IMPACT Generation Leadership Retreat

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

IMPACT Germany

Henrik Jensen

Lessons From David and Goliath

Father, we thank you so much for this new day, Father, we thank you for this group and for this time we can enjoy together.

Father, I just pray that you will speak through your word this morning.

The title of today's presentation, we have 14 minutes.

So if I speak too fast, please tell me to slow down.

I call it Lessons for Impact from the Life of David.

Now, this is a well-known story to a lot of us, and therefore I'm not going to, of course, read the whole thing.

We're just going to dig into a few verses and see what this story has for us.

Well, it's clear that David, he really made an impact on Goliath and also on his whole generation.

And therefore I think there's many good things for us to learn.

But I want to start with a quote, this is such a good quote, it has really helped me a lot, it's from Alan White's Selected Messages, and it simply says that the Bible was given for practical purposes.

That simply means that the Bible has answers for the practical questions and the practical problems that we have.

The Bible was given to us in order to help us with our everyday life.

So whether it's relationships, it's family, it's economy, it's school, it's whatever, the Bible has the right answers to that.

And so I think the Bible also has answers and practical solutions for whatever occurs with impact mission trips.

And so we're going to look into that a little bit.

Let's go to the first chapter, chapter 17.

First Samuel chapter 17, the book of Hebrews chapter 47.

And it says here, And there went out a champion out of the camp of the Philistines, named Goliath of Gath, whose height was 6 cubits in span.

And he had an helmet of brass upon his head, and he was armed with a coat of metal, and the weight of the coat was 5000 shekels of brass.

And he had crevices of brass upon his legs, and a target of brass between his shoulders.

And the staff of his spear was like a weaver's beam, and his spear's head weighed 600 shekels of iron, and 1 bearing a shield went before him.

So here we have a very detailed description of the appearance of the giant of Goliath.

How did the Israelites know that the spearhead weighed 600 shekels of iron?

Do you think there was a sign on the spearhead saying, spearhead weight 600 shekels or 7 kilos as it would be today.

Do you think it's God just brought it in the Bible to fill out the space?

No, It's a little bit too early for such difficult questions like this.

Maybe they took it afterwards and created it.

That's the only way they could have found out, right?

They must have taken the armor after they had slain the giant and weighed every piece to see how much it weighs.

Because they could afterwards write it in the Bible.

But most of these medals, they are actually useful medals.

So that could also be practical purposes.

I think maybe there is also another reason, but that's a good 1.

I think it's because that was the biggest armour they had ever seen in their life.

And so they just wanted to see how big it was and just to know everything about this.

And I think this was exactly the problem of the Israelites.

They were so amazed by the size of their problem that they just lost courage.

When they saw the giant, they were like, oh man, his spear is long like we haven't seen before, you know, he has just, this is just too big for us.

Now, When David went out to meet the giant, had he grown any smaller after 40 days?

And we're going to look into that a little bit.

Lesson number 1 that we can learn from this story.

If we become preoccupied with the size of our problems, we lose faith.

When we make Impact mission trips, we always face problems, we face trials.

Sometimes they come from surprising sources.

And we think to ourselves, if we become preoccupied with the size, you know, how insurmountable our problems are, we'll lose courage.

We should not look at the size, we should look at the solution.

You know, we had a big problem in Denmark this summer, where we had 40 people registered and we did not have a car to drive them around.

The health expo was like 20 kilometers away and they couldn't walk.

So we didn't know what to do and got, you know, 2 weeks before, 1 week, was it 1 or 2 weeks?

It was an old 1, it was a rusty 1, you know, you couldn't turn it on with the keys, you had to use a screwdriver.

And it was, you know, the suspension was almost gone, it felt like driving, you know, a horse on fire from the 1800s.

But it worked and it took us where we had to go.

And so God, he came through and he helped us in the last minute.

But see, if we had just looked at the problem and we would have lost courage.

But by God's grace, He showed us that he wanted to help us.

I cannot see my notes, so I hope I remember everything.

I don't know what happened to this computer.

Verse 20, it says, And David rose up early in the morning and left the sheep with a keeper, and took and went as Jesse had commanded him.

And he came to the trenches, the horse was going forth to the fight, and shouted for the battle.

I want to focus on the first part of the verse.

Back to Menu

Lessons From David and Goliath

Transcript

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Sound Doctrine