NEC 2015 Camp Meeting: Strong Families, Strong Churches

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NEC Youth

Eric Walsh

Facing Your Giants- Part 1

I Samuel 1 chapter 17, I'm sorry, 1 Samuel.

The scripture says, Now the Philistines gathered together their armies to battle and were gathered together at Shecho, which belonged to Judah, and pitched between Shecho and Azekah in Ephesus, Namim.

And Saul and the men of Israel were gathered together.

And Saul and the men of Israel were gathered together and pitched by the valley of Elah and set the battle in Array against the Philistines and the Philistines stood on 1 side of the mountain on the 1 side and Israel stood on a mountain on the other side and there was a valley between them.

Saul was in a bad situation when this was going on.

In chapter 15, Saul finds out that he's going to lose the kingdom, that the anointing is going to move from him to someone else, to David.

And so Saul is desperate by the time the story of David and Goliath actually comes around.

And much of his behavior in the story is the story of a desperate man.

If you wanted to see a picture of this, you would see that The position of the Israelite army was on this side.

There was a flat valley here with a dry creek bed that becomes important in the story later on.

And from the 2 sides of the mountain overlooking this valley, our story happens.

In verse 4 of chapter 17 it says, And there went out a champion out of the camp of the Philistines named Goliath of Gath, whose height was 6 cubits and a span.

Notice that Goliath is from a place called Gath, which happened to be 1 of 3 places where Anakim remained.

According to Joshua 11, 21 to 22, these are places where there were still giants.

Goliath was possibly a descendant of Anakim who mixed with the Philistine population in that area.

So you have this story where this giant jumps out, and we'll talk a little bit more about his height in a second.

He had on a helmet of brass upon his head and he was armed with a coat of mail and the weight of the coat was 5, 000 shekels of brass.

So you're talking about a man who stands somewhere at least around 7 feet tall, some would argue 9 feet, we'll talk more about that in a little while.

He has on a helmet that is quite heavy and a coat of mail.

In fact the Philistines would wear it like this.

The coat would have weighed about a hundred and twenty-five pounds.

It was so that he was protected from outside penetration from any weapons.

In fact, even going all the way down to his feet, the Bible says in verse 6, and he had greaves of brass upon his legs and a target of brass between his shoulders.

So he looked pretty impenetrable from the outside.

It looked as if you couldn't get in between the helmet, the coat he had on, even his shins were covered.

Like, you know, you guys like to play soccer, you got a lot of football here, you cover your shins.

He was covered all the way down to his ankles for protection.

But he wasn't just covered, he also had weapons.

It was a giant round of wood that he would hurl.

And his spares had weighed 600 shekels of iron.

When Goliath walked down into the valley, he was incredibly intimidating.

Not just his size, but just the fact that he could carry his weapons and carry his armor was enough to scare you.

As he walked down, he was a giant in size.

You see in this picture here, there are some arguments over whether he was around 6 foot 6 to 7 foot tall, or if he was 9 feet.

I've met Shaquille O'Neal once, who played for the Los Angeles Lakers and Orlando Magic, and I can tell you, at 7 foot tall, you look straight up at Shaquille O'Neal.

The Bible says that he wasn't just big in size, he wasn't just big in his defense, he wasn't just big in his weapons, he was a good, what we call in the States, he was an incredible trash talker.

He knew how to talk junk, that's the way we say it when we play basketball.

And here it is in verse 8, he says, and he stood and cried unto the armies of Israel and said unto them, why are you come out to set your battle in array?

Am not I a Philistine and ye a servant of Tassal?

Choose you a man for you and let him come down to me.

And so there were times when instead of the whole armies fighting, they would just send 1 champion from each side and they'd battle it out and in that battle whoever won that whole army would win.

So he goes on, he says, if he be able to fight with me and to kill me, then will we be your servants.

But if I prevail against him and kill him then shall ye be our servants and serve us and the Philistine said I defy the armies of Israel this day give me a man that we may fight together Now who do you think was really supposed to go down there and fight him?

Technically if nobody was around to fight, Saul should have gone and fought him.

He's the king, he's the anointed 1, he should have gone down and fought him.

But The Bible says it said in verse 11, when Saul and all Israel heard these words of the Philistines, they were dismayed and what?

So the king, who's supposed to go down and fight this man, is so afraid, He's hiding out and he won't go down.

And so here we have this standoff and for days they're just parked.

1 army on 1 side, 1 army on the other side with Goliath coming down and running his mouth off every single day.

But into the story, as usual, comes our hero.

Now David was the son of the Ephraim, Bethlehem Judah, whose name was Jesse, and he had 8 sons.

And the man went among men for an old man in the days of Saul.

So David has this 8 in the family of David and you remember the story when Samuel gets to Jesse's house to try and find a guy to anoint, he meets all 7 of the brothers.

David's so insignificant to the father, he's left tending just a sheep and when finally Samuel says, well wait a minute, there's got to be somebody else, then they bring David out.

He's the 1 that everyone would have left alone.

His 3 oldest brothers, verse 13, tell us, already followed Saul into battle.

This was Eliab, the firstborn, and Abinadab, and Shammah.

David was the youngest and the 3 eldest followed Saul.

But David went and returned to Saul to feed his father's sheep at Bethlehem because he used to play the harp for Saul.

So 1 morning David gets up early, leaves the sheep with a keeper.

He takes and he goes and as Jesse commands him, his father gives him instruction, and he came to the trench as the host was going forth to fight and shouted for the battle for Israel and the Philistines, the Bible says here, had put the battle in a ray, army against army.

David left his carriage in the hand of the keeper of the carriage and ran into the army and came and saluted his brethren.

Behold, as he talked with them, Goliath comes out, the champion, the Philistine of Gath, Goliath by name, out of the armies of the Philistines and spake according to the same words, except the Bible does something profound here.

It puts a colon, the King James Version puts a colon and then the conjunction and.

In other words, what the Bible is saying is everything that was said is really important, but watch what's about to be said.

The whole story hinges on the fact that a boy, probably no more than 16, 17, 18 years of age, a boy hears what the giant is saying and that starts the whole story.

So, 10 things between tonight and tomorrow night that you need to do to face the giants in your life.

In your life, it might be a giant of sin.

It may be a giant of fear of what you're going to do with your life, of where God wants to take you, or how God's going to use you.

But we're gonna show you the 10 steps you do when you have to face a giant in your life.

And that 1 is to be about your father's business.

You see, David could never have faced Goliath if when his father told him to go and deliver what he needed to deliver to his brothers, he was not obedient.

If you want to face the giants in your life, you've got to go when your father says go.

Matthew 6 33, But seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you.

Number 1, be about your father's business.

And all the men of Israel, when they saw the man, fled from him and were sore afraid.

And the men of Israel said to David, Have you seen this man that has come up?

Surely to defy Israel is he come up." So these are men of war, they're supposed to be able to fight.

They see this guy and they're like, look, have you seen this guy?

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Facing Your Giants- Part 1

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