[0:00] Please turn with me to 2 Samuel chapter 21.! We're going to begin in verse 15.! And Ishbi Ben-Ob, one of the descendants of the giants, whose spear weighed three hundred shekels of bronze, and who was armed with a new sword, thought to kill David.
[0:39] But Abishai, the son of Zariah, came to his aid and attacked the Philistine and killed him. Then David's men swore to him, You shall no longer go out with us to battle, lest you quench the lamp of Israel.
[0:52] After this, there was again war with the Philistines at Gob. Then Sibikai, the Hushathite, struck down Saph, who was one of the descendants of the giants. And there was again war with the Philistines at Gob.
[1:05] And Alhanan, the son of Jair-Oregim, the Bethlehemite, struck down Goliath the Gittite, the shaft of whose spear was like a weaver's beam. And there was again war at Gath, where there was a man of great stature, who had six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot, twenty-four in number, and he also was descended from the giants.
[1:26] And when he taunted Israel, Jonathan, the son of Shimei, David's brother, struck him down. These four were descended from the giants in Gath, and they fell by the hand of David and by the hand of his servants.
[1:39] This is God's word. Thanks be to God. Praise the Lord. Great singing. Great songs.
[1:52] It is great to be gathered in the house of the Lord. I want you to think back in time, long back in time, to a time long before GPS, long before any of our radar systems, long before all of our wonderful apps on our phone, where we turn to these things for navigation.
[2:25] I want you to imagine a time in history where towns that sit along the coastline all depended not upon Siri or cloud, whatever y'all call these things these days.
[2:43] They depended upon lighthouses. For them, light wasn't just an interior decoration and a statement.
[2:54] They were essential to their survival. Sailors looked through the fog for these lights to shine through. They looked through the rain, through the darkness, through the stormy seas.
[3:09] This light told them where the shore was and how to get home. But imagine being out in a storm, watching giant waves rising around you, trying to keep your bearings, and suddenly you see that lighthouse beginning to flicker.
[3:34] Now, if you were in that day and age back then, your stomach would probably drop. You're doomed. The light you were counting on may actually go out and you may be in danger.
[3:51] That is the kind of shock that this passage gives us today. David has been the lamp of Israel, the one that God used to guide, to protect, to defend his people.
[4:09] He's the giant killer. He's the warrior king. He's the man that Israel looked at and looked to when enemies came. But today, that lamp is flickering.
[4:24] David is growing weary and the enemy sees that flicker. And David needs to be rescued. And so the question of the passage today is not just, can Israel defeat the giants?
[4:41] Right? The question actually is, what happens when the light Israel depended on for so long begins to fade?
[4:55] Begins to almost go out. And honestly, this isn't just Israel's question either. It's ours.
[5:05] Because what do we do when our earthly lamps, as it may be, that God has used in our lives, begin to flicker? What happens when parents begin to grow very weak, very short with their children?
[5:22] What happens when pastors grow tired? What happens when leaders fail? When heroes in our lives begin to disappoint? When our own bodies begin to show signs of breaking down?
[5:37] Where the people that we depended on cannot carry previous expectations we once had. This passage does not tell us to despise lamps.
[5:50] After all, David was really the lamp of God, the lamp of Israel. But it does warn us today not to worship weary lamps. Ultimately, it points beyond David to Christ in the light that can never be quenched, found in Christ Jesus.
[6:08] The sermon title today is Stop, Get Some Help. And I'm doing this for Rick.
[6:21] He gets all the royalties. I'm sorry that came out of left wing. I thought I was going to be more smooth with that sermon title transition. But stop, get some help. And if you remember anything from this sermon, I hope you remember that.
[6:36] And if you remember that, you remember Rick. And what we're going to see in this passage unfold is that when weariness settles in, God sends help.
[6:50] God sends help. God sends help. So for that, we need to stop and get some help. So let's break this up into three different sections today. And I'd like to join together in prayer as we do this and pray for the Lord to speak to us through His Word today.
[7:12] Let's pray. Father, thank You for gathering us here as a people longing to hear You speak.
