Power over Appearance - David and Goliath
This week, Pastor Gene takes us to the account of David and Goliath in 1 Samuel 16-17, as we look at how people try to put themselves into the Bible, when the Bible is all about Christ and what He did for us.
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good morning welcome if you're new here among us my name is gene and i serve here at c3 church as your lead pastor if you're not new here among us you know that last week we talked about obedience obedience being better than sacrifice and i use the story from my childhood as i often do about paying the price for disobedience i suffered some great embarrassment as a child i told you that one of the instruments that i played i was a musician before was the trumpet it's a disgusting instrument you can go back and watch last week's message to find out why but the main point was that i duped myself not really just my parents the joke was really on me for the disobedience well it was one of the very rare occasions where i actually learned a lesson from something and so i found that practicing was really important so i began to practice my instrument a lot and i became what they called back then a band nerd complete with v-neck sweater vest and everything now if you judged me by outward appearances kind of a skinny kid playing the trumpet all the time sweater vest v-neck you'd think by outward appearances that i was someone who got really good grades and if you assumed that about me you would have been wrong i got terrible grades i was a horrible student if you know anything about me you know that i used to suffer from a form of dyslexia made school really tough they didn't have the same kind of resources back then that they do now and they didn't know as much about it so they worked on it they treated it but not so much i got really really bad grades so essentially i was an oxymoron i'm not going to go further down well a lot of word plays there anyway i was an oxymoron i didn't make sense and i suffered a lot of rejection as a result i don't know if you remember this but you had a lineup at recess or in gym class you line everybody up and then you'd have a couple of team captains and those team captains were the cool kids right and what did they do they picked all the other cool kids first and so i don't know if you know the feeling what it feels like to be standing there and pick last or pick by concession right oh okay we'll take the band nerd come on right while they're high-fiving all the other cool yes we got johnny we're gonna totally win man it's gonna be awesome and i'm just like and so glenn for punishment i would show up at recess instead of sitting at the nerd table with the other nerds right i should have done that but i kept lining up every week and so i spent a lot of my childhood warming the bench i knew what it was like to warm the bench until everybody was sick one day and so they needed a warm body on the football field so they put eugene the skinny band nerd out there now i got very very excited about this because there was something that they didn't know it was that i had been training not in the playground not on the field but on the streets you see i would walk my dog it was one of my chores around the neighborhood and for some reason there was a lot of loose dogs in my neighborhood so i would get chased by dogs a lot that was really fast you got to be really fast outrun a dog and also bees i didn't like bees and so i'd run from them and they're surprisingly quick so i was really fast and so i knew all i need to do is get a hold of that ball and once i do that's it sure enough i can't even remember how it happened it's what a blur this was i think someone fumbled it or something i don't know i got a hold of the ball and like a rocket touchdown look back no one was even close i think they were amazed the bad nerd got the ball so touchdown now i don't know if i'm the only one who does this but i start to daydream and kind of fantasize right so now in my mind the kids they're like carrying me on i got one touchdown right they're carrying me on their shoulders there's a victory but there's a float just for me in the town parade on the fourth of july right you do this kind of stuff i'm awesome maybe i'll get a girlfriend now you know this is just great it's fifth grade so i'm just wandering around the other end of the field like like just i don't know what i'm doing still got the ball i'm coddling it it's awesome life is going to be great now and all the other kids they don't even care so what i don't know there's something happening on the other side of the field i don't know this and one of the cool kids he sees a rock on the field i guess his thinking was i got to clear it off because this band nerd is going to trip over it or something right so he takes the rock and safely arcs it off the field just throws it into the woods all right i don't know this i don't know what he's thinking nothing i'm in la la land this is great right i'm a superstar all i see out of the corner of my eye is something being thrown so i see him doing this instinct it just sets in gotta catch it right so catching a rock is really not a good idea now there's something else they didn't know i could jump really high why because when you're getting chased by dogs it's good to be able to vault a fence once in a while so i can jump really hot and so i do i jump for it but remember the dyslexia thing i don't have good hand-eye coordination so i overshoot it and the rock hits me right in the forehead and i go down like a sack of potatoes now you can laugh because i'm over it and it looked really funny so some of the kids are laughing others are like oh he's dead right because i fall down on the ground so sure enough even the cool kid who threw the rock for