Sound Doctrine

Guest (Male): How are you dealing with the giants in your life? Giants, you ask? Oh, yes, giants. Here's Pastor Jeff Johnson.

Jeff Johnson: I don't know what giant you are up against. I don't know whether it's worldly temptations, whether it's spiritual deception, maybe you're being lied to by the enemy. I don't know what that particular thing you're up against, but I know this: that if you pick up on what's happening here, you too are going to be a giant slayer in the name of the Lord. And you're going to watch those giants fall.

Remember, this is a spiritual warfare. We're not fighting against flesh and blood, but against principalities, powers, and spiritual wickedness in high places. So we have been given spiritual weapons to do this with, and we must use them.

Guest (Male): We're glad to have you along as we present Sound Doctrine with Pastor Jeff Johnson. We're on the final leg of our journey through 2 Samuel. Find your place in chapter 21 as we set the scene. David is at the end of his reign as king and faces a major national crisis and some major battles.

But he does the right thing in turning to the Lord. Pastor Jeff will relate this to our daily walk with Jesus. You can be sure we'll have some battles of our own, and it's always a good idea to seek the Lord in such times. Here's Pastor Jeff in 2 Samuel, chapter 21.

Jeff Johnson: We're in 2 Samuel, chapter 21. We're actually finishing 2 Samuel chapter 21. We left off with verse 14, so we're in verse 15 now. And let me give you a little review of where we've come in chapter 21. David's troubles are continuing. God has sent a famine that has hit Israel for three years.

And we also note that this is not chronologically in order of 2 Samuel. So the events take place here during the revolt of Absalom, right up to the end of David's life. So this is the segment of time that we're dealing with here. And we see how God allowed national crisis to come to a people, to an area, to get their attention, actually to bring them to their knees. He will do that.

And he's doing that even in our world today, causing nations to come to their knees through national calamity. Now David, remember, finally prays after those three years. And God tells him exactly the cause for the famine and the cure for the famine. Of course, we know that the cause was past sins that had finally caught up with them. Be sure that your sins will find you out. And they'll catch up with you. And they did with Israel.

Now remember what James says. If you lack wisdom, in James 1:5, if you are up against something, if you are going through something this morning, you need wisdom. You lack wisdom in the situation. You don't know what to do. God says you ask me, I'll give it to you liberally. So we just need to come to the Lord and say, Lord, I lack wisdom. I need it for this situation. And he will give it to us. David came to the Lord, and God gave him the wisdom of what to do.

So David made it right with the Gibeonites. He gave seven of Saul's descendants to be put to death, who were murderers anyhow. And they were hung there and died in Gibeah. Now, it's interesting that we looked at this hanging of their lives as the hanging up of our sins. When Jesus went to the cross, he died for all of our sins. And he took all of our sins upon himself on the cross. And so we need to put our sins there.

And then, remember, he took their bones and he buried them. Remember, as the Lord has said, "Your sins and iniquities I will remember no more." And so we're allowed them to be buried in the forgiveness of the Lord, in the washing and cleansing of God. He has not only forgiven us, he has forgotten it ever happened. And that's the blessings of God's amazing grace for each of our lives.

Once this was done, the famine, of course, was lifted. It was over, and the rains began to return. And remember that truth in 2 Chronicles 7:14: "If my people that are called by my name shall humble themselves, turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven and I will heal their land." And so that prayer just came out so clear here.

Now, if you remember back in the Old Testament when Joshua and Caleb came to spy out the land, the Promised Land that God had given to the children of Israel. Remember when they went in there, they saw it was a land full of milk and honey. It was awesome. As they looked at all the grapes, you know, they're huge and just everything that they saw was awesome except it says that there were giants in the land.

So the report when they came back was, "A, it's great, but B, there's giants in the land." And they went, "Giants?" Now, I'm not talking about the giants like Jack and the Beanstalk stuff, you know. Not talking about kids' stories. I'm not talking about the giant basketball players that sometimes when you get close to them, like you run into them in the airport, you go, "Whoa, it's true, you know. You're a giant." And they're awesome to see.

I'm talking about entities. I'm talking about things that come up against us as a people. And these are all over the land today. In fact, Jesus said, "In the world, in this world, you're going to have great tribulation." And in this world, there's a family that lives in this world, and it's a family that are all into sin and into vice and wickedness. We're surrounded with giants in this world.

