Is There Not A Cause? 1 Samuel 17:29

Introduction

To come to Mississippi is in a real way a return back to my home region. I was reared as an orphan not too far from here over in Louisiana. Though my Aunt Eva prayed for me every day of my life, I left home as a boy looking for answers to life and looking for those answers in all of the wrong places. Along my prodigal journey, I lost much as I found myself in the hog pen, far from the faith-drenched home of my Aunt Eva.

After my wife, Mae, and I were married, I heard Dr. D. James Kennedy preach on Ephesians 2.8,9 and by grace through faith I was born again and I have never been the same since. I got on a plane headed to Kansas City when I was about 24 years old and having come fresh out of Evangelism Explosion I began sharing the Gospel with a lady. She sent me to the man sitting two rows back. I was eager to share the Gospel with even a fence post, so I went back there. Seeing that the aisle seat was empty, I asked this prominent looking businessman if I could sit next to him. He said, “Sure, Son.” I tried to share the Gospel with him and finally I asked him those two famous questions from EE. He smiled and said, “Son, I know Jim Kennedy personally and I know those two questions well! I am a believer in Christ. I am also the Chairman of the Board of Reformed Theological Seminary. Son, my name is Bob Cannada. He asked where I was headed, and I told him to Kansas City where I had been promoted to the manager’s position. He asked where I went to church. I told him my story. He said, “Son, you need to be in a PCA church!”

I asked him if the PCA preached the grace I had heard about. He assured me they did. He told me that while there was no PCA church near where my office was located, there was a church in Olathe, Kansas. So we moved to Olathe, Kansas, in order to join a PCA church. And from there God called this sinner saved by grace to preach the unsearchable riches of Jesus Christ. And I am thrilled to now be with you to lift up Jesus Christ and to encourage you with His message for you all tonight. I thank God for Don Breazeale and for Nate Shurden, Ligon Duncan, Jim Moore and Ric Cannada and the many, many who have told me that they are praying for us tonight. I too have joined your prayers for the Holy Spirit to come down and anoint this Word and bring it to our hearts.

I want to read tonight from selected passages of 1 Samuel 17, beginning with verse 28. This is the inerrant and infallible Word of the living God.

Introduction to the Sermon

I don’t what you did today, but while it was pouring rain in Jackson, I took off from Mississippi Air National Guard’s 172^nd Airlift Wing in a huge C-17 airplane loaded with supplies for our troops in Afghanistan. We experienced a lost engine along the way, a hydraulic leak, but finally landed safely in a dust storm on a runway built by the Soviet Union from their war there years ago. We then took off in a storm, flew through the pitch black night, and finally landed back home.

So what did you do today? Well, due to the kindness of the 172^nd Airlift, a jewel of not only MS but the nation, and my friend Bob Bailey, I actually did all of that this morning in about 20 minutes in a Boeing simulator!

On my trip I learned that right here in your backyard there are citizen-soldiers, airmen, officers and enlisted, going the extra mile, because they believe in a cause that is greater than themselves.

Wouldn’t you all agree that men need a cause, a cause to believe in, a cause that in greater than themselves, a cause to live for and even to die for.

Tonight I want to look at the life of David. David was a tragic figure and a heroic figure. He was a man of God and he was a man of sin. He was a model of a father and a failure unlike any man here tonight, I am sure. He was many things. But the Bible tells us that because David trusted God from his childhood, and because God had put His Spirit into David, he was always a man after God’s own heart. That gives us good news already. Because we are like that in many ways. God loves you. And you love God. But yet we fail. And yet we stretch forth to become a hero to our sons. As young men we seek to reach to become, as the Army puts it, “all that we can be.” Our hearts cry out for meaning and for fulfillment. Just like David’s.

And that leads me to that statement: “Men need a cause.” For in the first place, tonight we want to see that as a young man, David’s heart is shown to us as this king-to-be cries out to live for a cause that is greater than himself.

Men need a cause!