anonymity's sake will call him harry b harry burns comes up to me and he says are you okay are you alive is everything okay yes i'm fine big egg on my face and sure enough i go back in the lineup next week but no one ever picks me now i'm a liability so now it's over so i spent most of my childhood all through school warming the bench playing music i got to high school i found a way to be somewhat cool i did rock and roll music i switched instruments my parents finally like paid the rental fee for the trumpet or whatever and i'm over it so i'm going to move on to the guitar i did i barely graduated high school barely and i became a professional musician that was kind of cool but it wasn't cool enough inside me i still had a lot of anger a little angry about the way life turned out about being a loser a lot of discouragement so you know what i did some of you do i quit music i stopped doing it i decided to go back to martial arts i'd done that as a kid oh yeah i trained in a lot of different martial arts i finally found the hardest one i spent 10 years getting a black belt even after having a black belt in another style and so you can picture like a rocky movie you know the montage that's like my favorite part of all these movies whether it's like the a-team or you gotta have a montage for that so there's like the fight training montage so you can picture me like damn punching someone in the face and then it cuts away to like the rock hitting mine like no you know what i mean so this whole thing going on for 10 years and the martial arts isn't even good enough nope i have to lift weights and get absolutely huge because that's the opposite of band nerd and i don't just lift weights i power lift i want to get as strong as humanly possible so i can literally crush people then i'm going to call up the kid who hit me in the face with the rock and challenged him to a fight you know what happened absolutely nothing it would have been totally crazy can you imagine that phone call the guy's like in his 30s now he's got kids and a wife like he looks astonished when i call he hangs up the phone the wife's like what's the matter some guy called me who said that i hit him in the head with a rock in elementary school and so he challenged me to a fight on the playground at 3 p.m tomorrow what'd you say like you know another thing i got to take the kids to the game you know he's got responsibilities now so here's here's the lesson i'm going somewhere with this you'll see but the immediate lesson is this when you see people who by outward appearances look pretty amazing they got that way because there's something wrong with them there's hurt on the inside so i run a ministry now i see the big guys come in and they're all jacked and huge i'm like it's okay you have jesus now you know so just think about that outward appearances the lord does not judge by outward appearances we're going to learn that today so let's jump right in to the rest of the story we're going to look at first samuel 16 and 17. let's go for it starting at verse 1. now the lord said to samuel you have mourned long enough for saul i have rejected him as king of israel so fill your flask with olive oil and go to bethlehem find a man named jesse who lives there for i have selected one of his sons to be my king but samuel asked how can i do that if saul hears about it he will kill me take a heifer with you the lord replied and say that you have come to make a sacrifice to the lord invite jesse to the sacrifice and i will show you which of his sons to anoint for me so samuel did as the lord instructed when he arrived at bethlehem the elders of the town came trembling to meet him and said what's wrong they asked do you come in peace yes samuel replied i have come to sacrifice to the lord purify yourselves and come with me to the sacrifice then samuel performed the purification right for jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice too when they arrived samuel took one look at a liab and thought surely this is the lord's anointed but the lord said to samuel don't judge by his appearance or height for i have rejected him the lord doesn't see things the way you see them people judge by outward appearance but the lord looks at the heart told you so so we're back at bethlehem if you missed lacks last week's message or you don't know where we are the lord has rejected israel's first king he's ahead taller than everyone else so samuel is here and he's probably thinking it's going to go down like that no now have we learned our lesson yet bad king we're going to get a new one and it's not the way you think it's going to be back at bethlehem remember ruth check that out look at the genealogy at the end it leads to jesse and then david here we are right in that section so saul does something like lining him up he's like a team captain he's going to start selecting people and he does so at first by appearances alive i've been a dad shimmy a no no no jesse keeps presenting them seven of his children no got any more samuel says essentially yeah he's the youngest one he's out shepherding the sheep he's doing his thing all right get him we're not going anywhere until i see the youngest one sure enough he shows up now the text kind of implies that he may be the smallest but doesn't really say that it just says that he's the youngest we're going to get that from somewhere else a little bit later but anyway samuel knows the lord's like that's the king so he anoints him we went into that in the past i'm not going to go into that too much pours like olive oil on his head anoints him to be king and then he goes back to rama he leaves and that's really it so here's what you have in the background so that you're not confused you have saul who is the king and then david who is now anointed king but it