They are the giants of pride and self-esteem, the giants of contempt for others, and it just goes on and on and on. And if it isn't one thing, as far as us Christians go, it's another. I mean, if it isn't one thing that rises up in our lives, we got to be fighting on this side, you know. And it's one thing after another hits us. And it's going to be this way as long as we're here. We're going to have spiritual warfare.

And our adversary, you know, which is the devil, he's like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. And so there's a warfare that's taking place all around us. In verse 15 now of 2 Samuel, chapter 22, verse 15, we pick up our story from here. It says, "Moreover, the Philistines had yet war again with Israel, and David went down and his servants with him, and they fought against the Philistines, and notice David waxed faint."

So here come those Philistines again to war with Israel. These were a continual struggle in their life. It was a continual thing that would come up. Here they come again, you know. And note that David now is over 50. And he fought with them, but it says here he became faint. So I guess over 50 you can get faint. Under 50, no way, right? Well, there's various reasons why we grow weary and why we grow faint.

I just put about three of them down here. Number one is when we try to do it in our own strength, we will become very weary. "Do it yourself," you know. I can make this happen. I can do it. And when we wrestle in the flesh with our own selves and try to do it ourselves, we can become very weary.

Number two: isolating yourself from the battle can make you very weary. It can hurt you. Remember what David did in 2 Samuel chapter 11. Remember when he didn't go to battle as the manner of some kings were, and he stayed behind in Jerusalem? Remember what he did? He set himself up for Bathsheba and that whole trap. So it's dangerous to isolate yourself, to say, "Well, I'm just going to kick back. I'm not going to go to church. I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to do that."

And you just kind of kick back for a while and just in neutral. "I'm not going to go to anything. I'm just going to just see how things go, you know." Well, you're setting yourself up to get very weary.

Number three: failing to pray. Jesus said men ought always to pray and not faint. Our problem is that we don't pray about it. We don't give it to the Lord. We don't cast our care upon the Lord, and then the enemy comes back and uses that care to make us faint, to make us weary, to get us just groveling in it, when we need to trust God. We need to pray about it.

Have you prayed about it? Have you really got down? And I'm not just saying, "And Lord, take care of this." I'm saying really interceded and been serious with God about it and gave it to him. Casting your care upon him because he cares for you. David was growing weary in well-doing. Now, to understand this portion of scripture that we're about to get into, we need to go back for a moment.

Would you go back with me to 1 Samuel, chapter 17? In order to really understand how to overcome and fight giants, which is what we're talking about today, we need to go back to the story of David here in 1 Samuel, chapter 17, where we see David's first encounter with the Philistines. Now, this group, the Philistines, was one of the enemies that they just couldn't drive out of the land. They were just always there.

In fact, over in 1 Samuel 14:52, it says, "And there was sore war against the Philistines all the days of Saul." I mean, they just had one hassle after another with this group called the Philistines. Now, this enemy has come back again. In verse 15, it says they're fighting with Philistines again. Well, again, here's the enemy, and it's kind of like a recurring nightmare, you know. When you think that they're gone away, there they come again.

And again, the Philistines are coming against Israel. Again, they have to put up with all of the things that are going on as far as how they're fighting this battle and this sin that so easily besets them like besets us, they're confronted with again. And really what it was is that they would take one champion from the Philistines, and this is a lot of times how they would fight their battles—just have one champion go out from one group and another from another.

And that way, you wouldn't have a lot of loss of life and bloodshed. Just two guys fight it out. So they got their biggest guy out there, and he wasn't a shrimp. He was about a nine to eleven foot monster. And he comes coming down the hill there into the Valley of Elah, and he begins to defy and to curse the children of Israel and their God. And David now is introduced to this guy called Goliath.

I don't know what giant you are up against. I don't know whether it's worldly temptations, whether it's spiritual deception, maybe you're being lied to by the enemy. I don't know what that particular thing you're up against, but I know this: that if you pick up on what's happening here, you too are going to be a giant slayer in the name of the Lord. And you're going to watch those giants fall.

Remember, this is a spiritual warfare. We're not fighting against flesh and blood, but against principalities, powers, and spiritual wickedness in high places. So we have been given spiritual weapons to do this with, and we must use them. So he defied all of Israel. Israel, of course, is in fear and they are in defeat, actually, because of their disobedience. They chose themselves a king in disobedience to God.

