Transcription
We had a significant moment in our family this week. Wednesday, Morden, I'm leaving our little boy, Elijah. He's six. This is Curly's and Peter Allen. And as I'm pulling up, I'm getting ready to get out, and he says, "Dad, kind of have a drop-off this morning."
Now, for those of you who don't know what that means, that means that he's basically saying, "Dad, I don't need you anymore for this part of the journey." I mean, not in so many words, but that's what I heard. My therapist tells me, "Three years, you'll be fine. You'll have moved on. It didn't hurt that much." And he said, "Dad, kind of a drop-off. You can have a drop-off." And so I pulled in, and he jumped out. There was no, no, that was because there was a little cute girl from his class who was walking on her own because he started running. And I don't know if that was the key, but I watched him, and my heart sank in that moment for a little bit. I know, thank you. There's one of you here with a heart in here. "Um, I'm damn thirsty. Dad's cut off. A drop-off." And Friday, kind of a drop-off. I don't think I'm ever gonna walk him to the door again. I had thought by the time he was here, Tina, he'd be off to college. I might still be walking him to the door, you know, the main. And I could say, and some of you, you know, that feeling. It's like, oh, and yet there's a sense of, oh, he's growing up. He's developing confidence. He's developing enough self-boldness and maturity, and whatever you want to call that, that he feels he can, uh, do that. Let her walk around the corner on his own. I told back in back, he said that she would have followed. Um, you know, in the background and just cried her eyes out. But, but we, you know, I was, there's that sense of sadness, but also relief that because I want my son to be confident. I want my son to be bold. I want my son to not be afraid of doing things because we live in a culture that breeds fear. We live in a culture that, that if you watch the news and read the newspapers, everything is around making us afraid. And so we have grown up, and our children are growing up with this sense of fear that the world is bad, the world is evil, and that we just constantly need to be careful. I don't know about you, but when I was young, I used to run the streets for hours. And I'm not saying my parents weren't doing bad parenthood. I'm just saying it was, see, we were not, you know, they knew where I was. And it was, see, if we were scared sometimes, even to let our kids out the doors, and we try to wrap them up in cotton wool and bubble wrap. And we try to, and there's things that obviously we need to shield them from, but sometimes I worry. I worry that we shield them too much from the realities of life. I worry that we, we, we try so hard to protect them that we overprotect them. I mean, there's this thing now in sports days where everyone gets a medal. Like, really? Like, you come last and you get a medal? Like, what is that teaching kids? It's teaching them that, uh, SATs gives their self-esteem. I don't think so. I think it's teaching them that competition doesn't matter. And you know what happens when they hit 10 or 20 or 25? They get out into the big bad world, and they don't know how to handle it because either everyone doesn't get a medal, right? There are people who walk all over you. And that's why we are of a culture of a generation younger than me, and particularly in certain parts of the world, that have this outraged culture. They're offended by everything because their mommies and daddies have taught them that they're always right and nobody should ever disagree with them. And therefore, anybody disagrees with them, they take them to court, or they try to get them kicked out of university, or they, there's a huge outcry. When really, what they need to do is just grow up, develop a little bit of resilience and confidence. And so that's, that's what I want to think about this morning, is, is that sense of, of boldness and courage as we face obstacles, as we face opposition, as we face problems and challenges, that we would be a people who don't run away from the giant, but like David, we run towards it. That we would be a people who develop this inner core of resilience and perseverance that enables us to stand through the storms of life which inevitably come.
