Finish Him

I did a sermon yesterday titled: “Finish Him!” It came from the book of 1 Samuel 17, the story about David and Goliath. This is a very familiar Bible story that many people have studied, heard it preached, and even seen movies. As I was studying these Scriptures, preparing to preach, the Holy Spirit showed me that although this was a physical battle between David and Goliath, David teaches us about spiritual warfare. So many of God’s people face spiritual warfare and do not even realize that they are in battle. We cannot act every day like there is nothing going on and we are just going through our daily routines. We can wake up in the morning, spend time in the Lord with His Word and in prayer, and go throughout our day as if we are not in a battle. What the enemy wants is us to think that we are not at war. When we feel like that we are not in spiritual warfare, we will walk out of the house in the morning with no armor of God upon us. We will feel like our morning prayers are enough, then we leave our sword, shield, helmet at home. What happens when we let our guard down? We become open to the attacks of the enemy! That is why boxers in the ring keep their guards up, ready to protect themselves at all costs. We as the People of God must be ready to always protect ourselves!

Now, let’s learn from David. David, in so many words, said “bypass the fear. ³² Then David said to Saul, “Let no man’s heart fail because of him; your servant will go and fight with this Philistine.” David was saying, “You do not have to be scared, but if you are, then I will go down and fight. Not only this, but David was prepared to fight. He told Saul that he had trained to fight this battle because he fought against a lion and a bear in hand-to-hand combat. David also practiced his faith! How? Well when Saul tried to put his armor on David, it was too big for David. He could not fight in Saul's armor! He could not fight in Saul's faith; he had to use his faith of what and how he knows how to fight! So, where is the learning on spiritual warfare from David to us? One, bypass the fear because God did not give us a spirit of fear. Two, be prepared to fight. As soldiers of God, we must put on the whole armor of God and be prepared to fight every day. Three, practice your faith. It’s good that our parents, grandparents, ancestors, etc., prayed for us, but there should be a time when we must practice our faith through prayer, meditating in Gods Word, using our spiritual gifts, and being obedient to the Holy Spirit!

One last comment; as Soldiers of Christ, we don’t run from giants, we run to them just as David ran towards Goliath. David was confident in God enough to the fact that he said how dare this Philistine threaten the armies of the living God! You are more than conquerors through Christ, so you should be saying ‘how dare this giant threatens a son or daughter of God!