LIFE LESSONS
DAVID—PART I
DR. JIM DIXON
1 SAMUEL 17:32-50
JULY 13, 2003
Mythology is filled with stories about giants. From the Greek legend of the Titans to the English story of Jack and the Beanstalk to the Welsh story of Jack the Giant Killer. Of course, here in America we have our mythologies. In the lumber camps of America decades ago, stories were told about Paul Bunyan. Paul Bunyan was a giant and the story was that he dug out the Puget Sound that he might float his logs to his giant mill in the Pacific Northwest. He was said to have stripped all of the trees, cut down all of the trees, in North and South Dakota to create farmland. It was Paul Bunyan who, according to the stories, dug out the Great Lakes so he might have fresh drinking water for his giant Blue Ox whose name was Babe. Those are the stories of folklore and those are the stories of mythology.
Scientists, archeologists and anthropologists tell us there have been real giants in history. That’s what they tell us. Giants have walked the face of this earth. Scientists and archeologists have found skeletal remains of human beings who stood 9 feet tall. They have found some of these skeletal remains in the region of ancient Palestine, which is modern-day Israel.
Scientists debate as to whether these large giants had irregular pituitary glands. Did they suffer from gigantism or was there genetic makeup such that they were naturally big and tall and huge. There are some scientists who believe that there have been races of giants in human history. The Bible speaks of three races of giants. The Bible speaks of Nephilim, first mentioned in the Book of Genesis. There are some theologians who believe the Nephilim were actually the offspring of an unnatural union between angels and men.
The Bible speaks of the Rephaim. The Rephaim were giants who lived in the Valley of Rephaim, sometimes called the Valley of the Giants near the city of Jerusalem. The Bible speaks of the Animate Anakim were a race of giants sometimes called the Sons of Anahit is believed that Goliath was one of these. We don’t know a lot about Goliath. We know he was a giant. We know he stood 9 feet tall. We know his armor weighed 200 pounds. We know that the tip of his. javelin weighed 25 pounds.
I can tell you that I threw the javelin when I was in college, and later I threw the javelin for the Southern California Striders. I could not have thrown a javelin with a 25-pound tip very far. This man Goliath was huge. He was absolutely huge. He was the champion of the Philistines, and he stood in the Valley of Elah and he mocked the Jews. He was the champion of the Philistines, the great enemy of Israel, and he stood in the Valley of Elah and he mocked the Israelites. He challenged them to bring forth a champion to face him. In ancient warfare, this was a common practice for one army’s champion to meet the champion of the other army. But everyone in Israel was afraid. They were afraid. They could not go against this giant of a man who was mighty in battle, but then there came David, and David had courage. Courage is our first life lesson this morning.
God wants you to be like David. God wants you to be a person of courage. David was a young man. He approached King Saul. He said, “Let no man’s heart fail because of Goliath for your servant will go and fight this, Philistine. Saul said, “You can’t go against him to fight with him. You are but a youth and he has been a man of war from his youth. David told Saul how he had once been a shepherd for his father and how, as a shepherd, he protected the flock from lions and from bears and how he had even killed lions and bears by the hand of God. He said this Philistine would be as one of them since he had defied the armies of the Living God.
David said the Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear will deliver me from this Philistine. And Saul clothed David with his armor, but David was not used to armor. He was encumbered by it and by the weight of it and so, he cast it aside. He just took his shepherd’s garb. He took his staff and chose five smooth stones from the brook and put them in his shepherd’s bag. He took his sling in his hand and he went to meet the giant Goliath.
Goliath came toward David from the other side of the valley. When Barb and I, years ago, drove through the Valley of Elah in Israel, you could just picture the scene—how Goliath mocked David and cursed him by his gods. Goliath said, “Come to me and I will give your flesh to the birds of the air, the beasts of the field,” but David was not afraid. Incredibly, David was not afraid. He was a man of divine courage. David said, “I come to you in the name of the Lord of Hosts, the God of the Armies of Israel who you have defied. This day the Lord will deliver you into my hand and I will strike you down and I will cut off your head and I will give the dead bodies of the hosts of the Philistines to the birds of the air and the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth might know there is a God in Israel.” What amazing courage.