Last week, we saw that there is really our fear seeing the Philistines in this valley, the Valley of Elah. And on one side, you have the Philistines, on the other side, you have the, the Israelites, God's people. And you have this peace in the middle. And for, and, and for 40 days, they have been looking at each other. And the Philistines, like I said, have always been a thorn in the back of Israel for four decades. There had been these battles and skirmishes and then things that calm down. They were people who occupied the edge of the promised land, and everyone again, they would advance into the territory where the Israelites were living in the hills, and there would be battles, and then they would withdraw. And I've got me thinking about some of the battles in our own lives that we fear something, and we think we've defeated it, and it goes away for a while. And then six months later, or a year later, or five years later, it rears its ugly head again. And I have to fight the same battle again. And then we overcome it temporarily. And then it comes back again. And there are some arguments and some battles in life that you can't negotiate with. There's some you've just got to get rid of. There are some things in life that if you don't deal with them, they will just keep coming back, sometimes stronger than before. And last week, we saw this. We saw that we as Christians are in a battle. We might not see it because it's an invisible battle. And all around us right now, there is this battle between good and evil, light and darkness, heaven and hell. And we don't see the battle itself, but we see the consequences in the world around us. And so as Christians, we need to be aware that we are in a battle. Ephesians 6 tells us that we don't wrestle against flesh and blood, but we're to put on the full armor of God. I don't wear armor when I go to church, but if I was going into battle, I would wear armor. And if Ephesians is telling me that I need to put on the full armor, that's because every day there is a battle. And, and so we realized that last week. And we saw also this, that our giants have a purpose. Often giants will emerge at a time of transition. Often problems and mountains and obstacles and difficulties will emerge at a time in our lives when God is trying to shift us or move us or transition us. And those things have a purpose. And how we deal with them will determine what's on the other side. And I'm very often when a giant shows up, we see it as a wall. We see it as an obstacle. We see it as this impenetrable barrier. We really go to sin. That is not a wall, that's a door. And I want you to go through because of something bigger on the other side for you. But if you run away from the giant, you'll never see what's on the other side. And so we need to think beyond the giant to what God maybe has for us. And the other thing a giant does is this, a giant shakes us out of our comfort zone and complacency because we all get comfortable. We all cruise through life. We go on cruise control. Cruise control on my car frightens me slightly because I kind of like having the control of having my feet on the pedals. But, but I just, I can sit back. I've driven to Cork a few times recently. There are no traffic lights between Banbridge and Cork. And, and you can just cruise the whole way down to Cork at 95 miles an hour. Hope the cars don't stop you on this fantastic. And, but, cruise, we get, we cruise through life. And yet when a giant steps in our path, it shakes us up and stops us. And it makes us start to focus on what's really important, to check the side of our complacency. And so there's some giants in our lives that we need to take on. There's some giants in our lives that we have to confront. And we have to pick our battles. That's one of the things we learned last week. Not every, not every battle is worth fighting. Not every battle is worth fighting. There are some battles that we're better just walking away from. You know, there's, there's some things that we really don't need to fight. And then there's other things that our future will depend on. So what did this giant look like? Let's refresh our memories. Verses four to seven. A champion named Goliath. He was from Gath. Came out of the Philistine camp. He was over nine feet tall. He had a bronze helmet on his head and wore a coat of scale armor of bronze, weighing five thousand shekels. On his legs he wore bronze greaves and a bronze javelin was slung on his back. His spear shaft was like a weaver's rod. On its point, an iron point weighing six hundred shekels. His shield bearer went ahead of him. And so we have this image, this picture of a walking tank, a human weapon of mass destruction. Why are we told so much about him? Up until this point, we don't know how the Israelites are dressed. We don't know what they're wearing. We don't know what artillery or weapons they have. But we have got four verses here devoted to Goliath and his appearance. Why? As I studied it this week, this is what I began to think about. I began to think of it, the previous chapter, chapter 16, where Samuel comes and anoints David. And the first person, the first brother that steps forward to say, "I'll lead." The oldest brother, the most impressive one. I mean, Samuel literally, I mean, he had, he had Samuel hello. And he was so impressive looking. There's probably one drop before I went in as head before God said, "Stop, he's not the one." And what does God say to Samuel? "Do not consider his appearance or his height, for man looks at the outward, but God looks at the heart." And I wonder, is the writer here harkening back to the previous chapter and saying, "What is intimidating and terrifying Israel is his appearance and his height, because they haven't yet learned that that doesn't matter to God. That appearance and height are not what's most important. They're not going to be the ones God chooses, and they're not going to be the ones who win or lose the battle depending on their appearance or their height." If he was twenty