Speaking of when I was young a lot of people make a lot of assumptions about me and one of it is that I think people think I can fight and I can't like like growing up I read books and watched Nickelodeon I I didn't I wasn't ever about that life so when I had issues with people in high school it never it never sat well with my spirit and the bigger problem is that I had a Lot of friends who could fight which was cool because it's like oh if something happens y'all got it but
the problem is that something happens to them I don't have it I can't I can't help in any way and so I had one friend who could fight I'm not gonna say her name because I think she's she's not redeemed but she ain't doing that no more and uh she wasn't a person who just fought just to be fighting that wasn't Her personality but she was the person that you just can't talk crazy to her and she not gonna tussle like she just has to do something so there was this time where I was over
her house Mama you never heard the story so it's okay I ain't doing nothing wrong okay okay so uh I just be surprised at my mama with trauma like yeah I smoked weed and did this and did I like I ain't snort no crack but I was close like she just she Just [Applause] tell you what there was this time I was over my friend's house and this girl from another high school who had issues with my friend called her because or whatever and um white Saints I'm gonna be using a lot of black uh
euphemism so just use context clues I promise didn't make sense so she had issues with the girl and the girl was talking crazy my friend My friend they want to have a whole bunch of conversations so my friend was like oh you come over and so I got a little stressed a little bit because I'm like ah does she have to come over while I'm here but I'm like maybe maybe they'll fight one-on-one will be cool the only problem is she start pulling hair and I gotta get in the mix so anyway I was just
like okay whatever so then uh my the friend the girl that called my friend her friends and cousins Start calling my friend too saying that they were gonna come over and then my friend's mom who fights too generational curse she catches wind to this and she's like okay so she starts calling their cousins over the house so I'm like wow it's a party now and so at some point uh my friend her mom comes into the doorway with a sock in her hand and then the sock was a bunch of rocks Just a little just
dangling by our toes and she was like as soon as one of them step on my porch I'm dragging them and if y'all don't fight y'all could get the F out when I say my anxiety went through the absolute roof because I am not built for that level of violence I don't know how to show up for you in this space I don't have capacity for this and so when you go to a a black high school the one thing you don't want to do is look Soft but I am so I was over there
I was trying to strategize in my mind and come up with a way to look hard while being soft so I said you know what I'ma text my god brother so I text my god brother her husband and I said hey call me and act like you my mama so he called me he was like yeah what's up I said oh hey Mama he was like what I was like yeah I'm over so-and-so house he was like what you talking about I was Like oh you want me to come home he was like what are
you talking about I was like okay I'm gonna be on my way and I left foreign [Applause] I share that story because when I think about that situation what I remember most is how I felt and how I was just simply afraid afraid to get hit Afraid to get embarrassed afraid to get stomped out afraid of to have a bigger Gap because they knocked another part of my tooth like I just was terrified and I think that fear is a dominant emotion for most of us on most days it's unlikely that any of us will
have to fight a bunch of high school kids unless I don't know But we all do have to fight something there are there are spiritual fights like fighting sin in the devil there are circumstantial fights like fighting with loneliness or or fighting with contentment there there are other fights like even fighting with grief or fighting with loneliness there are relational fights like fighting with your spouse or fighting with your co-workers or fighting with your friends or your or your siblings and in all of These and in all of these kinds of tense Dynamics in our
relationships with other people fear is present fear is either working for your good or against you meaning fear is either wisely protecting you from legitimate harm or fear is foolishly keeping you from being faithful and so I want us today to look at a story with the same themes the same themes of fighting and fear with the aim Of seeing Jesus in all of it amen we can pray God we we thank you for this moment we thank you for this time you have been showing up all weekend and so we pray God we seek
you we petition you to do it again to let this this word land on soft Hearts to to make it make sense in our mind and I even pray just for the spirit of wisdom needed to have a knowledge of you as Ephesians said that you would give us that that as we read this we wouldn't just walk away with a bunch of Really good tools or practical ways to be a better Christian but rather we would see it as evidence in a confession of how good and how great and how you are a good
fighter God for your people we pray this in your name amen turn in your Bibles to First Samuel chapter 17. there's a lot of text to read but I think it's necessary to read it so that we are very clear on what's happening in this narrative I'ma start at verse 8. it says talking About Goliath he stood and shouted to the ranks of Israel why have you come out to draw up for battle am I not a Philistine and are you not Servants of Saul choose a man for yourselves and let him come down to
me if he is able to fight with me and kill me then we will be your servant but if I Prevail against him and kill him then you shall be our servants For and serve us and the Philistine said I defy the ranks of Israel this day give me a man that we may fight together when Saul and all Israel heard these words of the Philistine they were dismayed and greatly afraid verse 24. all the men of Israel when they saw the man fled from him and were much afraid and the men of Israel said
