Just One Story VI: It’s Not About David

Let’s wrap up this series about David and Goliath. The message to this point has been important, but the final lesson is more important yet. The most important lesson from the story of David and Goliath for the church is that this story is not about David, but about God. We are naturally self-centered and try to make everything about ourselves, but that is not what our faith is all about. Our focus cannot be on us, but on God.

Several years ago I was at a family gathering in the home of a relative who had small children. I was having a hard time participating in the family festivities because I had lost my voice to fall allergies, so I was simply watching the children do what children do when in the house–watch television. Mom of the house had put a “Christian” children’s video on and the children were enthraled. It wasn’t quite Barney the Dinosaur, but almost. The video was loosely about David and Goliath. The video did a credible job of teaching the raw events of the story, but when it came time for the “moral of the story” it missed the point completely. For the sake of family harmony, it was probably a good thing I had lost my voice. My relatives are good people but probably would not have appreciated my response.

The video taught that the moral of the story of David and Goliath was that God could use them no matter how small they were. That is backward. It made David the hero of the story rather than God. It effectively said that David killed Goliath for God rather than God killed Goliath for David. Sadly, the video reflects current theological thought. It focuses on us rather than on God. God always works to glorify himself. That is why he works in the way he does, so that all will know it is he doing the great works, so the focus will be on him. God used a small boy to defeat Goliath so that all would know it was the Lord at work not the Israelite army. Compare this to the story of Gideon. Gideon had assembled an army of approximately 32,000 men, but God told him, “The people with you are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hand, lest Israel boast over me, saying, ‘My own hand has saved me.’” (Judges 7:2) Ultimately, God defeated the Midianites with a mere 300 men using torches, jars, and trumpets. Again, God’s lesson was that the victory came from him and that he does not save with sword and spear.

We are naturally self-centered and make everything about ourselves. That usually gives us too much credit. The story of David and Goliath and of many, if not most, of the stories in the Scripture teach that God does for us what we cannot do for ourselves. They are not about our service, but about God’s gracious provision for his people. We cannot save ourselves. Only God can do that. We cannot change lives. Only God can do that. Furthermore, God will do that in ways we can neither understand nor duplicate. In the events surround David and Goliath, God was teaching King Saul and his army to get their eyes off of themselves and put them on him. The Israelite army did not need more training in order to defeat Goliath. They needed a God that was bigger than Goliath.

A self-focused faith can only result in a shallow, insipid practice of that faith. As James would ask, “Can such a faith save him?” Of course not. In his book Christless Christianity, Michael Horton begins by saying,

It is easy to become distracted from Christ as the only hope for sinners. Where everything is measured by our happiness rather than by God’s holiness, the sense of our being sinners becomes secondary, if not offensive. If we are good people who have lost our way but with the proper instructions and motivation can become a better person, we need only a life coach, not a redeemer. We can still give our assent to a high view of Christ and the centrality of his person and work, but in actual practice we are being distracted from “looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith” (Heb. 12:2). A lot of the things that distract us from Christ these days are even good things. In order to push us off-point, all that Satan has to do is throw several spiritual fads, moral and political crusades, and other “relevance” operations into our field of vision. Focusing the conversation on us—our desires, needs, feelings, experience, activity, and aspirations—energizes us. At last, now we’re talking about something practical and relevant. ¹

He goes on to say,

I think that the church in America today is so obsessed with being practical, relevant, helpful, successful, and perhaps even well-liked that it nearly mirrors the world itself. Aside from the packaging, there is nothing that cannot be found in most churches today that could not be satisfied by any number of secular programs and self-help groups.²

Horton is correct. We need more than just good teaching. We need a savior to save us from the righteous wrath of God, and that can only come by focusing on God rather than on ourselves.

May “he who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” (Revelation 2:11)

Notes
1. Michael Horton, Christless Christianity (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2009), pp. 15-16.
2. Horton, pp. 16-17.

Costly Grace

For the past several months I have been wrestling with the concept of self-denial in the Scripture. Jesus said that self-denial is a requirement for salvation (Luke 9), but it is a concept almost unknown in the twenty-first century church in America. Instead of self-denial, we have self-indulgence. For a great example of the current self-indulgence of the church, see the September 10, 2006 issue of Time Magazine.

As part of my study on this topic I have begun to read again Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s great work, The Cost of Discipleship. Bonhoeffer knew from personal experience what following Christ costs. For him, following Christ meant opposing the Nazi regime of the 1930s and 40s, and that cost him his life. (For more information see the Wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietrich_Bonhoeffer.

Even though I read the book for the first time about twenty years ago, I was struck by the depth of his spiritual commitment and just how contemporary his message is to our circumstances. Below are some brief quotes from the first chapter, "Costly Grace."

Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fighting today for costly grace.

Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjacks’ wares. The sacraments, the forgiveness of sin, and the consolations of religion are thrown away at cut prices. . . The essence of grace, we suppose, is that the account has been paid in advance; and, because it has been paid, everything can be had for nothing . . .

Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system. It means forgiveness of sins proclaimed as general truth, the love of God taught as the Christian "conception" of God. An intellectual assent to that idea is held to be of itself sufficient to secure the remission of sins. The Church which holds the correct doctrine of grace has, it is supposed, ipso factor a part in that grace. In such a Church the world finds a cheap covering for its sins; no contrition is required, still less any real desire to be delivered from sin. Cheap grace therefore amounts to a denial of the living Word of God, in fact, a denial of the Incarnation of the Word of God.

Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner. Grace alone does everything, they say, and so everything can remain as it was before. . .

Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has. . .

Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: "ye were bought at a price," and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God.

Costly grace is the sanctuary of God; it has to be protected from the world, and not thrown to the dogs.

May God have mercy on his Church and on me!