You come to that amazing moment when David pulls one stone out of his shepherd’s bag. He puts it in his sling and he fires it. By the will of God, surely divine providence, that stone strikes Goliath on the forehead and it sinks into his forehead. He falls on his face to the ground, dead. Of course, it is one of the most famous stories in the Bible. All can see a story of courage.
But you all who are assembled in this place today are not likely to face a giant, not a physical giant. You’re not even likely to ever have to fight a lion or a bear, so why do you need courage? Why do you need the courage of David? Well, the early church identified courage as one of the cardinal virtues, and the early church spoke of the courage of the faith. If you are a Christian today, you desperately need courage.
The early church spoke of the courage of the faith in three ways. They spoke of the courage of embrace the faith. It took courage to embrace the faith of Christ. It took courage to commit your life to Christ because in the early church, many of the people were either Romans or Jews. In many Jewish families, if you accepted Christ, you were virtually excommunicated. You might lose your job, your means of livelihood. In Roman families throughout the Roman world, Christianity at times was illegal. It took courage to embrace the faith. Of course, the early church also spoke of the courage to keep the faith. It took courage to keep the faith.
In the early church throughout the Roman Empire, there was the practice of Caesar worship. Many of the Romans late in the 1st century, during the reign of Domitian, demanded that all the people of the Empire come to a designated temple to submit to the deity of Caesar. They were told to renounce all other gods and they were told to embrace the reign of Caesar. They had to say these words: “Caesar IS Lord,” and early Christians would not do it. They would not do it, and they were incarcerated and executed and driven into caves and dens of the earth by the thousands because they would not do it. When they were brought before Roman authorities and told to say, “Caesar is Lord,” those early Christians said, “Jesus is Lord and there is no other.” Many of them died right on the spot. The consequences were great. It took courage, not only to embrace the faith, but to keep the faith. Of course, it took courage to share the faith. They spoke of the courage of the faith in this third way and that is to share the faith, to proclaim the faith.
If it was dangerous to embrace Christianity and dangerous to keep faith in Christ, how much more dangerous was it to actually go out and share openly the person of Jesus Christ and the message of the Gospel? Dangerous! It took courage. And I tell you, it takes courage today. It takes courage today to embrace Christ. It’s not politically correct to embrace Christ. It’s politically correct to believe in God, some concept of deity. It’s politically correct to believe in being nice and good, but it’s not politically correct to embrace Jesus Christ and to trust your life to Him as Savior and to receive Him as Lord and promise to follow Him. It takes courage to make that commitment to follow Christ. There can be social consequences when you make that commitment to embrace Jesus Christ. It takes courage, and it can impact relationships in dramatic ways.
It takes courage today to keep the faith as it has always taken courage. Judeo-Christian values are eroding in our time. It takes courage to keep the faith of Jesus Christ, to live by His word in a world that prefers darkness to the light. It takes courage to keep the faith. It takes courage to keep the faith through high school. It takes courage to keep the faith through college. It takes courage to keep the faith out there in the corporate world. It takes courage to keep the faith unto death, but we want to be able to say with the Apostle Paul, “I fought the good fight. I finished the race. I kept the faith.” It takes courage, and it takes courage to share your faith. It takes courage today to share your faith. It’s not politically correct to share your faith with certain views of multi-culturalism today where many cultures are viewed as sacred and each culture’s beliefs are viewed as sacred. It is viewed as arrogant and improper and intrusive for you to go and tell another person about Jesus Christ, and yet that’s what Jesus Christ commands of us. “You shall be,” Jesus said, “My witnesses.” He sends us into the whole world as His witnesses. We are called to share the faith and it takes courage.
I was reading recently about Bill Faye. I know Bill Faye. Bill Faye is an evangelist. We’ve had him two different times come and speak here at our church. An amazing thing. Bill has some incredible stories of sharing the faith. One story took place almost two years ago. It was September 9, 2001. Bill Faye was in Bellevue, Washington at the Crossroads Bible Church there. He was giving a teaching on the subject of evangelism and how to share your faith.