have you seen this man who has come up surely he has come up to defy Israel and the King will enrich the man who kills him with great Riches and will give him his daughter and make his father's house free in Israel and David said to the men who stood by him which shall be done for the man who kills this Philistine and takes away the reproach from Israel for who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the Living God and the people answered him in the same way so shall it
be done to the man who kills him verse 31. when the words that David spoke were Heard they repeated them before Saul and he said for him and David said to Saul let no man's heart fail because of him your servant will go and fight with this Philistine and Saul said to David 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 but David said to Saul your servant used to keep sheep for his father and
when there came a lion or a bear or and took a lamb from the flock I Went after him and struck him and delivered it out of his mouth and if he arose against me I caught him by his beard and struck him and killed him your servant has struck both lions and bears and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be like one of them for he has defied the armies of the Living God and David said the Lord who delivered me from the Paw of the lion and from the Paw of the bear will deliver me
from the hand of this Philistine and Saul said to David Go and the Lord be with you verse 41. and the Philistine moved forward and came near to David with his shield Bearer in front of him and when the Philistine looked and saw David he disdained him for he was but a youth ready and handsome in appearance and the Philistine said to David am I a dog that you come to me with sticks in the Philistine cursed David by his Gods the Philistines said to David come to me and I will give your flesh to
the birds Of the air and to the beasts of the field then David said to the Philistine you come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hopes the god of the armies of Israel whom you have defied this 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 host of the Philistines this day to the birds of the air and
to the wild beasts Of the earth that all the Earth may know that there is a God in Israel and that all this assembly may know that the Lord saved not with sword and not with spear for the battle is the Lord and He will give you into our hand 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 he fell on his face to the ground so David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and with a stone instructor Philistine and killed him there was no sword in the hand of David or was there this chapter opens up with a description of a battle a battle between Israel God's covenant People and the Philistines the text says that on one side the Philistine Army lined up ready to tussle on the other side was Israel's Army alongside their King Saul the recently rejected king of Israel and in between
them ain't nothing but space and opportunity instead of the entire Philistine Army coming over the line to attack Israel one man comes out from their Camp who Has a name named Goliath and Goliath has a whole lot to say he was the boy I went to high school with that got real amped when knuckle few Buck came home he just was really ready to be about that life at all times he's ready to fight he's willing to fight he's energized to fight because Goliath is truly about that life look at verse eight he says he
stood and shouted to the ranks of Israel why have you come Out to draw for battle like you're wasting your time am I not a Philistine and are you not Servants of Saul how about this you choose a man for yourselves let him come down to me and if he fights me and kill me then we'll be your servants but if I fight him and kill him then you shall be our servants and serve us Goliath makes a bold threat he says that he will fight as a representative for his people so that if he
fights someone and he wins then they Win but he also challenges Israel to do the same thing he wants them to put forward a man who will fight for them and if he wins Israel wins what's interesting about the text is when Goliath makes this threat I want us to pay attention to not only how Saul and Israel responds to the threat but how the text highlights how they feel look at verse 11. when Saul and all Israel heard these words of the Philistine they were dismayed meaning discouraged and Greatly afraid everybody say afraid you
ever Google the definition of a word and the definition is only like a variation of the word itself so like when I was reading this text I was like huh I wonder what the Hebrew definition of afraid is and it said to fear which was completely unhelpful so I really like Dan allender's description of fear he said this he said fear is our response to uncertainty about our resources in the face of danger when we Are assaulted by a force that overwhelms us and compels us to face that we are helpless and out of control
fear is provoked when the threat of danger physical or relational exposes our inability to preserve what we most deeply cherish what was happening with Israel and salt is what happens with us is that anytime we are face to face with something that we reckon as dangerous we tend to compare ourselves with the dangers thing And in comparing ourselves with the dangerous thing we automatically reckon that we must not have the resources to overcome it therefore we end up afraid when Israel and Saul saw Goliath and heard his words fear was at work because they believed
that they were too weak and too inadequate to succeed against this giant which brings me to my first point my first point is fear as reality and illusion fear as reality An illusion I heard a professor say that fear is cognitively constructed I really love that language meaning that fear is in the mind it's all in our head but that does not mean that even if it's in our head that it also doesn't serve a good purpose like if we were ever in a situation with the safety of your body or your family is threatened
going into fight or flight mode in light of fear is actually a wise choice right it serves you to run if Somebody comes in here with a gun and finds somewhere to hide it serves you to grab a weapon like a chair or a Pulpit or something and fight back if need be meaning fear has an element of value so just because fear is in the mind it doesn't mean that it's unnecessary or that it's not real your fear usually has some basis in reality and the reality of this whole situation is that Goliath was
