Stuart Tyner - God is the hero of the bible stories - NNZC Big Camp 2002

didn't call me to play golf with you tomorrow yesterday i didn't know you played golf i was probably preaching over somewhere else yeah that's two people now i'm in trouble with i'm also in trouble with pastor bainbridge i didn't call garth but stuart can you tell us what is your favorite sport golf yeah [Laughter] i asked for that didn't i yeah now i really do feel bad you know i have i have two sons that play golf one plays really really well hits the ball 300 yards kind of well and uh i i have a

fun time often on tuesdays aft afternoons we play together but the the boys and i our favorite sport really is basketball we're big los angeles laker fans so we our cable system on our tv carries all the home games for the lakers on one channel all the away games for the lakers in another channel and we generally get together either in front of the tv or on the telephone after a great play together with my boy so that's a fun thing for us to do okay terrific i'll remember you when gavin asks me i think

we might try and go on friday again i'm really missing my family uh this morning stu and i was reflecting as i was lying in bed this morning um the time that my wife debbie and myself first met would you like to share with us the time that you and your wife first met do you know we remember it very well we were in our second year in high school and i had been at this uh boarding school the first year of high school my wife my my friend karen came the second year and on

registration day it happened to be september the 4th we met i came down early to be the first one in line in registration ran around the corner of the administration building and there she was already in line with her mother and her sister and we had about an hour before the doors opened and we became friends karen's mother used to say that she wondered that day if karen and i would ever get together i'm not sure that was true i was 14 years old karen was 15 years old and that's the day we met we

started dating uh late in the next year together and we've been dating ever since terrific yeah terrific that's good i firmly believe that god puts special people in our lives so that he can be reflected through them and my wife has taught me a lot about god do you mind sharing with us stuart what has your marriage to karen is it taught you about god well as you're saying that about your wife i was thinking the same about my wife karen has been the most important spiritual influence in my life she has had a very

close personal relationship with jesus i think all of her life and i had one of those relationships with jesus that was at a distance and i did the right things and and it was that kind of you know i was a good boy and i sang in church and i took theology i did the right things but karen knew what it meant to have a friendship with jesus and it was karen also who taught me about god's grace because you're very gracious person and and i was much more of a legalist until a long uh

12 years ago when i bought a book for karen called the grace awakening and i thought oh that'd be a good book for her to read she would enjoy that and she read it and was by our bed and i picked it up and i began to read it and and it was through that book that i got interested in in it too but um boy i wish my wife was here steven and leanne know her she's just a lovely lady i talked to her about uh an hour and a half ago she's she's having

a busy week she said for me to hurry home so things would slow down when i got there i'm not sure what that means matt but it's uh yeah well thank you for sharing uh with us um is it good to find out a little bit about your speaker yeah i think it's it's really encouraging and i think it's um and i just want you to be prepared tomorrow morning i'm gonna ask matt three questions and i'm not gonna tell you what they are ahead of time but you're gonna get it tomorrow okay okay and

actually yesterday morning you said you were going to ask me a question today what was the question about why you didn't ask me to play golf no no no the embarrassing moment all the embarrassing tell us i can't think of any no um you'll have one tomorrow morning to tell yeah later on you'll be able to remember tomorrow right but um actually just talking about my wife i think i have come up with one and that was um has anybody ever fainted if you fainted and you've had one of those slow motion faints you ever

had one of those um i can remember the day we were married we were standing in front of the church and we said to the pastor look we we don't want a really long sermon talk that sort of thing and he just went on and on and on and on and um i was standing there and you know how everything goes a light green you've never fainted bless you then it went a darker green you know and then it went sort of a funny blue color and i didn't go down i didn't go down but

um i remember deb turning to me and saying are you all right and the microphone i think picked it up right in the middle of my wedding so that was probably one of the most embarrassing moments but this morning for our prayer time we're going to do something a little bit different we're going to do is ask you to be part of the prayer time we've all got things to be thankful for and i don't think the microphones are long enough but this morning are there some people here this morning that would like to share

