What to do with Giants?
1 Samuel 17:40-51
February 18, 2024 anno Domini
What do you do with giants?
In Genesis 6 we hear of the Nephilim, sometimes translated giant. They weren’t good guys – the word can also mean thug. It seems that the sons of God married the daughters of these men. That’s one solution. Make your enemy your friend. Join up with the bully in his bullying or the thug in his thuggery. However the Lord did not approve of the marriage, as Moses tells us, “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.” Getting in bed with the giant doesn’t have the Lord’s approval. He decided to wipe out the entire population of the earth, except Noah and his family, whom He would save by the ark. 40 days and 40 nights of rain and the flood was God’s judgment.
The next time we run into giants is in Numbers 13. The Israelites had arrived at the edge of the promised land. They sent 12 spies to scope out the land. The spies spent 40 days reconnoitering Canaan. What did they report? A land flowing with milk and honey, but the people are strong, the cities fortified, and there are giants, the very same word used in Genesis 6. The Nephilim, also known as the sons of Anak or Anikim. Ten spies gave a bad report – too many giants, too many fortresses. Two guys gave a good report – let’s take it, the Lord is on our side. Moses held a quarterly voters’ assembly and the Israelites moved, seconded, and carried not to go forward into the promised land. The giants were too big, the fortresses too strong. The Lord didn’t approve of their avoidance. For the next 40 years the Israelites wandered in the wilderness, suffering and dying, that they might repent. Of that original congregation, only the two good spies entered the land.
By now, unless you’ve been daydreaming you should this has something to do with Lent. 40 days and 40 nights of rain. 40 days of spying. 40 years of wandering and repenting. Every one of those is a Lent, a time of testing, a time of repenting, a time of battle. Lent focuses on facing the enemies of Christ and His people, and these enemies are not small. They are giants. When you were in catechesis your pastor taught you about the three giants who are against Christ, your sinful self, death, and the Devil.
So far God’s people have taught us two unsuccessful methods of dealing with giants. Marry them or try to avoid them. Those are still our temptations. Consider giant number 2 for a moment – death. Death cannot be avoided. This week a pastor called me to make a visit on a friend of his in the Saint Cloud hospital. The pastor couldn’t come himself because he was on the way to visit a family whose teenage son committed suicide. The call I made was on a man in his early 50s just diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He has a year to live if he doesn’t seek treatment. Two years if he does. His only daughter is a teenager. You cannot avoid death.
Another a great temptation facing Christians is to marry death, to love death, to look on death as a welcome companion. Abortion is the answer to poverty and crime and mental anguish for women. It also solves a host of problems for the cowardly men who father these children. Physician assisted suicide is the answer to suffering and the cost of long-term care, and the duress on caregivers. Want to solve the nursing home bed shortage? Death will make it happen. The world wants us to accept transgenderism but won’t tell you that 42% of transgender people try to commit suicide. Evidently gender dysphoria isn’t the problem. Something else is and sadly for almost half of those souls the solution is death.
You should avoid sin and the Devil. If you know there’s somewhere you will be tempted to sin avoid it. Don’t be alone with your phone or computer if you’re tempted to porn. Don’t go to a bar if you’re an alcoholic. Don’t hang around gossip if you love slander. However if you are a baptized believer in Christ, the Devil is not going to leave you alone. He’s got the abortionists. He’s got the Necromancers – those who love death. He’s not worried about them, but you are a problem. You belong to Christ and that makes you an enemy because you are alive, and he hates life.
So, what do you do you face the giants of sin, death, and the Devil? There’s only one way to deal with a giant – kill it and chop off its head. That’s what we learn from David.
David gives us great confidence against giants because David should have lost. In Vegas no one bet on David. He was under 20 years old, was 6 feet nothing, probably 175 lbs. Goliath was 9 feet tall and made Shaquel O’Neal look like a dwarf.
Before the text King Saul offers David his armor. David cannot go up against Goliath in a shepherd’s robe with a slingshot. So, Saul suggests his armor, but the armor doesn’t fit. David cannot move. His weapons are too heavy for David. There’s another lesson for the church – we’re not going to win by clothing ourselves in the power and might of the world. We won’t win by force. We are not going to win by pretending we are something other than what God has called us to be.
David went against the giant with one weapon. The name of the Lord. “You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied.” David had just been anointed by the Lord to be the next King and in the name of the Lord he went out to take down the giant. You have been baptized into the name of the Triune God. In your baptism the Holy Spirit gave you everything Jesus Christ won, accomplished, and purchased for you here on earth. Jesus bested the Devil in the wilderness not with Godly might but God’s Word. Jesus took your sin with Him into hell on the cross and all that slag and sludge of your life was burned away. Jesus rose from the dead and by that resurrection God declared you righteous and holy. Your sin is forgiven. Death will have to give you up. The Devil has nothing that can stand against Christ your Savior.
When David took out Goliath, he showed us what Christ Himself would do to that old serpent the Devil. David took a head shot with his sling and then used Goliath’s own sword to decapitate him. A headless giant isn’t scary, unless the giant is your hope like the Philistines. Jesus silenced Satan in the wilderness with God’s Word. When Jesus rose from the dead, He knocked out all the devil’s teeth. He has nothing with which to bite you because you are forgiven. But the Devil still mumbles his temptations and spouts his toothless accusations. Sometimes in this fallen world he looks gigantic, but he is not. You’ve got the Lord’s name on you and that will topple him every time. The same is true of death. When you face death, it will appear monstrous, but it’s not, because your sins are forgiven. You will rise and it will fall.
When you face the giants don’t cozy up to them. Don’t avoid them, you can’t. Go out to meet them in the name of the Lord and they will fall. You will defeat the giants in the name of Jesus. Amen.