Rejoice in the Lord's Salvation! (Luke 2:8-20)

July 31, 2011

Preached as one of the shepherds

Dear friends in Christ.

Glory to God in the Highest and on earth Peace to men on whom his favor rests!  These, dear friends, are some of the most beautiful words I have ever heard, because these very words came to me from the Lord through his angel messengers who announced the birth of his Son, our salvation.  But I’m getting ahead of myself; let me start at the beginning so that you can join me today and rejoice in the Lord’s Salvation.

I will always remember that amazing night when the angels appeared to us.  It was during the time of the Census that Caesar Augustus had issued; the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.  It was a busy time with people traveling here and there, traveling to their own towns; to the birthplace of their forefathers so that they could register and be counted.  I remember how busy Bethlehem was.  Though normally Bethlehem was a quite village in the hill country of Judea, because of all the people, Bethlehem was filled to capacity and beyond.  About the best comparison I can think of is the small town of Sturgis in South Dakota.  Though Sturgis is normally a quiet town of roughly 5,000 people, during the motorcycle rally, the population of Sturgis grows to more than 35,000 people. The same was true for Bethlehem!  So many people had descended upon her to be counted that there was no room left anywhere.  In short, she was filled beyond capacity and the people just kept coming.  It kind of made me glad that I was out in the fields that night, keeping watch over my flocks with all the other shepherds.  We were away from the hustle and bustle of the city.  We didn’t have to worry about all the people coming and going or looking for a place to stay.  All was quiet by us as we lay down with our sheep for the night, until suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared before us and the glory of the Lord shone around us, and we were terrified! (Luke 2:8-9)

Now, I know that you know my story like the back of your hand.  I know that when you were little children in Sunday School you learned these very words from Luke 2 and you recited them during your Christmas service.  I know that now you come to church each and every Christmas to hear your children and other children recite these familiar words, telling you about the angel of the Lord appeared to us and how terrified we were.  But have you ever stopped to consider what these words are saying?  Have you ever stopped to consider how you would have reacted if you saw what we did that night?  Imagine for a moment that you are sitting on a hillside, watching over your sheep at night, getting ready to lie down and rest for the night when suddenly you see in the sky an angel from the Lord.  Though it had been dark just a moment ago, in the same way that a flash of lightning lights up the sky, suddenly the sky is alight by the glory of the Lord which is shining around you from the angel that has appeared before you!  But, unlike the lightning that simply flashes in the sky and then disappears, the light from the angel and the glory of the Lord keep on shining.  Now, I don’t know how you would have reacted, but I was terrified.  I was terrified because this was one of God’s holy angels, and I am a sinful man.  I was terrified because the light that I saw all around me was the glory of the Lord, and I was nothing more than a shepherd; a person considered to be an uneducated, useless thief, who wasn’t worth anything to anybody.  I was terrified because out in that quiet, Bethlehem night, the Lord had sent his angel to me and to my fellow shepherds who were also living in those fields, nearby.  But even though we were terrified, that angel spoke to us some of the most beautiful words I’ve ever heard.  He said, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. 11 Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. 12 This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” (Luke 2:10–12, NIV84)

Though we were shaking with fear, the angel essentially told us that there was no longer any reason to be afraid.  There was no longer any reason to be afraid because the long awaited Savior had been born that day.  The Savior whom the Lord had promised, who would wash away all our sins and make us pure and holy before the Lord our God; the Savior whose promise had been passed from generation to generation by father to son and mother to daughter was here on earth.  He had been born this night.  He wasn’t even that far away as he was lying in a manger with his mother and father right there.  He was born!  The Savior of the world was here!  Our waiting was over!  Our sins would be forgiven! Our Salvation was at hand!  We would be right with the Lord, and we were the first people the Lord had chosen to tell!  I don’t know about the rest of the guys but I was overwhelmed by the sight of the angel, the amazing message of salvation that he had just revealed to me, and then came the amazingly beautiful praises that I will never forget.  For as soon as the angel was done telling us the good news, “Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, 14 “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests.” (Luke 2:13–14, NIV84)