with us something that they are thankful for today something that's happened today that they can be thankful to god for would you share with us the sun there's a thank you the sun thank you for being here yeah friends to have breakfast with some others family oh now you've started it inside i'm wanting my family badly today thank you any others the opportunity to worship continuously i like that some others for the encouragement that we've had from all the speakers thank you that's encouraging isn't it pastor tyner yeah all the songs yeah lovely couple more

how about on this side of the tent for miracles thank you thank you how about on the far side of the tent is there somebody over there that's thankful for something this morning that you'd like to share with us okay yes yeah thank you thank you don't we have a lot to be thankful for and i think that um this morning um for just about 30 seconds 30 or 45 seconds i want you to just close your eyes and talk to god yourself and thank him for something that's special to you let's pray [Music] father

we want to thank you that you're such a good god to us we thank you that the invitation is there in scripture to taste and see that the lord is good it is only lord as we experience you and your grace and your love and your mercy that we can resonate with those words of scripture we thank you lord for the weather we thank you for the bible we thank you for our friends our family we thank you for the opportunity of worshiping we thank you for the way that you work in our lives in

miraculous ways and lord we thank you that we can be here together we thank you to lord for pastor tyner we thank you for his ministry we thank you that he has such a wonderfully supportive family we thank you that you have given him such a wonderful role in your church and lord this morning as he opens the word of god to us we ask that you'll please bless him that you will reassure him of your presence that he will feel your arms of encouragement around him and that for us that listen to him and

interact that we too will be blessed by you today in jesus name amen thinking about all the things that you're thankful for i just shared with you uh every thing that was mentioned i felt like i could say amen to that it's been wonderful to be here i have four presentations today and then just two tomorrow and one sabbath so i'm on the downward slope of my assignment here but it's just been wonderful to be with you thank you for all the encouraging words after the meetings the conversations we've had and i have enjoyed the

conversations and the music here the prayers that matt's let out in paul thank you for your music i don't know if you've all gotten acquainted with paul this is his very first camp meeting we're so glad that you're with us and always here in the front row it's been great travis met me today saying there's good news and bad news the good news is that it was too hot for the people down here with the big lights on and so he's put these lights on today the bad news is it's about much much more hot

up here than with these lights on i was going to say 20 degrees but i don't that doesn't mean anything does it yeah it's anyway it's a lot hotter here so uh if things start to turn light green and dark green for me here you catch me won't you today is the 17th of january it's my youngest son's birthday today it's 23 years old i can't remember the last time i missed a birthday but the nice thing is that he doesn't know it's his birthday because it's yesterday for him i'm not quite sure how that

works but he hasn't missed his birthday yet by time i talk to him it'll be tomorrow and then i will say well i'm you know it's not going to work out anyway so happy birthday ben wherever you are today god is the hero of the bible stories we've been saying you okay with that seems like it's been easy as we've seen this today i want to talk about a story that is one of the prime examples about how we have made the human in the story the hero it's the story of david fighting goliath you'll

find it in first samuel 17 and we have made david the hero of the story as long as i can remember we do it with children we sing about david and we hardly ever talk about god being the hero this story but i think there's a lot in this story to teach us to hear god's voice speaking to us as we've been saying this week and to try to find out about salvation there's so much in this story so let's jump right in but to get to first samuel 17 oh i wanted to tell you

several people asked me yesterday after our morning meeting where i ever heard that story of hezekiah and then the hushtan well it's in second kings chapter 18. i guess i didn't give that reference yesterday second kings 18 if you want to look it up later on about how the israelites began to worship the serpent on the pole the bronze serpent uh ii kings 18. it's a fascinating story it's the only place in the bible that it tells about the nahushtan so you want to look that up in order to get to first samuel chapter 17

and the lessons about the families we have to begin in first chronicles chapter 2. so if you want to turn to first chronicles chapter 2 these are the genealogies that begin first chronicles and they're just fascinating if you have the time they're usually the stories that we pass by and we don't know what they were even included by but today and tomorrow i want to share with you some some stories that come out of the chronologies and this is an interesting one in chapter 2 of first chronicles we have the the genealogy of david you

