What fascinates me is that David comes to fight Goliath but he doesn’t know that he’s going to fight Goliath. He doesn’t come down to the battlefield to fight. He comes down to serve.
Get your Bibles, go to 1 Samuel 17 for a minute. I’m gonna show you something. I’m a-prove this to you. Nobody preaches about this. They don’t talk about this. Because it’s not fancy, it’s not glorious, it’s not spectacular, it’s not opulent, it’s not excessive. It’s not expedient. They don’t talk about it because there’s no fanfare to it. There’s no drama. There’s no special effects about it.
They talk about his bag of rocks and his five smooth stones. They talk about what he killed with his rocks. But I’m going to tell you that they’re looking at the wrong bag. Because he did not come down there preparing to fight. He came down there to serve. Glory to God. 1 Samuel 17:13 through 19. You don’t have to stand, ’cause I’m halfway through the message now. I’m coming in the home stretch, baby.
But David went and returned from Saul to feed his father’s sheep at Bethlehem. Little boy got work to do. And the Philistine drew near morning and evening, and presented himself 40 days. And Jesse said unto David his son, ‘Since your brothers have been fighting for 40 days, take now for thy brethren an ephah of this parched corn.’ An ephah is like a bushel. He said, Take a bushel of this parched corn, and these ten loaves, and run to the camp to thy brethren; and carry of their thousands, and look how thy brethren fare, and take their pledge.
Now Saul, and they, and all the men of Israel, were in the valley of Elah, fighting with the Philistines. They were fighting with the Philistines. They were fighting with the Philistines, the age-old enemy of Israel. They were fighting with the Philistines. David was not sent to fight. He was sent to serve. His job was to bring his brothers lunch. Everybody’s talking about the bag.
See, the problem today is that everybody is trying to get to the bag. But until you find your bushel, you can’t find your bag. Everybody wants to lead, nobody wants to serve. Everybody wants to be in control, nobody wants to submit. Everybody wants to be the boss, nobody wants to follow the direction.
We need a generation of people who find your place of service for if you find your bushel, you’ll find your blessing. He does not get called to fight. Jesse doesn’t say, Look, they’re losing. I need more men. Go down there and help your brothers fight. He says, You’re not even one of them. You’re not even one of them. You bring them some lunch.
And until David was faithful with the bushel–good God, help me preach this morning. Until he was faithful with what he had been charged to do, until he could be trusted to carry the bushel as if it were important, he would never find the power of the bag, until he understood the power of the bushel. And I see people running around with all kind of bags.
But it was not the bag that brought him into his destiny. It was the simple bushel of bringing lunch to the bigger guys. He’s bringing lunch to the bigger guys. He has come to serve someone else. And in the process of serving someone else, he discovers himself. He discovers who he is by helping someone else with who they are. His destiny, his miracle, his placement in the body of Christ, could never be revealed until he served someone that he saw as greater, then he could not find himself.
Instead, he is born in a manger and wrapped in swaddling clothes, hidden in a poor place, doing mundane things. In fact, in Philippians, it says, He took on himself the form of a servant. He decided, I’m not coming as a king. I’m not coming as a captain. I’m not coming as the lion of the tribe of Judah. I am coming as the Lamb. And the Bible says, He thought it not robbery to be equal with God, yet made of himself no reputation. He humbled. He humbled himself. You see, you see, when I was telling you about David bringing lunch to his brethren, I forgot to tell you that David was his brothers’ king.
When it all would be over, the brothers he was bringing lunch to would be serving the one who brought the lunch. But he humbled–oh, you’re not gonna talk to me this morning. The reason this is a pull is that we have been groomed to be important.
We have not been groomed to be servants. Particularly those of us whose ancestries came from slavery. We are so against being servants that we have taught our children to be arrogant. And in the process of making them arrogant, now they’re grown and incompetent.
God forbid that you be seen as a servant. So you got little Johnny sticking his chest out about nothing, showing his tennis shoes, got more on your feet than you do in your head. I wish we would go back to serving again. Because if you humble yourself, the Bible says in due time I will exalt–look at your life. Look at how you served your way into everything you got.
Look at how you worked and cried and sweated and labored and crawled and then God blessed you. The Bible says you’ll shine, After you’ve suffered a while, I’ll establish you and make you perfect. If you don’t go down right, you can’t come up right.