If God wanted Goliath dead, why didn’t he just take him out?  A well placed coronary, ruptured aneurysm, cerebral hemorrhage, any given number of things more microscopic than a stone from a sling would have felled this giant in seconds.  If God wanted Goliath dead, why put David at risk?  We’ll get back to that.

We all know this story, right?  The story of David and Goliath must almost certainly be one of the most well known Bible stories even among those most unfamiliar with the Bible.  It’s full color human drama was painted in panoramic scenes in our memories from earliest childhood.  Yet, unlike modern movies that keep pushing the envelope on the graphics of gore further and further, the story of David and Goliath leaves something to the imagination.  The only problem is that this story is like a movie we’ve already seen; we know how it’s going to end even before it begins.  Not to mention that it’s just way too easy to think that is it’s only an ancient story, irrelevant to our lives today, with the postmodern giants that call us out daily.  On the contrary, that is precisely why it has been preserved for us.  Through this story, God helps us face the giants that call us out to do battle in ways that might just restore our faith and give us new courage.  Would that be worth re-reading this story?

What giants call you out?  At ten feet and chain-locked in enough armor to break a mule’s back, Goliath must have looked like a cross between the Terminator and Robocop.  With two armies face to face, Goliath enjoyed the thrill of the kill enough to step out front and call someone, anyone, out to do battle.  Just someone to slaughter. “Choose a man for yourselves, and let him come down to me.  Today I defy the ranks of Israel!  Give me a man, that we may fight together.”  What giants call you out?  Think we could name some?

An Old Testament proverb reads like this, “There are six things the Lord hates, seven that are detestable to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours our lies and a man who stirs up dissension among brothers (Proverbs 6:16-19).”  Pride, dishonesty, meanness, finding pleasure in the pain of others or feeling powerful only when you can cause trouble.  Any of those giants ever call you out to do battle.  Sometimes, in fact, more often, the meanest giants call us out to do battle in the privacy of our hearts, the battle is joined in the center of our souls.

Giants like despair, anxiety or fear.  Perhaps the giant of revenge, a deep, passionate desire to see someone who has hurt you hurt even worse.  Or lust, perhaps.  One evening this week I was reminded of one giant that increasingly calls out Christians to do battle when the phone rang at home.  A young man who is not a member of this church and does not live in this community, called to ask help, yet again, with his addiction to Internet pornography.  An addiction that is beginning to unravel the fabric of his marriage.  It’s a giant that calls him out ever day.  Sometimes several times a day.  Working with him has made me fear for all the children and young people who are at home this summer with hours and hours of unsupervised web time on their hands.  E-giants are calling.  Giants that, I reminded my young friend, have destroyed more than one Christian marriage.  Anyone here arm wrestling the porn giant?  Why doesn’t God just take him out?  Why put you at risk?  We’ll get back to that.

Before we do, if you are one of those who still takes comfort in believing that God never gives us anything we can’t handle, I’ll be glad to send the Christians I know who are struggling with addictions to Internet pornography to you so you can tell them.  Ask David if he thought he could handle Goliath.  Even the bravest warriors in the whole army of Israel backed off when Goliath stepped up.  David was willing to join the battle, we know, but not because he thought Goliath was someone he could handle.  This is David’s confession, as he prepared for battle.  “The LORD, who saved me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear, will save me from the hand of this Philistine.”

Summoning up his courage for battle, David drew on his personal faith history.  Memories of the times when faith in the salvation of his Lord had been his salvation were at the core of his soul.  Preparing to face the giant, he confesses the salvation of his God as his only hope.  Not his wit or power or skill, just his faith that his God is bigger than the giant he faces and that God will, one way or another, see to his deliverance. 

What is your confession?   We ask new disciples of Jesus as they are baptized.  “What is your confession?”  They answer, “Jesus is my Lord.”  Facing your giant of anger, hatred, meanness, lust or whatever, what is your confession? 

Sometimes those of us who claim to be people of faith respond to crisis in strange ways.  We’re so afraid of a world that is sliding further and further down the slippery slope of moral decay.  So, we meet in conventions and pass rules and resolutions.  And, we say what we believe again and announce it to the world, “People shouldn’t live like that.”  As though one more rule or resolution that reinforces the rule will make people behave.  And, year after year after year, more and more people keep living “like that.”  Do we really need more rules?  Only God gets to make the rules.  He gave us Ten.  Ten is enough, isn’t it?  How many more do we need?  With rarest exception, the people I encounter who struggle with every sin imaginable already know the rules.  They don’t need more rules, much less the ones religious institutionalism keeps handing down.  