see chapter 2 verse 13 jesse was the father of and then the sons are named and notice in verse 16 the one place in the bible where we're told who david's sisters were their names were zaruya and abigail that's good to know there were girls in the family sometimes the bible stories just don't seem to make any mention of the women in the story we've passed by a couple this week where the women are very important abraham and sarah jacob and leah and rachel and today the the girls play uh a little part in it

but tomorrow i want to tell you this story of a wise woman whose name we don't know but she is a fascinating character in the david cycle it's just an amazing story and we usually pass right by it but today just nice to know that there were a couple of girls in the family and you can imagine what the family was like when they sat around in the evening by the time we get to first samuel 17 jesse is an older man we don't know the name of david's mother jesse's wife perhaps she's passed away

by this time by the time we get to first samuel 17 nor she mentioned here but you can imagine all these children probably nine or ten of them depending on which which story you read of the family that we get together in the warm evenings no television to go in and watch no laker games to look at so they would sit out in the beautiful evenings around bethlehem the the hills of bethlehem are steep and you oh you are a good man in spite of what travis has been saying about you thank you very much

don't go too far away man i'm going to drink that one in a few minutes matt you're turning light green what's going on oh no it's the lights are changing that's okay um the the hills around bethlehem are very steep and you can imagine this family large family sitting out in front of their tents in the evening looking at the beautiful stars maybe having a little fire in the fire pit and the children saying to their father jesse will you tell us the stories about grandma and grandpa and great-grandma and grandpa and great-great-grandmother and all

of the things that they love to tell about do we have any any grandparents here in the tent today let me see your hand my hands raise too i have four beautiful grandchildren two boys and two girls do we have any great grandparents in the tent oh my a number of them good for you god bless you do we have any great great grandparents in the tent that's asking a little too much isn't it well david would ask his uh father jesse to talk about the great great grandparents and the great you know that jesse's

grandparents david's great great grandparents were ruth and boaz isn't that amazing and so they could just talk about what great-grandma and great-grandpa did david and the other kids would do it and then jesse could talk about his great-grandmother who was rahab we go right back to the story that we talked about yesterday as the children of israel crossed into the promised land for the first time remember the spies went into jericho and they met rahab she's jesse's great-grandmother david's great-great-grandmother isn't that amazing just a few generations passed and the kids around the family circle would

just meet there together and talk about their ancestors let me pause in the story just long enough to tell you how important family worship is i grew up in the adventist church when family worship was something that we did all the time it was it was almost part of the definition of being a seventh-day adventist it was an amazing time when we had family worship in the morning in the evening and the church produced for the first time the resources to support family worship but i have to tell you today that the research indicates that

only about 15 of our adventist children have family worship as frequently as one time a week these days and with lots of moms and dads working it's just kind of family worship has gone the way of the dinosaurs and we don't do it anymore and it remains the most effective family spiritual factor if you want your children to get a great head start spiritually or your grandchildren to get that kind of head start be sure that they're getting family worship there's so many good things that we could be saying this morning about family worship it

is important that family worship is meaningful to the children and not that we just pick up a book and read something that was written by adults for adults family worship is really a time for the youngest ones in the family and meaning is more important than frequency if you had to choose between frequency and meaning choose meaning and make sure that that one time that you have family worship a week is really meaningful to your children that they take part they enjoy what's happening and it makes sense to them and it speaks to the issues

in their lives of course the best thing to do is have meaningful family worship with frequency then you're getting the best of everything it's a time for enjoyment and involvement aimed at the youngest in the family it's not a time for discipline if your children are acting up discipline them later don't make it a part of family worship make it so much fun that your kids enjoy or your grandchildren enjoy family worship when your grandchildren come to visit you that's a great thing to do to make sure in the evening that they have family worship

not a time for conflict and you can do that partially by the time that you schedule family worship you know there's no secret time for family worship that you have to have it at that particular time you have to find in your family a good time to have family worship some families do it first thing in the morning something some families do when the kids come home from school in the afternoon sometimes when the mom and dad are finally together in the evening or or the parent comes home and that's a good time before the

evening activities happen sometimes it's good just before you go to bed at night to do family worship whatever's best for your family is the best time for family worship but don't make it a time when your schedule of family worship conflicts with other things one young woman told me that her dad had family worship every single night that they were together in their home but his idea of family worship was to do it at the dinner hour after the food had been placed on the plates and set before the family on the table so mom