Then, as quickly as the angels had appeared, they were gone.  Yet their praises were still ringing in our ears causing us to rejoice in the Lord’s salvation.  You know that feeling you get when you have just heard the greatest news imaginable, the very news you’ve been waiting for you, the news that you can barely believe unless you go and see it for yourself? That is exactly how we felt.  After the angels left and went back into heaven we decided among ourselves that we would go to Bethlehem and see the Lord’s salvation with our own eyes.  We hurried as fast as we could, leaving our flocks in the fields, and we found them, just as the angel had said.  We found Mary and Joseph, and we found the baby Jesus, lying in the manger.  Do you remember that feeling of awe and joy that flooded over you when you first saw your baby after he or she had been born?  Do you remember that feeling of awe, joy, and wonder when you had the opportunity to hold your baby in your arms for the first time?  That is the exactly what we felt when we saw him, our Savior, the Lord’s Salvation, lying there in that manger!  There he was!  Our salvation!  Just as the angel had said!  He had been born!  He had come to earth!  The Lord’s promise to Adam and Eve was being fulfilled, and we were witnesses of it! 

I don’t remember how long we stayed.  I would have loved to stay standing there forever, simply standing in the presence of my salvation, but the time came for us to leave and go back to our flocks.  Yet, even as we were returning to our flocks we could not contain our joy over the birth of Jesus.  As we went back to our flocks we continued rejoicing in the Lord’s salvation and spreading the news to everyone we met about this child.  We were so full of joy that we were knocking on doors and telling everyone we could that their salvation was at hand because their Savior had been born on that very night!  All the way back to our flocks we were rejoicing, praising God, giving thanks to him, and spreading the news that the Savior was born, just as the angel had told us.

Greater joy has never permeated my heart than the joy that filled me that night, and to this day I still cannot contain my joy at the birth of my Savior.  To this day I must continue telling the good news of great joy that the angel revealed to us on that night that the Savior had been born to us!  But what about you?  Do you carry with you that same joy?  Do you continually rejoice in the salvation that the Lord your God has bestowed upon you?  Oh, I know that there are still roughly 5 months before you celebrate Christmas, but even now you can still live in Christmas joy, rejoicing in the Lord’s salvation.  You can still live in the joy of the Lord’s salvation, because it is the Lord who has freed you form all your sins!    While you were still his enemies, God sent his Son to be your Savior.  In the fullness of time, God sent his son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law.  This is the salvation that the Lord provided for us in Jesus Christ, his Son, our Savior.  In that little baby dwelt all the fullness of the Lord our God.  In that little baby was God’s solution to our sins.  And we know his story!

We know how he grew and how he lived his life.  We know how he was baptized, how he was tempted, just like we were and yet was without sin.  We know how he went throughout the land of Israel preaching and teaching the message of salvation through faith in him to all his people.  And we know how he gave his life for us on the cross.  Though he was the innocent Son of God, he willingly gave his life over to death to pay for our sins and was raised to life for our justification!  This is the good news of great joy that is for all people.  This is the message of salvation in which we rejoice today.  This is the message that the other shepherds and I brought to the people of Bethlehem as we returned to our flocks, and this is the message of joy that you now carry with you to the world.

Just think about the joy that you have in the message of salvation that the Lord has revealed to you.  It means that you have been forgiven of every single one of your sins.  No matter what you may have done or even left undone, the Lord your God has forgiven it and forgotten it for Jesus sake.  It means that when you fold your hands in prayer in the morning, in the evening, at meal times or any time, your prayers are heard by the Lord your God and they will be answered by him in his time.  It means that as you live your life here on earth Christ lives and that he watches over you and protects you.  It means that we have the sure and certain hope of eternal life waiting for us when the Lord decides that it is time for our lives on earth to come to an end, and it means that we are his ambassador to bring his message to the people who do not know. 

Just think about the joy that the message of salvation brings you when you realize what the Lord has done for you, and then think about all the people you know and you love to spend time with.  Do they know the same thing that you know?  Are they already rejoicing in the message of salvation with you so that you can be certain that you will not only spend your life with them but you will spend eternity with them as well?  Who do you know that may or may not know the message of salvation like you do? Think about all those people who do not yet know about the Lord their salvation.  Think about all those who do not yet know that Jesus has been born.  Think about the message of salvation in which you are rejoicing today and then go out and spread the message of salvation so that others might rejoice with you in the salvation that is theirs through faith in Jesus!  This is the assignment that the Lord our God now gives us—to tell others about the reason for the hope that we have! 