Nancy was telling me that a nurse in her unit was telling an off-color joke the other day.  Please note, that’s not the same as saying Nancy repeated an off-color joke she heard at work to me.  Besides, it really wasn’t that bad.  Anyway, just as this one nurse finished telling the joke in front of Nancy, another nurse told the joker that Nancy is a preacher’s wife.  Something Nancy just loves for people to do in situations like that.  This joker nurse immediately turns to Nancy and makes her confession, “I go to church.  It just doesn’t help.”

Hmmm.  I go to church.  I know the rules.  It just doesn’t help.  Isn’t that what she was saying?  Not that knowing the rules isn’t important.  But, if the only thing you’re going to sling at the Goliath who calls you out to battle is, “People shouldn’t live that way,” you may find yourself in a sling. 

What is your confession?  I like David’s.  “The Lord . . . will save me.”  Which brings us back to the original question as to why, if God wanted Goliath dead, he didn’t just take him out.  Listen closer.  When David and Goliath finally faced off, David repeated his confession with these words.  “This very day the LORD will deliver you into my hand, so that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel.”  If God had just dropped Goliath with a coronary, no one would have thought more about it.  Just one more death of someone well deserving.  But, when David brought his confession to the battle, he was telling people about the God who saves.  David wanted God to get the glory.  God wanted to use David to help other people believe that there was a God. 

This doesn’t answer all the questions we face as to why God allows suffering and doesn’t choose to intervene.  But, this has to be at least part of the answer.  Everyone faces their own Goliath.  When a lost world sees you still standing after you’ve faced yours in the name of your Lord and God, then someone who might not otherwise have done so might come to faith.  We’ll never argue people into believing in God by postulating algorithms that finally make their two plus two of unbelief equal faith in God.  We’ll never make enough rules or pass enough resolutions to fashion a moral straight jacket strong enough to keep the world from living “like that.”  But, what if the unbelieving world saw us loading our slings with unusual weapons, like forgiveness, love, hope, peace, joy and absolute faith that, even if we die, we will live again?  What if they saw us slaying our giants with those faith stones and still standing when the battle is done?  They might just be interested in knowing more about a Jesus who would help them face their giants, too.

Antwone Fisher is a movie based on the real life story of a young black man whose explosive anger kept landing him in jail in the Navy.  A compassionate psychiatrist urges him to search out his family of origin, a search that involves confronting a foster mother who brutalized him and her daughter who sexually abused him as a young boy.  Years after he left home, he goes back and finds the woman, Ms. Tate.  Standing on the front porch of the house where he was raised and abused, listen in on the dialogue as she and her daughter answer the door and Antwone confronts the horror of his past.

Ms. Tate’s daughter, – “Is that you, Antwone?”

Antwone – “Don’t touch me.  Yeah, it’s me.  I’m all grown up.”

Ms. Tate - “Don’t you know how to come home?  Where you been?”

Antwone – “I’ve come for one thing.  I remember everything.  Everything.  You could have helped me but instead you beat me to dust.  You beat me to dust.”

Ms. Tate – “Now, you just listen!”

Antwone – “No!  You listen!  This is my time.  You understand me?  It don’t matter what you tried to do.  You couldn’t beat me.  I’m still standing!  I’m still strong!  And, I always will be.”

Could you say that, in the name of Jesus, to your giant?  What if you did?  It won't be easy and there is no assurance that it will fell your giant in a stone-to-the-forehead instant.  It might be just the beginning of a long, heated battle.  But, what if, as a place to start, you stared your Goliath in the face and made this confession?  "Jesus is my Lord!  You tried to beat me to dust.  But, by the grace of God, I'm still standing!  I'm still strong!  And, I always will be!"   

What if God hasn’t taken out the Goliaths in your life because he wants you to know the joy of being able to say, when the battle is over, “I’m still standing!”?  Maybe that’s why, if God wanted your Goliath dead, he didn’t just take him out.  He wants to hear you make your confession, “Jesus is my Lord,” and see what happens next when people everywhere, just because they watched you do battle, know that there is a God in your world, in your life, in your heart.

Maybe, just maybe, that’s why, if God wants your Goliath dead, you’re still standing!