feet tall, it wouldn't matter to God. God would treat him like a little ant and squash him under his foot. It doesn't matter how big the giant is compared to God, he is minuscule, minute, undefeated already. I wonder if there's this sense of these remaining core people, "Will you stop getting focused on externals? Will you stop getting focused on how intimidating things like height, impressive things like, um, will you realize just what God really cares about, and that is people whose hearts are devoted to him?" And so we read this in 1 Samuel 17:10, "Goliath stood and shouted to the ranks of Israel, 'Why do you come out and line up for battle?'" "Why are you coming out every day and lining up for battle? Am I not a Philistine, and are you not the servants of Saul? Choose a man, choose one man, have him come down here to me in the valley. And if he is able to fight and kill me, we will become your subjects. But if I overcome him and kill him, which I'm likely to do," (open brackets, close brackets) "you will become our subjects and serve us." Then the Philistine said, "This day I defy the ranks of Israel. Give me a man and let us fight each other." This is what we call a representative battle because in those days, they didn't have warfare like we have today. They didn't have drones that can fly over enemy territory and drop the bomb. Anybody ever get near the enemy? They didn't have missiles and rockets that they could launch. It was hand-to-hand, and this fierce to fierce, it was face to face, and it was a place of bloodshed, and where whole families and where whole communities were wiped out. And so to overcome that, they actually developed this more civilized way of fighting, which was a representative battle, where both sides put their best fighter forward, and whoever won, that whole side won. In other words, you shared in the victory of the one person who won. And I've got me thinking about Jesus. They've got me thinking about the giant of sin. They've got me thinking about the giant of death that humans had never been able to overcome, that had defeated us for thousands of years. And yet the Father sent the Son, and the Son came, and he was like David. He was unimpressive. He was somebody overlooked. And yet he said, "I will step up to take on that giant." And on the cross, and through the resurrection, he knocked down that giant. He cut off his head. He defeated him. And we share in his victory through, we stand in his victory, not because we fought the giant, but because Jesus fought him on our behalf. And we're on his team, and therefore we are on the winning side. I don't know about you. Some mornings I wake up and I don't feel more than a conqueror. I feel like more of a sleeper. Some mornings I wake up and I don't feel like I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. And that he that is in me is greater than he that is in the world. Some mornings I don't wake up. But it doesn't matter what my feelings are, because the Bible says there, through Christ and in Christ, that I am a victor. That I am not a victim. That I have overcome because he has overcome. That I am sinless because the sinless one went to the cross and took my sin. That's the truth. That I share in his victory, not because I fought, but because he fought on my behalf. And we're on a communion Sunday to remember that. That the blood that he shed should have been my blood, but it covers me and it cleanses me. And I share in his victory.
The next point is simply this: Which giants believe what you believe? Believe what you believe. They rose, an impressive young man without equal among the Israelites, a head taller than any of the others. But hearing the Philistines' words, Saul and all the Israelites were dismayed and terrified. You know, you can't, you can't choose some battles, but you can't choose whether you fight them. A friend of mine came to me yesterday. You can't always choose the battles, but you can choose whether you fight the battle. And there's some battles not worth fighting. There are some battles that God never intended for you to fight. And when you fight them, that's when you end up into all sorts of trouble. And I always say, beware of people who love fighting. Beware of people who love battles. You know, there's some things worth fighting about, and there's some things not worth the effort. You know, if you're in Tesco and you're in the ten items or less line, and you look in the basket, and the person for the fear of 13 items, that's not a fight worth, probably not worth having. Am I the only one who's ever done that? Have you ever counted? Like, be honest. I've counted. And I feel like, put my hand up and say, "Mr. Tesco, 14 items here." That's not worth fighting about. Somebody cuts you off in traffic, probably not worth fighting about. So, me takes your parking spot, we'll see about that. But, but there are some things not worth fighting about. Some things are just not worth the effort. But there are some things you have to fight. There's some battles you have to fight. You see, you might not have chosen the battle, but you can choose to fight. If you have a diagnosis, and I know some of you are in that place where you've had a diagnosis of an illness, you can choose to lie down, or you can choose to fight. And I would say, fact, if your family, if your son or daughter is being rebellious, they're getting themselves into all sorts of a mess, you need to fight for that child, whatever way you do. Yet, if your marriage is falling apart, and there's no intimacy and no love, and you're like two strangers sharing a house, and you've just assumed this is going to be, you need to fight for that covenant relationship that God called you into, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death do you part. There's some things you need to fight for. For your future, if there's things coming against your future and the calling of God in your life, you need to fight for them. There are some battles that you have to fight, and that you can't run away from.