Just look at our society, any society, and you will have to admit what you know to be true in your own life. The cause may be the Ole Miss Rebels football team, or the New Orleans Saints’ road to the Super Bowl, or it may be a really great duck hunting club or the state’s best Rotary Club or it may be Milton, Milton, and Milton Law Firm’s cases won or Milton Manufacturing Company’s annual sales exceeded, but men need a cause. I believe that God put that into our souls as a part of the image of God. God has a plan, a cause, if you will, to redeem the world through His Son Jesus Christ. He is going to win back His Creation, which was contaminated, by rebellion and sin. When we say that men need a cause we are saying nothing more than there is an echo of the image of God in our persons that reminds us that our humanity is connected to Almighty God’s creative purposes. Men need a cause. But sin has contaminated that cause.

I had a cause once. I wanted to be a super hero, maybe Captain America. Then I grew up to be six and wanted to be an artist to draw super heroes. Then I really got an important cause, and I wanted to be a football player. That was a cause that lasted for quite a while, with an opportunity to play collegiate football. But that was shattered by a terrific head injury that I still lean on this day when I forget to do what my wife tells me to do. Then, I wanted to be a songwriter. That didn’t work out. I became a Naval Intelligence spy. That was going well but my impatience with the military forced me out. I became a salesman and a manager with two Fortune 500 organizations and I had a new cause. I was moving from cause to cause, but inside of me I had no joy, no fulfillment. I was becoming one o the mass of modern men that Patrick Morley wrote about.

Patrick Morley wrote in Pastoring Men

“Men have become one of our largest neglected people groups. As a result they are prone to get caught up in the rat race, lead unexamined lives, and become cultural (rather than biblical) Christians.”^[1]

I was that man. I was caught up with a cause that was too shallow, too self-centered, and too small.  Many of you here tonight may be in that rat race. You may be one of those men leading that unexamined life and have become cultural Christians only, not really a biblical Christian. Yet some of you have even gotten involved with a church, which is just fantastic, but your vision of your involvement in that church is too small. Some of you young men are consumed with your SATs and your ACTs, and your college GPA, and your GMAT or the LSAT but are missing a larger cause in your life which will transcend all of those things which cannot in themselves ever bring you absolute fulfillment.

Tonight God wants you to know that He not only loves you, sent His Son to live the life you could never live and die the death that should have been yours, things that you may all know, but He wants you to know that in Jesus Christ God has given men a cause that is greater than themselves, a cause that they live for and die for.

I am a chaplain in the Army Reserves and our command is responsible for all initial entry soldiers in the US Army. Therefore we are responsible for the spiritual nurturing of all of the drill instructors in the US Army. They are a tough group. But I thank God for them. And they love their chaplains. If you have been in the Army then you know that you can instantly identify any soldier who has served as a US Army drill instructor. How? He will be wearing a patch that boldly declares, “This we will defend.”

I am telling you that what you will hear tonight will give you a patch on your soul that boldly declares, “This we will defend.” Men need a cause and in Christ we have that cause.

Now the way we see this in the life of David starts when David is living in a time of a war on terror. There are no Al-Qaida operatives trying to detonate bombs in Bethany, but there is a Palestinian army that is annihilating Israel, the covenant people of God. Their secret weapon is really no secret anymore: he is a giant named Goliath, with a giant spear, a giant shield and a giant hatred of the people of God. Now Jesse’ boys, except David, are on the front line, which is quite withdrawn from the battle with this demonic opponent because of the size and strength of this enemy. David is back tending sheep. You can already sense that this just cannot be. That boy has got to get in the fight, in the same way that enlistments go up whenever our nation is attacked.

Well, Jesse sends David to the front lines with some provisions for his older brothers, to check on them and to bring back some proof that they are all right. But David arrives at the theater of operation, assesses the situation and is absolutely incensed by it. Israel is shaking in their sandals against this Goliath and something boils up and over in his soul. He asks what will be done for the man who takes this giant out forever. Now David is stirring up the people with this kind of talk and his older brother Eliab gets on to him.

Now Eliab his eldest brother heard when he spoke to the men. And Eliab’s anger was kindled against David, and he said, “Why have you come down? And with whom have you left those few sheep in the wilderness? I know your presumption and the evil of your heart, for you have come down to see the battle.”  1Samuel 17.28

And then David responds, and I quote from the old King James:

“What have I now done? Is there not a cause?” 1 Samuel 17.29.