a legitimately authentically dangerous man look at how the text describes him In verses four through seven the text says that he was a champion he done did this before the text says that his height was six cubits in the span I know the sayings I ain't never seen that on the ruler me neither commentators believe that that means he was up to nine feet nine inches tall so Goliath is legitimately a giant the text then makes our effort to describe his armor so we see what David is up against it says that he has a
bronze Helmet on his head and he has a a bronze coat of male which is uh the little jackets with all the rings that you see in the Like Gladiator movies under under the people's clothes he also says that uh he the the the bronze called a male weighed 5 000 shekels which is about 126 pounds of metal that this man got on his body not only that he has a javelin on his shoulder not only that he has a spear and if he wasn't already doing the absolute most he has a shield Bearer who
Has more weapons who you also have to fight to get to Goliath before you can even get to Goliath so it's just a lot going on like so he his threats are legitimately threatening so it isn't unreasonable then for Saul and Israel to be afraid I say that because I think we need the permission to know that it's not unspiritual to acknowledge your fears you're not less mature in the Faith by saying I'm afraid of X Y and Z but it is Hard to acknowledge what you haven't yet discerned and by that I mean we
have to develop the mental discipline of being able to acknowledge our fear but also discern the difference between the reality of the fear and the illusion of the fear for example uh on my Instagram a while back I did a q a on my stories and the young lady asked me how she could overcome the fear of having children in response I said you need to process What the reality of the fear is and deal with that accordingly so is the reality that there is trauma maybe she's been negatively affected by some external forces that
have somehow ruined a bit of her courage maybe it's medical carrying a child is so traumatic on a woman's body there is perinatal and postnatal depression there is miscarriage there is pelvic floor damage like even now I could do six jumper Jacks before everything goes wrong and so like Having children is rough maybe maybe it's Financial maybe she's afraid to have a baby because she legitimately knows that she may not be able to take care of it every single one of those concerns are real reasons to have fear but alongside the reality of fear we
got to discern and recognize that the reality of the fear will quickly exaggerate itself becoming an illusion and when it becomes an illusion what happens is whatever we are afraid of Gets scarier than what it actually is and the scarier it gets to us the more limited we feel and therefore we end up submitting to the fear rather than responding to it amen when Israel saw Goliath and heard his taunts feeling the fear wasn't the problem they should have felt the fear that's that's natural the problem was making fear Lord the problem was submitting to
it the problem was not fighting against it not one man stepped forward and do you know who the first Person to step forward should have been Saul first of all he's the king if anybody should step forward as a representative for his people it should be the king of the people but not only that in first Samuel it says that Saul was Head and Shoulders above all the people of Israel meaning he was tall so it's possible that he was one of the few men in the army that was actually equal to Goliath and stature
so not only is he a leader but he's also capable of Potentially fighting him because of the way the Lord has made his body but even though those are facts when when fear becomes an illusion facts don't actually matter anymore what you feel starts to rule what you do a few years ago I was praying for my friend Dana that she'd uh moved to St Louis or moved from St Louis to Atlanta and I knew there would be a lot of opportunities for her there so after the Lord and me worked on her for a
couple Months she was open to the idea one day I got on the phone and I I said something to the point okay let's just talk because I'm the friend that's going like help you come to truth in Jesus like I'm like let's talk about it like why are you not I even got no urgency to do what the Lord seems to be leading you to do and I was like what's keeping you from coming to Atlanta and she was like uh my car is Oh I'm like that ain't got nothing to do with you
moving to Atlanta I was like okay so what does that mean like if your car is old what is what's actually like let's be specific like what's is it the transmission is it you need no tires is your engine going to go out like your windshield wipers don't work so you can't spray the bugs away like what is it and she was like friend I don't even know is this fear and I'm like yeah Because at this point you're just making up things because you're afraid to make a decision and I think that's what what
happens to us all is that fear magnifies the reality of whatever it is that we're afraid of making it bigger making it better making it scarier to the point that we become delusional just because we don't want to respond to the fear in front of us does it make sense and so the thing is to overcome fear the Right way we don't need ego we don't need Pride we don't need none of that what we need is reverence this brings me to my second Point embracing faithful fear David a young Shepherd from Bethlehem the youngest
son of Jesse he comes on the scene and some of David's older brothers were part of Saul's Army and so Jesse David's dad told Dave tell David to go down to The camp to give his brothers some food up until this point Goliath has been coming and taunting and threatening and challenging Israel for a long time the Texas for 40 days and 40 nights and not at any point that somebody decide to step forward so when David goes down to take his brother some food the text says that Goliath comes out and he starts to
talk crazy again but the difference was is that this time David heard him look at Verse 24. all the men of Israel when they saw the man fled from him and were much afraid and the men of Israel said have you seen this man who has come up surely he has come up to defy Israel and the King will enrich the man who kills him with great riches and will give him his daughter and make his father's house free in Israel and David said to the men who stood by him what shall be done for
