A well-known young man named David once met a murderous giant on a battlefield and said this:
“...You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the Lord will deliver you into my hands, and I’ll strike you down and cut off your head. This very day I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds and the wild animals, and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel.”
At this point, if this was a sermon, we would all expect to hear something about David’s incredible faith or God’s incredible faithfulness. While those are two primary elements of the story, I think we usually miss something else that is very, VERY important.
This month in Youth Group we did an RPG-themed message series called “Choose Your Character”. In week one, I talked about how the little decisions we make every day slowly forge us into a certain type of person. On week two, I talked about the need to carefully think about and plan the type of character you want to become. We do this in video games; we should certainly do it in life! And lastly, just this week, I drove home the point that the character you choose is really and truly YOURS. When the time for character testing comes, usually unexpectedly, you will be bound to be the type of person you have become.
You will have chosen your character, for better or worse, and your options to act outside of it will be limited or nonexistent. This is what many of us need to hear from the story of David and Goliath.
When King Saul asks David why he thinks he can triumph against a belligerent giant, David says this:
“Your servant has been keeping his father’s sheep. When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, I went after it, struck it, and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it, and killed it. Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living God.”
Let me offer an abbreviated version of his response: “O King, know what’s scarier than a nine-foot-tall man? A bear. Know who I am? A bear-killer. Know what else is worse? Lions. Know who I am? A lion-killer. This Goliath punk is a warmup. God’s been training me for this my whole life.”
“Giant-killer” was David’s character. When the giant showed up, there was no doubt in his mind.
So the question is, who are we? What is our character? What type of person are you building yourself into? Are you cooperating with God as he builds you into a giant-killer or do you resist fighting the bears and lions that show up? It’s worth thinking about. Once the giant shows up, the time for building is over.