has not yet been confirmed so as we go through the story just keep that in mind the lord knows that's the king but it's going to be in the future we'll get there now importantly it says that the spirit of the lord takes control of david then in the story it cuts away to a different scene so we're going to have this happen in these couple of chapters so now first samuel 16 14 now the spirit of the lord had left saul so this is the current king the first king left saw and the lord sent a tormenting spirit that filled him with depression and fear some of saul's servants said to him a tormenting spirit from god is troubling you let us find a good musician a bad nerd maybe to play the harp whenever the tormenting spirit troubles you he will play soothing music and you soon will be well again so quick sidebar we're not going to get lost in this thought god is just but god can use evil things to achieve his purpose think pharaoh for the popular story so moving on with that being said saul basically says all right find me one of these musicians good idea one of the servants remembers ah one of jesse's sons he's a good musician he's also a warrior and he's handsome too i guess that's helpful so maybe he's kind of like a bad nerd i spent some time trying to be like david i guess so saul he sends messengers to jesse david's dad and jesse complies and he sends david off with like kind of an offering sends them with a goat a donkey loaded up with bread and a wine skin full of wine now i want you to keep this in your back pocket or if you're taking notes because this is going to be interesting jesse david's dad and saul have at least two exchanges remember that so here's one he sends david because they sent messengers to him and what happens is david becomes very close to saul interesting he becomes his armor bearer so saul sends word to jesse again can i keep him yes and it says that david plays the harp for him or the liar depending on the version you're reading and it soothes him the evil spirit leaves when he does this cutaway scene if we turn the page we get to chapter 17 and we read about those pesky philistines first samuel 17 1 the philistines now mustered their army for battle and camp between sako in judah and ezekiel and ephesus daemon saul countered by gathering his israelite troops near the valley of elah so the philistines and the israelites faced one another on opposite hills with a valley in between them then goliath the philistine champion from gath came out of the philistine ranks to face the forces of israel he was over nine feet tall he wore a bronze helmet and his bronze coat of male weighed 125 pounds he also wore bronze leg armor and he carried a bronze javelin on his shoulder the shaft of his spear was as heavy and thick as a weaver's beam tipped with an iron spearhead that weighed 15 pounds his armor bear walked ahead of him carrying a shield so this is like a human tank a weaver's beam you got a picture like if you know what are they four by eights those things you make decks out of that support deck so he's got that on his back he's this just giant guy and here's what he's doing he's going out and he's defying israel he's taunting them every day for 40 days it'll tell us later if you're reading along it's a little bit later it lets us know that he's talent he's just just challenging him send someone out to fight me if they can beat me we'll become your slaves but if i beat you you'll be our slaves and that's the basic gist of it it says that saul and everybody they're all terrified keep in mind that saul's terrified here get to that in a minute so here there's something awkward that happens at least i found it awkward david jesse his family they get reintroduced again that's interesting we kind of know who they are by now but they get reintroduced and it tells us that david's brothers the three older brothers they're in the camp all right so we're assuming here that they're soldiers in the camp they're fighting and david's going back and forth bringing supplies and stuff so he's shepherding the sheep he's helping his dad out and he's going and visiting the camp so it says that one day jesse sends him with some roasted grain he sends him with 10 loaves of bread and 10 blocks of cheese for the captain there maybe he's giving him a gift so that they don't send his brothers out i don't know but some people assumed that now when david gets there he hears goliath in his taunt whoa that's crazy who is this gentile philistine to defy israel then people are running away scared and they're saying did you hear the news saul has offered a reward for anyone who can kill him for the champion of israel one of his daughters is a wife and then his family is going to be exempt from taxes forever david does something interesting he keeps asking people the story over and over again so what again is it what again is it and his brother alive gets a little annoyed he's like you're here just to watch the battle cut it out but why is david asking over and over he's kind of annoying people well saul hears about it and he calls for him and then we get an exchange between the two of them i want you to keep something in mind david again he's the youngest brother possibly the smallest of them again he's handsome why does it tell us that well think about it if you're really handsome you don't have a scarred up face in martial arts we used to get cauliflower ear that's kind of ugly and so if you're a fighter you don't usually look very handsome kind of like me right so you know he doesn't have any of those indicators he's not a handsome guy so how can he be a warrior so just just picture this guy maybe a little smaller than average not quite like the statute of david and he's handsome that doesn't look like a mean old warrior but here's the thing despite