Who should have been fighting? Who should have been taking on Goliath? It should have been Saul. Remember what we learned about him? Tall. Saul, he was a head taller than anyone else. He was the most experienced warrior. He should have been the one to step up to take on Goliath. And yet, we read that he was just as terrified as everybody else. And here's the problem: when leaders aren't fearful, when leaders don't have courage, when leaders aren't people of conviction, their followers will have even less conviction and courage. Oh, we need leaders in our society today, in every realm and every sphere, of conviction, integrity, and courage. We need them in the church at a time when many churches think that if we water things down and make things palatable, un-wishy-washy, and don't really preach the gospel and teach the word and give them a five-minute sermon, "Attaboy, why should we recycle?" That's how we'll get them in. That is a load of rubbish. Those are the churches that become carpet warehouses, restaurants, and mosques. We need the people of boldness in the church, not arrogance, but boldness. We need people of boldness in our society. We need people of boldness and courage in our government, folks. And I don't want to get all political on you. Oh, at the end, we will pray for our government, because God challenged them in the first service with this. But we need politicians who are courageous and bold, who are willing to face the giant and say, "I will not be intimidated by you. You can threaten us. You can paint this doomsday picture, but we will not." Whatever side of the spectrum you sit on, you did not want a politician who cowers to a bureaucratic body. And how we need a Prime Minister and a local government and everyone else on both sides of the divide. We need them to be people of integrity and conviction and courage who will lead this country forward. And we need a prayer for them. And yes, at times like they drive me mad, but we need a prayer for them that God will infuse them with conviction and courage at this time, because they are leading our country forward, whether we like it or not. And we need men and women in government who have integrity and courage at this time. We need them in education. We need them in business. We need them in every realm. We need them in the home. We need men and women of courage, courage, character, conviction, and integrity to stand up and step up and speak the truth. And the darker that dares, and the bigger the challenges are, the greater the need for these sorts of men and women to lead people in the right direction. Imagine the Second World War with our church. Oh, and whether you liked her or not, I wonder what the Allies would have to say about that. Without the Iron Lady, there were things she did we didn't always love. But you know what? Don't we look back now and respect a lot of what she did do? You know why they call her Iron Lady for a reason? She was fearless. She had backbone. She had spine. At a time when we need a lot more leaders. And I'm not talking about some macho bravado Christianity. I'm talking about biblical conviction here. I always said we're a church of conviction and compassion. We are both. They hold them in tension, and that's hard. But it says Jesus was full of grace and truth. And that is what we are called to be as Jesus people. But we need to be a people of conviction who believe what we believe. What giant has God raised you up to confront? What has he put on your heart that you look at it and you go, "It just should not be this way. I have to do something about that." It looks too big for me. It looks like I don't have enough education or enough experience. But God, what is the thing? What is the thing you've put in my heart? Maybe it's human trafficking. And I feel like that's something as a church we are going to press into in the coming years. This is an area where there's a lot of it, and it's completely insane. And I really believe that's one of the ministries long-term that God will call us into. Maybe it's poverty. Maybe it's exploitation. Maybe it's abuse. Maybe it's such. It could be working with the less privileged or the, the overlooked in society. Whatever that is, you need to step up with courage and conviction, believing that if God has called you to it, he will equip you for it.