the man who kills this Philistine and takes away the reproach from Israel for Who is this uncircumcised Philistine then he should defy the armies of the Living God I want you to notice something interesting in this text I want you to know this the difference between Israel and David's perspectives about the same person they both recognize Goliath's Behavior as defiance but they both have different words in different language language for who Goliath is and who Goliath defies look at it look at verse 24 Israel says in verse 24 have you seen this man who has
come up surely he has come up to defy Israel look at verse 26 David says for who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the Living God just by looking at these two verses you can see that Israel and David don't see Goliath in the same way so I think before we get to the Slingshot and the smooth Stones I think it's helpful to get inside of David's mind and how faithful fear and reverence is influencing his perspectives his perspective is fundamentally different from the men of Israel because David has a
keen sense of two realities happening at once how David sees it is that Goliath has come to challenge Israel and by challenging Israel he is actually challenging God David understands something that they Don't that this whole battle this whole fight has everything to do with God here's the interesting part if that is the case could it be that Goliath was bigger and badder and scarier to Israel because instead of being God focused they were self-centered David said Goliath is defying who the armies of the Living God they said this man has come up to defy
Who us so if they see themselves as the only one involved in the fight no wonder why they are so afraid because they left God out of the whole battle the thing with fear is if you isolate whatever it is you fear from the reality of God then what you fear should scare you you are a human being you are not strong enough to fight every Battle you are not smart enough to overcome every intellectual obstacle you are not wise enough to always know what to do and that isn't to be condescending it's to highlight
your humanity and how your fear simply brings to light your own limitations and that is often what God wants from us is that God wants to put us in a place of dependence where you can become strong because now you recognize you're Weak but you won't depend on God until he removes all of your crutches so the truth is some of us are so fearful because we're also arrogant supposing that we are all the help we need to win every battle so when a challenge comes that you don't have the resources to overcome you will
do what you have always done which is to trust yourself to win even when self tells you that the best way to win is to submit to fear what we need is what David modeled And what Jesus embodied which is embracing faithful fear another way to say it is to fight what we afraid of we need to fear God but I think it's helpful to to distinguish between the fear of God and being afraid of God one example that I think is helpful to use is that in Genesis 3 after Adam and Eve sinned they
hid behind the tree God comes up and the cool of the day says hey where you at he responds I hid from You why because I was afraid you could read afraid and think he means reverence he doesn't mean reverence this isn't faithful fear because he hid from God keeping distance between him and God reverence and faithful fear always moves us towards God if Adam had the fear of God he wouldn't hid behind the tree as if the tree could protect him from Justice as if the tree was a proper mediator or an intercessor if
the tree was Jesus he would have ran towards God For forgiveness instead restoring his relationship with God so having a healthy fear of God will always involve intimacy will always involve Faith we're always involve knowing that God is also good and God is also lovely and God God is Lord and preeminent over all things and so when you have the fear of God you also see and discern that God is Central to everything which was Israel's problem they didn't see that this had everything to do with God to leave God out of the Battle was
to participate in an illusion so it is also by embracing faithful fear that will keep each and every one of us from embracing faithless fear circling back to David now are you following me his assessment of the situation at hand is because he has a reference from God or for God that helps him to see everything for what it is the Bible says it this way the fear of God is what the beginning of wisdom when you have the fear of God you can see stuff as it is And not with your fear wants you
to believe it is David recognizes the Goliath's challenge is utterly ridiculous one reason it's ridiculous is that Goliath has no Covenant relationship with God this is why Goliath calls or David calls him an uncircumcised Philistine his lack of circumcision proves that he is not a part of the people that God has promised to protect remember God told his people I will bless those who bless you I will curse those who curse you so the very moment that Goliath had a curse come out of his mouth it initiated his defeat and David knows this but not
only that because he's a Philistine it means that he is a man that is associated with the worship of false gods meaning when he prays and asks them for strength ain't nobody to hear it and ain't nobody to give it so even though Goliath is tall and even though Goliath is strong and Even though Goliath got all of this armor creating the illusion of power he does not have any power at all and David little old David knows this because he knows God what David is doing is what every faithful person in scripture has always
done which is that they do the work of putting every circumstance they're in And putting it next to what God has revealed about himself and his word remember Abraham God called him to do a scary thing God called him to sacrifice his son and what did he do the text says he considered he thought over he reckoned some of us don't fight hard enough because we don't think long enough he reckoned and considered that God was able to keep or God would be able to raise Isaac from the dead because God Was going to keep