appearances david wants to come off the bench so he wants to get involved here he's a warrior it said earlier so now you have this interaction between saul and david they're face to face keep that in mind so they're talking to one another and saul's like are you kidding me no way he's been a warrior all his life you're just a boy he said get on out of here it's not going to work david said wait a minute i'm a shepherd that means that things attack my lambs like lions and bears and so when one of them does that i grab it by the jaw and i club it to death and so saul seems pretty convinced by that think about it what's a human even if he's a giant compared to a bear i've never fought a bear of all things got to be kind of difficult he says something very important he says the lord who rescued me from the power of the lions and bears will rescue me from the power of this philistine who the lord he knows he has god on his side remember it says the spirit of god took control of him earlier it's not by his own power and he knows that so now we have a little bit of irony saul offers him his armor but he's not comfortable with it shepherds don't wear armor and so no i didn't need that for the lions and the bears but think about something what did it say about saul earlier on when we got introduced to him he was ahead taller than everyone else well i know people through the ages have gotten taller but perhaps there's someone six feet tall there if he's a head taller he's like six foot nine or something like that he's a really tall guy so of course if david we're imagining him as the shorter brother armor's not going to fit but i want you to keep that point in mind for a little later he's a very tall guy it's all big so now david arms himself with his shepherd gear he has his staff he has his sling and he picks up five smooth stones from the wadi or the stream why are they smooth probably because the water runs over them smooths them out so they're very aerodynamic so he gets them ready and he comes out to fight goliath but goliath does not receive this very well it's insulting all right would you send this little boy out to fight me the champion this is ridiculous so he's cursing him by the name of his gods he says when am i a dog that you come out with me with a stick really insulted well one little point too about the five smooth stones a lot of people missed this how many philistine kings were there in towns remember the rats and the tumors so you probably have a representation here interesting a lot of people missed that one anyway david's retort is this first samuel 1746 today the lord will conquer you who the lord will conquer you and i will kill you and cut off your head david is just an extension he's a tool and then i will give the dead bodies of your men to the birds and wild animals and the whole world will know that there is a god in israel and everyone assembled here will know that the lord rescues his people but not with sword and spear this is the lord's battle and he will give you to us these are the very key verses to getting this story right we'll come back to them later so most of you know the story david i know that feels hits goliath in the forehead with a rock he goes down presumably he's knocked out then david does what he said he was going to do he grabs his own sword insult to injury literally and cuts off goliath's head now the philistines they're in a panic they run off but they're killing them they're slaughtering them their bodies are strewn everywhere all the way back to towns like ecron and gas that's it they've won the battle it gives us some information here which is probably very retrospective it says that david puts goliath's head in jerusalem jerusalem doesn't really exist yet it's j-boos so it's probably retrospect and the armor or weapon some version say in the tent later we're going to see that he retrieves these things from knob they're not quite in that area anyway after the account we usually see this first samuel 17 starting at verse 55 as saul watched david so it's going backwards out to fight the philistine he asked abner the commander of his army abner whose son is this young man i really don't know abner declared well find out who he is the king this is saul told him as soon as david returned from killing goliath abner brought him to saul with the philistines head still in his hand tell me about your father young man saul said and david replied his name is jesse and we live in bethlehem now there are some of you who might be scratching their heads why well because saul should already know who david is that's weird think about it he had at least two exchanges with him right can david stay over yeah so he knows who he is he had him there it says they developed it great they loved one another literally is what it says they loved one another did a great relationship exchange he's like the only remedy that saul has for this evil spirit huh now interesting right tried on his armor and everything had the whole talk with him how does he not know who he is now i've seen people wrestle with this and i've seen pastors do it and scholars do it it's funny and they'll say things like well he's at a distance you see wrong they get him and then he has a face to face conversation with him he's close enough to see him how he defeated this what and when we keep reading the story well no he has a problem he knows exactly who he is that's weird now you might also be scratching your head in the opposite direction because in certain bibles these verses aren't there if i read these verses in an orthodox church for example they'd go what what is he saying that's not in my bible there are also a lot of versions that make a little note that says the oldest translations don't include these verses they don't have the same problem