Learning to Slay Giants

Goliath taunted Israel daily until David stood up against this intimidating enemy.

Here is Dr. Michael Youssef introducing today's Leading the Way. I think if we're honest with ourselves, every one of us would say that there is a Goliath in each of our lives. And these Goliaths are there to harass us. They're there to mock us.

They're there to discourage us. So what or who is your Goliath? The one thing that chases you down, bringing discouragement and intimidating you to the point of taking the joy out of life. Welcome to Leading the Way with Dr. Michael Youssef, where today you'll do a deep dive into the words of Psalm 8, words from the heart of David, right after his life-changing victory over Goliath, a real-life giant who was mocking God and threatening the lives of Israel. It's part of Dr. Youssef's series called God Has the Answer for Every Problem You Face. So as you hear the words from this powerful psalm, you'll gain a deeper understanding and appreciation for the name of this audio series because God does have the answer for every problem you face.

So listen with me now as pastor and international Bible teacher, Dr. Michael Youssef, begins today's teaching. You remember that Goliath kept on mocking the people of God until a shepherd boy who believed that his God is greater than all of the giants in this world, that his God is greater than all the Goliaths in our lives. Beloved, listen, whatever your Goliath may be, whether it's an illness that is plaguing you or it is a weakness that's constantly discouraging you, whether it is some hindrances that are frustrating you in life, whether it's a past that's holding you back in chains or whether it's a person who is constantly harassing you and there seem to be no end to it. And the Bible said that day after day, Goliath, the Philistine giant, would come and mock and harass and challenge the people of God. And no one could stand up to him until David showed up and who took the giant on. Right after that victory, right after David's victory over that giant, he sat down inspired by the Holy Spirit and he wrote Psalm 8. After the great victory, David sat under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and penned this song of victory. And in that song of victory, he does basically two things. Easy to remember, hard to forget, two things and two things only. He begins, and notice the order here because that's very important.

The order is important. He begins by the surpassing majesty of God. Can you say that with me? The surpassing majesty of God. And when you have taken account of the surpassing majesty of God comes the second one and that is you're going to have a sober measurement of man.

Man at that point becomes in his rightful place, in her rightful place. What David is saying here is this, listen carefully, that you will never, and I will never, that we will never understand human beings, we will never understand the complexity of humanity, we'll never understand the complexity of relationships unless we see them as God sees them. That you and I will never understand the human beings or humanity unless we see them as God's own handiwork, creation. We will never understand human beings unless we recognize that they have responsibility to their creator. That's why we're in trouble we're in today. The reason we have turmoil in society, all of communities and churches and family relationships, when they fail to have this perception, when they fail to have this perspective, and so you begin with the surpassing majesty of God.

David said, verse 1, O Lord our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. That's where you start. This is where you begin.

This is where you need to go. Perhaps some of you today are discouraged and just living in a life of discouragement. I understand that. Some of you are defeated right now in this life and in your circumstances and what you're facing, you're facing defeat.

Some of you right now, right now are depressed. I understand that. Call upon the name of the Lord and don't stop calling until he hears you and answers you from heaven. Amen. Beloved, there is power in the name of the Lord. There is strength in the name of the Lord.

There is victory in that name. There is mercy and there is grace in that name and David is really saying a lot more than this. He's saying that when you look at creation and you see all of its majesty and you see its magnificence, you are only seeing a very, very, very pale approximation of the true majesty of God. If you ever catch a glimpse of God's glory and majesty, you would be praising him every waking moment. According to Psalm 8 verse 2, every infant babe is praising God. Mom and Dad, even when that babe cry in the middle of the night, you need to rejoice because he's praising God.

I know you don't think so when you wake up in the middle of the night, but if you think about it this way, it will go a lot easier. The Lord Jesus Christ himself quoted this verse. He quoted it to these self-righteous Pharisees, hypocrites, he said, from the lips of children he would then praise. David came into the battlefield and he said to Goliath, who was mocking, he is actually mocking God by mocking his people. You remember when Paul on the road to Damascus and he has an encounter with the risen Christ, he did not say to him, Paul, why are you persecuting the church? Do you know what he said to him? Why are you persecuting me? You see, Goliath was mocking the God of Israel and David said, who is this Philistine who's mocking my God? Now his older brothers were trying to shut him down and shut him up. It's always the case, isn't it? With those who have the spirit of unbelief, those who have a critical spirit, in our culture we probably don't criticize, we just ignore.

