Don’t wait until things turn out positively in your life to give God glory. You’ve got to praise God before the battle.
God is not your refuge from trouble but he
is your refuge in trouble.
That understanding alone would answer many
of our questions about the operative nature
of faith.
God is not my refuge from trouble but God
is my refuge in trouble.
Some of the times in your life that you think
you’re in trouble, you’re not; you’re in training.
What you see as trouble God sees as training.
Go over to 1 Samuel 19.
When David wrote Psalm 59, or at least the
period of time he’s referencing here, it’s
a very successful time in his life, on one
hand.
He has been anointed to be king, and he got
a pretty cool opportunity in front of all
of his brothers to be singled out as the chosen
one who is going to replace King Saul.
He is called a man after God’s own heart,
and he has oil on his head, which represents
the way God is going to use him, the influence
God has given him.
God didn’t speak it to him like Joseph in
a dream.
God spoke it to him in front of his whole
family.
When God spoke to Joseph and said, “I’m going
to make you great,” Joseph had to try to convince
people, but when David was spoken of, he was
spoken of in front of his brothers, so everybody
knows he’s a little special.
If they didn’t know it when he was anointed,
they certainly knew it after he got done with
Goliath.
How many of you have never heard a good Bible
sermon about David and Goliath?
If you never heard this story about David
and Goliath…
Well, I’m not going to go into it now because…spoiler
alert…Goliath goes down.
By the way, for every Goliath in your life…spoiler
alert…he goes down.
He might be bigger.
He might be loud.
He might be defiant.
You might have never seen a battle like this
before, but Goliath goes down.
In fact, can I show you something?
When David stood before Goliath, before he
hit him with the stone he spit a few bars.
Can I show you?
You didn’t know David was the original battle
rapper.
In your mind you saw him with a harp and a
lamb in his lap, and he’s stroking a lamb
with one hand and strumming a harp with the
other hand, but before David was ever strumming
a harp or stroking a sheep, he walked up to
Goliath, and he looks at Goliath and begins
to declare what God is going to do.
Now here’s a principle: write your bars before
your battle.
Don’t wait until things turn out positively
in your life to give God glory.
Don’t wait until seas part and you’re standing
on dry ground to declare that God is able
to split them.
Don’t wait until everything is perfect in
your life to enjoy the presence of God.
Don’t wait until you don’t have any hang-ups
to say to God, “Here am I; send me.
Use me.”
God is looking for somebody who will shout
before the first brick falls, who will blow
a trumpet while you’re still looking at enemies
in an occupied territory.
So David stands up to Goliath, and I know
you know all this already, but just in case
nobody ever heard it, he goes up to Goliath
and grabs the mic and tells Goliath, “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.”
Next verse: “This day the Lord will deliver
you into my hands, and I’ll strike you down
and cut off your head.
This very day…”
Can’t you hear a beat behind this?
“…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.”
David’s confidence is not only something he
speaks of but something he walks in.
He has the kind of confidence to declare victory
before battle.
When I praise God, I’m not praising God for
outcomes I’m currently experiencing; I am
praising God for promises that are still to
come.
Can I preach a little bit today?
I want to talk about the wars David fought,
because he’s doing great.
He’s anointed to be king.
He kills Goliath.
He cuts off his head.
He goes to Saul’s tent, because Saul told
him he was just a little boy.
He tried to tell Saul he had the winning hand,
and Saul said, “You don’t have a sword,” and
David said, “Not now, but after I get done
using what’s in my hand to knock him down
and take what’s in his hand, I’m going to
cut off his head with what he came against
me holding.
I’ll take his sword and cut off his head.”
He stood at Saul’s tent with Goliath’s head,
and if that wasn’t proof enough, when he went
back into the city, a whole group of women
started following David into the streets singing
about his great victory.
David is an anointed future king.
He’s a warrior.
His music career is taking off.
He’s released a mixtape.
He’s being called to the palace to play the
harp for Saul, because Saul is going crazy.
He just held Goliath’s head, and now the women
are lining the streets, shaking tambourines.
Do you want to see this?
I promise you.
You think I make this stuff up.
This stuff is in the Bible.
You thought the Bible was boring.
The Bible is not boring.
Touch your neighbor and say, “You’re boring.
Read the Bible.
The Bible is awesome.”
David is rising in power, and he’s proving
the presence of God, not just through what
he says but through what he does, and the
women are lining the streets.
They have this little song they’re singing,
shaking timbrels and lyres and 808s.
“As they danced, they sang: ‘Saul has slain
his thousands, and David his tens of thousands.'”
Well, Saul didn’t like that song very much,
so Saul shut that song down.
He actually wanted to kill David.
This brings us to 1 Samuel, chapter 19, which
is the historical context of Psalm 59.
In Psalm 59, we see David calling on God to
be his strength, but in 1 Samuel 19 we see
into his struggle.
Let’s look into his struggle in order to understand
his strength.
It’s so important that we understand his struggle
or we will misunderstand his strength.
As one great theologian has said, the presence
of God is not the absence of trouble.
If I could get one thing across to you in
this series it is that your greatest testimonies
will come from your greatest tests.
Your greatest bars will come from your greatest
battles.
Maybe we assume that David killed Goliath
and went to the beach.
Not so.
