Well, hey everybody, I'm Adam Schell, the pastor of Melbourne Heights, and welcome to our sermon podcast. And I just want to start out by thanking you for spending part of your day with us. And if you're blessed during our time together today, let me invite you to come and worship with us live on Sunday mornings at 10.30 a.m. Eastern Time.
You can worship with us live on our church website at mhbclouisville.com slash live. Or if you're in the Louisville, Kentucky area, we would love to have you come and join us in person. With that, let's get right into this episode's sermon. We started a series of sermons called Lessons from David.
And in this series, we are taking a look at different events in David's life to see what they can teach us about how we can be thankful in all circumstances. But I don't really think that you can preach a series of sermons where you're talking about different events from David's life without talking about one particular story. And that's because this story is without a doubt the most well-known story about King David, even though it took place before he was king. So today we're going to be talking about that story.
We're going to be talking about David and Goliath. And for most of us, we were first introduced to the story of David and Goliath when we were just kids. So depending on how old you are, you may have heard this story for the very first time and see it playing out right before your eyes in a Sunday school class when you were growing up when the teacher told it using an old school flannel board. If you're a little bit younger than that, you may have been exposed to the story of David and Goliath for the very first time through an episode of Veggie Tales, where David was played by an asparagus and Goliath was a giant pickle.
But regardless of when you were at first exposed to the story of David and Goliath, we've all probably heard this story more times than we can remember. But even though we have heard this story more times than we can probably remember, it's still a story that's well worth revisiting because of what it can continue to teach us today. And today I want us to think about what the story of David and Goliath can teach us about being thankful in the face of danger. So to get started, let's just kind of recap the story of David and Goliath.
And this story begins when Israel's greatest enemy, their arch nemesis, the Philistines, go marching into a place called the Valley of Elah to battle against Israel's army. So you have Israel's army on one hill and the Philistine army on another hill, and they've got the Valley of Elah that's running in between them. But before Israel's army and the Philistine army come rushing down into the Valley of Elah to start fighting with each other, something different happens. The biggest, the meanest, the baddest, the scariest warrior in the Philistine army.
A guy named Goliath comes walking down into the Valley of Elah, and he challenges Israel's army to send someone down to fight him one-on-one. This wasn't uncommon in antiquity where people would want to fight one-on-one, your greatest warrior versus our greatest warrior, and let that battle determine who's going to win the fight without worrying about all the rest of the bloodshed. But let's just say that no one in Israel's army was very excited about going down to face the biggest, the baddest, the meanest, the scariest warrior in the Philistine army because that warrior, Goliath, was about nine feet tall. He carried armor, wore armor, that weighed 125 pounds, which is like packing a teenager around on your back.
He carried a spear, and the tip of the spear was made out of iron, and the iron tip of that spear alone weighed 15 pounds. So it's not surprising that nobody in Israel's army wanted to come down and face Goliath, because he was this massive mountain of a man, and he was carrying weapons that would look more at place on a battleship today than they did on a battlefield a few thousand years ago. But even though nobody in Israel's army wanted to come down and face Goliath, he didn't stop challenging them. For 40 days, he continued to walk down into the Valley of Elah, insulting the people of Israel, trying to get them to send someone down to fight him.
But seemingly no one in all of Israel wanted to face Goliath. That is until David shows up on the scene. Well, what you have to remember in the story is that David is not a soldier. David is a shepherd boy who spent most of his time out watching over his father's flock.
So he's not a trained soldier, and he is way too young to be showing up on a battlefield. The only reason that David is down in the Valley of Elah at all instead of being out watching over his father's flocks is because David's dad, a guy named Jesse, sent David to the Valley of Elah to check on David's older brothers, who were old enough to be in Israel's army. But when David arrives in the Valley of Elah, he can't help but hear these giant-sized insults that Goliath is keeping on the people of Israel. And David just doesn't get it.
He can't figure out how anyone could possibly have the audacity to insult the army of the living Lord the way that Goliath was. So David started asking the soldiers around him, started saying, who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he can get away with insulting the army of the living God? Well, when David's oldest brother named Elah heard what David was saying, he thought that David was just trying to stir things up. So he got mad at David, and he accused David of wanting to show up simply to watch a battle take place like he was watching some kind of UFC fight today.