Now in the English Standard Version the Hebrew word debar is rightly translated “word.” Thus 1 Samuel 17.29 is translates David’s righteous indignation to Eliab’s irritation as, “Was it not but a word?” The NIV translates it, “Can’t I ever speak?” But the King James, for me, gets at the heart of it by its testy retort, “Is there not a cause?” But whether it is a word or a righteous indignation that forces us to speak, it is the same thing. Every man needs a cause and in this verse and in this passage let’s glean God’s word for our lives tonight.

What is this cause that you need, that I need, that David demonstrated, that God calls us to tonight? I ask you tonight from God’s Word, “Is there not a cause?” That is our question for our lives and here is God’s answer from His Word.

1. There is a cause that men need to have for the glory of God’s name (that is there is no greater cause for which to live than to worship)

David’s retort to his cynical sibling was grounded in the fact that the name of the God of Israel was being drug through the Philistine mud! They were taunting God. They were making fun. They were cursing. Goliath has challenged Israel; “I defy the ranks of Israel today. Give me a man that we may fight!” And David was that man. That boy was that man because he had a cause to fight for and that cause was the name of God.

When he finally took on old Goliath, revealed exactly what was on his mind. Look in verse 45:

Then David said to the Philistine, “You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. 1Samuel 17.45

A cause that every man has here is the name of God. That name is the covenant name of God, which is not just the Hebrew Yahweh, it is the name Jesus. Peter preached to the Hebrews of Jesus Christ,

And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” Acts 4.12

Paul, that one trained from childhood to revere the very name of the Almighty Covenant God of Israel, wrote to Timothy,

For to this end we toil and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe. 1Timothy 4.10

That Savior is Jesus. That name is Jesus. And in that name is the fulfillment of all of the promises of the people of God to redeem a lost race through His suffering and atonement and through His life and through His resurrection from the dead.

Recently, we toured a military academy and I was told that thought it was Christian; there were some boys who had come from some backgrounds that left them with some pretty limited vocabulary. And I asked my son, who was with me, what he thought about that. He told me that he had heard it before. And he hates it. He told me that he respectfully asks, for instance in the locker room of his school, that the students not use his Savior’s name. I was of course proud of him. But David is not just upset that Goliath was desecrating God’s name, it was that Goliath was defying the name of God. What does that mean? It means that Goliath was a scoffer. He didn’t believe in this God. He had heard, no doubt of Israel’s trust in this God but Goliath was saying, “Where is this God now?” He was like those who crucified Christ along with the criminals who were crucified with Him taunted,

“He saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel; let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. Matthew 27.42 He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he desires him. For he said, ‘I am the Son of God.’” 43 And the robbers who were crucified with him also reviled him in the same way. 44

David’s cause was God’s name. This is a passion for nothing short of the worship of Jesus Christ.

I was reared by my old Aunt Eva in a poverty stricken area not too far from here. That woman saw her boy, Mike Milton, go from sitting on her lap as a lad, hearing this very story, to leaving as a prodigal and becoming one who defied the name of God. But she also prayed for me and saw me drop like Goliath, dead in my trespasses and sins. She saw a new man arise. I thank God for that woman of God who lived for the cause of the name of God. And when she lay dying, she lifted up her arms to praise God and she literally fell asleep in Jesus by praising His name, witnessing to another generation by honoring the name of Jesus Christ in her death. I can never forget it. I can never forget her life of worship. She defied death by praising Jesus through her own passing from this life to the next.

I have known many saints who have done the same. As a pastor I have been in many hospital rooms where vigils literally turned into worship services, and the dying man was the greatest worshipper of them all! This is a cause my friends like none other. My Aunt Eva and the many saints I have known as their pastor worshipped Jesus and when they did, the specter of death itself had to fall to ground like a Philistine giant!

Men of God, this is a cause! This is a cause that is greater than yourself, a cause that will last your whole life, a cause that you will give to your sons and your daughters, a cause that will never end, for you will be worshipping the Name in eternity!