The Bible says that David, continuing to serve
Saul, would go out (look at verse 8) and fight
against the Philistines.
In fact, it says (let me read this from the
New King James Version), “And there was war
again…”
Because it never stops.
You don’t kill Goliath, get the gold medal,
and go home and stare at his head for the
rest of your life.
Every time I heard Goliath preached as a little
boy it ended when he fell down, but do you
know what the Bible says was the reward for
David’s victory?
More battles.
I know that some of you are about to get engaged,
and before you post the engagement pictures
(swipe left) with eight different pictures
so everybody will “OMG” down in the comments
section and “Literally just died” and “So
happy for you…”
Before you post that, make sure you are prepared,
because the reward for engagement…
I mean, just ask Holly about the reward for
engagement.
She will tell you that the process of becoming
one is much grittier than the prospect of
walking the aisle.
So David kills Goliath.
Guess what?
You get to fight again.
You get the promotion.
Guess what?
You get to manage people.
Guess what?
People suck.
You get the house and you get to clean it.
I just love preaching the Bible like it really
goes.
If we stop when Goliath goes down, we miss
the whole point.
He killed Goliath, and Saul said, “Now I have
something bigger for you to do.”
Do you really want God to answer your prayer?
And war broke out again, and Saul needed somebody
to fight, and here’s the thing he did.
He sent somebody he didn’t even like to fight
a battle for him that he needed him to fight.
People will sometimes use you for what you
can do for them while secretly hating the
threat you represent to them.
Sometimes everything that appears to be a
gift is not a gift.
Saul wanted to kill David.
One of the ways he tried to kill him was he
let him marry his daughter.
He said, “I’ll give you my daughter if you
go kill 100 Philistines.”
David said, “No problem.
I’ll kill 200,” because he had hustle and
heart and ambition like that.
He came back, the Bible says, with 200 Philistine
foreskins.
In case you did not drop your kids off at
eKidz, I will bypass the exact meaning of
the text.
Just let it be known that Saul’s intention
in giving David the gift was not to bless
him.
Some of the things in your life that appear
to be battles are really gifts, and some of
the things in your life that appear to be
gifts are really curses.
So David is out fighting the Philistines,
and we all have Philistines we must fight
in our lives.
We all have Goliaths…not just one but many.
When we kill Goliath, here comes another and
another, because Goliath has brothers.
In the midst of fighting the Philistines,
because that’s hard enough…
It’s hard enough to fight the external battles.
I didn’t really want to talk to you about
the external battles, because it seems that
David had no problem fighting the Philistines.
That’s what he did.
David was a killer.
Give him a Philistine and he’ll knock him
down.
Give him five rocks and he’ll only use one.
You can keep the other four.
David knew how to fight Philistines.
I’m going to prove to you over the course
of this series that the biggest battles David
ever fought didn’t stand in front of him;
they lived within him.
Because while he is fighting the battles without,
there’s another battle that is being waged
within.
“Once more war broke out, and David went out
and fought the Philistines.”
And he did well.
“He struck them with a mighty blow, and they
fled from him.”
He sent them scattering, running for cover.
But verse 9 says that while that battle was
being won, another battle was being waged.
On one hand, David is coming up, and as he
comes up into a greater position, as he comes
up into a season of greater usefulness to
God, a distressing spirit from God has come
upon Saul.
On one hand David is being blessed, and on
one hand David is in a battle.
The battle is happening because God’s hand
has been taken off of Saul and put on David.
Now David has the unique task of trying to
serve someone who is threatened by his potential.
That’s tough.
Not only that but Saul is distressed.
He knows he’s slipping, but he cannot do anything
to catch himself.
Because of this, he’s acting crazy.
He’s doing things.
You know how you do when you sense that you’re
losing control.
You try to fix stuff, but everything you try
to do to fix it in frustration only makes
it worse.
You would do better to just leave it alone,
but you can’t, so you try to control people,
and then you sabotage yourself by creating
the very result you dread by trying to take
matters into your own hands.
That’s Saul.
He’s going so crazy in his mind that the only
way he can get the voices in his mind to stop
is if there’s music playing.
Now we don’t do that.
We don’t occupy ourselves with anything to
try to keep ourselves from having to be with
ourselves.
David is in the position that Saul’s dysfunction
has created, over in the corner playing a
harp for the king, because David is kind of
weird, because on one hand he can whip you
with a slingshot, but on the other hand he
can touch the strings and make you cry.
He is the embodiment of both a warrior and
a worshiper.
Now his gift has brought him into a position
that has created for him an opportunity in
the form of opposition.
As the hand of God is leaving the life of
Saul and as the hand of God, the anointing
of God, is raising David up, the Bible says
that Saul sat in his house with his spear
in his hand.
This is kind of creepy.
Big ol’ Saul, sulking in the corner with a
spear in his hand.
Watch what David had to do.
David had to sit over there behind a harp,
strumming a harp, while Saul held a spear.
David was playing music with his hand.
Verse 10: “Then Saul sought to pin David to
the wall with the spear, but he slipped away
from Saul’s presence; and he drove the spear
into the wall.”
Let me ask you a question.
Who is Saul fighting?
On the surface it looks like he’s fighting
David, but I wonder how many times in my life
I thought I was fighting someone or something
but the real fight, the real war, the real
battle was not the battle with them; it was
the battle within.