[7:23] We know You speak through Your Word. We know You speak through the power of the Holy Spirit who inspired the Word and confirms that Word within us.
[7:38] Father, we pray that Your Word is hidden in our hearts today. And we remember the God of all creation and how He preserves us weary people.
[7:50] We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. The first section that we have is sort of thematic in ways.
[8:01] The lamp grows weary. Verse 15 begins, There was war again between the Philistines and Israel. I emphasize again for a purpose.
[8:16] The word matters. Because nothing in this passage is new. We've been through all of this before. The Philistines are the constant enemy of God.
[8:26] This began back in 1 Samuel. The book of 1 Samuel in chapter 4. Where they captured the Philistines. Where they captured the ark of God in Eli's day.
[8:37] It led into chapter 8 of 1 Samuel. Where Israel demanded a king to go out and fight our battles before us. Partly because they feared enemies like the Philistines.
[8:50] In chapter 9, Saul was called to save Israel from the Philistines. But Saul failed. And in chapter 17, David's earthly rise began when he killed Goliath the Philistine.
[9:07] This is the same old tune. Probably like, what in the world is this bro going to preach up there? We've heard all this before. And so when we hear there was war again, we should expect the same old pattern.
[9:23] Philistines rise. David fights. And David wins. We could say amen and get our reservations at Bob Evans a little bit early this morning, can't we?
[9:33] Kyle's excited about that. I know what you're planning. But that's not what it says.
[9:44] It's not only what it says. It continues in the verse 15, the end of 15. And David went down together with his servants. And they fought against the Philistines.
[9:58] And David grew weary. What in the world is this all about? The giant killer is growing tired?
[10:14] The warrior king becomes faint? The lamp of Israel is flickering? What? I mean, consider our own propensity to grow weary.
[10:27] Not a single person grows weary from sitting on their biscuit, never having to risk it. Do we? Right? David has been laboring very, very hard.
[10:42] Hasn't he? The only reason you grow weary is the opposite of sitting around. Isn't weariness the evidence of strenuous labor?
[11:01] It's not just the workhorse either. Even prioritizing work and rest, someone can grow weary by.
[11:13] You see, the weariness of humanity is something to be mentioned and something to be acknowledged today. That is a reminder that all of us must face that none of our labor is our final hope.
[11:30] But all of our labor is a means to the ultimate hope that we have coming. We're laboring for something ahead. This is a word for some of us who desperately need to hear it today, isn't it?
[11:43] It's a tired parent. I'm a tired parent. Right? Who desperately needs to hear this. Who knows that their weariness and your weariness, my weariness, does not equate to failure automatically.
[11:59] A weary pastor, which I'm a weary pastor too, is not automatically a faithless pastor. A discouraged Christian, if you're discouraged today, is not automatically a defeated Christian.
[12:11] No, in fact, many of us who are weary, it's because you have been greatly laboring in love. You've been serving in great labor. You've been enduring greatly.
[12:24] Forgiving and parenting in great labor. Leading and obeying for a very long stretch of time. What we need to acknowledge today is that weariness is natural and weariness is actually good.
[12:41] It shows something about what we're doing when we grow weary. But weariness becomes dangerous when we pretend like it's not even there.
[12:52] As if we just try to continue in the status quo and just operate. I'm almost 40 or something like that. And, you know, operate like my 20s in my prime. Right? My body doesn't let me anymore.
[13:04] But my mind sometimes thinks that I can do it. I can't. But it becomes dangerous when we pretend that it is not there.
[13:14] To continue riding and just going upon the status quo, not setting boundaries, and laboring as if we are superhuman in complete disregard of any human limitations.
[13:29] In this passage, David's danger was not merely that he grew weary. But it was because he was still in the field as though nothing has changed.
[13:47] He's operating as a superhuman, we'll say. This is the moment when pride shows up, doesn't it? I could do that.
[13:58] Right? We can keep going because we don't want to acknowledge any limits. We keep fighting alone because we don't want to look weak. We don't want to ask for help. We keep carrying what God has never asked us to carry by ourselves.
[14:13] And you see in verse 15, we know that David was mighty. But we realize here, in the epilogue of the book, that David was not infinite.
