BIG PROBLEMS, BIGGER GOD

Introduction

-{1 Samuel 17}

-There is a story about a young poor boy named Jack who lived with his mother in a small cottage in a poor little village. A drought had taken its toll on the village, and Jack and his mom were in dire straits. To help their finances they decided to sell their prize cow; but instead of getting money for the cow, Jack was given some magic seeds. The seeds were planted and grew into an enormous plant reaching into the heavens.

Ever the adventurer, Jack climbed the plant and found at the top another land in the clouds with a large castle. The castle was home to a giant who had many riches. Jack decided to help himself to some of the riches, but dipped his hand in the coffer a few too many times. The giant found him out and began chasing him down the enormous plant. When Jack got back to land he found an ax, chopped the plant down, thus ending both plant and giant.

-Now, we all recognize this as a very shortened version of the fairy tale Jack and the Beanstalk. But, whereas the giant he faced was fiction, there are trials in life and enemies we face that are all too real and seem larger than life.

-There may be some here sitting in the pews who feel like they're problems are too big to handle. Some face physical ailments; others face financial problems; others may suffer from overwhelming emotions (such as fear or depression); others may suffer from work problems or school problems or relational problems (be it in marriages or trouble with children); and then there are sin habits that we cannot seem to break. Jack had his one giant, and we ourselves seem to have many. And we have an enemy that will use our trials to harass us and cause us even greater problems.

-Now, there is a lie that some false teachers tell that says if you come to Christ all your problems go away. They don’t. Sometimes they increase. But when we are a child of God, we don’t face these trials alone and we don’t have to fight them since the battle belongs to the Lord. Our problems might seem big, but our God is bigger.

-We’re looking at a familiar passage and I want to use the passage to give us understanding about how the enemy of our soul uses our trials to his advantage over us so that we become aware of his wiles and then run to refuge to the One who is bigger than our problems or enemies.

-To give some context to the passage, the Philistines were a Canaanite race that was a constant thorn in the side of Israel, and they were locked in a war. At one battle Israel was encamped on one mountain and the Philistines were encamped on another with a large valley in between. A Philistine hero named Goliath, a literal giant of a man, would daily come out into the valley and challenge Israel to send out someone to battle him one on one. He mocked Israel and their God. He boasted many great things. And he most definitely represents the enemy of God and God’s people and the problems God’s people face because we are in hostile territory.

-So, I want to spend some time warning about the tactics that are used against us before closing with an encouragement to run to refuge to God. So, let’s begin with the tactics used against us:

1) The enemy gets our focus on the problem and off God

1 Samuel 17:1–11 ESV

1 Now the Philistines gathered their armies for battle. And they were gathered at Socoh, which belongs to Judah, and encamped between Socoh and Azekah, in Ephes-dammim. 2 And Saul and the men of Israel were gathered, and encamped in the Valley of Elah, and drew up in line of battle against the Philistines. 3 And the Philistines stood on the mountain on the one side, and Israel stood on the mountain on the other side, with a valley between them. 4 And there came out from the camp of the Philistines a champion named Goliath of Gath, whose height was six cubits and a span. 5 He had a helmet of bronze on his head, and he was armed with a coat of mail, and the weight of the coat was five thousand shekels of bronze. 6 And he had bronze armor on his legs, and a javelin of bronze slung between his shoulders. 7 The shaft of his spear was like a weaver’s beam, and his spear’s head weighed six hundred shekels of iron. And his shield-bearer went before him. 8 He stood and shouted to the ranks of Israel, “Why have you come out to draw up for battle? Am I not a Philistine, and are you not servants of Saul? Choose a man for yourselves, and let him come down to me. 9 If he is able to fight with me and kill me, then we will be your servants. But if I prevail against him and kill him, then you shall be our servants and serve us.” 10 And the Philistine said, “I defy the ranks of Israel this day. Give me a man, that we may fight together.” 11 When Saul and all Israel heard these words of the Philistine, they were dismayed and greatly afraid.

-Here is this giant man in armor that weighs a ton walking into the middle of the valley for all eyes to see. And he speaks grand things, trying to induce fear in all who hear him. He wants all eyes focused on him to make sure everybody knows exactly how tough he is. He wants everyone’s attention on him.

-And the Israelites bought into it. Even though these are God’s people who knew what their God revealed about Himself, all they saw was the giant. It says in v. 11 when they saw the giant and heard all the words that he boasted, they were dismayed and greatly afraid. Their focus was completely on Goliath and they forgot the God they served.

-I mean, no doubt, Goliath was quite a site to behold. He was one bad dude. He literally was a giant problem. But who was he in comparison to the God of Israel? He was nothing. But he didn’t want the Israelites to think that way. He didn’t want them to get that proper perspective. He didn’t want them thinking about who their God is. He wanted them to be afraid, and the only way to do that was to make sure that their focus stayed on him the whole time instead of focusing on their God and who Goliath was in comparison to their God.