so there's an obvious clue going on here now if you're curious you can go to the beginning of this series look at the intro and look at the bible study that follows and i talk about the earliest copies of the christian bible they're actually in greek which is why i'm such a huge fan of greek old and new testament so when you go to the earliest copies this isn't there the oldest copies so for more on this you can also come to the bible study i'll be talking about it there's some pretty remarkable arguments for using that text in that text only one of them comes surprisingly from saint augustine quite interesting so these verses being absent the oldest translations it explains a lot clears up a lot of confusion they say the water is purest at the source makes sense it also explains something else that most christians don't know about goliath in the oldest translations he's six foot nine not nine feet tall interesting i want you to think about a little point here on the side and it'll probably play in better next week when we talk about saw their interaction in david six foot nine goliath is about a head taller than everyone else like who saul so why didn't saul go out and fight him so that'll answer some questions as to why these things are happening now i want to make an important note here and this is a real bible study thing where we're really going to study the bible on wednesday dig into the text and dig into some hard stuff some difficult questions here's an important thing i want you all to remember no matter what variations there are and you can identify this you don't have to be a scholar you don't have to know all this stuff just pick up two different bible translations open up the same page and it's a little bit different that's okay because regardless of any of the differences translators will just render something we talked about a very difficult translation on wednesday i didn't know the greek words i just didn't understand what they meant so i had to text my greek teacher and where in real time she's texting me back answers right it's very greek is very difficult so one word can mean like one whole sentence just to translate the word greek person's nodding your head it's very difficult it's very colorful it brings up a lot of imagery so naturally one translator is going to look at it and say yeah but i think it's painting a picture more like this or let's do a real literal picture of what's going on here that's okay they're both correct they're just both a little bit different so i just want to encourage you guys it's okay none of the translations none of them changes the central meaning of the message and the fact that the whole thing's about jesus so it doesn't change the gospel message one single bit if we subtract these stories it doesn't change the meaning of the story if we add the stories it doesn't change the meaning of the story and be comfortable in that so on this topic things being redacted from the bible or added to it a lot of people don't know that in the oldest copies of the christian bible there's an extra psalm in there psalm 151 why do i bring that up well because david has a lot to do with the psalms right it's about 74 75 of them remember he's a musician i'll stop calling him a bad nerd he's a musician and so he's a psalmist and he writes these things as jesus says under the inspiration of the holy spirit the spirit is controlling him and so they become scriptures one of them the 151 the last one is about david so let's take a look at it and we get more information from it too psalm 151 starting at verse 1. david i was small among my brothers and the youngest of my father's sons i was shepherd of my father's sheep my hands made a musical instrument my fingers strung a harp who will tell my lord the lord himself the lord hears me the lord himself sent his messenger and took me away from my father's sheep he put special oil on my forehead that's the anointing to anoint me my brothers we're good looking and tall so here's where we get some of this info but the lord didn't take special pleasure in them i went out to meet the philistine that's goliath who cursed me by his idols but i took his own sword out of its sheath and cut off his head so i removed the shame from the israelites so this often redacted psalm gives us a summary of what happened with david and goliath it's interesting and useful information again the tale of god using the weak to shame the strong over and over again god doesn't judge by appearances like we do now although no translation changes what the story is about we often change what it's all about all too often we make the bible about us but it's not about us we tend to do this with a lot don't we we make a lot about us you ever have an exchange with someone before they can even finish a sentence you're already taking offense at it we make it about us all the time and so we bring it into our bible study and make it about us but you see the bible is not about us the bible is about jesus this is an important thing to remember but all too often we take stories like this one and they're used to tell people that you can defeat any giants in your life right because you're david you're not david period nor should you want to be as we keep reading the story i'm not david i made the mistake of trying that without even knowing it you see the bible is not finding about finding our identity in david it's about finding our identity in jesus the bible is not about david the bible is not about us the bible is about jesus begins and ends there that's it in the beginning the word was with god and the word was god he was in the beginning with god at creation itself spoiler alert and he's coming back again it begins and ends with the alpha and the omega i know i didn't say them right it's about him