So as you go out that door, live in the joy of your salvation and rejoice in the Lord your salvation in the way that you live your life!  Live your life so that it is clear that you are a man or a woman of faith.  Live your life in the joy that comes from knowing that Jesus is your Savior and that you are his child.  Live your life rejoicing in the salvation that is yours through faith!  Then, as you live your life in that joy you will find people begin to notice that there is something different about you.  People will begin to notice the joy that you have and will want to know why you have it, and before you know it, you will have the opportunity to share the reason for the hope you have and rejoice anew in the salvation the Lord has bestowed upon you as you become a witness of that salvation.

What greater joy could there be than the joy that comes from knowing the salvation that the Lord bestowed upon his people at the birth of his Son, our Savior.  On that night, when the angels told us the amazing news, we could not help but go and see for ourselves and then spread the news concerning this child.  I pray that the message of our Savior’s birth and the salvation that the Lord bestowed upon you continues to permeate your hearts so that you live your lives in joy and witness as you rejoice in the salvation of the Lord your God through his Son, Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Pastor David M. Shilling

GraceEvangelical Lutheran Church -Le Sueur, MN

Remain Faithful to the Lord (Daniel 6:1-28)

July 22, 2011

Preached as Daniel

Dear friends in Christ.

If you’ll permit me, I’d like to tell you a story this morning.  It is a story filled with danger, struggles, hardships, and yes, even a little adventure.  It is a story with which you are very familiar, because it is a story that you learned when you were just little children, and it is a true story, which makes it all the better.  For the story I want to share with you this morning is the my story—my story of the things I endured as I sought to remain faithful to the Lord my God.

The year was 605 BC (roughly 400 years before the Savior would be born) and the time for Israel’s captivity was at hand.  The captivity which the Lord had promised through prophets like Jeremiah, Micah, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah began as King Nebuchadnezzar invaded the land of Israel, bound King Jehoiakim with bronze shackles and took him to Babylon.  (2 Kings 23:36-24:7; 2 Chronicles 34:5-8)  But not only did he take the king into custody, but he also took gold and silver articles from the Temple of the Lord, along with some of the young men from the royal family and nobility; “young men without any physical defect, handsome, showing aptitude for every kind of learning, well informed, quick to understand, and qualified to serve in the king’s palace. He was to teach them the language and literature of the Babylonians.” (Daniel 1:4, NIV84)

I was one of those men brought to Babylon where I was trained for three years before I entered the King’s service, and where, from the moment I arrived in Babylon, I was challenged as to how I was going to remain faithful to the Lord.  For you see, Babylon was the city that Nimrod had founded some years after the flood.  It was a great city in the very area where the Lord had confused the languages of the people after they had tried to build a tower to their glory so that they would not have to follow the Lord’s decree to spread out over the earth.  It was a city and an empire filled with all sorts of wealth and riches, peoples and nations, pleasures and diversions, and even though the name Babylon carries the meaning of “gate of god” it was clear that the Lord God was not worshiped in this city.  Rather people were “lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God—having a form of godliness but denying its power.”  (2 Timothy 3:2-5 NIV84) 

Interesting, isn’t it that the people of my day fit the very description of people that Paul spoke about in his letter to Timothy.  Yet the truth is, the people of my day were no different than the people of Paul’s Day nor than the people of your day.  It was because of this that I determined that I would do everything within my power to remain faithful to the Lord my God, and from the very moment that I determined to remain faithful to the Lord, I faced one challenge after another.  If I had time today I could take you through each one of them and show you just how the Lord blessed me as a struggled to remain faithful to him.  But since we don’t, let me take you through the story that has so often been called, Daniel and the Lion’s Den.