-It makes me think of our animals who are just funny. Our dog is a sweet dog. Jane Eyre is a chocolate lab and weimaraner mix and is a sweetheart. But if somebody comes near our front door (or even if a neighbor is out for a walk) she starts going off like she’s Cujo or something. But then when you come in the house, all she wants to do is lick your face. It’s kind of a bait and switch. I’m going to act all tough so you focus in on my toughness and be afraid so you don’t figure out what I’m really like. I want your focus on the fear I put in you. Don’t pay attention to the real dog behind the curtain.

-So, here’s the enemy’s tactic in wanting us to focus on our problems and not the One who is the solution. The enemy knows you have a trial in your life or he’s the one causing the trial in your life, and he knows that as long as your focus is on your problem and not God then he will be able to disable you—instead of living for God you give in to despair and you get into a “woe-is-me” mode. That way he doesn’t have to worry about what you do. You won’t thwart any of his plans. So, he gets your focus on the problem and not God. He makes big boasts about the problem so you forget about God and just spend your time worrying over your trouble. He makes your trouble look like the mighty Goliath in the middle of the valley. But that’s not the only tactic he uses...

2) The enemy makes you think your problem is relentless

1 Samuel 17:16 ESV

16 For forty days the Philistine came forward and took his stand, morning and evening.

-v. 16 in our passage says that morning and evening Goliath went into the valley and gave the same challenge and made the same boasts over and over and over again. For 40 days at least twice a day (if not more) Goliath with all his size and all his attitude would go out and taunt and ridicule the Israelite army. And all the Israelite army would do was sit in fear, never giving any sort of answer in return.

-The enemy will take your trial and problems and remind you of them over and over again. Morning and evening, day after day, hour upon hour, pressure upon pressure, worry upon worry. The enemy makes sure that when you wake up in the morning that you remember that your problem is there. And before you lie down at night the enemy makes sure that you know that your problem is still there. He will use it to taunt you and to intimidate you and revile you all the day long.

-He wants to make you hopeless, thinking that this thing will never go away. He wants to remind you of your trial over and over again so that you give in to despair thinking that there will never be an end to it. Knowing that God doesn’t work on our timetable (or the enemy’s timetable) he wants you to think that God will never do anything about what it is you’re going through and maybe you will just eventually turn your back on God.

-In a world that everything is instant, it would be easy to give in to the lie that our problems will never go away because God does not see or God does not care all because the solution to our problem is not immediate. We are used to times of instant relief. I have a headache, take an Advil and it’s gone. I want food heated up, put it in the microwave and in a couple of minutes I have a meal. We think that is how God works or ought to work. I have a problem, I pray once, that should be the magic pill and the problem is solved. But that’s not how God works. God can use our trials for growth in our spiritual life. God can use our trials to discipline us. God can use our trials to reveal something about Himself to us.

-But when our problems seem to linger, the enemy wants you to think that they will never go away. Now, to be truthful, they might not go away on this earth. But that’s when you remember that the promises of God are eternal—they go beyond our short life in this world. If you are a child of God through Jesus Christ, you at least have the knowledge that your trials and troubles will not follow you into the next life where He takes away every pain and wipes away every tear. Now, if you are not a child of God through Jesus Christ, every problem you have will follow you for eternity with a whole lot more added on.

-But the enemy wants the child of God to think that they will never have any relief…that they will never find peace. And we can’t allow the enemy’s lies to take away our hope from us. But there are move tactics that the enemy uses...

3) The enemy uses our problems to gain more ground

1 Samuel 17:20–27 ESV

20 And David rose early in the morning and left the sheep with a keeper and took the provisions and went, as Jesse had commanded him. And he came to the encampment as the host was going out to the battle line, shouting the war cry. 21 And Israel and the Philistines drew up for battle, army against army. 22 And David left the things in charge of the keeper of the baggage and ran to the ranks and went and greeted his brothers. 23 As he talked with them, behold, the champion, the Philistine of Gath, Goliath by name, came up out of the ranks of the Philistines and spoke the same words as before. And David heard him. 24 All the men of Israel, when they saw the man, fled from him and were much afraid. 25 And the men of Israel said, “Have you seen this man who has come up? Surely he has come up to defy Israel. And the king will enrich the man who kills him with great riches and will give him his daughter and make his father’s house free in Israel.” 26 And David said to the men who stood by him, “What shall be done for the man who kills this Philistine and takes away the reproach from Israel? For who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God?” 27 And the people answered him in the same way, “So shall it be done to the man who kills him.”