These are God's people. These Israelites are God's people in the land that God promised them. And God said he would fight for them and with them. And yet they are doing nothing. They have forgotten who they are, and they have forgotten who their God is. The real problem is not Goliath. The real problem is the godlessness of God's people. Sometimes I have discovered in life, what we think is the problem is not the problem. There's a deeper problem. Let me illustrate. For weeks, we had rats at the back here. George was out there fighting them off of the bank. He was cracking with them or something. I mean, they were like six foot four. I mean, I'm not exaggerating, that's preacher's exaggeration. But these were big rats. And George was fearless. He was like David going after Goliath. I don't know. And he was taking them. And there were chairs on the outside. But, you know what we discovered? The rats weren't really the problem. The overgrowth out there was the problem. Nobody was looking after it. And it was completely overgrown. And therefore, there were further rats. It's somewhere nice to live. So I got on to our MLAs, she got onto environmental health. If you look out there, and it is the clearest it has been probably in 20 years. I haven't seen a rat in a while, at least not right there. Seen a few rats elsewhere. But, you know what? The rats looked like the problem. But the rats weren't the problem. The grass was the problem. And once she dealt with the grass, she didn't have to worry about the rats. And sometimes in our lives, we are trying to deal with the rats when really we need to deal with the grass. We're trying to deal with the surface-level issue. We're trying to deal with the thing that we see when really we need to go down a layer or two, because unless she's behind that, we can't see. And for Israel, the giant seemed to be the problem. But the giant was not the problem. Their godlessness was the problem. That they had forgotten who they were, whose they were. They had forgotten what God had done. This was the God they had brought out of Egypt. This is the God who had inflicted Egypt with the plagues. This is the God who had parted the Red Sea. This is the God who had led them through the wilderness for 40 years and provided manna and quail for them and fed them and looked after them and water from a rock. This is the same God who, who brought down the walls of Jericho, who parted the, the, the River Jordan. This is the same God who had fought on their behalf again and again. And they have forgotten their history. Therefore, they have forgotten their destiny. And when we forget what God has done for us in the past, and we will think about this a little bit more next week, I thought we'll get there this week. God, the water. When we forget about what God has done in the past, we aren't able to face the future. But when we recall the goodness and the faithfulness and the kindness and the power and the might of God, when we thought we would be crushed in the past, it gives us confidence to face the future. You know what? You might have feared this giant before, but you're still here. But not spoiling next week, but they're living like God doesn't even exist. And you know, sometimes as Christians, I read a book a number of years ago called the "Christian Atheist" because a lot of us, myself included, we are Christians. We call ourselves Christians. We pray, to prayer. We come to church. We sing the songs. We raise our hands. And then pressure comes. Then somebody annoys us. Then somebody at work irritates us. Then somebody cuts us off. Then something happens, and we revert to completely back to our, our pre-Christian self. And there is no difference between the way we behave and the way the pagan next door, or the non-Christian at work, or the unbeliever in the gym would work, would react and respond. We're Christian atheists. We believe it on a Sunday, but Monday to Saturday, maybe depending on how much people annoy us, when life gets hard, when the pressure's on, how do we respond? With self-control and kindness and, and order? Do we fly off the handle and panic? And I am preaching to myself here as much as you, because I can revert to my carnal old self as well. There's got to be a statistic that this book has got to make a difference. This book has got to make a difference. And our faith has got to make a difference. It's got to make a difference in our workplace. It's got to make a difference in our homes. It's got to make a difference in how we speak to people who have nothing that they can offer us, but we treat them with kindness and respect and dignity. It's got to make a difference in how we see sickness. Oh, how we go through adversity. It's got to make a difference in how we face death. One of the great privileges, as I say, and I don't say that lightly, has been sitting with some families in our church recently who have lost loved ones. And on two occasions, have asked me this question: "Where are they now?" They know they're a Christian, but they're just said, like, right now, where are they? And I've been able to go through scripture and point them to what talks about their with Jesus, with paradise. And when Christ returns, their spirit will be reunited. And this isn't pie in the sky when you die. This isn't a fairy tale, folks. And I say this, I say this is a truth. This is the reality. This is not just something we believe and say as a creed. This is the truth that because Christ died and was raised again, and death has not conquered us, but death is not the end, and we have eternal life. It's not just a nice sandwich board. This is the reality