Goliath comes out and challenges God and His people. The giant wants a fight and so one man stands forth. The world today is big and full of bullying, trying to erase individuality.
But like David, we can face down giants with thinking, humility, and corporate understanding. (1 Samuel 17:1-10)

Speaker(s): Thomas Schaller
Sermon 12098
11:00 AM on 5/23/2021

P. Schaller –

Morning! What a joy we had this weekend as we had a graduation for our high school, GGCA. If you are visiting
here connected, related to that event would you stand up for a second? You’re from outside of
town or here you had a graduate, someone in your family. Carol Desmairis, Scott. Great. And
son, Luke. We had a beautiful graduation and barbecues. Different families opened up their
backyards, and had an excellent day yesterday. This coming Saturday is MBC&S graduation
and we look forward to that. That’s Bible college graduation. This is a good season, time of year.
Beautiful. I went windsurfing I think Thursday in the afternoon for a couple of hours at Rocky
Point. Wind is blowing. Fish are jumping. Birds are flying. What fun it was! It was a good time.
It’s a great time of year. June. Convention coming the last week of June. And so that’s that. I
want to tell you in a minute or two what our message is today.

You’ll hear the message twice. First time now, three minutes. Then we’ll do the offering. We have a little video. We’ll take the offering and pastor – you know what? That’s happening to me more and more! That’s not good!
Not good! What’s his name. Eugene! Oh boy. You’re looking at me, are you joking? I’m not. I’m
not. Alright. Turn to 1 Samuel 17. Here is the simple one verse for right now. 17:10. The title of the
message, “Give me a Man.” This is what we are going to say. Three parts: a giant. And he really
is a big guy, very big, strong. The crowd. Common Jewish people. The crowd all around him on
one side of the valley. On the mountain, they are afraid. He’s a giant. He said give me a man.
This giant is what we are going to talk about today. The giant. What is the giant today that is
crying out? Intimidating us, mocking us, saying you don’t have it. I’m in charge. I’m big. I’m
strong. Who is that giant? His name is Goliath. By way of analogy there is a giant that is crying
out and very intimidating in the world. And you could say the giant is government, big
government, big money. Social media.

Big tech. “Wokism.” Any -ism. Nazism. Communism. Hinduism. Buddhism. Any system that is in control and in charge and is big and strong and you people get back in your holes. You don’t have it. I challenge you. You don’t have it. This giant is huge and powerful and he is in control. What is missing in this picture with these two parties?
The common people are afraid. They are talking with each other. Woe he’s big. Woe, we’re in
trouble. We don’t have. There isn’t anybody. For 40 days he’s saying it. Give me a man. Give
me a man. We’ll fight together. Winner takes all. I’ll put him down. I’m in charge. Who’s missing?
This guy. He’s a little guy. What’s his name? David. Why? Why can he face that giant? Why?
What’s happening in him? Who is he? Who is he? How does he understand the situation?
Watch this. He doesn’t think like these people. The common people. And he doesn’t think like
this guy, the bully. He’s different.

He’s an individual. I want to share something about individuality this morning too. What it means to be. Who are you? What it means to be an individual. I am afraid that this world wants any individual to be part of this group. The message
is everybody is supposed to be afraid. Everybody is supposed to gravitate to that reality. That
we don’t have it. That he is a bully and he’s in power and we can’t take him on. Everybody has
the common mindset. You cannot walk on water. You cannot raise the dead. You cannot be an
individual. You cannot read your Bible. You cannot go to a church. You cannot say your
prayers. You cannot believe in God and trust in him and be different. Can you be different? Can
you be different? Are you different? Come on. That’s a good message for us. Come on. Can I
be. Am I my own man in God. Can I be a man of God or do I have to be part of the group. I want
to be a man of God because long before this bully shows up, you and I have to have an
individual relationship with a different kind of education. We’ll talk about that. Amen. Okay. You
may be seated. Okay, you may be seated.