would bring this hot meal on the plates put it in the on the table in front of the kids and dad would stand up with his bible or his book and say before you eat a bite you must wait for worship and he would then preach for 15 or 20 minutes and this girl told me how it was feeling to her to sit there with this wonderful food smelling in front of her and her mouth was watering she said when you say family worship it means torture to me i i wanted to i wanted to

eat every time i hear the word family worship well how silly of that dad to do that i hope you're not here today now it was in another part of the world that she told me that don't intentionally conflict with things for your kids it's not supposed to be a time of conflict and while we're talking about that that father the principle of duration for family worship is that you can do what you need to do in family worship have a wonderful time together in about 10 minutes i i've talked to fathers who believe that

they have to preach as long as the preacher preaches in order for family work should be effective just not so have a good time together sing a song play a game read a story do something fun together in 10 minutes have a word of prayer and and what you're trying to do is establish a pattern that's enjoyable and fun and something you look forward to one of the things we did in our house on tuesday nights we read a continuing story and we did that improvisational theater technique called hanging on the edge of a cliff

you know how that goes you take the story and you come to the most exciting part of the story you know the missionaries are walking home to their compound and they come around the corner and they stop dead in their tracks because in front of them there are two lions sitting there over the zebra that they've killed for supper and as they hear the missionaries come around the corner they stop chomping on the zebra and they look up and now the missionaries are the ones that look good for supper and the lions gather themselves and

stand on their forepaws and look directly into the eyes of the missionaries and we'll read the rest of that story next tuesday night and you know my kids how to know let's keep worship going that's the dynamic you're working for by sunday night the next week please can we have family worship tonight early and read that story no we have to wait till tuesday monday night comes please dad let the isn't that wonderful when the kids are begging you for family worship that's what you're trying to do that's the whole idea of making family worship

so enjoyable that the kids love to have it go to the abc this afternoon and ask for all the best resources for family worship there's great books great story books great games to play together all the things that you really need to do well imagine david and his brothers and sisters and their father jesse in front of the tent at bethlehem sitting around the fire pit talking about rahab and the conquest of jericho and ruth and and boaz and naomi and what great stories they had to tell and david grew up in that kind of

an atmosphere and he learned the lessons that children are supposed to learn about god being the hero of bible stories and about god providing for us those things that we cannot provide for ourselves and so david will say when he gets to the battlefield later on in chapter 17 uh when he when he is oh i'm in second samuel no wonder i can't find it first samuel 17 when david gets to the battlefield and he goes out and he volunteers to fight goliath you remember what he says verse 34 your servant has been keeping his

father's sheep and when a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock i went after it and i struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth and when it turned on me i seized it by the hair and struck it and killed it your servant has killed both the lion and the bear and this philistine will be like one of them because he has defied the armies of the living god and if it stopped there we would have thought like so many of us david did not learn the lesson

that god was the hero but look at the next verse chapter 17 verse 37 david says the lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of the philistine so david learned growing up in the family worship times exactly who the hero of the stories of of uh ruth and boaz and naomi and rahab and jesse himself who the hero of all the stories were and as he conquered in a daily basis he was able to give the glory to god and it's

an amazing thing when our children learn that kind of thing let me just tell you parents and grandparents when you talk to your children and your grandchildren about faith make sure that they know who the heroes of the stories are don't make yourself the hero always make god the hero and there are three levels of of inspiration that we have when we talk to our children about about their faith and our faith and the people who study this talk about faith talk and each of these three levels is deeper and more important to children the

the top most level of faith talk between adults and children is when children listen to adults talking to each other about their faith they hear their teachers talking about it they hear their their parents talking to other adults about their faith and they hear things about when they were children and they were growing up in the church and what the church meant to them and they discussed the issues that the pastor has raised in sermons they talk about what's important to their faith and the theological questions that they have and children listen on the outskirts

of that and it's inspiring for children to hear adults talking about faith to other adults but a deeper level of faith talk is when adults talk to the children about faith and children are now catching the stories directly and so we sit down with our children and our grandchildren and the kids that we teach in sabbath school and we talk to them about what faith is going to be like and when pastors include the world of children in the illustrations for the sermons children began to catch what faith is all about and it's much more