[14:25] He wasn't a superhuman. He was anointed. He was called to that specific task. And that task was still his to be carried. But he was not immortal.
[14:39] He was a radiant lamp. But he was not the radiant sun. Weariness. In just a single verse, we have quite a conundrum, don't we?
[14:54] What is Israel going to do now? Well, do they get a new king? A guy with a new engine? New vision?
[15:06] New mission? Right? Get rid of the old? Well, what does a family do? Get a new mom or a dad? Some families do try to do that.
[15:19] For weary parents. What does the church do? Get a new pastor? It's been tried as well. What do we do? Because of weariness.
[15:33] Well, we see something is God's hand working amid the weariness. Because weary people endure through the faithful help of others.
[15:45] And we see this immediately in section 2. As we look in verse 16 and 17. I'm going to call him Ishbi. Ishbi. Verse 16.
[15:57] The pinnacle of David's weariness becomes dangerous when Ishbi sees the giant killer's weakened state. We learn in verse 16 that Ishbi was a descendant of the giants.
[16:11] Now, that language is not just to give us a height category. Put your little Disney shows out of your minds. Jack and the Beanstalk.
[16:22] Mean guys going around with a club. Again, the little people. No. Forget Disney for a moment. In Israel's memory, giants were enemies that made God's people feel small.
[16:37] I would probably compare it to these crazy W... What is it called now? WWE or WCW?
[16:48] Those pro wrestlers. You see those guys build? They look scary. But we wouldn't call them giants. But it's people who appear in such a way that make you feel small.
[17:04] Right? Standing next to these people doesn't give you any comfort whatsoever. It builds more fear within you. These are like the spies back in Numbers 13.33.
[17:15] When the spies saw the descendants of Anak, they said, We seem to ourselves like grasshoppers as they looked at the enemy.
[17:29] You see, giants were not fairytale figures. Okay? This is language long before Walt Disney was even born. Giants were people that were walking intimidation.
[17:46] You don't mess with those people. Their sighs preached before their mouths ever spoke. And so I want you to imagine for a moment now, verse 16, setting Walt Disney aside, Ishbi, he's armed with a heavy spear and a brand new sword with David's name written on it.
[18:09] Right? And as he sees David weakening in this battle, he intends to capitalize upon his weakness.
[18:19] He sees a vulnerability. This is literally a reversal of what we saw in 1 Samuel 17, where David defeated the giant, and now it's almost like the giant almost defeats David.
[18:37] We see in verse 17, faithful help. Abishai comes to David's aid and kills the Philistine.
[18:48] What a grace of support. The Lord gave a dangerous calling to David, didn't he?
[19:01] Right? David really didn't have an option. David was called out of the pasture to receive a throne. But the Lord did not leave David alone to complete the task by himself.
[19:20] The Lord doesn't raise up superhumans. I don't know if that's a public service announcement to you, or maybe a humbling reality check. But the Lord surrounded this weak individual for a great task with servants who could step in when the king inevitably grew weak.
[19:45] God often preserves his people through the people he places around them. It's what God has been doing since the beginning, right?
[19:58] It wasn't good for Adam to be alone, right? You have Adam and Eve. That God orchestrated. You have Moses and Aaron.
[20:10] Paul in the epistles. He needed co-laborers. Not a single time is the office of elder singular. It's always plural.
[20:22] Elders of the church. Go appoint elders in this church and that church. After all, the church is a body where one member cannot say to another, I have no need for you, according to Paul in 1 Corinthians 12.
[20:37] And so church, one of the most spiritual things that we can say that can come from our mouths is that I am not okay.
[20:50] How about that for a Sunday sermon? To actually express to your brothers and your sisters that I'm not doing good right now.
[21:03] I'm tired. I'm tempted. I'm discouraged. I need prayer. I need help.
[21:16] Why is that the most spiritual thing that we can say? Because God preserved His people through faithful help. David's men didn't say, well, suck it up, right?
[21:34] David, you're the king. You get paid. You're on staff. You're on salary. You're the guy that we hired for the job. Get out to the field and just figure it out. No.