But David doesn't back down from Elah, but he says, no, that's not what this is about. So he starts asking another question instead. He says, what's going to be done for the person who defeats this Philistine, who kills this Philistine, and removes this insult from Israel? At that point, everyone around seemed to realize that David was serious about whatever he was asking and trying to say.
So word gets to Israel's king at the time, King Saul, and King Saul has David brought to him. And as David is standing before Israel's king, David looks at Saul, and he says, I'll go and fight Goliath. And Saul's like, hold up a minute here, David. You do realize that you're just a kid, right?
Goliath is a warrior who's been fighting in battle since before you were born. You don't have any business going out on the battlefield to fight him. So David looked back at Saul and he told him, the Lord who rescued me from the power of both lions and bears will rescue me from the power of this Philistine. So Saul relents, which tells us a lot about who Saul was, isn't the kind of king he was, that he was willing to let a young teenager go out and face Goliath in battle.
But Saul was at least a decent enough guy to realize that he couldn't send David out to battle empty-handed. So Saul offers to let David go out and wear Saul's own armor and carry Saul's own sword. But what happens next would probably look more appropriate in an episode of VeggieTales than it does in a war story. You see, when David goes to put on Saul's armor, none of it fits.
And David realizes that he can't go out to battle with armor slipping down around his ankles while he's trying to fight a warrior like Goliath. So he leaves Saul's armor behind, he doesn't take the king's sword, and instead he goes out to battle. This massive mountain of a man, with nothing but a slingshot and a few small stones. And you can probably imagine how Goliath responded when he saw David walking down into the valley of Elah.
But I don't want you to imagine. Instead, let me show you how Goliath responds when he sees David coming down. In 1 Samuel 17, verse 42, this is what we're told. We're told, when the Philistine looked David over, he sneered at David, because he was just a boy, reddish brown and good-looking.
The Philistine asked David, am I some sort of dog that you come at me with six? And he cursed David by his gods. Come here, he said to David, and I'll feed your flesh to the wild birds and the wild animals. But David still doesn't back down as we keep reading in 1 Samuel 17.
We're told, but David told the Philistine, you are coming against me with sword and spear and scimitar, but I come against you in the name of the Lord of heavenly forces, the God of Israel's army, the one you've insulted. Today, the Lord will hand you over to me. And all those gathered here will know that the Lord doesn't say by means of sword and spear. The Lord owns this war, and he will hand all of you over to us.
And we all know what happens next in the story. We all know that David defeats Goliath. But because we know how this story ends, most of us never really stop to think about just how dangerous this situation was for David. So let's take a second, let's talk about, let's think about how dangerous the situation would have been for David.
And when the situation unfolds, David is just a boy, as Goliath calls him. Maybe a young teenager, at best. He has absolutely no military training whatsoever, and he is about to walk into a battlefield to fight against a warrior who has been killing people since before David was born. It's hard to imagine many situations that are much more dangerous than that.
But David still walks down into the Valley of Elah with confidence. David still goes down and faces Goliath, even though Goliath is nine feet tall and carries weapons that are probably about as heavy as David was. David goes down, and he faces this giant, even when no one else in all of Israel was willing to. How did he do that?
How was David able to walk down into the Valley of Elah to face this giant that no one else wanted to face? How was he able to go down there with confidence, knowing that somehow, someway, he could defeat Goliath? How, or where, does this kind of courage come from? Where does that kind of courage come from?
Because I think all of us would like to have that kind of courage. And believe it or not, David actually answers that question for us, a story that we just recapped. Because do you remember what David said to King Saul when Saul told him that he was just a boy that he was too young to go out and fight? A giant like Goliath.
David said to Saul, The Lord who rescued me from the power of both lions and bears will rescue me from the power of this Philistine. But when most of us hear David say that in this passage, we just kind of skip over it because we don't really understand what David is talking about when David talks about being rescued from the power of lions and bears. And we don't understand that because none of us were shepherds in ancient Israel. So we don't understand what it was like to be a shepherd in ancient Israel.
Most of us, when we think of ancient Israel, we don't think of it as being a place where there were lions and bears. So let's take a minute. Let's talk about what it was like to be a shepherd in ancient Israel. And the first thing you have to understand about what it was like to be a shepherd in ancient Israel is it was very different being a shepherd then versus raising livestock in America today.