inspiring to them than just hearing us talk to each other when we talk to the children about it it's better but the deepest level of faith talk is when we sit down with our children and our grandchildren the kids we're teaching and we talk to them about our faith and we let them talk to us about their faith when the dialogue is going back and forth and they are saying things like i'm about to get baptized and i'm really nervous about it and we say let me tell you about the day i was baptized how

nervous i was when i was baptized and we talk about the things that are important to them and we hear their questions and they are open to ask questions to us and we even say things like you know i used to have a question about that too i remember when i prayed a prayer and god didn't seem to answer my prayer and i know you're feeling like god's left you out of the whole universe because he isn't answering your prayer i remember feeling that way let me tell you how i worked through it some of

us adults feel like we must always be on top of our feelings and we must never let our children know that we've ever had any questions about the religious life and they are full of questions and it's so much more inspiring for them when they hear that we've asked questions and we've found some answers too so the deepest level of faith talk is when we talk but we also listen and i think david exhibits the spiritual characteristics that that's the kind of home he grew up in he's already learned who it is that's the hero

of the bible stories one day jesse says to the kids that are still at home i'm a little bit worried about your three oldest brothers they've been off in saul's army for some time now and i just am wondering about them i just hope that things are going good i hear there's a big battle going on between the philistines and frankly i'm a little wonder i'm wondering a little bit a little worried and i i thought in the night what we would do is let's prepare a meal and we'll wrap it up and david we'll

get another shepherd to take care of the sheep today and you take this meal and walk over to to where the the battle is from here and give the meal to your three older brothers and i think probably all the kids got the ingredients together and they got in the kitchen and put the meal together and they wrapped it up and david went out to get another shepherd he got the shepherd to watch the sheep and he left early the next morning with the meal to take two to his brothers [Music] it's a it's always

a good idea when the family's involved together isn't it and one of the best things that family members can do to other family members is to encourage them the art of encouragement is one of those arts that seems to be losing its way among families today how much more important it is instead of criticizing each behavior to encourage each other ellen white has a fascinating concept when she's talking about correcting the wrong things that children do she says when she says to parents when you see objectionable traits arising correct the wrong by strengthening traits of

the opposite nature isn't that a great idea when you see something happening with the kids the grandchildren or your children and and you know that they're going in a direction you don't want them to go the way that you correct the wrong is not by fastening on the wrong and saying don't do this this way i've seen parents interrupt a normal decent pleasant conversation by suddenly grabbing on to something is a little bit in the periphery but the parents feel like something has to be taken care of right this minute and if they don't correct

it right now the kids are going to grow up to be criminals or something but the suggestion here is you correct the wrong by strengthening traits of the opposite nature so you see someone not telling the truth around the table one day exaggerating a little bit put it in your mind to begin to watch for it and the next time you see that child being absolutely honest about the tiniest little thing stop the world and get down on the eye level with the child and say you are such an honest child thank you for doing

that oh that was amazing i appreciate it and then go your way you don't need to say another thing something good is going to happen it's a wonderful thing to be an encouragement to children and there are so many ways to do it often it happens around food doesn't it just like jesse was knowing he'd like to send some food to the three oldest brothers but another great way to encourage children especially is to write little notes of encouragement i've had fun through the years telling people to write notes of encouragement to other people and

their families especially to the children when you send a lunch in the lunch pail with your children it just slip a little note in there when they open the lunch there's a note from mom or dad sometime it's nice to write a little letter take it to the post office and post it and let the kids open the mailbox and find a letter from you to them is a fun thing to do just three rules about writing a note of encouragement i promise i'll get back to this study but there's so many great things about

family life in the early part of this three rules about writing notes of encouragement first of all keep it short you don't need to write pages and pages and pages after a while it'll get to be what's mom really trying to get to at this kind of thing just write a couple of sentences just keep it short i really appreciate the way that you helped me in the kitchen this morning you're such a wonderful help thank you love mom um something like um uh you went to bed last night without complaining one time it made