Yes, “Men need a cause.” And to live to worship God with your all in all is a cause worth living for and dying for. It is a cause that is worthy of a patch on your soul, “THIS we will defend.”

There is not only a cause to have for the glory of God’s name, but secondly,

2. There is a cause that men need to have for the spread of God’s fame (and we are saying that there is no greater cause to live for than missions)

For thus David spoke to Goliath,

This day the LORD will deliver you into my hand…that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, 1Samuel 17.46

David had a cause. His cause was to defeat this enemy of Israel in order that the whole world would know of the God of Israel. Now why was this important? In redemptive history it was important because the mission of God in the world and in history is to redeem people from every tongue and tribe and nation. The mission of God was to use this little spec of a nation on the globe called Israel to bring a promised Savior of the World. Thus, for David to take a stand in his generation assured of the power of God to bring about the victory was to spread the fame of God throughout the earth that “all the earth may know.”

My fathers, brothers and sons in Christ, there is no greater cause than the cause of giving your life away to getting the Gospel of Jesus Christ out to the nations. It is greater than giving your life away to football or a baseball or education or a career or anything. And why? Because you will be used as an instrument in God’s hands to transform the world and to see souls saved and lives transformed through Christ.

John Piper wrote delivered a wonderful missions address that became a little booklet called, “Don’t Waste Your Life.” My friends, you will never, ever regret living, giving, and dying for the cause of the spread of the fame of Jesus all over the earth.

It was such a glorious cause that we are told that monks risked their lives to bring the Word of this Christ across the ocean to the Americas as far back as the fifth century. It was such a glorious cause that it caused John Calvin to transform Geneva into a missions sending movement that rivaled all other movements, planting thousands of churches in Europe and perhaps even a mission in South America. It was a cause that led to a cobbler named William Carey leaving his English home to bring the Gospel to India and enough for a Scottish physician to leave his home to bring the Gospel to the remotest regions of dangerous Africa. It was enough to transform the heart of one of my elders in a former church to give his life away to leading our church to become a great missions church, prioritizing the spread of the fame of Jesus over his own business, as he left his business to devote full time to missions. And it was enough for a shepherd by to take on a giant.

I have told you that I had many “causes” in my life, but the greatest cause in my life, my beloved brothers in Christ, is when I heard that God could use me, even me, to share His Gospel with others, even those who, like I had done, had doubted Christ, neglected Christ, stood, Goliath-like, and self-sufficient before the Almighty, and that God’s Word would transform them. There has been no greater joy in my life than not only preaching Jesus from the pulpit, but even as a young businessman, sharing Christ one on one with those who defied His name in my organization. I have seen many Goliath’s fall, their giant egos decapitated by the glorious grace of Jesus Christ. I have seen those who curse Christ one day preach Him the next. And I was one. Every since the day that I learned that Christ could use even me to share the Gospel and see men transformed, my life has never been the same.

And there is no difference with you. He will use you, if but tonight you respond to the wickedness of this generation not just by complaining, not just by retreating, but by standing up for Jesus and speaking His name, extolling His glory, magnifying His grace in your own life.

Let me speak to pastors for a moment: A passage that has meant so much to me across the years in my ministry has been 1 Thessalonians 2.19-20. There, Paul, who had been hindered from coming to the Thessalonians, wanted them to know of his love. And he opened his heart with them and I believe shared a core value of his ministry:

For what is our hope or joy or crown of boasting before our Lord Jesus at his coming? Is it not you? For you are our glory and joy. 1 Thessalonians 2:19, 20

What was his core value? It is one that I have embraced, if not fully and consistently lived, and that is to so minister Christ that generations after me and my ministry will be safe in the arms of Jesus because of what we do today. That is a cause worth living and dying for as a pastor.

But let me ask each man and young man here: What cause are you living for my friend? Commit tonight to live to see the Gospel spread across the world, across our nation, and maybe even across your living room. Live and die for Jesus Christ and His Great Commission. There is no greater cause.

Finally, David answered, “Is there not a cause?” because he lived and breathed for the glory of God’s name, and the spread of God’s fame, but also,

3. There is a cause that men need to have for the method of God’s claim (the method of God’s claim is the doctrines of grace).

