Too Big to Miss

1 Samuel 17:41-51

January 3, 2021 • Mount Pleasant UMC

Well, Christmas is over, the new year has come and we’re finally done with 2020. A couple of versions of a COVID vaccine have been introduced, some folks are beginning to get vaccinated, and maybe we’ll see live being to get back to “normal.” Whatever that is! Do we even remember what “normal” looks like? Of course, being back in our worship center gives us some semblance of “normal,” but “normal” doesn’t include face masks, so maybe we’re not that close to it after all. I have to tell you: last year at this time, I stood before you, full of optimism and hope. For some reason, for me anyway, 2020 had this sense of being a restart, a new beginning. There had been some difficult times in 2019 for us, and I was sure this new year would bring so many good things. As we now know, I couldn’t have been more wrong. And neither could you. None of us saw what was coming. So we stand now at the beginning of 2021—and what are we feeling? When the new 2021 calendar arrived in the office, I was hesitant to put it up on the wall, and when I finally did, I was hesitant to write anything on it—because pretty much everything I wrote on the 2020 calendar got cancelled. So I’ll be honest: as we stand at the beginning of a new year, my feelings are all jumbled. Hope, optimism, hesitation, anticipation, wondering…and fear. Yes, fear. But I’m willing to bet I’m not the only one.

I do know this: God is still faithful, and the same God who has walked us through this year will walk us through whatever 2021 brings. While maybe we can’t trust the people, the institutions or the leadership around us, we can trust the God who reigns over it all. So this morning, in a few minutes, we’re going to commit this new year to that God by sharing in our annual covenant service. But before we get to that, I also want to kick off a short sermon series called “#thestruggleisreal,” and we’re going to focus specifically on the struggle we have with fear in the new year. When this pandemic began, almost a year ago (depending on how you count it), I reminded you often that faith triumphs over fear, and for the next couple of weeks we’re going to talk again about how that is true. The next two Sundays we’ll look at words about fear in the New Testament, but this morning I want to start with a story that is probably familiar to all of us, so familiar maybe that we forget how much fear had to surround the whole event. I want us to begin this morning by facing the giants in our lives just like David faced a literal giant named Goliath.

David, as you probably know, becomes a significant figure in the Old Testament; he becomes the greatest king Israel ever knew. But at this point in his story, he is just a shepherd boy. He’s the runt of the litter, the youngest son out of eight boys, a nobody from the nowhere town of Bethlehem. He got the job of taking care of the family’s flocks, so he probably spent a lot of his time away from home, out in the wilderness. Shepherds had an annual rhythm; they knew where to go during each part of the year to find water and grass, something that is not plentiful in the desert surrounding Bethlehem and Jerusalem. No one expected David to amount to much of anything, so we can understand why they are shocked when, in the chapter just before this, the prophet Samuel shows up and says one of the eight boys will be Israel’s next king. Lo and behold, it turns out God has chosen the runt, David, to be the king. I’m always surprised when I read this that, after Samuel anoints David and proclaims him to be the next king, life seems to just go on as it always had. What? Did no one hear what Samuel said? Apparently, they either didn’t hear or didn’t believe it. David does go to work for the current king, Saul, for a time, but Saul doesn’t seem to notice anything special about him.

So, in the story we read this morning, David has come to the battlefield—not as a soldier, but as a sort of pack mule. He’s come to bring supplies. Three of his older brothers had volunteered in the war against the Philistines, so they were with King Saul on the battlefield in the Valley of Elah. David is sent to bring bread, cheese and roasted grain to those on the battlefield, and to find out for his father how everyone is doing (16:1-19). When David arrives, though, he quickly forgets about the food because he’s appalled at what he sees. You see, the Philistines had come up with a different way of deciding the outcome of this battle. Rather than both sides killing each other until no one is left, the Philistines had proposed that each side bring out their strongest warrior and the two of them would fight. The loser’s side would become the servants of the winner’s side. So the Philistines make their challenge: send out your best warrior. And they send theirs out, a man whose name has become synonymous with “giant.” His name is Goliath.

It’s hard to picture what he must have looked like. The Bible tells us he was “six cubits and a span” (17:4). My footnotes say that’s about nine feet nine inches—so almost two Cathys. Add to that his strength; 1 Samuel says he wore armor that weighed about 126 pounds—and that was just on his torso. He also wore protection on his head and legs, and carried a javelin and a spear. The spear point itself weighed over 15 pounds, and on top of all of that, as if his size wasn’t intimidating enough, he had a shield bearer that went ahead of him. Goliath is tall, strong and well protected (cf. Baldwin, 1 & 2 Samuel [Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries], pgs. 125-126). Of course, Saul, the Israelite king, was no slouch. He is described as being “a head taller than any of the others” (10:23), and he had armor that was quite extensive and heavy itself. So the Philistines probably expected the king himself would be the one to take on their champion. But Saul is hiding in the tents, just like his soldiers. He’s afraid of the giant. The Bible says he is “dismayed and terrified” (17:11). That’s what upsets David. This little runt, who is not a trained soldier, comes into the camp, hears Goliath cursing Israel and her God, learns this has been going on for forty days (17:16), and says, “Are you going to let him get away with that?”