The year was 539 BC.  66 years had passed since I entered into the service of the Babylonian government.  The Babylonian empire had recently been taken over by the Medes and the Persians, who quickly set about establishing their empire in the place that the Babylonians so recently ruled, and it pleased King Darius to appoint 120 satraps to rule throughout the kingdom, with three administrators over them, one of whom was [me]. The satraps were made accountable to [the administrators] so that the king might not suffer loss. Now [I] so distinguished [myself] among the administrators and the satraps by [my] exceptional qualities that the king planned to set [me] over the whole kingdom. (See: Daniel 6:1-3, NIV84)

This was something that just stuck in the craw of the other satraps and administrators.  They couldn’t stomach the idea that a foreigner, a Jew, no less, someone who did not worship their god Bel or any of the other gods of the Babylonian Pantheon, could possibly be placed in a position of authority over them.  They plotted and the schemed, and finally they came up with the plan to trap me in my faithfulness to the Lord.  They persuaded the King to sign a decree, a law if you will, stating that no one could pray to any god other than the king for the next 30 days.  They did this because they knew my heart, and they knew that I would not listen to the decree or pray to the king let alone other gods. They knew that I would remain faithful to the Lord.  Now, I cannot say that I wasn’t tempted to stop praying in my normal way, when I learned of the decree.  After all, the punishment was death by lions.  But even though I was tempted to be less than faithful to the Lord, the Lord gave me strength and the ability to remain faithful.    So, I simply did what I had always done.  I went upstairs to my room where the windows faced east toward Jerusalem, and I got down and prayed like I always did.  This time, as I expected, I was “discovered” by the others and tossed to the Lions.

You know how it happened.  You know how the Lord sent his angel to close the mouths of the lions and protect me, but the truth is, it could have gone the other way.  The Lord could have decided to let me be devoured by those lions, and allowed me to die in his name.  If he would have allowed me to die there, I was ready to go because I trusted in the Lord my God and knew that the Lord my God had the power to rescue me from the lions, and even if he didn’t I would remain faithful to him because I knew that he would carry me to his side where I would live with him forever.  Though the lions were not able to make a meal out of me, they made a very delicious meal out of those who sought to be rid of me when the King ordered that they take my place in the den and before they even reached the ground they were overcome by the lions. 

Now, why am I telling you all of this?  I am telling this to you because my story is not all that different than your story.  Just like me, you live in a great city and a great nation filled with all sorts of wealth and riches.  You live in a nation filled with all sorts of pleasures and diversions.  You live in a nation that though it was founded on Christian principles and values, it is quickly becoming more and more godless.  You live in a nation where shrines and temples to false gods cover the landscape. I’m not just talking about those religions that are obviously false and have absolutely no connection to the true God; I’m also talking about those churches that are supposed to be Christian, but no longer teach a Christ centered message.  You live in a nation where Atheism, which is the belief that there is no god, and Agnosticism, the belief that one cannot truly know if god exists, are becoming more and more popular.  You live in a nation that has blessed you with the freedom of religion, but certain groups are working very hard to make sure that this becomes a nation that establishes the freedom from religion.  You are living in a nation that is not that much different from ancient Babylon and the Lord your God is calling on you to remain faithful to him. 

But how do we do that?  The answer is simple!  We remain faithful to the Lord by remaining in his Word, for it is only through the Word of God that our faith is strengthened and our faith grows.  Just think about how your faith grows when you are regularly in church and you are regularly hearing the Word of God.  Just think about how your faith grows and how it is easier to avoid certain temptations when you are regularly partaking of the Lord’s Supper.  Just think about how your faith grows and how you are better prepared to remain faithful to the Lord when you are reading his Word for yourselves on a regular basis.  Just think about how your faith grows when you do these things, because you are convicted of your sins, and assured forgiveness from Jesus Christ your Savior.  Just think about how the Lord works in your hearts and how the Holy Spirit strengthens your faith and gives you that stronger conviction to live for your Savior, simply because you have been in the word. 

These are but a few of the blessings that the Lord gives when we remain faithful to him.  He blesses us with the assurance of the forgiveness of sins.  He blesses us with the assurance of life and salvation. He blesses us with the assurance that not only are our prayers heard, but they are also answered.  He blesses us with the power for Christian living.  He blesses us with the association of fellow Christians who are facing similar struggles so that we can encourage each other and build each other up as we remain faithful to the Lord.  He gives us the ability to stand up against temptations through Jesus Christ our Savior, and when we feel that we cannot stand up he assures us that we can hide ourselves in our Savior who will fight for us.  Though there are times when we do fail to remain faithful to the Lord and we fall into sin that one sin is never the end, because when we turn to the Lord in repentance, he forgives us.  He washes us clean.  He lavishes his grace on us, and he enables us to stand faithful once again.