Poor saps. They're trying to discourage the boy. Can't you see his size?

He'll hurt you, boy. If you read any of my recent books, you know that I believe with all my heart that this moment in history in which we live, it's the high noon and the faithful remnant are standing on the one side and the forces of evil on the other side and I am absolutely convinced that when I see terrorists are converted and becoming evangelists and I see Christians in America and in Europe and in the West are seeking entertainment rather than the pure word of God, I am convinced that the great apostasy is upon us. That God is gathering his remnant from all over the globe, literally from all over the globe.

He's gathering his people. He's beginning to separate the sheep from the goats and therefore I want to have a word with those armies of the living God, the faithful believers. I want to call upon you. Give up vacillating between God and the world. Give up vacillating between entertainment and worship.

Give up vacillating between being hot and cold and ending up being lukewarm. Give up and it is time to be zealous for God's righteousness. It is time to be zealous for God's name. It is time to learn how to appropriate the power of God. It is time to appropriate the name of our God. It is time to start appropriating the promises of God.

This is the time in which we live. It's time to stop wanting to be accepted by the enemies of Christ. There's so many people who want to be accepted so badly they compromise everything they knew to be true. In the very gospel itself. Beloved, listen to me. Appeasement has never converted anyone to Christ.

It is time to stop wanting to be loved by everybody. Let me have a word with those who feel defeated today, those who are despondent, those who are discouraged, the discouraged army of the living God. It is time to rise up and be the army of the living God. But there's something here I don't want you to miss. When David slayed Goliath, he used Goliath's sword to do the job.

Listen to me. Within every problem you're facing, within every giant Goliath that is challenging you, there is a weapon for you to use to defeat that problem. Amen belongs here. You need to ask God to show you how to find it and God will.

He will. David understood the secret of victory and it is first and foremost is the surpassing majesty of God. And secondly, David understood from there it follows a sober measurement of man, a sober measurement of man. Secularism, which is this life, everything focused on this life.

As you know, I don't have to tell you, is dominating. Here's the thing that makes me awake at night and weep. It has invaded the church. Everything in preaching today is about this life. Your best life is now.

Give me a break. That's what heaven is going to be like. That's why we look forward to heaven because that's the best life that's yet to come. Amen.

Amen. Verses 4 and 5. When I look at your heaven and the work of your fingers, the moon, the stars, which you have established, what is man that you are mindful of him? This is what David is saying after defeating Goliath. He's saying, God, when I think of the billions of galaxies, when I see the vastness of your creation, and when I see that the light that comes from these stars has taken billions of years to travel to get to us, when I see all of that, I am absolutely flabbergasted.

Well, it's a use of translation, but that's what it means. I am flabbergasted at the fact that the God of that universe, the God who made it all, the God who orders it all, the God who maintains it all, the God who sustains it all cares not only for every single human being, but for every single hair of his children. David is really saying more than that. He's saying the very God who created the vast universe has given human beings a higher priority than all of the galaxies. David is saying, Lord, it's mind-boggling. It's mind-boggling for me that you are more interested in every single one of your creation than the planets that you've flung across the orbits. Lord, it's mind-boggling that you are interested more in souls than in stars. Lord, it's mind-boggling that you are more interested in me than the universe. It's overwhelming.

It's overwhelming. Beloved, because of that interest, God the Son left the glory of heaven and came more than 2,000 years ago, became one of us in order to save everyone who would come and place their whole trust, their whole confidence in him, and then live in obedience to him. And I hear people say, oh, God doesn't love me. God doesn't care about me anymore. He doesn't care about my problem. Come on now.

No, no, no, no, no. It's just you don't like the way he cares about you. He cared enough. So this morning, when you brushed your hair, he said, number 10,571, come on out.

And it came in the hairbrush. How foolish of us to try to define ourselves and refuse the Creator's definition of who we are. I know throughout history, those of you probably learned all this at school, but you know that people try to define man in different ways. Darwin tried to define man as only a highly developed animal. Freud, Freud, I always mispronounce his name, he thought that man is an underdeveloped child.

