In other words, David, this guy has been fighting and killing people for longer than you have been alive.

He's got socks older than you, David. Verse 34, here we go. But David said to Saul, your servant used to keep sheep for his father.

And by used to, I mean, this morning I was keeping sheep for my father. And then there came a lion and a bear and took a lamb from the flock. And I went after him and struck him and delivered it out of his mouth. And when he arose against me, I caught him by his beard and I struck him and killed him. Now, first a beard.

What did bears look like in those days is the question I ask. Verse 37, the Lord who delivered me from the ball of the lion and from the ball of the bear will deliver me also from the hand of the Philistine. And Saul said to David, go and the Lord be with you.

In other words, good luck dying, man. Have a good time with that. Verse 42, when the Philistine looked and saw David, he disdained him for he was but a youth with his freckles and his floppy hair. Verse 43, the Philistine said to David, am I a dog? Am I a dog that you come out to me with sticks? Seriously, you sent out Sheldon Cooper from Big Bang Theory to come and fight me?

Would you think this was a, so you think you can dance contest? Verse 44, the Philistine said to David, come to me and I will give your flesh to the birds of the air and to the beast of the field. Then David said to the Philistine, well, see the problem dude is you come to me with a sword and a spear and a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. And so this very day, the Lord will deliver you into my hand.

And I will strike you down and cut off your head. And I will give the dead bodies of the hosts of the Philistines this day, to the birds of the air, to the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel. Notice by the way, there's your audience, number one, all the earth. Verse 47, and that all this assembly may know that the Lord saves, not with sword and with spear.

Notice the two audiences. One is the world to know that God exists and that he answers prayer. The other is the church to prove to other people in the church, all the cowards on the sidelines, that God is trustworthy. 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, when the Philistine arose and came and drew near to meet David, David ran quickly toward the battle line to meet the Philistine. And David put his hand in his bag and took out a stone and slung it and struck the Philistine on his forehead. The stone sank into his forehead and Goliath thought, well, this was the last thing to ever enter my mind. And he fell, see what I did there? And he fell on his face to the ground. Then David ran and stood over the Philistine and took his sword and drew it out of his sheath.

David didn't even have a sword y'all. And he killed him and he cut off his head. And when the Philistines saw that their champion was dead, they fled.

And the men of Israel and Judah rose with a shout and pursued the Philistines and they plundered all their camp. All right, here's the big question. What is the main point of this story? I know you've heard the story, but what's the main point of it?

Is it that the bigger they are, the harder they fall? I mean, that literally is a proverb that comes right from the story that people get. How about there's always hope for the underdog, so never stop believing in yourself. Don't stop believing. Hold on to that feeling or whatever.

Is that the main point? 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.

Or how about this? Is the main point God has appointed you to conquer the giant of mediocrity and dominate in your workplace? I've heard all of these as the explanation for this story, right? Are those the main point of this story? What do you think?

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the audience participation part of the program. What do you think? No. Let me teach you something about Bible interpretation. This is a mistake that people most often make with the Bible. 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. Don't ever cut out the middleman.

At least in this form, don't cut out the middleman. But this book that we talk about every week, this book, first and foremost, is not a book about you. It's not even a book about your life.

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. As our representative, Jesus lived the life we were supposed to live and then he died to death that we were condemned to die in our place. And just like David, Jesus was opposed by all of his brothers and he was abandoned by everybody at the moment of battle. He walked out on that field all alone and he conquered the giant all by himself.

And now we, his brothers, who stood like cowards on the sidelines while he went and did it, we get to share in the plunder of his victory even though we did not even lift a finger to help him. The real giant in our lives, 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. All right, because 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. And in the moment of death I can say like Paul, for me to live is Christ and to die is nothing but gain.

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. The valley of the shadow of death. All I will ever go through is the valley of the shadow. I won't even go through the valley of death.

I'll just go through the valley of the shadow of death. You're like, what's this? I've told you this before. This is one of my favorite illustrations.

I probably use it a couple times a year. True story of a little girl whose mother died when she was 12 years old. And she's on her way from the funeral to the graveside. And of course she's just overcome with grief. But she's thinking about what the pastor said at the funeral. She's thinking about the funeral. And he quoted the 23rd Psalm where he said, yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. She turns to her daddy and she said, dad, what does it mean to go through the valley of the shadow of death?

And her dad thought for a minute about how to explain it to her. And he said, just at that moment, this semi tractor trailer went by on the right hand side and the way the sun was shining, it made the shadow come across our car. And I turned to my daughter and I said, I said, I said, sweetheart, if you had to choose, would you rather get hit by that truck or get hit by its shadow? She said, well, I'd rather get hit by the shadow, of course.

He said, yeah. He said, Jesus was hit with the truck of your mommy's death so that all that would ever pass over her is the shadow. God promises to care for you. No matter what happens to you, it is not the end of the world.

With God's watchful eye, you'll never be alone. You're listening to Summit Life and a message from our teaching series titled The Whole Story. So J.D., we have a really great resource that we're kicking off today that goes along with the series and it will help us get that full picture of God's overarching plan. Can you introduce it to our listeners and tell them a little bit about it?

Yeah. In this series of The Whole Story, we're looking at the Bible as what it really is. 66 books written by different authors, 40 different authors that tell one continuous story. And that is the story of Jesus, the story of the gospel.

From Genesis to Revelation, every page points to Jesus. And so to go along with this series, we've got a new resource simply called The Books of the Bible Cards. It's a set of cards that will help you as you read the Bible to make connections with the context of the original audience. Each card, there's one for each of the 66 book is going to include a great illustration that just represents the book, give you details about the book, some historical must knows. It'll give you at least three key truths that you can glean from the book to get your mind around it. It'll show you where the book points to Jesus and the good news of the gospel so that you can read it through a gospel lens. And then it'll give you a reflection question to help you apply the book's message to your life.

I'd love to give you this resource as a reference for any time you're reading through a book of the Bible, be a great stack to keep next to wherever you daily meet with God. You can find out more about those cards and this offer at jdgrier.com. Allow us to get this unique new resource to you by reaching out at jdgrier.com right now. Today is the first day to request it when you support this ministry with a donation of $25 or more. Remember when you give to Summit Life, you're not just supporting us. You're really giving this program to your fellow listeners, making sure that we stay on your station and on the web.

And this amazing set of cards is just our way of saying thanks for your support. Remember to request your set of the books of the Bible cards when you call 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220.

Or if it's easier, you can give online at jdgrier.com. I'm Molly Vitovich inviting you to join us again tomorrow when Pastor JD continues our study of King David. That's Friday on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.