Not (Im)Possible
June 20, 2021*
By Pastor John Partridge
1 Samuel 17:1a, 4-49 Mark 4:35-41 2 Corinthians 6:1-13
What do you do when you face the impossible? Of course, that impossible thing could be all sorts of different situations from being outnumbered, to facing impending deadlines, to going back to school as an adult, to a difficult situation at work, to facing down a rival or a bully, or finding your way through a difficult financial situation, to being lost, alone, and afraid, and all sorts of other things. And, naturally, since we’re talking about overcoming giants, we’re going to begin with the story that even secular writers talk about when they try to describe impossible situations, and that is, not surprisingly, the story of David and Goliath. And because we’re starting with that familiar story, and because I don’t want to skip over too many important parts of it, today’s message is more Bible story than it is sermon, but I’m sure that I will manage to throw in a few good words along the way to tie thing together.
But, because the story of David and Goliath is so long, we’re going to start somewhere in the middle. We begin reading in 1 Samuel 17:1a, 4-49:
17:1 Now the Philistines gathered their forces for war and assembled at Sokoh in Judah.
4 A champion named Goliath, who was from Gath, came out of the Philistine camp. His height was six cubits and a span. [about 9’ 9” – for reference, Shaquille O’Neill is 7’1”] 5 He had a bronze helmet on his head and wore a coat of scale armor of bronze weighing five thousand shekels [125 lbs.]; 6 on his legs he wore bronze greaves, and a bronze javelin was slung on his back. 7 His spear shaft was like a weaver’s rod, and its iron point weighed six hundred shekels [15 lbs.]. His shield bearer went ahead of him.
8 Goliath stood and shouted to the ranks of Israel, “Why do you come out and line up for battle? Am I not a Philistine, and are you not the servants of Saul? Choose a man and have him come down to me. 9 If he is able to fight and kill me, we will become your subjects; but if I overcome him and kill him, you will become our subjects and serve us.” 10 Then the Philistine said, “This day I defy the armies of Israel! Give me a man and let us fight each other.” 11 On hearing the Philistine’s words, Saul and all the Israelites were dismayed and terrified.
12 Now David was the son of an Ephrathite named Jesse, who was from Bethlehem in Judah. Jesse had eight sons, and in Saul’s time he was very old. 13 Jesse’s three oldest sons had followed Saul to the war: The firstborn was Eliab; the second, Abinadab; and the third, Shammah. 14 David was the youngest. The three oldest followed Saul, 15 but David went back and forth from Saul to tend his father’s sheep at Bethlehem.
16 For forty days the Philistine came forward every morning and evening and took his stand.
17 Now Jesse said to his son David, “Take this ephah [about 36 lbs.] of roasted grain and these ten loaves of bread for your brothers and hurry to their camp. 18 Take along these ten cheeses to the commander of their unit. See how your brothers are and bring back some assurance[token] from them. 19 They are with Saul and all the men of Israel in the Valley of Elah, fighting against the Philistines.”
20 Early in the morning David left the flock in the care of a shepherd, loaded up and set out, as Jesse had directed. He reached the camp as the army was going out to its battle positions, shouting the war cry. 21 Israel and the Philistines were drawing up their lines facing each other. 22 David left his things with the keeper of supplies, ran to the battle lines, and asked his brothers how they were. 23 As he was talking with them, Goliath, the Philistine champion from Gath, stepped out from his lines and shouted his usual defiance, and David heard it. 24 Whenever the Israelites saw the man, they all fled from him in great fear.
25 Now the Israelites had been saying, “Do you see how this man keeps coming out? He comes out to defy Israel. The king will give great wealth to the man who kills him. He will also give him his daughter in marriage and will exempt his family from taxes in Israel.”
26 David asked the men standing near him, “What will be done for the man who kills this Philistine and removes this disgrace from Israel? Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God?”
27 They repeated to him what they had been saying and told him, “This is what will be done for the man who kills him.”
28 When Eliab, David’s oldest brother, heard him speaking with the men, he burned with anger at him and asked, “Why have you come down here? And with whom did you leave those few sheep in the wilderness? I know how conceited you are and how wicked your heart is; you came down only to watch the battle.”
29 “Now what have I done?” said David. “Can’t I even speak?” 30 He then turned away to someone else and brought up the same matter, and the men answered him as before. 31 What David said was overheard and reported to Saul, and Saul sent for him.
32 David said to Saul, “Let no one lose heart on account of this Philistine; your servant will go and fight him.”
33 Saul replied, “You are not able to go out against this Philistine and fight him; you are only a young man, and he has been a warrior from his youth.”
34 But David said to Saul, “Your servant has been keeping his father’s sheep. When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, 35 I went after it, struck it, and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it. 36 Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living God. 37 The Lord who rescued me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will rescue me from the hand of this Philistine.”
Saul said to David, “Go, and the Lord be with you.”
38 Then Saul dressed David in his own tunic. He put a coat of armor on him and a bronze helmet on his head. 39 David fastened on his sword over the tunic and tried walking around, because he was not used to them.
“I cannot go in these,” he said to Saul, “because I am not used to them.” So, he took them off. 40 Then he took his staff in his hand, chose five smooth stones from the stream, put them in the pouch of his shepherd’s bag and, with his sling in his hand, approached the Philistine.
41 Meanwhile, the Philistine, with his shield bearer in front of him, kept coming closer to David. 42 He looked David over and saw that he was little more than a boy, glowing with health and handsome, and he despised him. 43 He said to David, “Am I a dog, that you come at me with sticks?” And the Philistine cursed David by his gods. 44 “Come here,” he said, “and I’ll give your flesh to the birds and the wild animals!”