Though remaining faithful to the Lord was not the easiest thing to do in Babylon, it was a very important thing for me to do.  Not only was it important for my own salvation, but it was also important that I remained faithful to the Lord to encourage my fellow Israelites who had also been brought to Babylon.  The same thing is true for you today.  Because you are living in a world where your Christian beliefs are being challenged, it is all the more important that you remain faithful to the Lord.  Because you are living in a land where Atheism is becoming more popular, where sexual sins are becoming normalized, where sexual perversions are thought of as alternate lifestyles, and where certain groups are seeking to do all they can to legislate Christianity to the point of nonexistence, it is all the more important for you to remain faithful to the Lord your God.  Though you may not have been threatened with lions because of your faith, we all face different kinds of persecutions because of our beliefs.  Yet, it is the Lord who delivers us from those persecutions. Though sometimes he uses them to help us grow in our trust of him and someday he might allow those persecutions to take our lives as he did with so many of the heroes of faith in his Word, we know that when we remain faithful to the Lord it is the Lord who blesses us.  We know that no matter what we face in this life, heaven is waiting for us.  We know that no matter what hardships the Lord brings into our lives, he is the one who will deliver us from them, either in this life or in the life to come by his side forever.

This is why it is so important for us to remain faithful to the Lord our God, because the Lord is our salvation.  Though I know you know my story so well because you learned it as little children, I hope that it has been a blessing to you.  I hope it has been a blessing to you and an encouragement to you to remain faithful to the Lord who always remains faithful to you.

Amen.

Pastor David M. Shilling

Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church -Le Sueur, MN

Marvel at the Lord's Deliverance (1 Samuel 17:1-58)

July 17, 2011

Dear friends in Christ.

Today we’re making a little bit of a change in the lineup when it comes to our windows.  Though the roster of our windows has been printed in such a dramatic way for us, it was only a few days ago that I realized that the next two windows in our series are out of place, at least according to the narrative of the Biblical account.  Though there is no problem with the window of Daniel in the Lion’s Den following after the window of Joseph, when it comes to the pattern of the Bible, it is the account of David and Goliath that takes place between these two.  So today, even though our roster suggested that we would marvel at the Lord’s deliverance as we studied the account of Daniel in the Lion’s Den, instead, we will marvel at the Lord’s deliverance through the account of David and Goliath.

Now, I don’t know about you, but of all the Bible history lessons I learned in Sunday School and Lutheran Elementary School, David and Goliath was one of my favorites.  Though you might think the whole reason I loved this lesson was because of the amazing similarity between my name and the main character’s name; the real reason I loved the account of David and Goliath is because even as a little child I was amazed and I marveled at how the Lord delivered a young boy from so many things.  I marveled at how the Lord had delivered David from both the lion and the bear, not when they had attacked David, but when he had gone after them, grabbing them by the hair and killing them in order to rescue the sheep they had stolen!  That always amazed me!  Yet the thing that caused me to marvel all the more was how the Lord delivered David from the hand of the Philistine with a single rock to the forehead. 