Saul, who is their leader, is in disobedience to God. And he's the tallest guy of all of them. Remember, it says in the scriptures that he was taller than everyone in Israel. He stood above them. And so everybody, when they looked at Goliath, they looked at Saul and said, "Hey, Saul, go on down, do your thing. You're the big guy. You go fight him." And Saul's going, "Oh, ho, ho, I'm the king, not me. I'm not going down there." And he was frozen in himself.

He looked at that guy and he said, "There is no way." He was broken under the stress. He didn't know how to handle it. Now David, he's just a kid. He comes walking out there. He knows how to deal with the situation. He saw this giant like a roaring lion. Notice I said "like a roaring lion." He's all bark and no bite. And that's how he looked at this giant.

And as he came against him, it's interesting because David was counting on how God worked with him in the past. And let me share something with you guys, those of you that have been Christians for a while. You know what God has done for you in your past. Start to remember the wonders he has done. It'll help you for that which you're encountering today.

Start to look back and see all the awesome things that your God has done, and this that is before you will become as like a lion, all bark and no bite. And you'll begin to see it as that. Especially up against your God. Remember, we're not to take it personally our way. You know, it's amazing to me how many Christians take what they're going through as personal. "Oh, it's because of this and me," you know, and they're listening to the enemy and they're saying, "Oh, man, I'm going through it."

Well, wait a minute. Don't you know that it's because you're a Christian? That's why you're in this warfare. And your enemy is coming against you because you're in your Lord. You stand in the Lord. And you need to continue to stand that way, because he is nothing when he comes up against your Lord. Oh, he'll try to pick on you, but you just need to say, "Wait, wait a minute, let me bring my God to meet you, you know." And that's exactly what David did.

Now let's read it, chapter 17, verse 45 of 1 Samuel. "Then David said to the Philistine, 'Thou come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a shield, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied. This day will the Lord deliver thee into my hand, and I will smite thee and take thy head from you, and I will give your carcass to the host of the Philistines this day unto the fowls of the air and to the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, and that all this assembly shall know that the Lord saves not with the sword and the spear, for the battle is the Lord's, and he will give you into our hands.'"

So David takes this stand and says, "It is not by my might, not by my power, but by the Spirit of the Lord, you're going down." And he believed it with all of his heart. "You're going down." It's not this whole thing of, "Oh, look at David out there with that giant, oh, poor David." No, it's, "Oh, you poor giant. Look who you're coming against." And yet David's just a little scrawny boy with a little sling in his hand. But no, no, behind David was his God. And that's who he had to come up against.

And so David went down into this little stream, picked up five smooth stones, and he put one of those stones in his sling. And he felled the giant with one stone. That giant came crashing down. David ran over to the giant, and there he took his huge sword and he cut off his head in front of everybody. I love that part. In fact, I've got a little statue of David holding the head of Goliath with the sword in my office. I love that.

It's not the gross part that I love. I mean, it's just that it's the overcoming of the enemy and his head's cut off, man. It is written: "Satan, the sword of the spirit is the Word of God." And when we say that, it is written. It's like wielding your sword up against the lies of the enemy, up against that which the enemy is coming up against you with, and nailing it. My God says...

I want you to notice this one thing here, that David took the very sword that was going to be used to kill him and he took it and he used it to cut off the giant's head. That cross that Satan tried to use to crucify our Lord with, that horrible instrument of death that he tried to use to kill our Lord, turned around to be his greatest weapon. It lopped his head off. And now Satan does not hold the power of death over anybody or the bondage of sin and death. It has been removed when Jesus died on that cross. And as you believe in him, as you receive him, his head is lopped off. What a battle was fought right there. That which the enemy tries to use is turned against him. God does it every single time.

Notice this now in verse 52: "And the men of Israel and Judah rose up, they shouted, and they pursued the Philistines." All of a sudden, here these guys were, their knees were smiting and they were sitting there going, "I can't handle that giant, man. Come on, Saul, you go. No, you go down. No, you go down." And they were trying to find somebody to go down. Nobody went down. Everybody just stood up there and listened to all this curses.

Now all of a sudden, little David goes down, he does the thing, and now everybody's going, "Yay, our champion, our hero! Let's get them guys, come on!" All of a sudden, they're really encouraged, aren't they? And I love that part, because you know who our champion is: Jesus Christ. He's our hero. And he went to the cross and he slew the enemy so we could what? Rejoice and identify with him, as they identified with David and went running after the enemy and pursuing them and wiping them out. So we identify with Jesus Christ and we are more than conquerors through Christ, who gave his life for us. Our enemy is vanquished.