The next day, September 10, he flew back on American Airlines to Denver. Bill lives here in the Denver area. As he was on that flight, he was sitting down. He looked up and saw the stewardess trying to crack ice with a wine bottle. She apparently couldn’t find anything else, and she was trying to break the ice loose with a wine bottle. He was afraid that the bottle would break and she would cut herself. Bill got out of his seat and went up to the stewardess and said, “I’m afraid you’re going to hurt yourself. Let’s see if we can find something else to break this ice with.” The stewardess was deeply moved that Bill cared about her and she told him so. Bill talked with her a little bit and gave her a Christian tract that explained the Gospel, explained the person of Jesus Christ. He gave it to her and went and sat back down.
Sometime later on the flight, the stewardess came up to Bill and she said, “You know, this is the eighth time that someone has given me a Christian tract. What’s going on?” Bill said, “God wants you. God is after you.” She said, “What does God want from me?” Bill said, “God wants your life.” He wound up, by the power of the Holy Spirit, sharing with this stewardess. Right there on the plane, they prayed together and she asked Jesus into her heart and took Jesus as her Lord and Savior.
Well, you all know, the very next day September 11th, 9/11, it was that horrible day when the terrorist attack took place in New York City at the Twin Towers. That stewardess was on that American Airlines flight that first crashed into the World Trade Center. Bill looked in the newspapers in the aftermath of 9/11 and looked for the names of the passengers and the crew and he saw her name there. He felt said but there was a smile on his face; a smile on his face because he knew that this woman had eternal life and had entered into heaven itself and had begun her inheritance with Christ.
So, much is at stake. Jesus commands us to go and share our faith. He reminds us in the Parable of the Soil that as we go forth into the world, we’re going to see different kinds of people, different types of people. Jesus tells us that there are some people who have hard soil in their heart and they won’t receive the seed of the Gospel. It will not penetrate. In fact, Jesus said, “The evil one will come and snatch the seed away. These people with hard soil in their hearts won’t receive the Gospel. It will not penetrate.” He said, “You’ll find other people out there who have shallow soil in their hearts, and they will immediately receive the Word with joy but it can’t take root because their hearts have shallow soil and the Gospel never really takes root. When hard times come, they chuck the faith.”
Jesus said there’s a third type of person out there and the soil of their heart is what Jesus called “thorny soil. It’s soil that’s encumbered with weeds and with thistles. When they hear the word of the Gospel, they receive it and it takes root, but it can’t really grow because of the weeds that are growing around it and the thorns and the thistles that are growing up around it. They just choke the fruit of the Gospel because their soil is thorny, and their lives are encumbered, Jesus said, with materialism and hedonism, and it all just grows up to choke the Gospel.
There’s a lot of hard soil in the United States of America, a lot of shallow soil. There’s a lot of thorny soil, but Jesus said there’s a fourth kind of soil. He tells us this in Matthew 13 when He gives us this Parable of the Sower. He says the fourth type of soil is good soil. It receives and understands the Gospel, and it embraces the Gospel, embraces and receives the Word, and it bears fruit. “It bears fruit,” Jesus said, “30-fold, 60-fold, some people 100-fold.”
Know as you go forth and tell people about Jesus, you’re going to meet all different types of soil. Don’t be discouraged. Remember you’ve been called to demonstrate that you are the good soil and you’re bearing fruit, 30-fold, 60-fold, 100-fold. I tell you this. If we had a little more courage, if we had more courage in this congregation as a congregation of people… If we had more courage, this worship center would be jammed this morning and people would be lining the walls because we shared our faith and we were telling people about Jesus. We would be bringers if we just had the courage to invite people to church.
I think one of the great failures of the 21st century American church is the lack of courage in sharing the faith. We need courage to embrace the faith, courage to keep the faith, courage to share the faith.
We have a second life lesson more briefly this morning and that concerns generosity. David was not simply a man of courage. He was a man of great generosity. We see this in many areas of David’s life. This is a quality that is so pleasing to God when we learn generosity.
