Pentecost 6 - Protecting

Scripture: 1 Samuel 17:57-18:5, 18:10-16

1 Samuel 17:57–18:5 NIV

57 As soon as David returned from killing the Philistine, Abner took him and brought him before Saul, with David still holding the Philistine’s head. 58 “Whose son are you, young man?” Saul asked him. David said, “I am the son of your servant Jesse of Bethlehem.” 1 After David had finished talking with Saul, Jonathan became one in spirit with David, and he loved him as himself. 2 From that day Saul kept David with him and did not let him return home to his family. 3 And Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as himself. 4 Jonathan took off the robe he was wearing and gave it to David, along with his tunic, and even his sword, his bow and his belt. 5 Whatever mission Saul sent him on, David was so successful that Saul gave him a high rank in the army. This pleased all the troops, and Saul’s officers as well.

1 Samuel 18:10–16 NIV

10 The next day an evil spirit from God came forcefully on Saul. He was prophesying in his house, while David was playing the lyre, as he usually did. Saul had a spear in his hand 11 and he hurled it, saying to himself, “I’ll pin David to the wall.” But David eluded him twice. 12 Saul was afraid of David, because the Lord was with David but had departed from Saul. 13 So he sent David away from him and gave him command over a thousand men, and David led the troops in their campaigns. 14 In everything he did he had great success, because the Lord was with him. 15 When Saul saw how successful he was, he was afraid of him. 16 But all Israel and Judah loved David, because he led them in their campaigns.

6/23/2024

Order of Service:

Announcements

Ministry Celebration

Opening Worship

Prayer Requests

Prayer Song

Pastoral Prayer

Kid’s Time

Offering (Doxology and Offering Prayer)

Scripture Reading

Sermon

Closing Song

Benediction

Special Notes:

Week 4: Ministry Celebration

Opening Prayer:

God our protector,

you stood by David in the time of trial.

Stand with us through all life's storms,

giving us courage to risk danger

to protect those who are oppressed and poor,

that they may know you as their stronghold and hope. Amen.

Protecting

Facing Danger

Jesus promised us that it would be dangerous following Him. Trusting Jesus is not a free ticket to paradise. It is trading a life of comfort in a cage that ends tragically for a life of freedom in the wilderness, with only a shepherd to guide and provide for us. In trusting Jesus, we give up the danger of eternity in hell for every other danger out there that the world has to offer us. If it were easier to follow Jesus, everyone would do it, and we would not need church families to help encourage us as we follow Jesus together.

Jesus promised us that it would be dangerous following Him. When the disciples began asking questions about the dangerous places He sent them and His plans to be crucified, He told them plainly:

Matthew 5:10–12 NIV

10 Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 11 “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. 12 Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

and

Matthew 10:16–18 NIV

16 “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves. 17 Be on your guard; you will be handed over to the local councils and be flogged in the synagogues. 18 On my account you will be brought before governors and kings as witnesses to them and to the Gentiles.

and

Matthew 10:28–31 NIV

28 Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell. 29 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. 30 And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. 31 So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.

Do you need more? That’s just from Matthew, chapters 5 and 10. Each of the gospels teaches this, and Paul describes the persecutions he and others would face following Jesus in his letters through the New Testament. And it is the same throughout the Old Testament. Noah faced the flood, Abraham faced armies, Daniel faced a den of lions, and David faced Giants and more. But in every case, God came through for them and proved Himself to be their Shield against every adversary. Jesus, too, protects His leaders and charges His leaders to protect His people.

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God Protects Us

When David battled with Goliath, he was fresh out of the field. As the youngest of Jesse’s sons, he was the smallest and least significant. Family and cultural traditions were pretty much constant unless God directly intervened throughout the 4,000 years of history we have in the Old Testament, and without much more than birth order, we could determine the future of little David without difficulty. As Jesse’s eighth and last child, he would have had little to inherit from the family business. So he could hire himself as a shepherd, perhaps to one of his elder brothers, in exchange for provision for himself and his family. Or he could hope to marry into a family with a greater inheritance. For an ordinary young man, his hope rested in his ability to take care of his father’s flock and the willingness of others to take him on as a servant.

David was expendable, replaceable, and insignificant. When he faced Goliath, he did not have the army’s backing. Goliath had negotiated the people’s surrender based on the outcome of one battle—man-to-man or man-to-giant combat. When no one stepped forward to take on the giant for the nation's sake, David stepped up by himself.

How did this young boy have so much courage? He tells us that he faced a lion and a bear as a shepherd protecting his sheep, and God gave him victory over those beasts that would have harmed his sheep. He did not trust in his strength or skill. He knew he was small. But He knew the God who watched over Him as the true shepherd of Israel was a greater power than Goliath could ever imagine. The Big lesson we learn from the story of little David fighting great Goliath is that God is the biggest one of all and fights for us. God protects us.

So when you face danger, you first need to remember who your true Father is. Your Father in Heaven, Who knit you in your mother’s womb, is far stronger, fiercer, and probably more terrifying than any foe you will ever face, and He loves you more than anything. He will protect you.

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God Sends Others to Protect Us

God also sends others to protect us. An evil spirit tormented King Saul. This was, in part, a consequence of his disobedience to God. You see, unlike David, who faced the enemies of God’s people with God leading the way, Saul chose to do things his own way, and God left him. So, all the enemies of God swooped in to torment the king of God’s people.