his promise so Abraham's courage was not abstract nor was Abraham's courage of feeling if you are waiting to feel Brave to be brave you won't be brave and so what he needed and what he had was a courage that was rooted in the revealed nature of God so we have to do the same well whatever it is that we are facing that tempts us to cow where we have to put it next to what scripture says about God and there you will always see who the strong one Really is back to the text David David
feels away about Goliath's threats so he decides that if ain't nobody for the fight he will saw the king gets wind of David wanting to fight he finds out that David wants to tussle so he calls him over to his Law Office in verse 32. look at it and David said to Saul let no man's heart fail because of him your servant will go and fight with this Philistine and Saul said to David you are not able to go against this Philistine to fight with him for you or by the youth and he has been
a man of war from his youth but David said to Saul your servant used to keep sheep for his father and when there came a lion or bear and took a lamb from the flock I went after him and struck him and delivered it out of his mouth and if he arose against me I caught him by his beard and struck him and killed him your Servant has struck down both lions and bears and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be like one of them for he has defied the armies of the Living God verse 37 and
David said the Lord who delivered me from the Paw of the Lion's hand from the Paw of the bear hand will deliver me from the hand paw of this Philistine I love the Bible my third point is bringing out what David himself testifies to is that we serve a God who Fights something that struck me about this passage is how David references his prior successes with overcoming beasts as the reason why he is confident that he will be able to defeat Goliath David has a resume on it if you will on it one time he
killed a lion another time he killed a bear Jasmine Sullivan said that she is not afraid of lions tigers and bears but I am So if I met someone who said that they had killed two out of the three I'd be impressed says something about this person's bravery their courage their their agility their strength their ability to strategize but David isn't handing Saul his resume so that Saul can trust David only David gives Saul his resume as evidence for why Saul can trust God to work through David Because even though David's name is at the
top of the resume it's God who's always done all the work speaking of work we're in a super ambitious era we we have influencers left and right selling lotions they don't use we got women killing the game in terms of education and and upward mobility in the workplace like we aren't killing lions and tigers and bears but we are legitimately killing it But even though all of that is happening all of that is good and well though productivity is at an all-time high so is anxiety another form of fear and I think a part of
the increase in anxiety in our era is because we become very efficient at doing a lot of things at one time we are raising babies and getting degrees and eating Jackfruit pulled pork sandwiches and listening to podcasts exfoliating Our our pores all while trying to serve the church and read the Bible and resist the world and and men with man buns and flesh and the devil we're doing a lot we're working hard and we have produced a lot of good in the world because of it but the problem is is that when we look at
our resumes whatever that might be how your success in the home your success in the workplace your uh success interpersonally whatever it might be When you look at your resume and see yourself and all that you have accomplished instead of God's grace then what happens is when something doesn't go according to plan or work like it used to when the strategies that always work for you fail what we do is we tend to cope with the anxiety and The Angst and the stress by becoming more productive instead of becoming more humble for example a couple
weeks ago me and Preston got the new iPhone and you know when you get a new phone you have to reset all your things you got to log into your emails log into your your Instagram and all that stuff and so Preston was trying to log into Instagram but he didn't remember his password because that's his Thorn In the Flesh he doesn't remember anything important except to love me I could take that but so he realizes like he sends the little reset password thing and it goes to his Email email he don't remember that either
and so he's on the phone with Yahoo that's how old the email is not even Gmail that's equivalent of Hotmail and Black Planet like he's on the phone he's on the phone with Yahoo trying to drum up and get all this information to get his password and he's like really stressed and really angsty and I'm just sitting back like if you just would put it in the iCloud we wouldn't have this problem But whatever so he's doing the most doing the most doing the most finally gives up the next born that he texted me and
he said I I got so frustrated about me not being able to log into any of my stuff that I just gave up and just asked God could God give me the password and he said literally it just came into my mind and he said the Lord was like why didn't you just ask me in the first place but that's what we all do is that when Something happens that we don't like our strategies and all of that don't work what happens is we end up strategizing before we pray we end up working before we
rest all because when you know that you know how to get stuff done you start to believe that you are the common denominator in every Victory you've ever had so the question then is what if hypothetically speaking what if some of the anxiety you experience is Because you've made an idol out of your ability to produce I think so imagine if David her Goliath talking crazy at the mouth and rightly remembered his success remember that he'd killed things that were bigger than Goliath before but imagine if he read his resume and never traced it back
to God then he would have ended up walking in the same Pride Goliath was walking in And how does God respond to Proud people he resists them how does God respond to Humble people he helps them he gives them Grace so David knew that he was not about to defeat this giant with his ego he knew that the only way he would win this fight is if God who had been fighting for him this whole time did it again let's read what happened verse 41 and the Philistine moved forward and came near to David with