that's how the story ends it's about him fighting our battles it's okay the martyrs he tells them that when are we going to be redeemed here right vindication they want hear your white robes i got it don't worry and he does it we do nothing i'm not here to give you a false sense of security in yourself that's what the typical teaching on david and goliath does but it's not about us it's about the lord let's go back to our key verse again notice what david says to goliath first samuel 17 46 today the lord will conquer you and i will cut off your head and then i will give the dead bodies of your men to the birds and the wild animals and the whole world will know that there's a god in israel and everyone assembled here will know that the lord rescues his people but not but not with sword and spear this is the lord's battle and he will give you to us that is how you should read your bible total reliance on the lord it's not about anything we do it's about what the lord does through us he uses us as his instruments that's what i tried to do with the martial arts i tried to be all that but i received god's power when i stopped trying to be all that now here's the thing the lord used that to teach me a lot of things kind of like david in the shepherding field i'd have the ability to just do the sling and all that other stuff but it was the lord who made that victory happen we have to remember that you see and this is really hard for us to grasp because we like to control stuff we don't like trust we don't like faith very much if we're being honest the miracles happened in my life when i did the exact opposite of what the world told me to do the miracles happen in my life when i let go and let god the miracles happened in my life when i did the opposite of what my training told me to do submit submit that's a bad word in mma if you watch it you're not supposed to tap out that's what the world tells you don't tap don't give up but that's precisely what i had to do when i stopped fighting when i surrendered to the lord i was then able to receive his spirit i've seen t-shirts say jesus didn't tap wrong wrong he submitted and he died he submitted to the father's will not your will my will father but yours be done sorry dyslexia still exists today but not as much and that's my point that is the very key ingredient to christianity itself submission you might say love right got to submit first because whose love should we be loving with it's impossible for us on our own to love greater than god so until we're filled with the holy spirit how can we really love others around us and the key to receiving it is total submission to god you take it not my will but yours lord when we relinquish our will and receive his when we're baptized we must submit to receive the holy spirit i told you i had a learning disability dyslexia it's part of my testimony it's an interesting part i don't talk about it a lot sometimes it comes to my attention i'm like oh yeah that's true we once had a pastor he kind of spoke a little bit funny and he didn't like to tell people about it like why and once in a while he'd tell his testimony but seldomly it was that he was in a car accident when he was very very young messed him up really bad his face his jaw had to be reconstructed everything and you could see a scar on his face and when he found out that the doctors everybody said you will never have a job where you'll speak publicly ever yeah wrong god sorted that out he's a miracle it's crazy and so i used to tell him dude you have to tell your story more it should be on the website because you're almost being prideful keeping that to yourself right like it would seem like you did it tell everybody you're a miracle man this is crazy it's so funny how sometimes you get advice back from yourself that you tell somebody else i don't know if you know what it feels like maybe you related to the lineup right maybe maybe you can relate to this but it might be harder for some of you to be sitting in a classroom is year after year after year sitting in a classroom feeling worthless there's always the rejection right you know the band nerd okay there's that rejection hey got that then you're sitting at a desk you look around you have no idea what's happening no idea like literally we're doing fractions right you got dyslexia how hard are fractions forget it forget it and so i'm looking around and everybody every single kid is busy at work and i don't even know what they're doing how does that feel horrible you're worthless my mom was pretty good but my dad was less sympathetic he didn't understand it and that's okay but to be told that at school then when you go home then you have to stay inside because you failed then you have to go to summer school they don't have ac in new york but it gets real hot so that's like prison right you practice your instrument that was my only outlet it's the only thing i was good at but everyone thought it was uncool and so what did i do i did things on my own first i try to self-medicate right start drinking and drugging and then i'm awesome right so it's the 80s i'll grow my hair out real long and now i do shows and i get my attention that way that's how i get it because it's immediate and i'm cool the girls like me now i'm 16 years old in a bar smoking and drinking but it feels good immediately doesn't it it didn't work so let's try something else i'm going to get huge and go beat people up i'm going to make a living out of it it doesn't work i tried to do this on my own i know how rejection feels and i know what happens when we try to solve it on our own but here's what i want to tell you when i gave up when i hit a wall i said forget it i'm going to let god take care of it miracle happened think about it i could barely read i read a lot for those of you