that if you're in Christ, you have eternal life on your breath, God forever in heaven. And if you're not in Christ, you're going to hell for eternity. That is the reality. And we can't shy away from that. And we need to be people of compassion, and we need to be people of conviction. I was reading, I love Christian biographies, and I was reading a book by Charles Stanley. He's an older man. Nah, he's probably in his, scary to say what he is. People are when you say they're old. He's only 80, okay? And, but he's not a preacher for a long time. Some of you will have seen him on TV. Um, he's written hundreds of books. But I was reading his autobiography called "Courageous Fear." And he was talking about his childhood. And when he was born in 1933, America was in the midst of the Great Depression. And on his farm, he was their first child. And his family had so little money as it was. And within three months of him being born, his father died, leaving this young mom with her first child on her own. And they were barely able to survive when the dad was alive. And she was left not knowing what to do. How did she raise this child? She feels so under pressure and inexperienced as a mom. And now she has to go out to work. And he said this, he said, "My mother always believed that we could trust the Lord for all our needs. My mother created within me a desire to know God and depend on him for every aspect of life." For years, she worked at the Don River Mill, which was about 16 miles from where she lived. She walked 16 miles to work. I can recall her showing me her paycheck. She brought home just nine dollars and ten cents a week. And that had to cover all of our needs: food, clothing, rent, and everything else. And he said this, "Of course, the first thing mother did was to tithe the little money she brought home to the church." No matter what she brought home, $9.10, which was not enough, and she took her 91 cents and gave it to the Lord. That's challenging right there. There were many times that I looked, I would look at all our expenses and think, "There just isn't going to be enough." But she would say, "We're going to trust God, and He will provide. He has always been faithful, and He will be faithful, no matter what." And Charles Stanley says this repeatedly, "I watched her fears become reality, seeing the Lord supply every need." We see there's a woman who didn't just believe, she believed what she believed. Because when you believe what you believe, it changes how you live, not just what you think.
We need to be a people who believe what we believe. Saul's army, the army of Israel, they were dressed for battle. They looked the part. They had the outfit, so on. They're all the gear on. But they weren't engaged with the enemy. You see, there's a difference between showing up and stepping up. They showed up every day for 40 days, but nobody stepped up. And there's a difference in the Christian life between showing up and stepping up. And that could mean many different things. It may mean stepping up to serve. Stepping up to, maybe it means stepping up in your workplace where nobody knows you're a Christian. It may mean speaking out at times when it would make you unpopular. It may mean sharing your faith. There's a difference just between showing up and stepping up. And these men, and this army, showed up every day, but they never stepped up. They were prepared and trained, but they did nothing with it. Why? Because this battle is won, and this is my last point. Battles are won or lost in our minds before they're ever fought on the battlefield. Battles are won or lost in our minds. Know that one says, "Saul and the Israelites were dismayed and terrified." For 40 days, the Philistines came forward every morning and evening. The Philistines came forward every morning and evening and took his stand. For some reason, I'm reminded of a quote I read yesterday. "Courage isn't that you don't wet your pants when you fear something. Courage is that you, if you fight the battle with wet pants." I thought that was good. There's an image for you before your Sunday lunch. Try going. But that was good. Courage isn't that you aren't afraid. Courage is that you are afraid, but you aren't controlled by fear. Because you will be afraid. There are things you will confront which will terrify you, which will feel overwhelming. But you don't have to be controlled by those things. For 40 days, almost six weeks, every morning and evening, the same thing happened. Goliath stepped out. He taunted them. He shouted abuse at them. He taunted their God. Blasphemed their God. And then he went back. And every night they went to bed. They got into their tents. And next morning, they got up to the same thing over and over again. What did they think was going to happen? 40, six weeks, almost like, did they think I'm staying at 41 or like, Goliath was gonna pack up his spear and go home? Like, did they think he was just gonna go, "Well, I'm not gonna get a good fight, lads. Let's go back to the coast. Let's go to the beach." You know, there's some giants that aren't going to go away. You can ignore them. You can pretend they're not there. You can avoid them, because we all try to avoid conflict. I don't like conflict. But there's some things you've just got to face. There's some things that if you don't confront them today, you will have to deal with them tomorrow. And if you don't deal with them tomorrow, they'll still be there on Tuesday. There are some issues, some habits, some obstacles, some problems in your life that you've been avoiding dealing with from fear, from what it'll cost, because you just don't like conflict. But you need to confront them, deal with them, face up to them. And some of them you've got to destroy. Not people, I'm talking about. But I'm talking about some of those habits in your life. You know, it's no coincidence that it tells us that this has been going on for 40 days. 40 in the Bible is a number that's symbolic for testing. 