the shield Bearer in front of him and when the Philistine looked and saw David he disdained him for he was but a youth ready which means bread so either her skin was red or his hair was red handsome in appearance and the Philistine said to David am I a dog that you come to me with sticks and Philistine the Philistine cursed David by his gods the Philistines said today become 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
you come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin all the things but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts we finally come to this point when David and Goliath are about to tussle Goliath steps up and sees David coming towards him and he feels away because he like I'm a champion I'm not for nine and you sending this 14 year old redheaded boy To come fight me y'all must think I'm light work and so he gets mad and he starts to curse it David steps
forward and he sees Goliath and sees all the things that Goliath has and David acknowledges all the stuff that Goliath has in his favor he says you have a sword you have a spear you have a javelin and remember in the beginning of all of this I use Dan allender's definition of fear which says that fear is our response to uncertainty About our resources in the face of danger Goliath has resources he has weapons he has height he has history so if David were to submit to fear it would be because David is comparing Goliath's
Resources with his own Goliath has weapons David has a rock and a slingshot but the question that we have to ask is that the only resource David has on his side look at verse 45 pay attention to David's weapon of choice it says then David said to the philistine you come to me with a sword a resource with the spear a resource and a javelin a resource but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts a resource the god of the armies of Israel David has a weapon that Goliath doesn't have
and it's a name Lord of hosts is a military description of God it carries the sense that God is a Warrior who will fight Cosmic and Earthly battles on behalf of his people there's this story in first Samuel where this word pops up for the first time and chapter one of that book we Are introduced to a woman named Hannah Hannah is married to a man named elkana El Cana has two wives we're not touching that but anyway Hannah is his wife and another woman named peninnah the tension in the text is that pinena has
a whole bunch of kids but Hannah doesn't Hannah's Baron Hannah is infertile and because of that she has all kinds of Shame and all kinds of angst and all kinds of sadness and every year elkano would take his family including Hannah peninnah and her children they would go up to the city of Shiloh to offer sacrifices to God and to worship and every time they went the text says the penina would use it as an opportunity to revoke Hannah she would say things like Oh I got kids and you don't I got stretch marks and
you don't like stupid stuff like that thank you that was really stupid right so Hannah is not only dealing with internal shame but also external shame being put on her to the point that when Hannah or when elkana comes home bringing a portion of the sacrifice back for his family to celebrate and worship God over Hannah can't eat And it isn't because she isn't hungry and it isn't because she isn't tired it's because she cannot worship she cannot celebrate God she is too depressed to be able to protect participate in the celebratory fashion and I
think some of us understand what that's like when you get so sad of fighting a thing that you don't have energy for natural stuff you don't even want to eat so Hannah is she's tired of fighting this battle it Feels like no one could help her it feels like not doctors not her husband not even her own self because I've had times and I'm sure you have too where it seems like the giant that you have to fight isn't somebody else but your own body when your mind is attacking you when your heart is provoking
you when your own womb shames you Hannah doesn't have the resources to fight this battle but she knows someone who does So she goes up to the temple the text says that Hannah was praying so intensely that the high priest thought she was drunk clearly she was Pentecostal yeah she was with the evidence hello but while she's there in this Temple being emotionally vulnerable to God do You know what she calls him she says O Lord of hosts please look on the Affliction of your servant the very first time God is personally referred to as
Lord of hosts it's spoken by an infertile woman in prayer and why would she call God that name because she had options she could have called him God she could have called him Lord she could have called him Creator she could have Called him uh uh anything but she chose the name that she knew would inform inform her faith and change the way she prayed she said Lord of hosts because I think Hannah recognized something that we need to recognize too is that sometimes we need to call on the military God Hannah needed the warrior
God Hannah needed the God who would not just fight Goliath but also infertility The God Who has all resources at his disposal if if He made the body then he can heal the body if he is life he can give life and let's just say hypothetically speaking God decides not to he can also give joy in the midst of Sorrow that's a resource we need a God and we have a god hear me who will fight for us overcoming every enemy we are too afraid to challenge or every uh every every thing that we are
too afraid to defeat like we need a God who will fight for us against depression we need a God who will fight for us against anxiety we need a God who will fight for us against shame we need a God who will help us overcome sin like the crazy thing is like this week I was working out and I was listening to this song where it talked about the Lord fighting for us and I was like yeah Lord like Lord be fighting me yeah sure you know like you just you acknowledge the Truth you don't
realize you don't believe it thank you and I felt like the Lord was saying to me Jackie you know that your guardedness is there because you don't believe I'll fight for you your trauma has trained you to believe that you are the only one that can protect yourself I will fight for you even emotionally I will vindicate you against people that you don't have to have a guard over your heart at all times because I am a defender of my people do you know that God will even fight you to free you just like Jacob