Sometimes taunts like that are meant to be hurtful. Other times it’s exactly what you need to hear; David’s question is meant in the latter way. Why are you still sitting here, Saul? Why hasn’t someone answered the challenge this giant is giving? Well, if they won’t move, David will. Even though his brothers are ashamed of him, David’s determined that no one will mock God or Israel while he’s around. Even when King Saul protests, David insists he is more than able to take on this giant. “The Lord who rescued me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will rescue me from the hand of this Philistine” (17:37). After one awkward attempt to put David in Saul’s armor (sort of like trying to put an adult’s clothes on a toddler), Saul gives in. Even if David loses, he supposes, they won’t be any worse off. Sure, they’ll be slaves to the Philistines, but, you know…at least it will be over.

And that’s when we find David kneeling down by the brook. He’s testing stones, checking their weight, their balance. He’s vulnerable, unprotected. There’s nothing to stop Goliath from killing him right then and there, except it seems that Goliath is amused by David. “Am I a dog,” he asks, “that you come at me with sticks?” (17:43). No, David doesn’t see Goliath as a dog. He sees him as someone who is on the wrong side of God. He will not allow this man, who worships an idol, to slander the living God. So he carefully selects five smooth stones, and then he stands up and faces Goliath. “The battle is the Lord’s,” David says, “and he will give all of you into our hands” (17:47).

That is what we most forget when we face giants. Oh, I know we’ve not faced men ten feet tall. Our giants are much more commonplace. Cancer. Joblessness. Family struggles. Grief. Divorce. Loneliness. Betrayal. Debt. Foreclosure. Death. The list could on and on. Or if we’ve not faced them, we’ve feared them. And while they may be common, they are no less threatening. They whisper, “God can’t really get out of this. God isn’t listening to you. Look at you—all those years of going to church and serving on committees and putting money in the offering plate and see where it's gotten you. God has abandoned you. No one loves you.” Maybe they do more than whisper. Maybe they stand on the hillside and shout at you. Maybe the voices never quit. You even hear them in your sleep. And you know they are false. You know they lie, and yet they are so insistent, so repetitive, that it’s easy to begin to believe them. They seem so much louder than the still, small voice of the one, true God. You know Goliath; he’s frightened you for many years and he’s convinced you that you don’t have the weapons you need to defeat him. In David’s case, the same sort of voices that treated Goliath as important and undefeatable also treated David as insignificant. His own family is telling him he can’t win. After forty days of listening to Goliath’s voice, they’ve begun to believe him. His truth has become their truth, but that doesn’t make it the real truth. As Eugene Peterson puts it, “The moment we permit evil to control our imaginations, dictate the way we think, and shape our responses, we at the same time become incapable of seeing the good and the true and the beautiful” (Leap Over a Wall, pg. 39). And so David kneels at the brook, looking not for bigger weapons, but for five smooth stones.

Last year, we lost the actor Chadwick Boseman, a man a deep but quiet faith. I first became aware of Boseman in the film 42, which tells the story of baseball player Jackie Robinson. Robinson was the first African-American to play in major league baseball, and he faced a huge giant in his time called racism. But his manager, Branch Rickey, was motivated by his faith in God to bring Robinson up into the big leagues, to make a difference for generations to come. Together, they faced Goliath—multiple Goliaths—as they sought to end discrimination in baseball. There are many great scenes in the film, but this scene probably best sums up the giant they faced.

(There is some mild language in this movie clip.)

The rest of David’s story is well-known, and, oddly enough, is told in rather quick fashion considering all the build up in the story thus far. David goes out, puts one stone in his sling and hurls it toward Goliath. This would have not been a slingshot like you might have played with as a child. The first time I was in Israel, a man in the town of Bethany had a sling that was like the one David would have used and he demonstrated how it worked by putting a stone in it, swinging it around a couple of times, then letting one end of the sling go. The stone went flying a long distance over the houses of Bethany. I wouldn’t have wanted to be where it landed! The man smiled at us as we watched it go and said, “My mother-in-law lives over there.” So David hurls one stone at his enemy. Everyone else thought this enemy was too big to take on, too intimidating, too scary. But David saw this enemy, this giant as being “too big to miss.” Now, some commentators want to downplay what happens here. The sling, they say, would have allowed David to operate quite a distance away, outside the range of Goliath’s weapons, and, they say, David somehow managed to hit the only vulnerable spot in Goliath’s armor—his forehead (cf. Baldwin 128). Some commentaries want to make it all about David’s skill. And while he was undoubtedly very skilled, and all of that may be true, it misses the main point of the story: David is not fighting for himself or even really for Israel. David is taking on the giant so that he can defend God’s name, God’s reputation. He believes no one should be allowed to speak ill of the God who has walked with him from early in his life. It’s his faith in God that gives David the strength to overcome his fear, confront the giant and kill him. It’s a story that is so well-known that we often hear it used to describe sports teams who win over bigger opponents, or politicians who beat the odds. But I want to ask this question: when did David win? Was it when Goliath died or was it way before that?

