I am using One Year Bible Online for my daily Bible study. For today, One Year Bible Online links here.
Today’s passage is the story of David and Goliath, which most people are familiar with. The passage tells us that three of David’s brothers were in Saul’s army, but that David went back and forth to help with his father’s sheep. This is probably because David played the harp for Saul when Saul became depressed (as was mentioned in the previous chapter of 1 Samuel). David’s father sends him to the army camp with food for his brothers and their unit. When David gets there, the army is just going out into the field to face down the Philistines. Apparently the two armies had been doing this for 40 days with neither commander (Saul and whoever was commanding the Philistines) feeling he had enough of an advantage to initiate a fight. David leaves the supplies he brought with the quartermaster and hurries out to the lines, ostensibly to talk with his brothers and follow his father’s instructions to find out how they are doing. While he is talking to his brothers, Goliath puts forth his daily challenge to the Israelite army. While David is talking to his brothers, Goliath comes out and delivers his taunt. Some of the men nearby ask David if he has seen the giant and tell him of the reward King Saul has offered to anyone who kills him. David then turns to some other men and ask them what reward is being offered for killing Goliath and why is he being allowed to defy the armies of the living God. To us, this seems innocuous enough, he’s just asking for confirmation of what the first men said. However, David’s elder brother knows what he is doing and accuses him of wanting to get into battle. David’s response is, “What me? I’m only making conversation.” From this exchange I am going to guess that David was under instructions, that his brother knew about, to not get involved in battle. As soon as his brother moves on, David goes up to another group of soldiers and asks the same questions. The passage does not explicitly say so, but I am going to guess he kept doing this until someone reported his questions to King Saul.
King Saul sends for David. As soon as David comes before Saul he says, “I’ll go fight this guy.” Saul responds by telling David he can’t defeat Goliath because David is a mere boy and Goliath is an experienced warrior. David responds by saying that he has fought lions and bears and besides that Goliath is not merely taunting Saul’s army, but God Himself and God will give David the victory. Saul was convinced to allow David to try and he outfits David with his(Saul’s) own armor and weapons. David tries out Saul’s armor and weapons and concludes that he cannot fight like that. He goes out against Goliath as he would have gone into the fields to tend his sheep, with a staff, a sling and a few carefully chosen stones. When David comes out, Goliath treats him with contempt that is reminiscent of that shown to Jonathan earlier. David’s reply is. “You are a great warrior and I am nothing but a boy. But you have defied God and He will defeat you, after which I will kill you.”
There is a lot to learn from this passage and most, if not all, of it has been covered by others batter than I can. But I will still write about the lesson that comes out strongest to me today. When Goliath challenged and belittled the men of Saul’s army, he was challenging and belittling God. He did not see it that way and Saul and his men did not see it that way. But David saw it that way and he was right. Saul had gone into battle as God’s anointed king over Israel. The Israelites claimed to be God’s chosen people (and they were). When Goliath proclaimed that he was the champion of the Philistines and the Israelite army was nothing but servants of Saul, he was saying that their claims to being God’s chosen people were of less consequence than Goliath’s claim to be the champion of the Philistines. He was saying that Israel’s God was weaker than the Philistines, not than the Philistines’ gods but than the Philistines themselves. When David came out before Goliath, he said, “I am going to win today, not because I am better or stronger than you, but because my God is better and stronger, not only than you, but than your entire people and your gods.” David did not claim that his victory would show what a mighty warrior he was. As a matter of fact, he claimed that he was nothing much and that his victory would show that God was powerful. We need to take that position, our successes do not come from our greatness but from God’s greatness and our weakness.
The New Testament passage today is short and much of what it says is a restating of what was said in earlier passages. However, there are two things that stood out to me. The first is that twice Jesus uses the Divine “I AM” to refer to himself. This would not have been lost on His audience even though it is less clear in the translation. The second is that this section ends by saying that many who heard Him say these things believed in Him. I am not sure that I understand, because I do not see Jesus making any particularly convincing arguments in the section that preceded the author saying that. However, I am going to try and see what I can garner from this. It looks to me like we are being told that sometimes our willingness to stand our ground and say that we unconditionally believe that Jesus is God is the final straw to allow the Holy Spirit to reach some people. The fact that when ridiculed and questioned Jesus did not back down from what He had said finally led some/many of His listeners to believe in Him. Today the same is true, sometimes what people need in order to believe is for us to stand up in the face of ridicule and questioning and say, “I believe.”
They are forever true,
to be obeyed faithfully and with integrity.”
They don’t come with expiration dates after which we can rewrite them to something more to our liking as some people today (and all throughout history) seem to believe. Of course this psalm concludes with the important point that so many wish to avoid:
All who obey his commandments will grow in wisdom.
Too often today, we Christians emphasize God’s love (which is fine) and downplay the need to fear Him. I remember when I was young there were many preachers who talked of God’s fearsomeness. They often, in my recollection, took it too far and were, as I heard it expressed, “selling fire insurance.” But today, there are not enough Christians who talk about the coming Judgement and how much it is to be feared. In some ways I wish I could go back and listen to those men again with ears shaped by my experience. Perhaps I would discover that they were not saying what I remember, shaped as those memories are by those who were older than myself, yet younger than those preachers. Some of those same people who shaped my memories of those preachers as “selling fire insurance” are the same people who shaped my perception of the Mennonite Church of the 1920s-1960s as being a Church that was insular and did not do enough evangelism. A Church which needed to do away with its traditional teaching in order to be better able to reach those outside its community. Of course, now I look back and I see a Church which did more to spread the Gospel than those who told me it needed to be less insular and change in order to be able to reach those around it. I don’t believe that my observation is unique to the Mennonite Church. It appears to me to be true of the Christian Church in the U.S. in general. The argument was, and too often still is, that we need to give up traditional positions of the Church in order to reach the world around us with the Gospel of Christ. Yet we often find that once the Church has abandoned those traditional positions, it no longer has any Gospel left to offer the world around it. There is a reason for this many of those “traditional” positions are not just traditions, but the teachings of the Bible and when you get rid of them you discover that what you are preaching is no different than what the world teaches. And offers people nothing of value.
How fitting that this proverb comes today following the lesson I learned from today’s psalm. We, as humans, always think that we can improve on what God has told generations past. Yet time and again we learn, to our dismay, that we were wrong. As this proverb points out, if God can see and understand what is beyond death, something which is completely beyond the bounds of human understanding, what makes us think there is any part of human motivation that He does not see and understand?