the evening so pleasant thank you just keep it short and then the second rule be specific don't say something like my what a good kid you are be specific and tie the encouragement to something good that you've caught the child doing and then the third rule is to never connect encouragement with past misbehavior i it was encouraging a group of pastors and their spouses one time to write notes of encouragement to people in their church in their congregation and we practice it was a small group about 35 people i ask every one of them to

write a note of encouragement to someone in the church and that i would grade these notes of encouragement on it being short and to the point and not connecting well actually at that point i only had two rules keep it short and specific and i i collected them all and began to read them and one pastor's wife wrote a note of encouragement to the organist in the church and her note went like this thank you for the beautiful prelude that you played last week before church it was so much better than the one you played

the week before [Laughter] now is a note like that encouraging or discouraging what do you think of when you read the note how good my prelude was this week or how bad it was the week before yeah that's what so at that point i added the third rule never connect encouragement with past misbehavior you don't say something about how terrible their behavior was thanks for going to bed without fussing last night it was so much better than the night before when you fussed for a half an hour and i could hardly stand it that's not

a note of encouragement and you will watch your children or the people that you write encouragement to you watch them change in front of your eyes as they read that i have to tell you one time when i was teaching elementary school i had the first three years of school all in one classroom about 15 kids early on in my teaching career and at the end of the very first week of school i decided i would write a note of encouragement to all 15 students and i sat in their little desks at friday afternoon after

the kids had gone home and i began to write a note of encouragement short and to the point and i just taped it inside their desk the kind of desk that you you lift up the lid and there's the place where you put the books and their pencils and things and i got to one desk right in the middle and it was a boy named robert and i tried to think of all week long what could i thank him for what could i encourage him for and i couldn't think of a single thing that he

had done good he was a terrible kid misbehaved all week long boy i was going to have a hard time i went to the brother desk and i wrote notes of encouragement to all of them i came back and i i had to do something and i looked at his desk and i saw something on the the chair there was a crack all the way through the chair and i remember that he had told me that whenever he wiggled which he did all week long the little crack on the chair pinched his little bottom and

he was always wiggling and going ow ow ow and i said well at least i can give him a new desk so i went out to the shed where they kept the new desk i got a new one and brought it in and i was transferring the books from the old desk with a crack in this chair to the new one and when i lifted up the lid robert's books were stacked one on top of the other so i put them in the new desk and it gave me an idea and i sat down and

i wrote a note to him thank you for keeping your desk so neat you're a great example to all of us monday morning when the kids came in and they began to discover their notes robert sat there just with his arm folded he knew he wasn't getting a note of encouragement he saw the other kids get him and he knew one wasn't coming his way and finally he opened his desk and there was the note and he literally stuck his head in the in the desk and he read this little note and then he put

it down and he put the lid down and never said a word about it and he never talked to me about it but almost a month later robert's mother came up to me at church on sabbath and she said to me i don't know what you've said to robert at school but for the last month his room has been neat isn't that interesting that one little note about a half a dozen books piled on top of each other transferred into his keeping his bedroom neat because now he began to see himself as someone who was

a neat person well lots of things that we could talk about family dynamics but just in a couple minutes let me point out some lessons about salvation and for samuel 17. we're talking about the battle of the valley of elah you know in the early part of the chapter for samuel 17 about goliath's challenge what he's going to do he comes every day you can go to this riverbed in israel today it's the same place the riverbed is still full of stones and on this side is the hill where the philistine army was camped over

here on this side of the bank is the place where saul's army camped we're told that that saul's army was made up of mighty brave men for samuel 14 52 but they came out every morning and every evening facing each other across the riverbed and the philistines would yell across the riverbed at the at saul's army and the israelites would yell across the army at the philistine army every morning and every evening that's the way the battle of the valley of ela was fought for forty days and after the shouting and the insults and the

swearing across the riverbed took place goliath this great giant of a man would walk into the riverbed closer to saul's army and he would shake his fist and he would defy the king of israel and he would defy the army of the king of israel and he would defy the god of israel and he would shout and swear and and insult and that's the way the battle was raged over here on the this side was saul's army not one single of the mighty valiant men ever drew the sword out of its scabbard not one of