[21:46] David's men said in verse 17, you shall no longer go out with us to battle lest you quench the lamp of Israel. He wasn't going to make it.
[22:00] Continuing the way that he's been going all along. And notice that they were not dishonoring Him. They weren't limiting Him here. But they were loving Him.
[22:12] Sometimes love doesn't say keep going. Sometimes love says slow down. Sometimes love says you cannot keep going like this.
[22:33] Before any of us have been saved by grace, myself included, we were brought to a place of a humility where we surrendered ourselves to Jesus Christ by our faith.
[22:46] And what did God do for us in return? He brought us into a church. Isn't that fancy?
[22:59] Isn't that spectacular? He brought you into a family, a place where the Lord provides.
[23:19] God is the architect of the perseverance of His weary people. He always has been. And look around this room. He continues to do so, and He always will until the day He returns.
[23:35] Church, I love the saying, fake it till you make it. But it doesn't work in the church. It doesn't. You want to dishonor God the quickest way possible?
[23:49] Do that in the church. That's the world's way of advancing. No. We shed ourselves, vulnerable to one another, that I'm not doing good.
[24:05] I need prayer, struggling. And that's how God preserves His people. This is beautiful and comforting. Don't fake it till you make it, because you won't.
[24:19] You won't. Don't despise accepting it until it's too late. Don't neglect those that God has entrusted around you.
[24:31] And trust me, if you are in isolation right now, maybe on the live stream right now, your failure is certain.
[24:44] The more you neglect the body, the more despair that's awaiting for you in the future. God has assembled a family, a community of weary people as the ultimate support on this earthly side of history that His hand has provided to one another.
[25:09] Perseverance begins when people, when God's people step into our mess, and we allow them to step into our mess.
[25:21] So I'd encourage you to come out of hiding, come out of isolation. You know who you are and who that might be. And be encouraged, be sustained by God's hands among His church and among weary people.
[25:36] We see also this last thing unfolds. The lamp remains. They save David from Ishbi.
[25:48] And they take him out of battle, but giants still fall. After David is removed from battle, obviously the giants keep coming, right?
[26:02] Bible's the most action-packed book there is. Best seller. And the giants are still going to come. Three more wars arrive following Ishbi.
[26:15] And guess who's standing by watching it all unfold? David. Verse 18, sorry, we see the second giant, Saif.
[26:27] He was struck down by Sibakai, the Hushethite. Sorry. Sorry. We see in verse 19, the third giant, the third war, a relative of Goliath was struck down by Elhanan.
[26:45] Verse 20, we see giant four, the fourth war, a nameless giant from Gath was struck down by David's nephew, Jonathan. Sibakai, Sibakai, Elhanan, and Jonathan.
[27:02] All as David is sitting by watching other people fight a battle. And so what we see here is an old enemy is still producing this giant-sized level of threat.
[27:21] And God is still preserving His people through faithful hands. It didn't rely, solely rely, on one individual, but it was the community that sustained.
[27:33] Think about what we don't see, church, here. We don't hear about the fifth war that came. We don't hear about the tenth war that came.
[27:46] We don't hear about the twentieth war. And so on. This sort of reminds us, reminded me, of how spiritual warfare feels. That we come along, one battle, one giant will say, and still another will inevitably rise after that.
[28:05] Right? No wonder people are weary, right? Go through life like we're in the hamster wheel. Like yet another crisis, yet another trauma, yet another situation.
[28:20] We confess one's sin, and all of a sudden we defeated that, and all of a sudden another temptation comes up. Like what in the world? We endure one season of suffering, and we all know that another battle is coming on the horizon.
[28:41] Church, it's important for you to hear. The Christian life is not one battle, and then all of a sudden take vacation and ease. Don't buy in for that lie.
[28:53] The truth is, until Jesus returns, there will always be war again. Your battle now is going to happen again in the future.
[29:09] There will be a fifth war, tenth war, twentieth war. And this is important because we cannot confuse these repeated battles with inevitable defeat.
[29:20] like, well, what's the use of trying? What's the use of even worrying about this when I know it's just going to happen again, and this is going to just pan out, I'm going to be weak again, and then all of a sudden life will begin to crumble again.