Part of the reason the chess game developed as it has over time is that in war kings often are the most vulnerable players on the field, as well as on the board. They hold the authority to win and lose the game, but the other players must work to protect them because they cannot win the game themselves.

Many people God sends to protect us do not look like mighty warriors. They often come as humble shepherds and servants whose strengths may be caring and compassion more than the military might. Again, God sent David to protect King Saul not with a sword or a shield but with a harp and some gentle music. If God used David to slay a giant with a sling and a stone, should we be surprised that God would use David to banish demons with a harp? No. This is how God protects us.

God not only protected King Saul with David but also sent Saul’s son, Jonathan, to protect David from King Saul’s jealousy and wrath. What God develops within the relationships between these three men is nothing short of a soap opera drama that bounces erratically from love and gratitude to jealousy and hatred from page to page until two of these men die at the end of the book. Only one is left standing before the throne. But God used them, and Jonathan in particular, as one who recognized the leading of God, that the throne would never be his to hold, and that he would give up everything to follow God and his anointed one. Jonathan, the prince of Israel, was the key person who made it possible for David to live, thrive, and finally take the throne as God commanded.

The shortest distance between two points may be a straight line, but God rarely works that way. He sees more than us getting to a particular place. He wants us to be particular people when we get there, which takes time and challenges to shape us. Jesus will provide us with shepherds to guide and protect us as we follow Him.

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God Calls Us to Protect Each Other

Knowing that Jesus protects us and that He sends others to protect us in His name is vital as we move from enjoying God’s protection to sharing that protection with others. It is one of those subtle shifts between being a disciple of Jesus and a disciple-maker.

When it comes to following Jesus, on being His disciple, we never graduate from that first call to follow where He leads us. You can stop being a student or a scout anytime, move on to something else, and keep your merit badges and diplomas. But that is not the way of being a disciple of Jesus. He grows us, bit by bit, to share what we have learned as His disciple so that He can make other disciples through us, but we never stop being His disciple.

We must understand this when it comes to protecting other people. Most of us have an innate drive to protect those we care about and perhaps those we see as needing extra help. And much of that drive is put there by God to help us live out His compassion for His people. However, how we protect them and the perspective we hold matters as much as the act of protecting them.

If we forget that it is God who ultimately protects us, as well as them, we will walk into someone else’s danger ill-equipped, unprepared, and, worst of all, a poor witness to what it means to trust Jesus. The story of David and Goliath worked out precisely because David turned down Saul’s sword and armor and chose the sling and stones God gave him instead. If he had faced Goliath on his own strength, even with the armament of the king of Israel, the story would have had a tragic ending. Likewise, if David had ignored Jonathan and the other people God put in his life as shepherds and protectors, David would never have survived his first year as the anointed one of Israel, and he would not have been able to protect Israel from anyone.

Every soldier, police officer, scout leader, teacher, doctor, nurse, pastor, president, king, or parent relies on the prayers for, and even more, the protection of Jesus as much as the people they serve and protect... and maybe even more than them. When we ignore our needs for protection and help and go off to save the world on our own, we get off course, lead people astray, and make ourselves an excellent example of what not to do. When we get it wrong, we take the name of Jesus down with us, all because we did not trust Him first. In His mercy, God usually takes those people under us away and places them under people who will offer them God’s protection, not just their own.

God desires that we grow in our relationship with Him enough always to have plenty of faith to spare and follow Him as He calls us to watch over those He brings into our lives. Watching over means, first and foremost, to watch, pray for, pray with, love, and encourage, and then, in those times of danger, follow God as He leads the means and ways of providing protection. His ways are not our ways, but they are always better.

Just like David, we learn how to protect others from the way God protects us, and the way others protect us on behalf of God. And just like David, we will find that God provides what we need to protect those He calls us to be shepherds over. Also, like David, we will find some of our biggest falls and failures when we step outside of that call of God, reaching after or fighting over sheep that are not ours to claim.

When we stop following Jesus, stop leaning intimately on Him for our protection, and stop relying on the shepherds he has networked around us to keep us on the straight and narrow path, we will cease to be shepherds ourselves and become sheep that have gone astray, with nothing to offer the lost around us.

Brothers and sisters, how is God protecting you?

Who has he sent to protect you as you strive to follow and grow closer to Jesus daily?

And who is He calling you to bring under your care as you protect them from the many dangers that seek to pull us away from Jesus?

Closing Prayer

Lord Jesus, we come to You today, grateful for the mercy You have shown us in saving us from our sin and the full consequences of the choices we have made in our lives. We know we would be utterly lost without You. We feel burdens on our hearts for those near to us and we want to share that mercy and protection You offer us each day with them. But we know we carry other burdens ourselves that slow us down and prevent us from being fully free for You to lead through some of those places they are lost. Help us to turn to You first when our hearts seek out those who are lost or in danger, so that we keep a firm foot on the solid rock that You are in our lives. Help us to lay our burdens down, even those that touch our hearts the most, and trust that You love them even more than we do. Teach us to follow You first into the mission field, instead of getting lost in it and needing you to come rescue us again from our failed attempts of doing work for You instead of serving with You. You are our rock and shield, our mighty defender. You are the best thing we have to offer, and in the end, You are the only thing we truly have to offer. Thank You for working in, around, and through us. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

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