The story of David slaying Goliath is a gripping narrative of war, cowardice, courage, and national deliverance. There is however no believer, oldest or youngest, who is going to deliver the people of God from the enemy.  David’s victory was not a personal victory over any of life’s problems.  David was not overcoming a personal vice or passion.  There should be though one unlikely hero who delivers God’s people from the power of the devil, sin and death.  Only the Nazarene can fill up the shoes of the little Bethlehemite.  Yesterday’s heroes do not cut it today, and despite a popular song about “what he’s done for others he will do for you” and despite an avalanche of faith to see impossible things happen no-one has seen an amputee grow a new limb, and we do not have reliable documentation of the blind seeing and the dead coming to life. I do not know how to explain that the miracles of the Bible are not happening today in the 21st century with any regularity or confirmation of the genuineness except to say yesterday is not invading today.

We can say “Christ the same, yesterday, today and forever” until moons are all blue

It may be a comfort to many people to simply have nothing change as the centuries roll by, but the wish to keep Mosaic Law, patriarchal traditions, and primitive practices alive is just wish wasting.  All around us are the contradictions of advances from donkey to tractor, from stonings and floggings, from lynchings to principled courts of justice, and from male supremacy to gender equality.  Perhaps the most dramatic movement is in the field of education.  The insistence that women and girls need no formal education crashes head-on into the rapid increase of highly educated girls and women.  In the wake of a close analysis we find that Christ preincarnate, Christ crucified, and Christ exalted are quite different.  Each of these marks of divine being and interest appropriately defines unique features of divine life.

Already delivered

There is a believer who thinks that he or she will bring victory to the Church.  The stark reality is that since the Lord Christ went back to glory we have not cleaned out a single hospital of sick people, we have not prevented the false prophets and their sickening doctrines from making shipwreck of countless souls.  There is one passage from 1 Samuel in the New Testament, and that should tell us something about what was important to the writers of the New Testament.  Just think how many times you’ve heard a sermon based on 1 Samuel with the goal of bringing to life one of Yahweh’s interventions.  Try as they might, the power-tripping prophets of the modern era seem incapable of stopping their testimony of miraculous intervention and seem unwilling to ascribe the lasting victory of the Church to Christ and him alone.

Courage is the least common denominator

The people in the ancient record were always encouraged to be human and humane, because they could not become what we are able to become through the gift of the Holy Spirit. “Be strong” is often translated by the Greek ischuo, katischuo, or enischuo. Another term that defines this requirement is  andrizomai ανδριζομαι.  The Hebrew word chazaq חזק means “be strong” or “strengthen”.  This is entirely within the human capacity, especially when God commands it.  They could not become sons of God.  God is definitely not doing for us what he did for the ancients.  We are not them.  They were not what we are.

The age of strong men and women

Joshua alone tells the sons of Israel “You are not able to serve Yahweh”, and his own distinction places his as the one who delivers the descendants of Abraham to Canaan.  Why would his era be denied an iconic rating?

This personal exhortation to be strong –  chazaq – חזק – has no prominence in the Five Books of Moses until Joshua. The verb is used from Genesis to Deuteronomy for other situations and actions.  If the verb was spread out across the OT books the rate would be 1 per book (1.34).  Joshua has four times the average.  The connection of the term to Joshua personally is a clue that something critical exists in the Messianic revelation.

What’s in a name if not something we are?©️

God obviously has a remedy for sin, but what does he have for people making a mockery of his name? God’s has a primary interest in maintaining his name and reputation.  We too have names, but what is a name if it is not something we are? The question (what ‘s in a name…”) appears in Smoky Knows, a song by Kyu and Ganjy (hence the ©️ alert).  Woe is one way of describing the fate of the pretenders, but people who think they have a lifetime to get their act together are deceiving themselves.  God’s “today” is extremely precise, unrelenting and mysterious.  It could be twenty-four hours, seventy weeks, 120 years, 3½ years, or 0 minutes.  “Time’s up” happens to everyone, and that was the premise of the revelation of God’s Son to the world. “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” (Matthew 3:2, NASB), and the saying “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.” (Mark 1:15, NASB) show that there is no such thing as “all the time in the world”, and the urgency surrounding the Lord’s parousia in glory has not changed the offer of repentance since New Testament times.

There are many better stories than giant-slaying

Storytelling around the David and Goliath episode is penny cheap.  The church faces no giant that is not already dead or openly displayed as a leashed canine.  So what is the point of giant-slaying if it has no typological venue in the cross of Christ?  Do Christians not have the power to throw mountains into the sea? When that fails do they not fast and pray? When that fails after three times do they not have the intelligence to say “God’s grace is sufficient”?  Furthermore giants can just as easily be killed by courageous soldiers as they can be killed by a shepherd boy with a sling. Saul of Tarsus and the leaders of the Jewish establishment were the closest thing to the church’s Philistines.  They used violence and the church did not. One has to go to the People’s Republic of China to see this kind of warfare and hostility in play.

The works of the devil are destroyed

Do the children of God need someone to tell them what a virtuous life looks like?  Of course they don’t, and thinking that they do is where deception rears its head. Listen to John talking about the victorious life.   “Little children, make sure no one deceives you; the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous; the one who practices sin is of the devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning. The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil.” (1 John 3:7-8, NASB)

“And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it.”

Colossians 2:15

The yesterday of the eyewitnesses of the Christ does not expire or fade.  God alone speaks things into existence, and if we speak a thing that does not exist, we have to wait to find the material, then go and put the parts together. We have forgotten that human pomp and pride also gets laid in the dust when the day of release comes. 

“For My own sake, for My own sake, I will act; For how can My name be profaned? And My glory I will not give to another.”

Isaiah 48:11

“For indeed what had glory, in this case has no glory because of the glory that surpasses it.”

2 Corinthians 3:10