As it is, the story of David and Goliath is one with which we are all very familiar, because it is one of those Bible history lessons that has caused us to marvel at the Lord’s deliverance in one way or another.  In fact, I would be willing to bet that if I asked you to, each and every one of you could recount the majority of what happened when David took on Goliath.  But, instead of me asking you to take turns to recount different portions of our lesson today, I invite you to take a look at it with me in 1 Samuel 17.  If you haven’t done so already, I invite you to open your Bibles to 1 Samuel 17 and we will take a look at exactly how the Lord delivered David from the hand of his enemy.  As you are turning to 1 Samuel 17, let me give you a little history to get you up to speed with what is happening here.  It wasn’t all that long before chapter 17 that the Lord sent Samuel to the house of Jesse in Bethlehem to anoint one of his seven sons to be the next king. Though Samuel anointed David on that day, it seems that he never told David, his brothers, or even his Father of the anointing.  Shortly after that David was brought into the service of Saul to play for him when he was tormented by an evil spirit from the Lord.  Now, as Chapter 17 begins, Israel is at war with Philistia.  They had camped on opposite sides of the valley of Elah and had drawn up the battle lines to meet the Philistines.  But it was Goliath whom they had not expected.  Take a look at verse 4:  “A champion named Goliath, who was from Gath, came out of the Philistine camp. He was over nine feet tall. 5 He had a bronze helmet on his head and wore a coat of scale armor of bronze weighing five thousand shekels; 6 on his legs he wore bronze greaves, and a bronze javelin was slung on his back. 7 His spear shaft was like a weaver’s rod, and its iron point weighed six hundred shekels. His shield bearer went ahead of him. 8 Goliath stood and shouted to the ranks of Israel, “Why do you come out and line up for battle? Am I not a Philistine, and are you not the servants of Saul? Choose a man and have him come down to me. 9 If he is able to fight and kill me, we will become your subjects; but if I overcome him and kill him, you will become our subjects and serve us.” 10 Then the Philistine said, “This day I defy the ranks of Israel! Give me a man and let us fight each other.” 11 On hearing the Philistine’s words, Saul and all the Israelites were dismayed and terrified.” (1 Samuel 17:4–11, NIV84)

What a sight it must have been to see a giant coming forward from the camp of the Philistines.  How terrifying it must have been for a man who was nearly twice the size of an average man, challenging just one man to step forward, to be the champion, and to meet him in single combat in order to decide the outcome of the entire war.  How would you have reacted?  Would you have stood up to fight without hesitation?  Or would you have cowered with the rest of the Israelites who were trembling in fear?  Though right here, right now, in the safety of this church it is easy to feel the passion of righteous anger coursing through our veins moving us to stand up against this unbelieving giant who is defying the Lord our God who saves us, watches over us, cares for us, and delivers us; once we actually pass through those doors to the outside, or sometimes even as stand up, fear begins to overtake us, and we run, trembling, to hide ourselves with the rest of Israel’s army.  Just think about the last spiritual battle you were in and the last time an unbelieving “giant” caused you to run and hide.  Was it the last time someone asked you about your faith or the church to which you belong?  Was it perhaps the last time someone complained to you about how strict your church is and how your church doesn’t allow you to do this or to do that?  Was it perhaps a time when a classmate, or a co-worker, or even a family member decided that it was time to argue with you about religion and you chose to go the other way?  What happened the last time that a Goliath entered your life and defied the Lord your God?  Did your faith prevail as you stood up for your faith?  Or did fear reign in your hearts like it did in the hearts of the Israelites?

Sadly, the reason that fear reigned in the hearts of the Israel was because their King did not fully trust that the Lord would deliver them.  Their King did not remind the Israelites of how the Lord had delivered them in the past, nor how the Lord delivered the Promised Land to them only a few generations earlier.  Instead, the King cowered in fear until after 40 days of Goliath’s defiance, the Lord sent David to deliver the Israelites.  Take a look at verse 17: “Now Jesse said to his son David, “Take this ephah of roasted grain and these ten loaves of bread for your brothers and hurry to their camp. 18 Take along these ten cheeses to the commander of their unit. See how your brothers are and bring back some assurance from them… 22 David left his things with the keeper of supplies, ran to the battle lines and greeted his brothers. 23 As he was talking with them, Goliath, the Philistine champion from Gath, stepped out from his lines and shouted his usual defiance, and David heard it. 24 When the Israelites saw the man, they all ran from him in great fear. 25 Now the Israelites had been saying, “Do you see how this man keeps coming out? He comes out to defy Israel. The king will give great wealth to the man who kills him. He will also give him his daughter in marriage and will exempt his father’s family from taxes in Israel.” 26 David asked the men standing near him, “What will be done for the man who kills this Philistine and removes this disgrace from Israel? Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God?” …31 What David said was overheard and reported to Saul, and Saul sent for him. 32 David said to Saul, “Let no one lose heart on account of this Philistine; your servant will go and fight him.” 33 Saul replied, “You are not able to go out against this Philistine and fight him; you are only a boy, and he has been a fighting man from his youth.” 34 But David said to Saul, “Your servant has been keeping his father’s sheep. When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, 35 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. 36 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. 37 The LORD who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine.” Saul said to David, “Go, and the LORD be with you.” (1 Samuel 17:17-18, 22-26, 31-37, NIV84)