David won when he recognized what was really going on here, that this wasn’t a physical battle so much as a spiritual battle. Israel had forgotten God. The king had forgotten God. Fear can only threaten us when we forget who our God is, so David won when he helped Israel remember God. Israel had forgotten who they were, and that’s the only way the Philistines could threaten them. They had put their trust in the world’s way of doing things, in the world’s weapons. But David knew another way. That’s why he was by the brook, down on his knees, refusing to use weapons that the world thought were appropriate. David’s looking for five smooth stones because he needed something authentic to who he was and who God called him to be (Peterson 42).

When I was younger, the giant that most threatened me was fear—specifically, fear of death. Not my own; it was more a fear of being left alone. I don’t know what triggered it, or even exactly when it started. But I remember it would sometimes take over my whole thought process. Somehow I got it in my head as a kid that if, before I went to bed, I told my parents, “I’ll see you in the morning,” then nothing bad would happen to me or them during the night. And that fear, that giant, dogged me for a long time. The giant laughed at me, threatening to be my undoing, telling me, “You don’t have any real faith! A real Christian wouldn’t struggle with this!” And I was convinced of that for a long time. Like Saul’s men hiding in the tents, I spent a lot of energy—emotional and spiritual energy—fighting the giant without ever really facing it. There were two things that finally brought me peace. One was studying the Bible and learning better theology than I had taken from Sunday School and Christian movies. And the other was the same thing that sustained David. Like David, I needed to spend some time kneeling.

David pulls five smooth stones out of the water, but he only needs one.  When he stands up, he’s ready to face Goliath. “You come against me with sword and spear and javelin,” he says, “but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the Lord will deliver you into my hands” (17:45-46). While David was kneeling at the brook, he was praying, asking God for the strength to stand up for what was right. And that’s why, there by the brook, David won the battle. Whether he lived or died (though he was pretty sure he would live), it didn’t matter. He was, in that moment on his knees, in the presence of God, the person God made him to be.

You see, when the giants come after us, we really have only two choices: fear or faith. The one “stone” we need is not summoning up within ourselves some faith (as the self-help gurus would tell us). No, the one “stone” we need is prayer, because that’s what connects us to the God who is bigger than any giant that will come our way (cf. Lucado, Facing Your Giants, pg. 168). Paul says, “Pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying” (Ephesians 6:18). We have to face the giant on our knees; no one else can defeat our giant for us. A counselor can’t, a pastor can’t, a good friend can’t. They can help, but they can’t do it for us. We have to face our own giants on your knees. As Eugene Peterson puts it, “Every person learns the way of faith freshly or not at all” (43). In this new year, will we face the giants and live our lives on our knees? Will we be shaped by our fear of Goliath or our faith in God? One of the big themes of the Bible is that God delights to turn the odds upside down (Goldingay 84). Over and over again, the one who shouldn’t win does and the one who is the “least of these” becomes the greatest. The biggest example of this, the pinnacle of God’s work, is when Jesus was crucified. To the world, it was a shameful death. To the world, it was the end. Death was the end. The rulers and powers of this world had finally silenced this one who threatened them so much, and when the stone was sealed in front of his tomb, there were those who believed it was done. He was done. They wouldn’t be bothered by Jesus anymore. But God takes those odds and turns them around. Paul, in his letter to the Corinthians, put it this way: “God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong” (1 Corinthians 1:27; cf. Arnold, NIV Application Commentary: 1 & 2 Samuel, pg. 264). Before too long, the shepherd boy who was kneeling by the brook is standing over the giant who was shouting. The giant is dead, and God is not. We have only two choices in the face of posturing giants: fear or faith.

As we head into the new year, you may find yourself facing your giant again and again. I prayed and prayed and prayed for a long time before I was able to defeat the giant that had followed me since I was young. And there are still times when he peeks his head around the corner, but I’m holding on to the fact that my God is bigger than the giants, and that there is no evil he can’t defeat. But that assurance has only come with a long period of prayer and a lot of patience and perseverance. This morning, though, we’re going to start by renewing our covenant with God and reminding ourselves both who he is and who we are. This is something those of us in the Methodist tradition have done for centuries, usually at the beginning of a new year. We need reminders like this, because we are forgetful people. We don’t mean to; we just get wrapped up in so many other things and that’s when the giants know they can scare us. Fear creeps in. So we need to be reminded, we need to remember who God is and who we are. To that end, then, I invite you to join me as we renew our covenant with the God who conquers all fear. The responses you need will be on the screen.