40 years in the wilderness where God tested his people to see if they could trust him down to the promised land. Jesus spent 40 days in his wilderness. For 40 years, Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness being tested and tempted and tried by the evil one. The thing about a test is this, and I know of a few teachers here. A test is not there to teach you something. A test is there to find out what you already know. God doesn't put us through a test to teach us. He puts us through a test to see what we already know. And what does a test do? A test shows if you're ready to move on to the next thing. Sometimes you have to repeat a year because you don't feel you've passed the test. And there's some tests God puts us through in life because he wants to get us to the next thing, the next stage, whatever that looks like. But if we don't pass it, we've just got to keep taking it again. And the interesting thing is this: in the New Testament, the Greek word for tests and temptation are exactly the same word. And sometimes I find it hard to distinguish. Is this a test? Resist temptation. And sometimes it's both. But here's the difference. The difference is one, the source. Because if it's a test, it could be from God. If it's a temptation, it's definitely from me. Even more, because the Bible says God cannot be tempted, nor does he tempt anyone. And 1:13. And the second one is this. First one is a source. Second one is a purpose. When God tests you, he wants you to feel. When God tempts you, he wants you to pass. And sometimes those things, their lives seem like giants, those problems, those difficulties, sometimes God has testing us because he wants to see if we're ready for the next level or the next stage. These are 40 days in the valley with Goliath testing the people of God. And the test is this: Who do they trust? Do they trust God, or do they trust themselves? And the test reveals their hearts. Like I said, the test is there to show what we already have inside. And it reveals that they don't trust God. They don't fear God. And when you don't fear God appropriately, you end up fearing things and people that you shouldn't be afraid of. When God is not big in your life, when God doesn't hold the right place in your life, other things have their wrong place in your life. When God is small, people are bigger than they should be. When God is small, problems are bigger than they should be. When God is small, irritations are bigger than they should be. But when God is big, everything else takes on its proper perspective. Because let's face it, for 40 days and 40 nights, what had Goliath actually done? Apart from saying a few words, nothing. He hadn't thrown a punch. He hadn't even arm-wrestled one of them. He hadn't done anything. All he had done was shout abuse and intimidation. He hadn't actually done a thing. It was just all words. All he'd done was talk to them, taunt them, tell them how powerful he was, and how weak they were. And day after day, they listened to the voice of intimidation and fear from Goliath until his voice replaced the voice of God in their hearts. God was drawing doubt by what they believed about him. And every day as they focused on Goliath, I can imagine every day as they focused on him, he just seemed a little bit bigger than the day before. By the end of 40 days, he probably looked like he was 27 feet because, you know what? What you focus on grows. Have you find you got up in the morning, it's just a wee megabyte somebody in your head, but you choose to focus on it all day. Up at the end of the day, you're ready to kill them. Like they didn't do much dear, but you've gone round and round on your own in your head, and you've remembered every bad thing they've ever done, and everything bad thing that they might have done, that they might not have done. Really, the day he just, and you're like, you fear it, and it's grown and it's grown. And they have got so focused on the giant that he's got bigger, and God has got smaller. Watch where your focus goes in life. Watch where your focus goes, because where your focus goes, your direction goes. Anybody who drives a motorbike will know that if you look in the direction you want to go, otherwise you come off the bank. Then that's where your focus is, is where your life. And so many people are focused on over here, but they want their life to go this way, and they wonder why they're ending up over here. You know, there was an article in the Portadown Times this week about our church, and it was about half a page. And there were probably three words that I would have changed on it, but it was 99% positive. And when I read that, I can go, "Oh, three words I don't like. I don't like that word in the headline. On those two words in the first part. I don't like that." I looked out, and you know what I thought? The Portadown Times has just written a half-page ad for our church with arrows pointing to the valley. That's where I chose to focus. And you know, there's people in the service this morning. I've spoken to them, and I said, "Why are you here?" "We read the article in the Portadown Times." Where do you focus? Because if we get into constantly negatively focusing on things, that is where we will go. That is that becomes a habit where we ask the whole