-The enemy wants a foothold in our life to harass us and make us ineffective for God’s kingdom. But he doesn’t want to just stop at a foothold. He wants to come wholeheartedly into our lives to lead us away from God. And he will use our problems to attempt to gain more ground into our lives in order to have a greater influence over us.

-There is a detail in the verses I read that is very subtle and easy to overlook, but we see something that Goliath is doing that is very representative of what our enemy does to us.

-In the first 11 verses it had described Goliath as coming into the middle of the valley and making his challenge. And he continued to do it day after day. But v. 23 and v. 25 describe Goliath as “coming up.” Here’s the picture: Goliath stood in the valley and made his challenge and it wenta unanswered and Israel did nothing in response. So every time Goliath went out to make his challenge he kept getting closer and closer and closer to the mountain where Israel was encamped, and he was never challenged. So, Goliath kept taking over more and more ground until it got to the point where Goliath was actually climbing the mountain that Israel was on in order to make his challenge.

-And so, the enemy takes your trial and problem and tries to get a foothold. And if he does, he will try to gain more ground in your life and exert more influence in your life. And if you do not run to God for refuge, the enemy will just keep advancing. Goliath thought that since Israel isn’t going to do anything about it, he’d just take over more ground. The enemy sees that we aren’t running to God for help, that we’re not doing anything to stop him, he just keeps covering more ground.

-This made me think of bullies in school. As long as nobody stands up to the bully, their mean and harmful actions will continue on and might even get worse. It isn’t until somebody gets help to stand up to the bully and put the bully in check that they would finally leave people alone.

-As long as you focus on your problem instead of God, when you think that there is no hope and give in to despair, the enemy will just keep advancing as long as you are not running to God. As the old adage goes, if you give him an inch, he’ll take a mile. And so instead of letting the enemy use your trials as a way to exert more influence in your life, get his foot out of the door and lock it shut—commit your life and protection to the Lord who is your refuge and will keep you in hope.

4) We have a champion greater than our enemy

-We know the rest of the story. Nobody in Israel would rise to the challenge of facing the enemy. The enemy hurled insults toward the people and God and caused doubt and problems. But somebody stood up to take on the enemy and defeat his ways of discouragement.

-David, a shepherd boy, had enough. He went out with a sling and found some stones and with one shot took the giant down. The enemy was defeated. His ways and his boasts were exposed for what they really were.

-And we too have a champion who has fought for us and nullified the ways of the enemy. No, the champion is not us. We are not the heroes of this or any other Bible story. Don’t ever try to insert yourself into any Bible story and somehow think you are the hero. No, we are the Israelites who are cowered scared back in the camp. We needed another to go fight the battle. And He did.

-Jesus Christ is always the hero. Jesus Christ is always the champion. David is a picture of Christ who went out and defeated everything that stands against the people of God.

-At the cross Jesus nullified the enemy’s two greatest weapons against us—sin and death. For all who believe on Jesus, sin and death no longer have power or influence over us. So now all the enemy has is smoke and mirrors to distract us from who Christ is and who we are in Christ, for greater is He who is in us than he who is in the world.

-The enemy is like an illusionist, using lights and movements to distract you from how the trick is done so as not to destroy the illusion of the trick being real.

-The enemy doesn’t want you to consider that your champion won the battle already and is your place of refuge. The enemy wants you to be overwhelmed by your trials and tribulations so he can maintain the illusion of domination over you. He’ll keep you focused on him and your problems so you don’t focus in on your Savior. He’ll try to discourage you into thinking that your problems and trials are all-powerful and never-ending instead of keeping the perspective that Christ is all-powerful and eternal. And as long as he can do that, he will continue to gain more and more ground.

-But Christ has de-fanged the serpent. He has dispelled the darkness. He has defeated the giant. And so we make decisions and live in light of those truths instead of living in light of the enemy’s lies. Yes, our problems are real. Yes, the enemy is real. But also yes, we have a great Savior.

Conclusion

-And so you have a choice to believe, in faith, that our God is big enough for the challenge, and trust in His goodness and sovereignty. Or we can let the enemy use our seemingly giant problem to block our view of God and try to deal with it ourselves, most likely by cowering in fear and hoping it will go away on its own, which it never will

-Christian, I don’t know what giant is in the valley taunting you today, but you have claimed a faith in a God of power and love—will you not come to the altar today to lay it at His feet and trust Him to fight the battle.

-There are others here who have no choice but to handle the giant on their own because they don’t know God or have a relationship with God—I will tell you right now you will lose the battle against the giant—even at your strongest point you aren’t strong enough to take on the troubles of this fallen world on your own; and you are definitely not strong enough to take on the enemy—you need a God who is so big He was able to take the sins of the world upon Himself and pay the penalty for everyone so we could have eternal life----[GOSPEL]