Sermon Tone Analysis

You Can’t Be The Hero of Your Story

1 Sam 16

Main Idea: You aren’t David— Your problems are too big for you that is what you need Jesus.

Jesus is David

I love a good superhero.

What makes us love a superhero?

Powerful/Strong/Wise/Savior/Good

Everyone loves a good super hero:

What are some of your favorite Super heroes?

Batman/Superman/Thor/Ironman/Captain America/Spiderman

If I had to say my all time favorite superhero is batman.

I love batman.

I think he is the greatest hero.

I in turn wanted to be a superhero.

Superhero saves people from their problems and I felt like my problems weren’t so bad so maybe I could help others.

But I didn’t have super powers and nothing tragic has really happened in my life— I mean that is what truly makes a superhero.

And while I wanted to help people, I soon realized that some people don’t want to be saved.

For a ton of reason.

People don’t really want to be saved.

Actually many people want to not need help.

You see needing saving means you are weak and vulnerable.

I don’t want to be damsel is distress.

I’ll figure it out myself.

And so we have men who hide their emotions and we have women who won’t let a guy hold a door open because they want to be strong.

I am not saying this to ruffle feather what I am saying is that in our culture today this is normal.

If you have a problem then you need to fix it.

And I agree with that only so far.

I do believe that at times we need to figure things out because that is life.

If you want a job you have to apply for a job.

If you want to buy a car then you need money for that car meaning that you are going to have to work for that car.

No body is going to hand that to you, but often times we think that is how it works.

So we want to be powerful and independent yet we don’t want to do anything about it, we don’t want to get things figured out.

Yet we want to drive the car.

We want to be in charge of our life.

Here is the issue with that mindset:

That may sound good to the world and it may even sound good to you, but that goes against what God has called you to be.

You are 100% in charge of your life but depending on what you have decided about who Jesus is to you— that is going to change a lot of stuff.

If Jesus is your savior— you don’t get to be in the drivers seat.

If he isn’t your savior— they you can keep driving and be in control of your life because the direction you are going is no where good, and it will eventually lead you to hell which is a real place where that is absent of God.

Being that the reality of hell is where no one wants to end up, I would suggest that be begin to live a little differently.

And one way we can do this is by admitting that our problems are too big for us to solve.

Me: Have you ever thought that you could solve an issue that was beyond you?

Like let’s say you offer to fix your car but you are not a car person.

So my van is having all sorts of problems— and to me— it is making a noise in the back that’s fine— you know how to fix that just turn the radio up.

When the sound was still loud even with the radio— I got under the car to see what was wrong and I noticed this metal stick down from the car.

Now at some point this was screwed in but now it isn’t and it is causing the whole van to rattle.

Easy fix— duct tape is perfect for this situation.

Should we ever use duct tape on a car— well the guy at the shop told me nope but did I anyway.

absolutely.

Why you may ask because I was fixing my problems.

I want to figure out the answer myself.

Anybody else relate to this?

Like if I ask for help I feel weak.

If I ask for help then I feel stupid.

I know nothing about cars but yet, as a man aren’t I suppose to?

So instead of having someone else do it— I’ll go on youtube watch videos for a week and then try it and fail— watch more videos until finally I take it in a month later because I give up and have spent a ton of money and the van still isn’t fixed.

I want to fix my problems!

I want to fix my kids problems and my wives.

I want to fix our youth problems, our church problems.

I want to fix it all.

I’m a fixed by nature.

Can you relate to this?

But what happens when my problems are too big for me to solve.

I make way for an expert eventually.

It doesn’t mean that I should try but it also means that I have to know when I am out of my depth.

What happens when your problems are too big for you to solve?

We: We can relate to this right?

Like do you eventually give up?

When it comes to a math problem, we need to keep grinding it out.

Try and try again because it can be solved.

But about when a friend ask us to do something you know we’re not suppose to do?

We like our friend but we also know the right thing to do.

Or maybe there is a sin in your life like, lying, cheating, disrespecting your parents, being prideful, putting God in second place to everything else, indulging in porn, sex, maybe not having sex but doing everything except sex, drinking, drugs—

Look I know you all go to the Christian school but we would be foolish to believe that this stuff isn’t happening in your life.

Because we are all sinful.

We deal with temptation daily and we give into sin daily.

Don’t be misguided— we all have giants in our lives that weigh us down.

So when we are in the mist of temptation or sin— and we have tried to figure it out.

We know that there is a problem.

We keep doing what we don’t want to do and in the process we keep repeating the same thing over and over again.

The writer Paul said something about in Romans 7:15

So when this happens to us what do we do?

Do you just keep our heads down and try to figure it out no matter what?

What happens when we meet an immovable foe?

I think the first thing we should do is to acknowledge that we are up against a foe we can’t beat.

Because we keep doing what we don’t want to do.

We have to first acknowledge that we have a sin issue, we have a problem and we are powerless to do anything about it.

God: So How do we attack our problems in a godly way?

What do we do when the odds seem to be against us?

Let us turn to the word of God for clarity.

We are going to be looking at a very familiar passage today.

David and Goliath but before we tune out the story because we have heard it 100 times, let us listen to the story with a fresh understanding, pretend like it is the first time you heard it—

Like you have no idea what is going to happen.

We may say— David who?

What is a giant?

Lets turn to 1 Sam 17:1-11

The men of Isreal, God’s chosen nation where drawing up the battle-lines.

The men of Isreal had defeated many foes under King Saul’s reign and today should be no different.

If you can picture it the two sides where both a side of a mountain, with a valley between them.

It was common in the day for them to size up the opponent and even maybe throw some insults at each other.