Turn to 1 Sam. 17. Education has been on our minds because many of us have been blessed with an education unique and different because of approaching life from a transcendental perspective. Meaning that our world like we draw the
common picture – some of you may be new here. We say the universe is something like a
house with two floors. The first floor is where most people live, just like this world of space and
time and reason and natural phenomena. But the universe is more than what you see. God is
here. The Spirit of God is here. Truth. Absolute truth. This is our reference. That which is
beyond us on the second floor of the house. And when Jesus came he said nobody has gone
up to heaven but the Son of Man who is in heaven. He’s like in the whole house like this. He
lived in the natural world and beyond because he always did what he saw his Father do. He was
one with the Father. He brought God into our world where we could touch him and see him and
believe him. And his education, Luke 4:32, – where has he learned these things?

No, he does not speak like the scribes and Pharisees, or he speaks with power. John. 7. Look and see. Where
did he learn these things? Who was his rabbi? Where did he learn these things? Even when he
was 12 years old in the temple, he was asking questions and talking and they were amazed at
his insight. Because his world was more than just a world of religion and law and rules but he
had the heart of God, the love of God, the Spirit of God. Our education is different. Let me read
a quote here. C. S. Lewis wrote this, “If you read history, you’ll find that the Christians who did
most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next world. It is since
Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become ineffective in
this one.” To go back to our Goliath story, we could become like these people on the hillside
who are afraid of Goliath and we have become like them because we have stopped thinking
about the reality of God.

The fear of God is the beginning of this understanding and our Bible is a book that becomes alive to us. I was reading a speech by Winston Churchill. There are certain sentences I think you can hear them. He said, “one aspect of modern life which strikes me very much is the elimination of the individual.” This is in 1901 when he said this. That money, labor
unions, groups, large groups, snuffing out the individual. I’m not talking about his politics. I’m
just using the sentence to provoke us in our thinking. He said “we live in an age of great events
and little men.” Look at this picture. Great event Goliath is facing and we have the little men on
the hillside. They are group think. They are thinking as a group and they are saying it can’t
happen. Goliath is a monster. Let’s read the text 17:1-2.By the way, we were there in that valley
in Israel. We had a devotion there. You could see the ridges of the surrounding hillside. Up over
the ridge was the town of Bethlehem where David was from. North five miles is Jerusalem. We
could see the scenario, the ground setting. Right now we are planning to go to Israel in October.
You can join that group if you want to register.

We have places for 48 people total, so we plan to do it. vs. 3-4. So he was about nine feet tall. Huge man. vs. 5. That’s 125 pounds. So he’s a big man. He can carry 125 pounds of armor. vs. 6-7. That’s fifteen pounds of iron. This guy is a
gorilla. He is huge and strong and very capable. I wonder what he represents for us today. I’ll
put down here, I mentioned it earlier, big tech, social media, technology, money, government,
power, media, propaganda. Powerful. They’ve always been. I’ve lived in a Communist country.
I’ve lived in Europe about 20 years. I know a little bit about the subject. I’ve been in the Soviet
Union many times since 1976 and I’ve been detained by the Soviets on a ship in the harbor in
Estonia,Christmas 1976. I spent my Christmas on the ship, not officially as a prisoner but
detained because of smuggling materials into the Soviet Union. I know about it. I’ve been to
Holocaust museums in Poland. I’ve been to Auschwitz. I’ve been in Budapest sitting at a Jewish
home covered with – old house – covered with trees and bath, swimming pool filled in and a
plague it was owned by a Jewish business man and the details are there.

I sat at that house and in my mind I saw the Hungarian Nazis come and arrest him, take him away and his family. I
think he had two little girls and he went off to a camp and never came back. 600,000 Hungarian
Jews. I know a lot about it. How they did it. They brought them from the countryside to a ghetto
in Budapest. They took them by trains to Poland. I’ve seen the worst in history. Not personally
experience it but I’m interested in who is Goliath? Who is he? What is he today? And who are
you? I say this to encourage you. We are the salt of the earth. We are people that are equipped
and capable because our house is not just here on the first floor. We believe in and relate to
another world. We are people of faith and this is important. We are living in times when we are
seeing things change radically, and Goliath and is going to be shouting out, “give me a man.”
Give me a man. And he’s mocking us. You don’t have anybody.