half-full, half-empty. Like, everything will be half empty. But why not look on it and go, "Actually, what's good here? What's positive here?" Even when somebody annoys you, yes, I might not like that one thing about them, but what do I like about them? How have they helped me in the past? What's the good things I've done in the past? What do you choose to focus on is what will grow in your life. Because very often, the greatest battles aren't out there, they're in here, in our minds. I have a chatterbox in my head. That chatterbox is at home, but I've got one in my head. And if a chatterbox in my head that constantly tells me, "You're not good enough. You can't do it. And there's so much more gifted than you. And that other church is so doing so much better." And, and like, "You're not, you're not coughing. No, and you're not, you're not intelligent enough." Chatterbox never stops. Do you know what I need to do? I need to replace that chatterbox with this. I need to fill my mind with the word of God that tells me the truth of who I am, and the truth of who He is. Because if I don't, I will believe every lie of the enemy, and I will be paralyzed. They will be positive, and I will never press into the call God has for me. Unless I see him for you. That every day we need to fill our minds. We fill our minds with Netflix on a Saturday and Coronation Street and Emmerdale and Celebs Go Dating and all those really important, wholesome programs. And we wonder why we're not living an effective Christian life. What if we spent a fraction of the time filling our minds with this book? It might change how we live. Because we might start to see ourselves like God sees us. We might start to believe what God says about us. Or we may start to believe what He says about Himself. And that is that He is greater than any giant. That no weapon formed against us can prosper. And that we are more than conquerors through Christ our Lord. The giants are defeated in our minds before they're ever defeated on the battlefield.
And David arrives on the scene after 40 days. And we'll get to this next week. Why's there? But the reason David is able to see things differently is because he has not been living under the voice of Goliath for 40 days. What has David been doing? He has been in the sheepfold, and filled with fluffy and fluffy planners, harp, singing love songs to God, declaring the greatness, the mercy, the power, and the authority of God. And so when David arrives on the scene, he has a God-saturated mind, and not a Goliath-saturated mind. The biggest thing in David's mind is God, not Goliath. And so he arrives on the scene, and he looks at Goliath and goes, "Who the heck does he think he is?" Spoiler alert: next week. But he had been phoning his mind with the majesty and the power and the goodness and the authority and the glory of God. And because of that, why he saw the giant was very different to how everybody else saw the giant. And if we are to be a people who live bold and courageous lives, we have got to have a God-saturated mind and a God-saturated worldview and a Bible-saturated warranty. Because these are dark days, folks. And I don't want to be a daily learning preacher, but these are dark days. You don't need to be a prophet to say that. Just watch the news. And these are days when there's pressure upon the church and pressure upon godliness like I, I can't remember in my short lifetime, and I'm sure many of you can't remember, where things are being forced upon us. Um, we've been told to accept things that I will not accept. And if I don't have a mind as saturated with the truth of God, the Word of God, and the awesomeness and the character and the nature and the love of God, I cannot survive these days. But I need to be a man, and you need to be a man or a woman who says, "God, not just a better me." I'm not just going to say I'm a Christian. I'm not just going to wear the badge or wear the uniform and show up on a Sunday and, and do the club for an hour and a half, the same song, listen to the guy preach, so club. I'm going to make this my life. I'm all-in. I'm all-in. I might feel, I might fall, and I will, but you know what? I will get right back up again. And I want to close this morning with a story about William Booth. Many of you will have heard of him, the founder of the Salvation Army. I read a story. It was a guy called Wilbur Chapman, who was an evangelist here about a hundred years ago. And one time he was in England, he was visiting William Booth. And William Booth was renowned for his incredible spiritual life and power. And well, Wilbur Chapman, the evangelist, said this to him, "I want to know your secret. What's the secret of your spiritual life?" And he writes this in his book. He says, "Mr. Booth hesitated for a second. I saw tears come into his eyes and roll down his cheeks. And he said this, 'I will tell you the secret. God has had all there was of me.' He said, 'There have been men with greater brilliance. There have been men with greater opportunities. But from the day I got the pearl of London on my heart and a vision of what Jesus Christ could do with the power of London, I made up my mind that God could have all of William Booth there was.' And if there is anything of power in the Salvation Army today," he said, "it is because God has had all the adoration of my heart, all the power of my will, and all." And that's why a hundred years later, we're still talking about a man who made a difference in his generation because he, he didn't just say he was a Christian. He believed what he believed. He didn't just wear the uniform, but he fought the battles.