them put a bow an arrow in their bow and shot it across the river they stood there and yelled at each other kind of reminds you a lot of the fighting we hear doesn't it i hear it in homes i hear it between husbands and wives i hear it between parents and children stopped at a grocery store the other day and mother was stopping on the outside of the grocery store where the lotto tickets were sold and the little child in the basket was trying to get mother's attention and just as i walked by i

heard the mother say oh just shut up oh it's amazing we talk about each other we just fight each other like israelites and philistines don't we that's the way the battle was going on saul's army was paralyzed and it didn't matter that saul had offered these mighty inducements to the soldiers if anybody went out there and fought goliath and won the battle saul was going to give him great wealth secondly he was going to give one of his daughters to the soldier in marriage we don't know which daughter it was we presume it was an

inducement don't know what the daughter was like but maybe saul was trying to get rid of her and all the soldiers knew that i don't know but you'd think that marrying into the king's family would be a wonderful thing and then thirdly he would exempt the king would exempt the soldier's family from taxes for the rest of his life i don't know about you but in america that would have been people would down there fighting all the time would have been a great thing to do but they were paralyzed they stood on the opposite bank

shouting and it's just at that moment when david arrives with the food from bethlehem he comes he leaves the provisions with a supply sergeant he goes down to the riverbank and the first thing he hears is goliath shouting at saul's army and defying the king and blaspheming the god of israel and immediately david begins to ask who's going to go down there and fight this man who's doing this why aren't you all jumping to the chance isn't saul going to give something to the people that are going to do it why aren't you fighting and

you remember the oldest brother the response that he gives they begin to quarrel instead of encourage each other and the other david says can't i even talk and then he turns and he talks to somebody else asks the same question why aren't you going down there and fighting and they give him the same kind of answer and the quarreling begins i just was thinking and reading this story the last couple days about the consistent results that happens when we tell other people that they should be fighting particular battles instead of going down ourselves and fighting

our battles it's always the same isn't it and yet how many of us are tempted to talk to other people about their battles and what they should fight of course it's a great thing to encourage people when they're fighting and they've invited you into the having the encouragement but many of us think that our role in life especially in the christian life is to tell other people what battles they ought to be fighting and the result is always the same then we've got the episode in this chapter about trying to fight in saul's armor and

all the implications that it has for us david did his best to walk out of saul's tent with saul's armor on it was probably the best armor in the camp of israel but it didn't work for david because they were different sizes and my friends it's exactly the same for us we all must fight our battles and our own armor we can't do it in each other's armor because you have conquered a temptation in a particular way does not mean that your neighbor can conquer the temptation the same way that you conquered it perhaps one

day in your life you were a heavy smoker and god moved in your life in strange and mysterious ways and one day you woke up and you no longer had a desire to smoke that does not mean that every smoker is going to have the overcoming experience exactly the same way some people struggle with temptations like that addictions like that for years and years and years we don't know your makeup and their makeup are probably different some of us are addictive personalities some of us aren't there may be other things in their life that we

don't know anything about that's predisposing them we can't fight the battle in each other's army armor we have to fight in the armor that god gives us and in david's case it was an amazing thing that god gave him he got off of the army of the king he took it off he went down into the riverbank and and we begin to see the focal point of this story as david reaches down and he picks up five little stones and he approaches the giant goliath with just these five stones and a slingshot it is significant

that over and over again we are told that david is just a boy at the beginning of the chapter with the little boy out in the in the watching the sheep when saul is talking to david and david says i can't go on this saul calls him just a child just a boy and then we see goliath who looks down at david and sees that he's only a boy ruddy and handsome but just a boy and goliath despised him verse 43 he said to david am i a dog that you come in me with sticks

and the philistines curse david by his gods come here goliath said and i'll give your flesh to the birds of the air and to the beasts of the field it is significant that we know that he is just a boy facing this man that the king of israel has said has been a fighting man since the time he was a child look at the size of his armor look at the the length of his spear and the length of his javelin it's all there to show the contrast between goliath and how david approaches this particular