[29:39] You can't equate these battles, these repeated battles, with inevitable defeat. Or, just because the enemy keeps appearing in your life, and things get difficult in life, it does not mean that the Lord has suddenly stopped preserving His people.
[29:54] No. Some of us today here are fighting, fighting battles so hard today, and have grown so discouraged because we think the fight is equivalent to failure.
[30:11] Trust me, I text y'all, and I know what y'all are going through. This passage shows us that repeated war can still be the place where God gives repeated help every single battle.
[30:30] Consider verse 22. They fell by the hand of David and by the hand of his servants. Did you see that?
[30:41] By the hand of David. Now, David didn't personally take care of these giants, but his servants do. But yet, the victories still belong to David's kingdom because they fight in David's name.
[31:00] What was provided to David has been provided to us through the assembly of the church. A group of people who don't stand and watch or sit around and watch the few strong people standing and fighting as if you're just merely spectating a sport, but the church is literally a group of people who stand together under King Jesus fighting together, everyone included, extrovert and introvert.
[31:34] Right? Those who can teach and those who can't teach. Those who love public speaking and those who hate it. Right? All of us stand and fight.
[31:47] It's not a group of people who just watch a few strong people fight. It's not the church. Some stand and fight through teaching.
[31:59] Some by praying. Some by just showing up. Some by bearing burdens quietly. Some confronting sin and some as Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 5.14 encouraging the faint-hearted.
[32:18] David's servants fought to preserve a vulnerable king, but we fight as Christ's servants fight because our king has already conquered and his kingdom can never be lost.
[32:32] It can never be shaken. The king we fight for is the greater son of David and he does not merely carry a lamp, but according to John 8, he is the light of the world.
[32:52] His enemies tried to quench him at the cross, but on the third day that light rose from the grave. So where David's servants fought so their king wouldn't perish, Jesus died so his servants wouldn't perish.
[33:08] That is a great comfort for us this morning. Many of us need to hear it that your battle that you're in today is worth it.
[33:20] It is worth it. So treat it as such and don't fight it alone. We also need to be reminded to be careful ourselves when help arrives, right?
[33:36] when that Savior comes, that perfect counselor, that perfect sentence the pastor says, that perfect leader, that perfect friend, that perfect author, that perfect book, that perfect form of therapy, and all of these things, all these perfections just healed everything and fixed us.
[33:59] We need to be reminded to be careful ourselves when help does arrive. Codependency is a thing. It is a thing.
[34:14] And idolatry of helpers is quite a danger. See, when you finally surrender to the help that God provides to you in your mess, don't forget to continue to rely upon the God who provided it, lest we create idols in our lives.
[34:36] How often we have found that author, we have found that counselor, we've found that friend, we've found that pastor, who has so greatly impacted our fight that we have elevated them in our lives.
[34:51] And friends, this is what the Bible calls idolatry. We have to be careful. Church, receive earthly help without making saviors out of earthly helpers.
[35:05] Right? Honor faithful servants without worshiping them. Thank God for faithful pastors, for faithful friends, for faithful parents, counselors, faithful church members, without asking them to be what only Jesus Christ can be for you.
[35:25] We are weary people, yes, weary people can be very foolish. I'm talking to myself. I had to wrestle with this all week.
[35:36] You have to wrestle with it now. This passage is so speaking to me. So speaking to me. When weariness settles in, God sends help.
[35:52] So stop. Get some help. In Jesus, giants fall, darkness fails, death dies, and the light never goes out.
[36:06] So look to him. Serve him and fight in his name. The fight is worth it. You'll get exhausted no matter how much you rest, no matter how much you work.
[36:20] You will grow weary. weary. May we be reminded of Paul's weariness. As Paul remembered in the paradox of his own condition, that in his frailty he was strong because of his strength from Jesus.
[36:39] He says in 2 Corinthians 12, that is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weakness, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulty.
[36:53] Why? For when I am weak, then I am strong. It is a paradox, but it is so true and it is so vital that we realize that sooner than later.
[37:10] May that be true of all of us. Let's pray.