who know me did it look like i was struggling reading the scriptures how's a kid with dyslexia do that it's not rewritten for me or anything like that are any extra accommodations here and i want you to think about this so now i'm giving myself advice that i was giving to that pastor i want you to think about this for a minute couldn't read english so bad that i would make jokes ask my wife when we first got together make jokes why would anyone want to read a book when you can just watch the movie they're stupid what a waste of time that's a common joke why insecure that's why we make fun of other people because we're insecure i go from that to learning how to read ancient greek i'll give you a page of that in a couple of months good luck it's hard she'll tell you somehow not so much for me how's that possible you reminded me didn't you that's not normal and i forget it's because of god all glory to god if i fixed it i could take credit for it if the doctor fixed it they could take credit for it nobody can all glory to god he healed me that's amazing it was when i did the opposite of what the world told me to do that is just my encouragement if you hear anything else today you're going to go out and you're going to hear all kinds of things you're going to hear remedies you're gonna just please stop listening to it just listen to what the word of god says just please stop listening to it it's all meant to dupe us into division that's all it is just stop it just listen to god listen to god submit slow down receive the spirit because it will heal you be in god's word more that's my encouragement you see i tried equipping myself with the worldly armor right it looked pretty good on the outside i was working try something else it wasn't working think about this david could have worn the armor david could have worn the arm and he didn't instead he was equipped with what the armor of god and that's what we ephesians 6 should be equipping ourselves with when i finally equip myself with the helmet of salvation the breastplate of righteousness the belt of truth i had the shield of faith that's what we need the sword of the spirit which is the word of god and if you know this well you know i did it kind of backwards and i did it for a reason because everyone forgets about the shoes of peace we're supposed to be messengers of what not anxiety not anger those are all things of the flesh in the world they want us to carry it spread it around like the disease it is it's a disease no shoes of what peace we're supposed to be vehicles of love kindness gentleness self-control ah galatians 5. those are the things we're supposed to be spreading that's my encouragement for you today i want to just briefly i know run a little bit longer i apologize for that but what are you going to do tell me to stop no but i just i just feel that this is god speaking right now and i just don't want to shut him up right now is that all right and who's going to say no again i keep baiting you into these things but just to take an extra minute i want to invite those who want to be baptized to be baptized and some have asked me why don't you do like an altar call or why why don't you do that kind of thing because in my years in ministry i've seen way too many people get drummed up by the music and excited and run up to the altar and then you don't see them again you know it's weird they're not like thinking about anything and if you look at what jesus said he says this is a very conscious decision he has so many parables he uses you know what would a king do we just send off his 10 000 troops to fight against the what 20 000 troops he warns you're going to suffer you're going to go through some stuff the enemy's not worried about you when you're not saying the gospel we're not preaching the gospel and you're not saying anything about jesus he's not going to bother with you but when you say i love jesus and everybody else should know about him oh he's coming for you and you better be ready so what we do here at c3 is somewhere in between what you may have seen in like the protestant church or more charismatic churches where people just rush up jesus didn't say to do it that way and not quite what a very traditional church would do which would make you go like when i was a kid ccd or some of those other things you have to take all the classes somewhere in the middle so what i want to invite you to do is if you're interested in being baptized reach out to the leadership they're going to tell you how you can do that through the app through a connection card there come talk to me we still do that nowadays just approach me i just want some time to sit with you and then affirm a bunch of questions i'll give you a bunch of questions some reading and just just really know what you're getting into and we'd be more than happy to baptize you as a church you should know uh we have plans to put in a baptismal tub the old thinking was that ah someone get baptized we'll go to the beach but whether the water gets cold whatever it is it just adds another logistic we're gonna try to get rid of it so we're talking this morning about putting a baptismal tub in there and so yeah let me pray lord i thank you for this church that is the body of christ the people not the building but we do thank you for the walls that house us and allow us together allow us to be a blessing to the community through the cafe through the spreading of the gospel message i thank you for it all i thank you for the willingness of the people to come here this morning and be fed by the word your word this morning i hope it touches minds and hearts it motivates people to submit to you to be vehicles of your peace your love your kindness your gentleness your self-control thank you lord i ask these things in jesus name amen do you