Goliath has a swore and a spear and a javelin but David has the Lord of hosts verse 48. when the Philistine arose and came and Drew near to meet 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 he fell on his face to the ground so David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and with a stone instructor Philistine and killed him there was no
sword in the hand of David now if this theme if this discussion is about Jesus what does this narrative have to do with Him or what does this narrative have to do with us and him simply put we are afraid of many things for different reasons but if there is one thing that everyone is afraid of for the most part it's death why do you suppose no one in Israel stepped forward to fight the Giant it isn't that they were just afraid to Lose it's what they were it's what they would lose if they lost
that they were afraid of which is their life death is an inevitable part of life the moment we were born we were dying and we do all that we can to hide from that reality Shakespeare said in one of his plays that the conscience makes us cowards we try not to think too much about death And have you ever wondered why I think it could be is that death is terrifying for some of us because we don't know which God will get on the other side we don't know if when our soul is taken from
this body if when we open our eyes we will meet the warrior God the Lord of hosts who will fight for us if we will open our eyes and meet the Warrior of God who will fight against us because it's true that the Lord of hosts will utilize all of his resources to save you but the same God will also utilize all of his resources to condemn you and you know that so we're afraid so when we think of death we feel this fear and we tend to respond on two different extremes what happens is
our fight our flight response is Engaged against God too we either fight by building a resume of good works we try to be good people try to do good stuff try to be faithful try to be kind try to be nice apart from faith try to do all of these good works so that we can present our resume to God on the day of judgment and say see look at all the good stuff I've done now you have to let me in or Flight response is engaged where we hide behind idols we hide behind greed
we hide behind success we hide behind being an influencer we hide behind Fame we we hide behind men we we hide behind sex we hide behind things because it makes us feel secure it makes us feel Immortal and we do it because we don't believe that God actually can give us life apart from all of these idols But what if I told you that when it comes to you and the Lord none of those methods will work when it comes to that fight you will lose every single time but this is this sets me up
for the good news because this is why the Lord of hosts brought another Shepherd boy from Bethlehem onto the battlefield on one side was a giant named the devil Whose weapons were sin and death standing around him where all the children of Adam who rightfully recognized that they didn't have the resources to defeat him they didn't have the power they didn't have the strength they didn't even have the morality to do it since Genesis 3 Humanity has been pulling up to tussle with the devil and he has won every single time making us slaves to
sin making us slaves to our Fears but when the son of David showed up he wasn't scared of lions or tigers or the devil because he created him so here we go we got the devil and sin and Death on one side and we got Jesus on the other side and all the scary little people all around the watch and the expectation might have been that Jesus would fight this battle by force That that's why one of his friends Peter pulled out a sword and started chopping ears off he might have thought that he was
a part of a kingdom that needed those kinds of resources to win but Jesus didn't need those kinds of resources but he also didn't need the spiritual resources he had access to too he could have called Legions of angels he could have rained down fire and sulfur but the resource that God wanted to use to win the battle against death Sin and the devil the Jesus's weapon of choice was his very own self Jesus his body was the slingshot in the five smooth stones and the irony of the whole situation is that God is so
humble that the way he won the battle is about making everybody think he lost he moved forward he moved forward by laying down he prepared his sling by being pierced and he threw his Stones by going to the Grave so that through weakness his People could be made strong so that through death his people would be made alive and after three days the giant the devil the death and sin Was Defeated when Jesus got up and all the scary people meaning you all the people that could not fight all the people that were not strong
enough able enough resourceful enough all of those people including me and you and us we won a battle that we never had to fight that is the beauty of the Gospel It is that Jesus is our champion it is that Jesus our is our representative he is the one that stepped forward and fought for his people and now we win a battle that we weren't even involved in the writer of Hebrews commentators believe that in this verse he is picking up on this narrative between David and Goliath when he says this since therefore the children
of uh since Therefore the children share in Flesh and Blood he himself likewise partook of the same things that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death that is the devil and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery huh if there's any encouragement I think you need is that God is one already you understand that He's won already so as you go back into your homes and as you go back into your schools and as you go back into your jobs you probably feel like
all you got is a slingshot and some stones but you actually show up with a name the Lord of hosts is with you and on your side and guess what he is a man that cannot lie and so you know the promise he gave you he said That I will never leave you and I will never forsake you can you imagine how your life would be if you believe that the totality like the full being of God was with you and for you that that the Creator God is with you that that the warrior God