battle we must always remember that the bible asked us to present at this battle the evidence of what we have to win the battle in david's hand were five rocks and he holds the rocks up for everyone in the world to see for you and me in this tent this morning to see he faces the entire army of the philistines and the giant of their champion that was standing in front of them and he holds up his hands and in effect he says this is all we have to defeat the philistine army a small handful

of rocks in other words we do not have the might that it takes to do this over and over again it's the same story gideon and his 300 holding up torches and blowing trumpets is not a story about what god can do with 300 people it's the impossibility of 300 men fighting the battle that was set before gideon with simply torches and trumpets you can't do it uh jonathan and the armor bear crawling up the escarpment to fight the philistines is not a story about what god can do with mighty jonathan and his armor bearer

it is of the impossibility of fighting such a battle jehoshaphat takes his choir out to meet the enemy it's not a story of what god can do with a good choir it is the story that we have no might against this great company that comes against us look it up in second chronicles verse chapter 20. we have no might against this great company that comes against us we don't even know what to do but our eyes are on you that's jehoshaphat's message it's gideon's message it's david's message in the riverbank all we've got is these

stones and david knew it just as well as he knew that it was the lord that delivered the delivered him from the bear and the lion look what he says verse 45 you come against me with a sword and a spear and the javelin but i come against you in the name of the lord almighty the god of the armies of israel whom you have defied verse 46 today the whole world will know that there is a god in israel and all those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that

the lord saves for the battle is the lord's and he will give you into our hands you see what the message is the hero the story is god and the salvation implication is exactly the same this is the way that god fights the salvation battle not with sword and spirit not with anything we can do all we have in our hands is five little stones we don't win heaven with five rocks but everybody will know today when this battle is over that that's not the way god saves he is the one that delivers our enemy

and so the battle is engaged and just like that it's over it takes no time at all there is goliath the champion of the philistines lying dead in front of the philistine army and in front of the army of saul and david stands over the conquered foe having just repeated those marvelous words everyone here will know that it's god who delivers and he turns around because there's a rumbling on the bank where all of saul's army is standing as people suddenly draw their swords and they place the arrows in their bows and they begin to

shout not insults across the army across the river to the philistine army they began to shout we've won we've won we've won now if i had been david i would have turned around looked at the army of saul put my hands on my hips and said what do you mean you've won what have you been doing for 40 days i'm the one who's down here facing the giant i won what do you mean you've won but that's not what happened because i believe david knew the importance of what he was doing and i believe with

all my heart that david is is a foreshadowing of what jesus would do in the dry riverbed of this earth wading into battle against the champion that comes against us while you and i have stood here getting defeated day after day after day trying to manage to shout about the enemy but not engaging in warfare and not winning many battles and suddenly the enemy is dead lying in the riverbed jesus standing over the conquered foe and you and i standing on the riverbed beginning to swell the shout we've won we've won we've won and jesus

looks at us and says exactly the point i came here to beat the enemy to defeat him so that you might have the victory and then an interesting post script to the story in first samuel 17 the bible says that saul's army crossed the riverbank and pursued the philistines all the way back to the border of their country it is to the people who have been given the victory that we can expect that they will pursue the enemy and how many times we get it backwards how many times we say to our children go out

today and fight the enemy pursue the enemy all the way back to their to their country go ahead and fight the battles all the way back day after day fight the battle and we don't give them the victory to begin with the bible's way is to give us the victory and then pursue the enemy see the difference try to pursue the enemy without the victory and you'll be defeated try to pursue the enemy and win the battles without being given the victory and you'll be overcome over and over again but accept the victory from the

hand of our champion and then we pursue the enemy every time and win the battle maybe our experience today to pursue the enemy because we've accepted the victory from the hand of our champion maybe our experience today to hold up the rocks of our own life and say this is all i have it will not win the victory by itself all we have in our hand just rocks but jesus has done dividing for us he's won the victory he delivers the enemy and gives us the victory father thank you for that victory this morning thank

you that we are your children we have learned the lesson through the stories that you've left for us that we only are victorious when you have won the battle and given us the victory what uh what a wonderful armor we have been given what a wonderful victory and we go through the rest of this day in this place thankful that we can shout the victory has been won because you've given it to us we praise you now for that in jesus name amen you