You don’t have anybody. Because your education doesn’t include God. He doesn’t know this but I’m saying it. Cause you don’t have, you’re all about experts and knowledge and you’re sophisticated society but you
guys are all afraid. You don’t have it. You don’t have it. Another thing Churchill said in that
speech, “We live in an age of great events and little men, and if we are not to become the
slaves of our own systems or sink oppressed among the mechanism we have created, it will
only be by the bold efforts of originality, by repeated experiment, by the dispassionate
consideration of the results of sustained and unflinching thought.” Let me say it my way. I love
what he means. I want to say what I want to say in this context. David in the story has, to use
these words, sustained and unflinching thought. He is not submitted to the oppression of this
huge system that is capable of squashing you, mocking you. Goliath doesn’t care about you.
Goliath doesn’t care about the individual.

Goliath just thinks about his arrogance, his power, his advantage. And he is able to take you out. He is able to mock you and ridicule you and put you in your place. You Christians go back in your holes. You Christians. You narrow minded dull, boring little people. By the way, Adolf Hitler had a thing where he mocked Christians. He said I
can stare at them until they get nervous and the sweat. I don’t have the exact quote in front of
me. He’s an arrogant intimidator that Hitler could stare at you. And he was demonized
undoubtedly and he could mock and ridicule you. You are nothing. You are nothing. This is
Goliath. Whatever form it comes in. It’s in the world. Who are you? That’s a good a question.
Who are you? What do you have? What do we have? Okay. So that’s a message. I’m almost
done because that’s the message. I want to help you. Three things about it. Go to the verses,
please. vs. 8-11. Why wasn’t David afraid? Because he wasn’t common. He had a relationship.
He wasn’t common. He was filled with the Spirit. He wasn’t just part of the group. He was an
individual.

Back in the 70s when I became a believer and we were individual hippies or
independent. We liked our individuality. Americans we used to like the cowboy spirit. You’re
independent. You’re on your own. You make it. You’re a pioneer. It used to be that way. But we
have moved away from that. It’s more community, the social connections, the popular language,
the conformity. But I want to provoke us in individuality today. I want you to think it’s between
you and God. You and God and you’re walk with God. You are an individual. You are an
individual. I was thinking – I’m not sure about this – but having a Norman Rockwell painting up
on the screen tonight in our service and the whole idea of individuality and being an individual
and to remember and think about that. Nobody walks in your shoes but you. Nobody has an eye
retina that identifies you except you or your fingerprint or your DNA. It’s you. You are an
individual. And in a spiritual way it’s true as well. John was not Matthew or Mark or Luke. And
Paul was not Peter.

Everybody is different and in heaven the variations, the incredible manifestation of all the various works of God with nobody being the same. Oh yeah! But Goliath doesn’t like that. He’d like you all to be in a group afraid of him. You can’t do that. You can’t do that. You got to fit in this group or this category. Well, I don’t fit in there. You don’t belong. You
don’t belong. We cancel you out. You cannot do that. Oh, really? I can’t do that. Okay. Well,
because of the second floor of the house, I cannot help but being a different kind of person. I
like what I have found in Jesus Christ and I enjoy it. We quote proverbs. We know the Scripture.
We’re learning in faith. When God says can these bones live, we don’t answer with all the group
from Johns Hopkins University saying no, those bones cannot live. We got this much data on it
and forget about it. Those bones are done. But how do we answer? We have another
education. And I respect that education. I’m not saying it that way. Wait a minute. Is there a
second floor to the house?

Is God in the house? Is God in the house? In my secular education, God is not in the house because it’s one floor. It’s science and knowledge and analysis and personality and preferences and opinions and talking and a lot of information and many things and much and there is a deafness to the second floor of the house. The Lord said to Ezekiel,
“can these bones live?” And Ezekiel like a good man of God said, Oh, God, thou knowest. If
these bones can live and flesh can go on those bones and they can live, you know. Can you
walk on water? No. Yes. Can you feed five thousand? No. Yes. What’s individuality with God?
That individuality there’s three things I want to share about it. #1 You have to have a new kind of
thinking that includes this book. Quicken me according to your Word. There has to be a new
mindset. Romans 12:2, a renewed mind. A word that is a living word. There has to be the constant
meditation of the Scripture, Psalm 1, day and night.