Because if you're raising livestock in America today, whether that is on a farm or a ranch, you typically have some kind of fence that goes around your entire property that keeps your animals inside. And somewhere on your property, you're going to have some source of water, whether it's a pond or a creek or just watering troughs that your animals can go and get a drink. You're going to have plenty of fields where they can go out and graze. And if you don't, you're going to have feeding troughs where your animals can eat.
But that's not how it was for shepherds in ancient Israel. It was pretty common for shepherds in ancient Israel, which would have included David, who had to lead their flocks miles away from their homes on a regular basis to find places where their flocks could graze and find places where there was water for them to drink. And that in and of itself would have been an exhausting job for anybody. I mean, think about what it would have been like trying to get a flock of sheep that had dozens if not hundreds of animals in it to go anywhere at all, let alone on a journey that took you several miles away from your home on a regular basis.
It would have warned any of us out. But when David finally led his flocks to a place where there was plenty of grass for the sheep to eat and plenty of water for them to drink, it's not like he could just kick back and relax. He couldn't go and find a nice shady spot underneath a tree and start scrolling on his phone or trying to take a nap. Because remember, there's no fence around this property that would keep his animals in but also keep the predators out.
So David had to be on constant lookout for any threats against his animals. And yes, some of those threats against his animals would have been lions and bears. So David had to constantly be aware of these animals. And if these predators showed up, well, it's not like David could just cry wolf or lion or bear and hope that somebody else was going to come in and rescue him and help him out of the situation.
Remember, he's miles away from home. If he starts shouting, nobody's going to hear him. So the only thing standing between David's flocks and these predators if a predator decides to attack is David. And that means that David would have had to either scare these predators off, fin them off or fight them off using whatever he had on hand.
And what would he have had on hand? A staff, a slingshot, maybe a knife. And these were the things that David would have to face down a 400-pound lion or an 800-pound bear. So I think it's pretty safe for us to say that in David's time as a shepherd, there were multiple occasions where he had to put his life on the line to protect his sheep.
And that means that there would have been plenty of times, this is when David was working as a shepherd, that he would have found himself in pretty scary situations. There would have been plenty of times when he saw one of these lions or bears working nearby when David wasn't sure if he was actually going to be able to scare them off or fight them off. And there were probably at least a few times when David was fighting one of these predators that he wasn't sure if he'd be able to win. He didn't know if he'd ever be able to go back home again.
But it was in those moments, in those moments when David felt as helpless as one of his sheep that he realized he had a shepherd watching over him. It's when David felt as helpless as one of his sheep that he realized he had a shepherd watching over him. That's why David could walk down into the valley of Elah with so much confidence. That's why David could look at a nine-foot-tall giant and not be terrified.
David could do that because he knew that God was his shepherd. And that realization that God is his shepherd doesn't just help David stand up to Goliath. It may have also led him to write one of the most well-known passages in the entire Bible. And that's Psalm 23.
And if you've got a Bible closed by or a Bible app on your phone, I want us to look at this passage together. So if you would, go ahead and open it to Psalm 23. But as you're finding that, I want you to realize that this is a psalm that is written from the perspective of a shepherd, someone who knows and understands what that means. And I'll be honest, we don't know for sure if David actually wrote this psalm or if it was just attributed to him by another author who was writing while David was king of Israel, which would have commonly happened.
But we can still hear that shepherd vibe coming through this passage. So let's take a look at Psalm 23 together. We're going to start reading in verse 1. Here's what the psalmist writes.
He writes, The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters.
He restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name's sake. And even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil. My cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long.
Now, I said this second ago, this is one of the most well-known passages in the entire Bible. And one of the reasons why so many of us know this passage so well is that the 23rd psalm gets read at a whole lot of funerals. I know, because I read it a whole lot of the funerals, so I do. But because we hear the psalm read at so many different funerals, we think that the psalm is about death and dying.
And even though some translations of Psalm 23 will talk about walking through the valley of the shadow of death, the psalm isn't really about death and dying. What Psalm 23 is really about is living with confidence, even in the face of danger. And that's something that we can do. We can live in the face of danger with confidence for the same reason that David's sheep were able to go out and confidently graze in fields and drink water, even if there were lions or bears or other predators lurking close by.
And David's sheep could live with that kind of confidence because David's sheep were protected by their shepherd. And we can have that same kind of confidence because we are protected by our shepherd. David's sheep... sheep were protected by their shepherd, and we are protected by our shepherd.
