This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Welcome to day three of week four of Looking Through First and Second Samuel.
We're looking at the story of David and Goliath, this story that's been retold
in so many ways. It's one of the classic stories, obviously, in the Bible, the
truths of how God worked.

And this story has been retold and retold and retold and retold. In fact, the
famous movie Star Wars. It's really a David and Goliath story.

You look and you've got Luke Skywalker. He is the David, the little short guy.
And then you've got this Death Star, this big old Goliath of a thing.

What does he have to do? He has to put one shot into one little place and if he
gets it in the right place, then the whole thing is going to explode. He's got
one smooth stone and he throws it in and guess what?

He has victory. Many, many stories are David and Goliath stories. But this one,
the one we're reading here, this is the one that really happened.

This is the one that's not fiction. And this one teaches you and I how to have
genuine faith in our lives. It's not about us and us achieving things.

It's about faith and us looking to what God can do in our lives. And yesterday
we talked about the fact that you begin with faithfulness in the possible.
That's the first thing you do in the small things of life.

Secondly, you keep your eyes on God and not Goliath. But if you're going to be a
person of faith, have the kind of faith that David had, there's a third thing
you and I have to do. And that is number three, you make an open commitment of
faith.

How do you turn the impossible into the possible? You make an open commitment of
faith. In verse 32, David said to Saul, "Let no one lose heart on account of
this Philistine.

Your servant will go and fight him. " Down in verse 37, David says, "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.

" There are a lot of faithful people. We talked yesterday about beginning with
faithfulness in the possible. The truth is there are a lot of faithful people
who never take great steps of faith.

And this is why. This teaches us why. The reason why is they never make an open
commitment of faith.

So they're very faithful. There are a lot of believers in life and there's a lot
of times in my life, maybe you look at your life and realize there's a lot of
times in your life, weeks and months and maybe even years past when you're very
faithful in the tasks that God has given you. But there are no great steps of
faith that you've taken.

And many times the reason why, now sometimes it's that God wants you to be
faithful in the shadows. I understand that. I'm not minimizing what you're
doing.

But many times what is happening is God is challenging a great step of faith,
but you never make the open commitment. You never say like David said here, "I
will go. God will deliver me.

" For David it was simple. God did it before. He will do it again.

So the process in our lives is this. We begin to learn of God's faithfulness
from his word and we begin to see it expressed in our lives. And there we find a
foundation as we build our lives on God's word, as we do the small things he
asks us to do, we find a foundation from which we can defeat even Goliaths.

That Goliath of a sin in my life, that Goliath of a relationship, of a
forgiveness, that Goliath of an opportunity in my life to make a difference in
the world, a witness that I can give, a mission that God is sending me on, a
calling that God has in my life, that Goliath of reaching a city, that Goliath
of changing a culture, that Goliath of coming up against disease in our world,
that Goliath of making a difference. But it's only going to happen. You can only
defeat Goliath when you say, "I will go.

" It will not happen without an open commitment of faith. Our reach out into
space could not have been accomplished. It couldn't be accomplished today
without launching pads.

You've got to have a launching pad to allow that rocket to take off into space.
God's faithfulness in many ways is the launching pad for your faith. And maybe
you've experienced his faithfulness for many, many years and there's this moment
in your life, and God's been challenging it for a while now, there's this moment
when you now need to push the button and get off that launching pad.

When you need to say, "I will go. " I will go. You need to make a commitment of
faith.

You need to fight the "I can't" of the world with a solid "God can and therefore
I will. " You need to stop praying if God wills and you need to start to say,
"God's been working in my heart. I know God wills.

" No one has ever defeated a Goliath with an "if. " David didn't say, "Well, if
God wants this to happen," he said, "I know that God will do this. " Because he
is ridiculing the living God.

How often do you think the army of Israel dreamed of what would happen if one of
them could go out and defeat Goliath, but no one else made the commitment? David
took this great challenge and he was the one who stepped forward. He was the one
who said, "I will go.

" Where's the place in your life where you need to do that? It may be some
witness that you need to share with somebody. It may be some place that God is
sending you.

It may be some calling to ministry that God has in your life. It may be some
confession of sin in your life. God's changing you, beginning to transform that
area of your life.

It may be you seeing that God wants to use you to reach a group of people that
have never been reached before. Where do you need to say, "I will go"? What's
one of the 12 cities of the world over here at Saddleback do you need to go to?

Which part of the peace plan do you need to be a part of? Where do you need to
go to plant churches, to equip servant leaders, to assist the poor, to care for
the sick, to educate the next generation? Where do you need to go?