There’s nothing I love more than to sit in my office – I start with one book and then I end up with a couple. By the end, I have ten books around me and I can be there for four hours without any problem. I enjoy every minute of it.
Okay, do I? Yes there are times when I’m distracted. Of course. I just say that to encourage us.
To have a personal life whether it’s five minutes in the morning or it’s a song on the way to work
in the morning or it’s an attitude of walking in the garden and taking a walk and having the
Scripture, having a hunger and meditation that comes from this kind of second floor education.
Jesus said, “I am from above; you are from below.” Why don’t you hear and understand what
I’m saying? Because you don’t have my word in you.” (John. 8). You must be born from above.
You cannot enter the kingdom. Nicodemus, you are a professor in Israel, a rabbi of high stature
but you don’t know these things about being born again?

How could you be a teacher and not know it? But that same line could be used in the Christian church today where people do not hear the Gospel about the new birth, about salvation, about God being your Father, about faith,
about the blood atonement and the doctrines that teach us. #2. Humility. Maybe one of the
biggest words in our spiritual life. Humility. I mean humility. Not like that funny joke. This Christian said I think to P. Mati when he talked to P. Mati. The believer said I understand. I know
I need to be humble. I understand that. The thing that bothers me is that nobody notices it! I’ll be
humble if people could notice it! We don’t have that humility except in Christ. Because of him,
you are humble. You have a new heart. You have a relationship with God. You know what
happened to you and I? We ended up loving God. He loved us and now we love God. And then
we end up loving the people of God. We end up loving each other, and in that love there’s a
humility that you can recognize with each other. Not undertone, undercurrents of self interest.
Like a real selflessness.

A real genuine love that we have like standing in the parking lot or being together. It’s not complicated. It’s not about ourselves. It’s selfless love. It’s God’s presence in your life. David had it. He lived in it. There was a time when he has a shepherd boy he was watching the sheep, and there was a lion and a bear. I was told by P. Ben I believe in
Israel that when he killed the lion and the bear it seems to say in the Hebrew language that it
happened at the same time. Like first a lion and then a bear at the same event. Two animals
that are wild and ferocious and capable and he was able to take them out. I believe the
education that is needed in our modern world is of such a nature and so much needed that the
bully that we are facing cannot be handled by a fool. Fools can’t do it. They won’t be there.
They’ll be on the hillside talking like everybody else. They don’t have it. They don’t have a
message. They don’t have the wisdom. They don’t have the discernment.

Have you ever noticed sometimes there’s a need here and somehow you showed up and somehow you had a
sense there was so wisdom or some courage or some love. There was some sense where you
felt in your heart that this has to be. This is the way it is. That guy out there, the big giant, the big
bully, that guy is not in charge. God’s in charge. And somehow how did you get there? It’s not a
matter of that particular event. It is that every one of you have some time and appointment and
it’s the pre- the right now on a normal Sunday morning when you are being prepared in your
spirit and your heart with another kind of education. This is learning the Scripture. This is
learning the heart of God. And saying to these things like the Nazism with Bonhoeffer, and how
Bonhoeffer, what Bonhoeffer said and how he believed Nazism is racist. Nazism is hatred.
Nazism is murder. By the way, in the Holocaust Museum in D.C. In one of those booths – what
do you call those? Presentation. Exhibit.