Yet these Philistines, I see them a lot like our flesh. The enemy of our souls is, you know how many times one area will come up and the enemy will try to use it against our weak area, you know? That sin that so easily besets you will come up and you'll think you have a victory over it, and then all of a sudden he hits in another area. He kind of regroups, doesn't he? And he comes back again. And he just doesn't stop. He just keeps coming, but it's in a different way, in a different situation. But he comes back, and it's just like the Philistines. Let's get back to 2 Samuel now, 21.

The enemy is seeking to take advantage of a confusion time within Israel's life. It was right after the Absalom's revolt was put down. The enemy now, Philistines, are coming in, they're attacking, and they're coming again, it says. I think here's what we have is a good picture of how hard it is to establish God's kingdom in this world. Because here we have a picture of the enemy who has occupied much of the territory at this time, who is actually now assaulting Israel. And what they are doing is that sin always will fight the kingship of the Lord. Sin always comes against the Lord taking up his proper place.

See, when you revolt, when you that don't know the Lord here this morning, when you say no to Jesus, it's because the darkness in your life—you like your darkness rather than the light. And so you run towards it instead of giving it to the Lord. But you know what? You're just going to continue to spin your wheels until you see that you're being deceived. You need deliverance. You need salvation. And he wants to be king of your life. Don't run from him.

Well, sin was seeking to fight the kingship. And God, really, the generations that have gone on before Israel put them in a bad position. And I think it puts us in a bad position too. Because of compromise. The results of compromise is hindering their victory. And there's been a lot of compromise in the church today, folks. And because of that compromise, it's hindered our victory a lot.

Also, the giant sins that surround us today, sometimes frustrate us. It causes fear to come in our hearts. As we look at how sick our nation is, as we look at the sin our nation is groveling in, as we look at the cults, how they're thriving today, especially Islam. And then as we look at what's going on with the church itself and as we see a sick institution, we see a sick body, and we say, "Oh my gosh, it's like giants." And all of a sudden, it paralyzes us.

And then, of course, with the negative influence of our leaders of today, man, it is downhill. And it just seems like they're insurmountable giants. But they're not, and they're going to fall. And I'll tell you something, there is a battle going on in each of our hearts. It's the flesh versus the spirit, the spirit versus the flesh, and these two are contrary one against the other. But God wants to give us a victory in this war. Not only in our own lives, but in our nation's life and in the world. And this is a winnable war, folks.

But as we trust in the Lord, as we stand in his power and in his might, we are going to take the victory. We got to put our armor on, because we're more than conquerors. Look at verse 16 now of 2 Samuel 22—verse 16: "And Ishbi-Benob," what a name, Ishbi-Benob. Say that three times quickly, you know. "Ishbi-Benob, which was of the sons of the giant," notice, "the weight of whose spear weighed 300 shekels of brass in weight, he being girded with a new sword, thought to have slain David."

If you remember back in 1 Samuel 17 also, that David knew that his sling was what he needed to use because God had given him victory with it before. You see, once you use faith and you've seen what belief can do, you're always going to go back to it. But remember Saul wanted to give David his armor, didn't he? He wanted to suit him up with all this armor and his sword and everything. But no, he said, "No, I'll just take these smooth stones," and he took five of them.

And he just put one in his sling, and that one did the job. But you say, "But why did he take five? Is it because he wanted reserves in case he missed?" Well, if he did that, then that's a lack of faith. He should have just believed God for one stone, right? So David, what are you doing? Lack of faith? No. Here's the answer to why he took five stones, right here in this verse.

Because there was a family and when David went up against that one giant, he was actually going up against five giants. We are getting here in the last part of this chapter the last four of the giants that are to be slain. The first one was Goliath.

Guest (Male): We'll stop right here for today. Pastor Jeff Johnson will have the conclusion of today's message in 2 Samuel, chapter 21, next time we meet for Sound Doctrine. Pastor Jeff's messages are archived for you at SoundDoctrineRadio.org. That includes all of 2 Samuel. Our programs are also accessible at oneplace.com and on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

If you enjoy the teaching you receive through Sound Doctrine, you can show your support through a financial gift. And thank you for whatever the Lord lays on your heart. There's a place to give at SoundDoctrineRadio.org. SoundDoctrineRadio.org. Join us for another study in 2 Samuel next time we meet for Sound Doctrine with Pastor Jeff. May God richly bless you as you live by the sound doctrine contained in God's word.