David was generous, first of all, financially. He was generous with his finances, incredibly so. You look in the Old Testament in the book of 1 Chronicles, chapter 22, and you have this incredible account of preparation for building of the Temple in Jerusalem. God had told King David that he was not allowed to build the Temple because he’d been a man of war. He’d been a man of war and he’d been involved in the shedding of blood. Therefore, he could not build the Temple, and his son Solomon would be a man of peace and he would build the Temple. But David was wanting to have some part in the building of the Temple, at least by way of preparation, and so, David decided to give. He decided to give wealth and materials for the building of the Temple though he himself could not build it.
In 1 Chronicles 22, you see David draining a good portion of his national treasury as he brings it for the building of the Temple. He brings, we are told, 100,000 talents of gold and 1 million talents of silver. It’s hard for us to imagine the amount of wealth that represented. One hundred thousand talents of gold would be equal to $10 billion today. A million talents of silver would be equal almost to $10 billion when converted from their value at that time. So, he had almost $20 billion that he was bringing from the national treasury for the Temple. Of course, it was gold and silver that was to be used in building the Temple and it was to adorn the Temple and it was to make it one of the most beautiful buildings on earth.
Bible scholars debate, “Did the kingdom of Israel have that kind of wealth? Was his conquest through war and the spoils of war able to fatten the coffers of his treasury to that extent? Or were there numerical errors in copying as the figures were passed on from generation to generation in, 1 Chronicles?” Of course, scholars debate all this and sometimes they never get around to the point. The point is, David was incredibly generous. He was generous. He longed to give to God.
You might be thinking, “Well, he gave from the national treasury. How about his own personal wealth?” That’s where you come to, 1 Chronicles, chapter 29, and you see the follow-up story. David said, “I’ve given from the national treasury. Now, I’m giving from my personal treasury, from my personal wealth, and he drained it.” He gave 3,000 talents of gold equal to $300 million, and he gave 7,000 talents of silver, equal to $60 million. Unbelievable. “He had a heart,” the Prophet Samuel told us, “after God’s own heart and he longed to give to the things of God.”
So, how about you? Are you generous? How about me? Am I generous? Do we have a heart for the things of God and do we give radically. We have some generous people in this congregation I can tell you that. We’re still in the process of receiving pledges for our atrium project. It’s an $8 million project and will serve diverse needs in ministry. Counting the money that’s come in and the money that’s been pledged, we’re really only about $2.5 million short right now. That’s amazing, given the economy we live in. We’re only $2.5 million short out of $8 million, and I believe the rest is going to come because many of you are generous, and it’s all to the glory of God. Thank God.
Our operating budget has just come to the end of its fiscal year at the end of June. We met, as a congregation, the operating budget—99.5% of what we budgeted came in. That, again, in this economic time is incredible. God bless you for your generosity. God bless all of you who are giving, not just to this church but to the causes of Christ everywhere and to all who are in need. God bless all of you who have generous hearts. For those of you who don’t, you know the life lesson this morning. At least one of the life lessons for you is to learn generosity and to see what it means to give and to understand that, “Give, and it will be given to you.” There’s a reciprocity about giving. The promise of God is upon it.
David was generous, not only financially. David was generous in other ways. He was generous not only with money but with his mercy. David was generous in mercy. God wants us to be generous in mercy.
I want you to see a little clip from the movie “David.” To understand the clip, you need to understand that King Saul was chasing David all over the countryside, seeking to snuff out his life. King Saul, in his envy and his rage and in his fear, had one consuming, driving purpose in his life, and that was to kill David. He was taking all the power of the throne to pursue and kill this young shepherd boy, this young man. Here in this clip, David encounters Saul.
Remarkably, David and his men come across Saul while he is sleeping. David’s men say to him, “One blow from that spear and Saul is dead. Order me to do it.” But David responds, “Do not do it. Who could raise his hand against the man who God anointed? The Lord will take him. His day will come to die, but not by my hand.” Saul wakes up and realizes that David could have taken his life, and David says, “Where did you hear that I ever meant you harm? This day you can see with your own eyes you were given into my hands. Some said to kill you, but I did not. I will not raise my hand against my lord king. I came this close to you, Saul. Now, you must know there is no evil in my heart towards you. I’ve not sinned against you even though you have hunted me and sought to take my life. The Lord will judge between you and me. Wickedness proceeds from the wicked, but my hand will not rise against you.”