Now listen closely to this passage as we unpack this truth:

And that all this assembly may know that the LORD saves not with sword and spear. For the battle is the LORD’s, and he will give you into our hand.” 1Samuel 17.47

The word “assembly” is the Hebrew word qahal. It is the word for assembly. But in the context of Israel it refers to the called out people of God. In the Septuagint,[2] the Old Testament translated into the Greek, the word used here is “ecclesia,” or the word we translated the Church. David had a cause that the People of God, the Congregation of Israel, the ancient Church, would know that the LORD saves not with sword of spear but with His power and might, his ways, his methods. It is what has been historically called the old Reformation truths of the doctrines of grace: by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, according to the Scriptures along, and therefore to the glory of God alone.

Now why was this a cause? Because the people were fighting a battle and not appropriating the covenant promises of God in the battle. Saul, when convinced that this ruddy youth was crazy enough to go out to fight, also misunderstood the spiritual nature of the battle and gave him armor. You remember that David chucked the armor and found five smooth stones. He only needed one. Paul tells us that we are not fighting a physical fight, but a spiritual one. We are fighting against “cosmic powers” that reside in “this present darkness.” And so Paul admonishes the Ephesians in chapter six of that epistle to take up the whole armor of God. That armor included six spiritual resources: (1) Truth, (2) Righteousness, (3) Peace, (4) faith, (5) salvation, and (6) the Word of God. And he caps it all off with prayer for all of the saints and for himself, that he proclaim the mystery of the Gospel and declare it boldly as he ought.

This is a cause: that the Battle belongs to the Lord. This cause will involve you standing up for Jesus Christ, His Gospel, His methods of reaching souls through the Word of God, through the Sacraments of the Church, and through Prayer. This will rely that you commit to praying for the preaching of the Word, placing your family under that Word in Church and in the home. This will require that you pray as a father for your family. Young men of God, this will require that you memorize the Word, speak to Word to each other, and to pray for your enemies to be converted.

Years ago I embraced the doctrines of grace and the last thing that had to fall in my submission to God in this area was my sense of self-reliance. But I came to see that I had to trust in God to save me, to save others, to change the world—not through my power—but solely through His. Such a theology magnifies the name of Jesus, surrenders to the God of grace, and exalts the atonement of Jesus Christ on the cross. This is all of God and none of me. I must simply reach out by His grace to receive Him, and then to follow Him in this way all of my life. When I received the doctrines of grace as the methods that God uses to save, to sanctify and to build His Kingdom, it was as if I were born again, and I think I was! Because this is the Gospel!

This is going to cause you to lean wholly on the work of Jesus Christ at Calvary. There is no room for improvising, no room for adding the methods and ways of man. This is totally of God.

To live like this in your church, in your home, in every area of your life, will cost you. It will, like David, cost you derision by even your brothers, even those in the Church, who have grown accustomed to trusting in the world’s ways. It will cost you. As there was skepticism from Saul, so there will be from the world.

But as that one single river stone soared through the air like a heat seeking missile, from a seemingly idealistic shepherd boy, to kill the accuser of Israel, so too one act of passion on the Cross took down the gates of Hell. It was not by a conquering power of a white steed and a great army that the Accuser of the Brethren was hit on that day but it was through the divine power of an abandoned Savior on an old rugged cross. My friends the David and Goliath historical account is an Old Testament hint of the paradox of the New Testament historical event of our salvation. And that is also the ruling motif of the Christian life. What a cause, to live in faith that the God who calls is the God who will keep, that the God who demands is the God who will supply, that the God who ordains is the God who maintains. And that we can place our lives in His hands, place our families in His hands, and place our souls in His nail pierced hands and know that we are safe forever in Jesus Christ. What a cause to live for!

There is a favorite hymn that has been recovered in recent days through Reformed University Fellowship that speaks to this cause of the doctrines of grace:

Jesus, I am resting, resting, In the joy of what Thou art; I am finding out the greatness Of Thy loving heart. Thou hast bid me gaze upon Thee, And Thy beauty fills my soul, For by Thy transforming power, Thou hast made me whole.