is with you that the that the Savior God is with you that every resource that he has every everything he has in his hands that God will use it for your good and His glory do you know how free you would be if the only person You feared was the Lord [Music] if that's the case then if God is the only one worthy of reverence if God is the only one worthy of fear then we don't have to go into places scared to be honest about the truth we can push back against the lies of
the world why because you don't have to fear those that can kill the body but can't kill the soul what they gonna do to you but sends you to Glory faster [Music] you don't have to fear this sense of Shame and powerlessness you sense you're inadequate inadequacy because God is the adequate one the point the point is is that greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world you don't have to fear the tribulations that you're going through and will go through there will be trials there will be circumstances there
will be mountains that need to move there Will be angst there will be suffering there will be trouble that happens in the world but guess what don't fear it because guess what Jesus has overcome the world too it's ridiculous how faithful it is even then you don't even have to fear the state of the church we see all these crazy demon-possessed people in pulpits all these churches being destroyed oh these Christians fighting amongst each Other on Twitter and on Instagram and it's easy to be discouraged and think that you are the only good one in
the church but guess what God says that the work I started I will finish God is perfecting his body God has a rimmed it that will be preserved don't don't even make the devil think you used to make you think that you by yourself [Music] you don't even have to fear condemnation Yes you're imperfect yes you got struggles yes you mess up yes you're not as faithful as you want to be but if you are in Christ Jesus there is no more condemnation reserved for you it has been swallowed up in Victory so now you
can say with full confidence to him who is able to keep me from falling and to present me faultless before his glorious presence with great joy to the only God our Father through Jesus Christ Our Lord be glory be dominion and be Power forever and ever amen this is the truth the death burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ has legitimately set you free And if every battle is actually the Lord's the challenge of faith is for us to actually live like that's true God we thank you for [Music] Man you're [Music] there are 700 000
words in your Bible foreign [Music] that you have given us so much reason to trust you from beginning to the end you are faithful from beginning to end you are good so we pray for the women and the men in this place You would increase our faith that you would increase our capacity to believe and if that means that trials must come sin them if that means that circumstances must get hard send them whatever has to be done in our lives for us to love you more than anything do it and that's only scary insofar
as we Don't believe you're good [Music] God we pray for everyone's mind in the room that you would renew their mind with the scriptures that you would wash them with the word that you would give them self-control and the discipline to resist Every Lie every untruth about you about themselves about your Bible about their neighbors about this world even the fact that this world will not last But those who do the will of the father will and so we pray God that you would grow us and make us fruitful in how we think we pray
God for the women in this room who are called to teach who are called to evangelize who are called to disciple who are called to lead that you would Empower them for the mission ahead that God if some people are in places that feel stagnant Feel unuseful it is useful it's a preparation season and so God I pray that in that season God that you would fill them with the word that you would fill them with truth that they would wrestle over texts that you're able to learn how to walk in what they will eventually
preach we pray God for the mothers in the room we need energy father for our young kids and our older ones we pray for divine energy to keep loving To keep being patient to keep showing up God motherhood can feel like a silent War but you see us and you will honor it I pray that you bless our motherhood we pray for women in the room who are playing praying for children and they've almost given up we pray God that you would bless them with fertility that you would visit them like you visited Sarah that
you would give them the children that you want them to have But we also pray for the women that that's not your will for we pray God that you would give them Direction and intention on the children that are not from their womb but still belong to them God that you would make us all mothers and you would make us all fruitful that our wounds would bear disciples God [Music] God we pray for those in college Academia can be a very demonic place Where doctrines of demons are applauded and upheld and promoted and looked at
as a righteous thing we pray for those who are students in these places that they would be a light in a dark place that they would speak against every lie of the enemy and we pray against the spirit of discouragement we pray against shame they're feeling like they're doing the most God you did the most you died and you are the most the most high and so why not be extra why not be loud why Not do the most for Jesus knowing that this world will not last so we need you God to stay faithful
in this world we pray God that we would have the strength needed to put on the full armor of the spirit that we would wear the breastplate of righteousness that we would have the helmet of salvation that we would put on the the shoes of the Gospel that we would put on the belt of Truth and that We would pick up our sword of the spirit and that we would have our Shield of faith and that we would constantly petition you for the help needed to do all that you called us to do we will
not be alive forever you have put us here on purpose you have put us here in this time for a particular mission in a particular moment so help us count our days and see that there's an urgency to what you've called us to do we pray for this In your son's name amen [Music]