And Psalm 23 tells us that because God is our shepherd, we don't have to be afraid. Let's look at verse 4 again. Verse 4 of Psalm 23 tells us, even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. Now notice what this psalm says and what it doesn't say, because this verse doesn't tell us that you will never face danger.
This verse doesn't tell you that you will never walk through a dark valley. But what this verse does tell us is that when we face danger, when we walk through dark valleys, that we're not alone. God is with us. That's where David's confidence comes from.
David's confidence doesn't come from his own abilities. David's not able to walk down into the valley of Elah to fight against the lions. He's not able to stand up to these lions or bears or whatever other predators when he's been out watching over his sheep because of his own scales, his own talent, his own bravery. No, David had that confidence because he knew that God was present in his life.
And that's something that he learned over and over again as a shepherd. Every time that he had to face down a lion or a bear, every time he had to go out and rescue one of his sheep, David learned that he could trust that God would be with him. But what does all this have to do with being thankful? I mean, I told you at the beginning of the sermon that that's why we're looking at these different stories and events from David's life.
I told you, we're looking at these events to see what they can teach us about how we can be thankful no matter what situations or circumstances we find ourselves in. So what is the story of David and Goliath? What does the 23rd Psalm teach us about being thankful? These passages teach us that no matter what giants you're facing, God is always with you.
No matter what giants you're facing, God is always with you. And that's something that we can be thankful for because we all face giants in our lives. Maybe the giant that you're facing right now is a medical diagnosis that you've received that has you terrified about what the future holds for you. Maybe the giant that you're facing right now is some financial problems that leave you wondering if you're going to be able to pay all your bills.
Maybe the giant that you're facing right now is a relationship that you have with your spouse, your partner, your parents, your kids, your co-workers, your boss. It's been broken and you don't know if it can be fixed at all. Maybe you have a different giant that you're facing altogether. But whatever giants you face in your life, there are going to be times when it seems impossible for you to defeat that giant.
No matter what giants you face in your life, there are going to be times when those giants seem too big for you to handle. But your giant isn't too big for God. Even when the giant is too big for you to face, too big for you to handle, your giant isn't too big for God. So David could walk into the Valley of Elah with confidence, not because he was brave enough to defeat Goliath, but because he knew that God was with him.
And David could be thankful in the face of mortal danger, not because the situation he was facing wasn't scary, but because he knew that his shepherd was watching over him and protecting him. And the same God who was David's shepherd is your shepherd, too. The same God who protected David from the lions and the bears that he faced is the shepherd that's watching over you. The same God who protected David when he walked down into the Valley of Elah to fight Goliath is the God who walks with you through whatever dark valleys you have to cross.
So you don't have to wait until your giant is defeated to feel thankful. You don't have to wait until you're safe on the other side of danger to express your gratitude. You can be thankful right now, even in the face of giants, because you know that God is with you. You can be thankful right now because you know that God is your shepherd.
So here's what I want to challenge you to do as we get closer to Thanksgiving this year. I want you to simply remember that God is your shepherd. When you're facing giants that seem too big to be defeated, remember that God is your shepherd. When you're walking through a dark valley and you can't seem to find your way out from it, remember that God is your shepherd.
When you're facing something that genuinely terrifies you, remember that God is your shepherd. Because David's story teaches us that our reasons for being thankful, they don't come from our own circumstances. They don't depend on whether you are facing giants right now or whether you were sleeping in green pastures. No, our reasons for being thankful depend on who God is.
And God is always with us, even when we're facing the scariest giants in our lives. So we can be thankful no matter what goes on, knowing that we're never alone, that God is always with us. Let's pray together. God, as we come to you on this moment of prayer, you know that every one of us face different giants in our lives.
Those giants may be over health issues, financial issues, relationships that we have. There may be so many other giants in our lives, God. And you know that there are times these giants are bigger. They feel bigger than even Goliath.
They feel impossible for us to defeat. They feel like they're too much for us to handle. But God, never too much for you. Our giants are never bigger than you are.
So God, help us to realize the same thing that David did, that you are our shepherd, that you are walking beside us, even in the darkest valleys, no matter what giants we may face. Let's be thankful for that. Let us be grateful for your presence beside us and not wait to express our gratitude until everything works out in the end, until we've made it to lie down in those green pastures. Help us be thankful right now, even if we are facing giants, because we're not facing them alone.
You're with us, God. Show us your presence and let us be grateful for it. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.