Sermon Tone Analysis

Killing the giants

One of the best-sellers on the New York Times list nine years ago was this book: David and Goliath: Underdogs, misfits, and the art of battling Giants.

In this book, Gladwell outlines how David took what looked like disadvantages in his situation with Goliath and turned them into a big victory.

David is the underdog, and underdogs are expected to lose.

David didn’t lose because he had the determination and the grit to go face the giant, and he had the ingenuity to turn the negatives into positives.

16 years ago there was a movie called, Facing the Giants.

And the by-line was “Never give up.

Never back down.

Never lose faith.”

It’s a feel-good story.

But the theme is much in line with Gladwell.

The football team wins because it improves its determination and effort.

When faced with giants in life, whether it’s bad cars or financial issues, simply don’t give up.

God can do the impossible, if you just put in a lot of effort.

We love the underdog stories.

Yesterday, one of the top college football story was that of Kamryn Babb.

He defeated adversity by scoring his first touchdown for Ohio State.

Babb at one time was a shoe in to play in the NFL, one of the best wide receivers coming out of high school.

But in the past few years, he suffered 4 major injuries to his knees.

He finally got back on the field this week and he scored a touchdown after four years of hard work.

Babb confronted his giants and didn’t give up.

Is that the story of David and Goliath?

The underdog who wins even though there are insurmountable odds?

Taking down the giants we find in our life?

In fact, slaying or killing the giants is as much of this story as the underdog.

Gladwell isn’t the only book using this story for a theme.

This week I found at least a half dozen Christian books on Amazon that had “five smooth stones” in the title.

Some of them were the five smooth stones of success, or the five smooth stones of leadership.

Whatever the topic, the smooth stones are a metaphor for taking out those giants in our lives that would do us harm.

Is that the story of David and Goliath?

All of these examples are why this Bible story just may be the most popular of our Bible stories in our culture.

There are universals in the story, especially the story of the underdog.

The little guy who seemingly has no chance to win, shocking the world by winning decisively.

We love those stories, we want to tell those stories, and David and Goliath checks all the marks, including a love story… which isn’t in our text today, but in the end, David gets the girl, he gets the King’s daughter as he had been promised.

This story has it all.

We want hope

We want to tell this story because often, in our own lives, we are looking for hope.

David’s story seemingly offers hope.

Things happen in our lives, difficulties that we face, sometimes impossible odds, and in those moments we want to believe that God is on our side in the crises, and we need help in killing the giants in our lives, whether it’s finances, relationships, health issues.

You plug any negative you can think of and we gravitate to David’s story because it’s there we find courage and hope to go out there and face down our giants no matter the odds.

And we read these books on Amazon, books that provide a way out using five smooth stones.

And we face the giants believing God will be with us, just like he was with David.

We’ve got to be the hero just like David.

Giant-Killing temptations and sin

As great as that sounds… as hopeful as that sounds… as helpful as those books and stories promise to be… all of this, represents a misunderstanding of the story and a misuse of the text.

And that includes any of the spiritual ways we could plug into the underdog paradigm.

One way we then try to spiritualize this is that the five smooth stones are ways for us to combat evil in the world or sin in our lives.

We at least recognize that Goliath here in the story represents anything or any idea that would oppose God.

Giant-killing in this instance involves beating down sin, trying to get victory in our personal lives over evil things that come our way or temptations that may arise.

Again, I want to ask.. is this the way we’re suppose to think of this story?

Is that what David is really doing when he takes down Goliath, providing us with a fantastic metaphor for dealing with temptation and sin?

And the answer is “no”.

This also falls into a misunderstanding of the story and a misuse of the text.

The Promise of Victory

What is it that we’re after when we tell this story like this?

We want to win.

We want victory.

There’s a huge victory in this story.

This represents an unbelievable victory.

And if you know anything about the story of Israel and the constant threat that the Philistines were to Israel in that day in that part of the world, this story has a nationalist vibe.

There is something to see here regarding that aspect.

David takes out the champion of the bad people.

The enemy.

The constant source of grief and suffering.

That’s some kind of victory when their Big Bad goes down.

And that kind of story appeals to us.

The negatives in our lives are real.

It’s real temptation.

It’s real sin.

It’s real health issues.

It’s real relationship issues.

We live in a broken world.

And we want victory.

We want a win.

How many times do you find yourself muttering under your breath, “I need a win today”?

We’re always looking for the win.

We’re built to win.

Our culture reinforces this over and over and over… and the books we’ve talked about are part of this.

We have to win.

Nike’s “Just do it” isn’t simply about self-fulfillment.

It’s self-fulfillment aimed at getting the win.

They aren’t going to spend billions on advertising shoes for losers.

For coming in second.

Success is determined by the winning.

So we come to a story like this, and we say, “A-ha, David won.” How’d he do it?

Let’s do that.

We need five smooth stones in order to win.

What are the five smooth stones I need in order to win the day and get where I need to go in life?

Who is David in this story?

You know where this is going, right?

What is it that all of these ways of thinking about the story of David have in common?

I’m David.

I need to win, I have giants, I need five smooth stones.

I’m David.

David is a classic life story we tell to pump up our courage in facing the giants.

Because we are David.

We’re the little guy badly in need of a win.

When we read this story like that, we are doing what we always tend to do with these Bible stories and Bible heroes.. we shape the text around the narrative of our lives.

We believe that our lives run better when we are motivated by and informed by grand ideals to push us forward.

And while there is some truth to that, the problem is that we end up making the text fit whatever is happening to me, whatever I need to happen.