Saul replies, “Is this your true voice, David, my son? I have sinned. Return to me, David. I’ll do you no harm because my soul is precious in your eyes tonight. God is with you. You will be king but swear to me you will not cut off my sons nor destroy the name of my house. God bless you, David. You will do great things.”
We do not completely trust the words of King Saul, but we know the words of David are true, that he would show mercy not only to King Saul but to his house in perpetuity. He was that king of a man, generous in mercy. Saul was delivered into his hands but he had pity on him and would not take his life. Mercy even to his enemies.
That’s what God is looking for in His people. People of mercy, even to our enemies. A promise is given, that as we show mercy, we receive the greater mercy. “Judgement,” the Bible says, “will be without mercy for those who have shown no mercy.” Jesus taught us to pray, “Forgive us our debts. Forgive us our sins. Forgive us our trespasses AS we forgive those who trespass against us.”
Again, there’s a certain reciprocity about generosity. When you give, whether it’s money or mercy, it comes back to you many-fold because God loves generosity. God loves generosity.
As we conclude, I want to tell you a little story that is one of my favorites. Some of you have heard it. It’s absolutely true, and I think incredible. It concerns a man named George Bolt, George C. Bolt. George Bolt was a front desk worker at a third-rate hotel in the city of Philadelphia decades ago. It was late at night because George worked the night shift.
An elderly couple came into the lobby wanting a room. It was raining outside and they were wet. The elderly couple came up to the desk and they said to George, “Could we please have a room?” George said, “I’m so sorry. There are so many conventions going on in Philadelphia that we’re just filled up. We don’t have any space. We don’t have one single room.” This elderly couple looked so despairing and so, discouraged and even afraid. George’s heart just went out to them. They said to him, “Don’t you have anything?” George Bolt said, “You know, I have a little room that is mine to use. It’s not as nice as the normal guest rooms, but I work the night shift and I don’t need it at nighttime. You can go into my room. It’s got new sheets on the bed and it’s clean. It’s not large but it’s clean. You can go and sleep in my room tonight.”
The next morning the elderly couple came back out to the desk. George was still there. They said, “Young man, you’re the kind of guy that someday we’d like to put in charge of a hotel. Someday I’m going to build a wonderful, beautiful hotel and I’m going to put you in charge of it. George said, “Thank you.” Inwardly he thought, “Wow! This guy has really flipped out!”
Months passed. George had forgotten about everything. Suddenly he got a letter from New York City. Inside the letter are round trip tickets for New York on the train. This was before airplane travel. Round trip tickets on the train. George was stunned. There was a little note. It was from this elderly man. It simply said, “Come to the corner of 5th Avenue and 34th Street. I’ve got something I want you to see.”
George wouldn’t even have gone except for the fact he had the tickets paid for and he wanted to see New York. He went to New York City and went to 5th Avenue and 34th Street. He got out of the cab. He was told to come at a particular time and he was there. The elderly couple was there. George looked up at the most beautiful hotel he’d ever seen in his life. The elderly man said, “George, this is the hotel I built for you and I want you to be the manager of this hotel.”
George said, “I don’t get it. What was your name again?” They were Mr. and Mrs. William Waldorf Astor and it was the Waldorf Astoria Hotel.
An amazing story, absolutely true. George Bolt went on to become a great manager of that hotel. I think one of the reasons I love the story is because it shows reciprocity. Life in this world doesn’t always work like that. You do a good deed; you show an act of kindness. It doesn’t always come back to you. Not in this life. But, you see, God wants you to know He’s watching. He’s watching and He sees everything, and He will bless you. He will bless you in so many ways in this life, some of which you won’t understand until you get to the next one. In the next one, He’ll give you heaven itself. But He wants you to understand that He gives mercy to the merciful, and He gives to the generous, so give and receive. Let’s close with a word of prayer.