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. 46 This day the Lord will deliver you into my hands, and I’ll strike you down and cut off your head. This very day I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds and the wild animals, and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel. 47 All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the Lord saves; for the battle is the Lord’s, and he will give all of you into our hands.”
48 As the Philistine moved closer to attack him, David ran quickly toward the battle line to meet him. 49 Reaching into his bag and taking out a stone, he slung it and struck the Philistine on the forehead. The stone sank into his forehead, and he fell face down on the ground.
David was young. His father didn’t yet place a lot of trust in him. He was too young to go to war when King Saul had called the nation to arms to fight against the Philistines. David’s brothers thought he was a useless little twerp with an oversized ego. And worse yet, the enemy that Israel faced was literally so gigantic that even the best trained warriors ran and hid themselves whenever he showed up. Goliath was a man who, today, could literally set his drink on the roof of a tractor trailer, climb a flight of stairs in two or three steps, and who carried, and could throw, a spear that was like a pole with a bowling ball on the end. He was not just huge, but also immensely strong, everyone was afraid to even think about fighting against him, and no one who ever had ever done so had lived to tell the tale.
Except, out of all the farmers, shepherds, field hands, servants, and ordinary men who had answered Saul’s call to arms, and out of all the professional warriors and charioteers that were regularly employed, and trained, by the king, including King Saul himself, the only person that was willing to fight was the twerpy little brother whose brothers tried to send home. And the reason that David wasn’t afraid, was because, as we discussed last week, David’s perspective was different. David didn’t look at Goliath and see how much smaller David was in comparison, David looked at the wider perspective and saw how much smaller Goliath looked than God.
And in the story of Mark 4:35-41, Jesus takes on an even more impossible giant.
35 That day when evening came, he said to his disciples, “Let us go over to the other side.” 36 Leaving the crowd behind, they took him along, just as he was, in the boat. There were also other boats with him. 37 A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped. 38 Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke him and said to him, “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?”
39 He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, “Quiet! Be still!” Then the wind died down and it was completely calm.
40 He said to his disciples, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?”
41 They were terrified and asked each other, “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!”
From the perspective of the Disciples, and almost any other “reasonable” person, the weather, and other natural forces, are the ultimate uncontrollable situation, the ultimate impossible opponent, or the ultimate Goliath. Nature cannot be reasoned with, bullied, encouraged, persuaded, or controlled. Nature will do what nature will do.
But that wasn’t how Jesus saw it.
From Jesus’ perspective, nature was just one more part of creation that fell under God’s control. Jesus scolded the wind as a parent rebukes a misbehaving child… and the wind stopped.
Often in our lives, we have been, and will be, faced with impossible situations. We might be outnumbered, facing impending deadlines, going back to school, have struggles at work, be facing a rival or a bully, finding ourselves in a difficult financial situation, be lost, alone, and afraid, and all sorts of other things. But whatever our Goliath may be, our perspective makes all the difference. If all that we see is giant that rests his beer on the roof of a semi-trailer, or an uncontrollable storm that intends to leave us for dead, then we will hide from his threats or huddle in the bottom of the boat. But if we remember that our God is bigger than any trouble in all of creation, all our problems, and all our “Goliaths” will seem far less frightening. Jesus knew, and David trusted, that God was able to defeat their impossible Goliaths whether they were giants, or uncontrollable forces of nature. Like them, the key to surviving, and even thriving, when we face the impossible, is to maintain the right perspective. Instead of seeing that our giants are bigger than we are, we must remember that how small those giants really are in comparison to God.
Victory against the impossible is possible… with God.
We won’t win every time, but even when we don’t, we hold on to Jesus and remember that he said…
… “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20)
You can find the video of this worship service here: https://youtu.be/c_P203OfI5M
Did you enjoy reading this?
Click here to subscribe to Pastor John’s blog.
Click here if you would like to subscribe to Pastor John’s weekly messages.
Click here to visit Pastor John’s YouTube channel.
*You have been reading a message presented at Christ United Methodist Church on the date noted at the top of the first page. Rev. John Partridge is the pastor at Christ UMC in Alliance, Ohio. Duplication of this message is a part of our Media ministry, if you have received a blessing in this way, we would love to hear from you. Letters and donations in support of the Media ministry or any of our other projects may be sent to Christ United Methodist Church, 470 East Broadway Street, Alliance, Ohio 44601. These messages are available to any interested persons regardless of membership. You may subscribe to these messages, in print or electronic formats, by writing to the address noted, or by contacting us at secretary@CUMCAlliance.org. If you have questions, you can ask them in our discussion forum on Facebook (search for Pastor John Online). These messages can also be found online at https://pastorpartridge.wordpress.com/. All Scripture references are from the New International Version unless otherwise noted.
And earlier this evening, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, after a delicate astrophysical dance that lasted for months, has slipped into orbit around asteroid Bennu. While Bennu is “only” 1.2 billion miles away, it has taken OSIRIS-REx over two years to arrive since its launch. But if Ultima Thule is the most distant object we are studying, Bennu, at only 1600 feet wide, is clearly the smallest. And because Bennu is so small, its gravity is similarly weak, making it incredibly difficult to carefully place OSIRIS-REx into orbit. The spacecraft’s orbital speed is only one TENTH of a mile per hour (or five centimeters per second) and it is orbiting only 1.25 miles (2 km) from the center of Bennu. OSIRIS-REx will study Bennu for about a year, and then, around July of 2020, will descend, capture a sample from the surface of Bennu, and return that sample to earth in 2023.
Pastor Partridge 