Refrain

Jesus, I am resting, resting, In the joy of what Thou art; I am finding out the greatness Of Thy loving heart.

O, how great Thy loving kindness, Vaster, broader than the sea! Of, how marvelous Thy goodness, Lavished all on me! Yes, I rest in Thee, Beloved, Know what wealth of grace is Thing, Know Thy certainty of promise, And have made it mine.

Refrain

Simply trusting Thee, Lord Jesus, I behold Thee as Thou art, And Thy love, so pure, so changeless, Satisfies my heart; Satisfies its deepest longings, Meets, supplies its every need, Compassed me round with blessings: Thane is love indeed!

Refrain

Ever lift Thy face upon me As I work and wait for Thee; Resting ’neath Thy smile, Lord Jesus, Earth’s dark shadows flee. Brightness of my Father’s glory, Sunshine of my Father’s face, Keep me ever trusting, resting, Fill me with Thy grace.

Refrain[3]

This is the cause worth living and dying for: it is the cause of the methods of God’s claim—the doctrines of grace. God will save by His own power so wondrously fulfilled in the cross of Jesus Christ.

Are you trusting in His ways or yours? Are you living for the Cross?

Conclusion

Tonight is a night when I am going to ask you to examine your lives. I want you to go before God with these two questions and answer them in your heart:

Number one, “Do I have a biblical cause that is worth living and dying for?”

You see you can still pull for your football team, have a cause for being the best in your business, or being committed to even being a great family man. That cause is the cause of the glory of God’s name (which is Jesus), the spread of God’s fame (which is the Great Commission), and the very methods of God’s claim (which is the Cross). “Do I have this cause in my life?”

Number two: “Can I honestly say that this cause is now shaping every other area of my life?”

If that cause is burning in your heart, then your wife, your children and your church and others will know it. For that cause will consume you.

When men get a great cause in their hearts they will make great sacrifices to follow that cause. As a reserve Army chaplain, I have seen many men, and yes some women, make enormous sacrifices in order to stand up for this country. But I have never seen a greater sacrifice than the one Jon Krakauer wrote about when he wrote the book, Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman.[4] You will not doubt remember that young man, a highly paid, celebrity strong safety for the Arizona Cardinals who eventually gave up his NFL career, and departed from his new bride, in order to go fight with the special forces in Afghanistan. He was so moved by the attack of Al-Qaida on 9/11 that he left it all and eventually gave it all as he was killed—yes, through the firepower of his own troops while in the fog of battle—but he gave his life for his nation. But there was a moment, a time, on April 8, 2002 when he wrote in his diary these words in the throw of a great decision:

“Many decisions are made in our lifetime, most relatively insignificant while others life altering. Tonight’s topic…the latter. It must be said that my mind, for the most part, is made up. More to the point, I know what decision I must make. It seems that more often than not we know the right decision long before it’s actually made. Somewhere inside, we hear a voice, and intuitively know the answer to any problem or situation we encounter. Our voice leads us in the direction of the person we wish to become, but it is up to us whether or not to follow…For much of my life I’ve tried to follow a path I believed important. Sports embodied many of the qualities I deem meaningful: courage, toughness, strength, etc., while at the same time, the attention I received reinforced its seeming importance. In the pursuit of athletics I have picked up a college degree, learned invaluable lessons, etc.,  incredible people, and made my journey much more valuable than any destination. However, these last few years, and especially after recent events [that is, the attacks on America by Al Qaeda], I’ve come to appreciate just how shallow and insignificant my role is. I’m no longer satisfied with the path I’ve been following…it’s no longer important.”[5]

I wonder if there are any men here tonight, who look not at Pat Tillman, not at David and Goliath, but at the call of Jesus Christ to take a stand for Him, and say,

“I’m no longer satisfied with the path I’ve been following…it’s no longer important. I want to live for a cause greater than myself.”

I would submit to you that there are giants defying the name of our God in this day. The question is whether there is in this room a man, a boy, a young man who will step forward to cry out from him heart with trust in Jesus Christ alone, “Is there not a cause?”