One of those exhibits I read that it says the S.S. that was in charge of the extermination of the Jewish people under Hitler, two thirds of them were college graduates. Two thirds of the Songs of Solomon Officers were college graduates. You’re educated? So what. You can be an educated murderer. A killer, a racist. So what? You are blinded. You’re just
a bully. You are arrogant. You think you are in charge because Hitler is in charge. Nazism is in
power. You are in control, but do you want to be part of that? I don’t know what is going on
around me, but I want to be part of the truth in the Spirit, in love. I want the Lord – and I don’t
care about Goliath. That’s not the point of any of us having a contest. If he shows up and he’s
doing this, we’re here. But I’m not looking for – we’re not walking around or wanting to be a
hero. It has nothing to do with that. It’s much deeper. It’s how you live if you lived on a deserted
island by yourself.

How would you be living? If it is at the end of your life, how is it that you are
thinking and living? And when there isn’t any obvious contest, it’s how are you and I living and
thinking? The third thing I want to say about this education, is that you are an individual but it’s
also corporate. It’s also connected with a teacher, Acts. 8:20. It’s also connected with the Body
of Christ. Many teachers. Many examples all through history. We’re connected with a great
assembly that is in heaven and also on the earth. We are connected with a history that we are
so proud of in God. Let me finish up and say this: The Roman Empire, first century, the first 15
Caesars, 14 of them were homosexuals. Homosexuality was not uncommon in the first century.
But I want to ask the question, where did it go? How did it disappear or just go underground?
What happened? Why did Christianity grow bigger? Why did Christianity take over the Roman
Empire, pagan – how about the gods of the Romans? Iris, Chemosh, the pagan gods, Jupiter,
Zeus. The Greek names.

The Latin names. Aphrodites. Where are those names today? Listen, the early Christians said there will be a time when men will call their sons Paul and Peter and their dogs Nero and Caesar. Have you ever met anyone come here, Caesar! Come on Nero! And call your son Paul or Peter. Who won? Nero or Caesar? Or Christ? Because you know
what, you know what happens? David shows up and he’s so much a nobody but he’s able to be
there and God takes that bully out and everybody is talking about it. David doesn’t care about
that. He cares about God. Because long before he’s been in the church and he’s been in the
Spirit. He had killed a lion and a bear. Nobody knew about it. He was out on a sidewalk somewhere. Nobody knew about it but the Spirit of God came upon him, and he knew who God
was and he walked with God and loved God. That love of God in his heart was his food and
identity and his fellowship. Then in the story when David came forth and said I can do this. Saul
said take my armor. You’ll need my armor.

David tried it on and he said it doesn’t fit. I don’t care about that. I’m not going to use it. I’m not there. I am here. I’m not thinking like this. You can think like that. I’m not thinking that way. I don’t need it. I got something else going on in my life.
That’s what we need. There will be a time when your world will collapse, you know. My world
and you’re world. The world of Saul’s armor. You know this world. Some of you are going to be
angry with me that I’m doing this. This world, Saul’s armor world and my world as much as it’s
relating to that collapses. I need Jesus. I’m in a prison. I don’t know how I got here. I need
Jesus. My world collapses. My Bible college education collapsed and now I have to get really
serious with God. My church collapsed. How about that one. My pastor disappointed me. My
Christianity crumbled right in front of me. How about that one? What do you do about it? Who
are you? Is that second floor of the house ever going to fail?

Is the living God ever going to forsake you? Is the living God ever going to stop talking? Is he ever going to withdraw? Is he ever going to forsake? Is he ever going to let us down? Is our God faithful? That’s all l want to
say. That is why David is written in the Scripture as our reference. Jesus is our reference
without question, but he had no sin. David is our reference even more in a sense because he
was a failure. He did commit adultery. He did murder a man. He did sin. He did fail. But when
his world collapsed, he knew who God was. And that’s like what I want to say today. We need
an education. Listen. There’s going to be bullies out there in the world but that’s okay. You’re not
– look at the group up in the hillside. I’m not in the common group. I’m there but they think one
way and I’m thinking another way. I’m not like Goliath.

He’s just hot air. He’s in charge. He’s got a lot of money and a lot of power. He’s got everything going for him and he’s got the social media platforms and everything but I could care less. I got a living God that gives me peace on
a Friday night and a Tuesday morning. He gives us words of faith and a fellowship of love and
that has changed our lives.

Amen.

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