The fear in the camp of the Israelites was so palpable that when the Lord brought David in to step up and conquer Goliath even the King himself sought to stop him.  But David would not be stopped because he knew that the Lord would deliver him.  He knew that in the same way that the Lord had delivered him from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear, he knew and believed that the Lord would deliver him from this Philistine as well; and that is what the Lord did, he delivered David without sword or spear or javelin, because the battle was not David’s. The battle was not David’s because it belonged to the Lord.  (See 1 Samuel 17:45-52)

It is for this very reason that the Lord included the account of David and Goliath in his Word.  He included it in his word because it is through the account of David and Goliath that the Lord teaches us that no matter what battles we might face in this life those battles belong to the Lord and he is the one who delivers us from the hands of our enemy.  Let me say that again: it is through the account of David and Goliath that the Lord teaches us that no matter what battles we might face in this life those battles belong to the Lord and he is the one who delivers us from the hands of our enemy.  Though we have all cowered in our tents as the Israelites did, it is the Lord our God who has already delivered us from it by forgiving us all our sins.  It is the Lord our God who has assured us again and again that we are his dearly loved children through faith in Jesus Christ our Savior.  It is the Lord our God who has taught us that in the same way that the rains and the street sweepers have cleaned away from the streets all the debris from last week’s storms, so also has the blood of our Savior cleaned away even all the fear and the guilt from those times we have hidden.  But not only has the blood of our Savior cleaned our hearts, it has filled our hearts with the gift of the Holy Spirit who now lives in us and encourages and strengthens us through his Word.  It is the Holy Spirit who lives in our hearts, and uses accounts of the Lord’s great deliverance of David from Goliath to help us to recognize and understand how the Lord will also deliver us when we face our own Goliaths in this life.

In fact, just think about how the Lord has delivered you when a Goliath entered your life and defied the Lord your God.  How did if feel when someone asked you about your faith or about the church to which you belong, and you took the opportunity to confess your faith and to tell a little bit about your church?  How did you feel the last time you took a stand on God’s Word about what you believe when someone else came at you complaining or even blaming you because your church doesn’t allow this or that?  How did you feel the last time you stood your ground and confessed your faith even when a friend, a relative, or a co-worker decided that it was time to argue religion with you?  How did you feel the last time you stood up like David did and marveled at how the Lord delivered you just as he delivered David?  I know if felt good, because I’ve been through those same kinds of situation and found myself simply marveling at how the Lord has delivered me through a battle that never actually belonged to me. Rather, it was a battle that belonged to the Lord, in which he simply asked me to participate so that he could deliver me and so that I could marvel at that deliverance.

This is why the Lord has included the account of David and Goliath in our Bibles!  He has included it so that he might teach us that no matter what battle you might be fighting, the battle belongs to the Lord and he will deliver you so that you can continually marvel at him.  No matter what battle you might be fighting! Though you might be battling with health issues right now, and don’t see exactly how you are going to go through, remember, the Lord has promised to deliver you.  If you are battling with financial issues and you find that you are being standing at a fork in the road and neither option in front of you is a good option, remember, the Lord will bring you through even this; he will deliver you.  If your battle is with your family, with your friends, with your employer, with your vehicle, with _____________ (fill in the blank)  remember what the Lord is teaching us today.  He is teaching us that no matter what battles we might face, he will deliver us.  He has already proven that by delivering David from the hands of Goliath.  He has proven it by delivering us from our sin by the death and resurrection of his Son, and he will prove it again on the day he finally delivers us from this life to the life that is to come.

It truly is amazing how the Lord assures us again and again that he will deliver us from every trouble in this amazing account of David and Goliath.  Though I don’t remember specifically catching that truth when I was in Sunday School or even Lutheran Elementary School, it is a truth that cannot be missed when we study this lesson.  For today we have seen just how the Lord does deliver us so that we can praise him, thank him, and marvel at his amazing deliverance.

Amen.

Pastor David M. Shilling

GraceEvangelical Lutheran Church -Le Sueur, MN