Make an open commitment of faith. Tell someone in your family, tell your best
friend, tell your church family. That's the step to take.

You make that open commitment. That's how you begin to see the impossible happen
in your life. That's how you come to that place where you're doing something and
you think, "I could never have believed that God could have used me to do this.

" You have to say, "I will go. " You make an open commitment of faith. And then
the fourth thing you do that David teaches us to live a life of faith is, well,
let me say it this way.

You blame God. You blame God. In verse 45, David said to the Philistine, "You
come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the
name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have
defied.

This day the Lord will hand you over to me, and I'll strike you down and I'll
cut off your head. Today, I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to
the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth, and the whole world will know
that there is a God in Israel. All those gathered here will know that it is not
by the sword or spear that the Lord saves, for the battle is the Lord's, and he
will give all of you into our hands.

" Now when I say blame God, I mean that in the most positive of ways. Give God
the credit. Give God the notice.

Give God the praise. Give God the blame for the victory. David says, "The battle
is the Lord's.

If the battle is yours, you have no reason for faith. But when the battle is the
Lord's, you have every reason for faith. There's nothing else to choose but
faith, because it is his battle.

" The truth is we often forget to give God the credit for the victories in our
lives. We blame him for natural disasters. We blame him for the circumstances of
our birth, the family we grew up in.

We blame him for the problems in our lives. But when the successes come, we step
back and say, "Oh, it was nothing. " Or, "Oh, it was the Lord, but really, could
you look at me while I'm saying it's the Lord?

" That's what you need to do, because we all feel inadequate in our lives. But
the best way to feel a new sense of adequacy in your life is to realize what you
were made for. You and I were made to give praise to God.

And when you take a risk of faith and you see a victory from God, the next
natural thing to do is to say, "The battle was the Lord's. Look at what God did.
" It really isn't so much David and Goliath as God and Goliath.

And that's no battle at all. You see, if you're trying to impress people with
your abilities, you've turned faith into a farce, into a fake. Real faith leads
people to see God's reality in their lives, and that's what David did.

And because David had faith, verse 48, as the Philistine moved closer to attack
him, David ran quickly toward the battle line to meet him. Reaching into his bag
and taking out a stone, he slung it and he struck the Philistine on the
forehead. The stone sank into his forehead and he fell face down on the ground.

So David triumphed over the Philistine with a sling and a stone. Without a sword
in his hand, he struck down the Philistine and he killed him. How can faith
cause you and I to face the impossible in our lives in a way that what we
thought could never happen?

That person who could never become a Christian becomes a Christian. That sermon
I could never have preached or teaching I never could have done. I'm standing up
here teaching at that place I would have never gone to in the world in Africa or
in Asia or in America.

Here I am doing that. How does that happen in my life? Four simple things that
you and I can begin to do today.

First, you start with faithfulness in the small thing. Second, you keep your
eyes on God, not Goliath, on God. Third, maybe most importantly, you make a
commitment of faith.

And number four, you give God the credit. My question to you is, are you gazing
at Goliaths or are you looking at the living God? Are your Goliaths shouting
ridicule at you or are they lying dead at your feet?

Have you seen that victory that you know God wants to bring in your life? Keep
trusting Him. Yeah, we struggle towards it sometimes.

Yeah, it doesn't come as easy as it might have seemed in this chapter to David,
which it wasn't easy. He'd built all his life towards this moment. But you keep
trusting Him because God is working to bring this victory in your life.

It's not about you. It is about Him and what He's doing. I don't know what your
Goliath is, but you do, even as I say it.

You do. You know that big challenge in your life, that big thing in your life,
that big barrier in your life. You know what it is.

God wants to defeat that Goliath in your life. He wants to use you to defeat
that Goliath in the world. Let's pray together.

Father, thank you for who you are and help us to make that commitment of faith
to say it to someone. If you're putting it in our hearts, don't let us let
another day go by. Put someone in our lives.

Put someone in our paths. Help us to make sure there's someone in our lives, to
pick up the phone, to make sure we may have a meeting with somebody today and
let them know this is what God is challenging in my life. Help us to step out
and then watch what you do.

We know that the life of faith is not an easy life. We know that there are
struggles in it. We know it's not a perfect life, but it is the life you made us
for.

It's the adventure you made us for. So Lord, help me, help us to take a step in
this life of faith today, we pray. In your name, amen.

Well, tomorrow we turn our eyes back to Saul and we're going to look at the
danger of jealousy in our lives.