Karl Marx defined man as a mere economic factor. Pascal said that man is a reed, a thinking reed, but a reed nonetheless. Mark Twain apologized for man. He said God made him the last day of the week when he was tired. But before all of them, there was Plato, who once defined man as a featherless bird until one of his rivals showed up in his doorstep with a plucked chicken announcing, behold, Plato's man.

And then he changed the definition. He said a being in search of meaning. But God said through David in Psalm 8 verse 5, man is crowned by God with glory and honor. The Bible said that God created men and women in his own image, that God created men and women to reflect his glory, that God created men and women as rational being.

That is why God created men and women to be very different from the rest of creation, that God created men and women as separate and apart from the rest of creation. Thomas Aquinas in the medieval times explained Psalm 8 this way. He said man is a midway between angels and animals. Angels above man, animals below man. Angels have spirits but no bodies. Animals have bodies but no spirit, and yet man has a body and spirit.

Now I don't think Aquinas was thinking biblically, but be that as it may. The Bible teaches that men and women were given a special privilege to be able to look up beyond the created being, beyond the angels that God created. That when man is able to look up to the creator God, he will imitate God. But when he looks down at the animals, he's going to exhibit beast-like behavior.

We're seeing it right now. The reason the merchants of the theory of evolution are selling very hard these days is because they want men and women to cohabitate like animals. They are wanting us to behave like monkeys. The reason they want us to look down rather than look up is because they want us to be beast-like, not God-like. In fact the book of Daniel chapter 4 verse 30, you see King of Babylon, King Nebuchadnezzar, when he turned his back on God he became a beast. When the God of the Bible is rejected and replaced as we're seeing before our own eyes right now, animal-like people will rule these lands. The reason all of the secular humanism from Hollywood to academia to the media, they want to eliminate God, the God of the Bible I'm talking about, from our collective conscience is because they want to live like animals with no moral boundaries. In fact when that happens people will behave like wild animal kingdom.

Indeed they are doing things and tolerating things that even animals do not tolerate. And that is why God sent his one and only Son to save us from our willful ignorance, from our rebellion, and to fulfill Psalm 8, for it is Jesus is the ultimate fulfillment of this Psalm. Beloved the time is coming says Hebrews chapter 2 verses 7 and 8, when God will put everything in subjection under Christ. The day is coming when those who love the Lord Jesus Christ regardless of the harassing, regardless of the pain, regardless of the suffering, we're going to be reigning and ruling with him in heaven. Some might say, well you know Michael it doesn't look like that now. Of course it doesn't.

Couldn't agree more. But don't panic, this is going to change. It's not going to be like this forever. You know there's a story that always a reminder to me, a reminder for every believer, it's not going to be like this forever. And it's about the Queen Elizabeth of England. When she was a teenager, as soon as she turned 18, she is seeing so many of her friends signing up and going into the army to help efforts against the war, Second World War. And so she went to her father King George VI and she asked for permission, please allow me to enlist so I can go and fight for my country and he was absolutely reluctant.

He said you cannot do this, you're the heir to the throne. But she kept asking, she kept asking and finally he allowed her, he gave her permission to enroll in what they call the auxiliary territorial services and she joined as a private. She had a superior officer who absolutely took pleasure in bossing her around, in bullying her.

It was private Windsor do this, private Windsor do that. And Elizabeth always responded with yes sergeant, yes sergeant. She was made lower than an uncommissioned officer for the sake of her people. But then on February 6, 1952, her father died and she instantly became Queen Elizabeth. She was no longer private Windsor. She was no longer badgered by a small-minded non-commissioned officer. She became her royal majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

She inherited the position for which she was born. Never again would she be called private Windsor. Beloved, listen to me, in a far, far, far, far, far, great away our Lord Jesus Christ who fought the devil on the cross and crushed his head as the scripture said, now he is reigning and ruling on the rim of the universe. But the day is coming when all of that's going to change, when he comes to take his believers, his army of the living God to reign and rule with him. We're no longer going to be subject to harassment. We're no longer be subject to challenges. We're no longer be subject to temptation. We're going to sit on the throne with Jesus to reign and rule with Jesus.

The time is coming. Insight into David's victory over Goliath and how you can, through Christ, face the Goliaths in your life. Thank you for joining Dr. Michael Youssef for Leading the Way. Learn all the ways that you can hear Leading the Way audio when you visit ltw.org. In Mark 16, 15, Jesus said, go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.

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