A Man after God's own heart — Duane Troyer

Greet everybody in Jesus' name this morning, and I'm thankful again to be gathered with you. I appreciate what was shared this morning, many good thoughts. Yeah, I just appreciate it. Say Amen. Let's stand to pray.

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. We pray that you would be with us today, Father. Help us to be faithful in everything. Help us to have a hunger, or give us a hunger and a thirst for righteousness.

All things that pertain to you, we pray for your blessing on the rest of this day. Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Today, I'd like to talk about that subject that I meant to talk about last week.

Well, I didn't mean to talk about it last week, but I had planned to talk about it last week. And then I got on a trail that took me somewhere else. But today, I'd like to get out there to where I was going before I came to that trail.

And I'd like to talk about that topic, or maybe I should say that person, that I wanted to look into and look at some things about his life. And because it's somewhat of a sequel to that message. In fact, I think the trail that I investigated the other time, and the things that we learned as we looked at Jesus' interaction with that Samaritan woman, where he came to that point where he told this woman that the true worshippers will worship him in spirit and truth, I think, at least for me, that has only enriched the meat that I hope to bring home today.

And maybe just to refresh us or to remind us, Jesus said to that woman that the time will come that the true worshippers will worship him in spirit and truth. And then he says God is spirit. And then he restates it, like the true worshippers will worship him in spirit and truth.

God is spirit. Jesus is truth. Jesus is the fullness of God. He's the reality of it. And in a similar way, the kingdom of God that is a spiritual kingdom and is within us, that we receive by faith, in working it out in our lives, dare I say, doing it in the flesh, like living out the things of God in this life here now, presently, with our hands, with our feet, with our eyes, with our ears, with our mouth, like living that out can make this kingdom of God not only a kingdom in spirit but a kingdom in truth, a kingdom in reality that is right in our midst.

The reality of this spirit and this truth together is where salvation is found. There's no salvation in any other. It is found when faith is worked out, when it's brought forth in its fullness, its faithfulness.

Today, I want to go to that spot where I see a man, and though he's in the Old Covenant, I see a man who worshipped God in spirit and truth, at least to the extent that was possible in the Old Covenant.

Whose life is rich in faith, in an inner relationship with Jehovah. That relationship that he has within himself, it's abundantly evident in this person. He worshipped God in his heart, personally expressing his gratitude and adoration to the Creator.

But that's not all. It didn't end there. His faith was lived out in fullness, in truth, in reality, in the everyday things of life, in a very humble occupation. He proved himself faithful when he was all by himself.

He proved himself faithful with another man's possessions. He proved himself faithful first in the little things and then in the big things. He proved himself faithful first in his private life and then in the spectacle of the great arena that he entered.

In the Old Covenant, his greatness is equal to that of Moses and Abraham. He truly was a man after God's own heart. His name? David, a Bethlehemite. We first read about David in 1 Samuel, chapter 16, and I'll read there if you desire to turn there.

Probably not necessary to give much of a history about what's going on here. Saul is king. He's the first king of Israel. He's head and shoulders taller than everybody. His appearance is a man of a leader.

His appearance is a man that should be able to lead the battles of God, but he failed. After a few victories, it happened to him what happens to so many people after a few victories. He started overstepping the authority that he had and not fulfilling the things that he was commanded.

Not totally, like enough that he could say, well, I kind of did this, you know, but not totally, not completely, not diligently, not to the best of his ability. And God, the Spirit of God, started withdrawing himself from Saul, and Saul felt this.

And so Saul was on his way out, on his decline as a king there in Israel. And here's what it says in chapter 16. Now the Lord said to Samuel, how long will you mourn for Saul, seeing I have rejected him from reigning over Israel?

Fill your horn with oil and go. I am sending you to Jesse the Bethlehemite. For I have provided myself a king among his sons. And Samuel said, how can I go? If Saul hears it, he will kill me. But the Lord said, take a heifer with you and say, I have come to sacrifice to the Lord.

Then invite Jesse to the sacrifice and I will show you what you shall do. You shall anoint for me the one I named to you. So Samuel did what the Lord said and went to Bethlehem. And the elders of the town trembled at his coming and said, do you come peaceably?

And he said peaceably, I have come to sacrifice to the Lord. Sanctify yourself and come with me to the sacrifice. Then he consecrated Jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice. So it was when they came that he looked at Eliab and said, surely the Lord's anointed is before him.

But the Lord said to Samuel, do not look at his appearance or at his physical stature because I have refused him. For the Lord does not see as a man sees. For a man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.

So Jesse called Abinadab and made him pass before Samuel. And he said, neither has the Lord chosen this one. Then Jesse made Shammah pass by and he said, neither has the Lord chosen this one. Thus Jesse made seven of his sons pass before Samuel.

And Samuel said to Jesse, the Lord has not chosen these. And Samuel said to Jesse, are all the young men here? Then he said, there remains yet the youngest. And there he is keeping the sheep. And Samuel said to Jesse, send and bring him.

For he will not, we will not sit down till he comes here. So he sent and brought him. Now he was ruddy and bright eyed, he was ruddy with bright eyes and good looking. And the Lord said, arise and anoint him for this is the one.

And Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers. And the Spirit of the Lord came upon David from that day forward. So Samuel arose and went to Ramah. Here we get the first glimpses of this man.

He's taking care of his father's sheep. We get a little bit of his appearance. The impression I get is he was a bright eyed, youthful looking man, young man. Possibly red haired. Ruddy means, can mean red.

Maybe he had a reddish complexion, maybe he had red hair, I don't know. But it says he was ruddy and bright eyed and fair looking. We're not sure of his age. I did a little research and I would say around 15-ish.

A couple of years younger or older I'd be fairly sure he fits somewhere in there. But that's a little bit of how this young man looked. He's accustomed to grunt work. He does not have a high position.

He has a job that largely goes unnoticed. It was common because shepherding was not hard work. There were some aspects of it that may have been hard, but still it was work that a young man could do. For the most part it didn't require an enormous amount of strength.

It often fell to one of the youngest in the family. Maybe at first, like this Jesse had eight sons. The way this likely would work in a family like this is once the oldest is, I don't know, eight, nine, ten years old, he starts tending the sheep.

But as the other needs of the household and the farm and raising grain and plowing fields and bringing in harvest and all these things start demanding more help, these older guys take this and the next one younger tends the sheep.

And finally it comes down to the youngest of the sheep. He tends the sheep longer than the others. And here's David. I get the impression he's been taking care of sheep for a long time. It's his job. And shepherding is one of those things where a guy spent a lot of time alone.

He spent a lot of time out away from everybody else. He missed out on a lot of the excitement that happened in social life in the village and at home. The appearance, I'm reading into this quite a bit, but the appearance that I have of the way this passage reads is that, well, first of all, Samuel comes.

He's the prophet. He's the seer. He's the one man over all of Israel that is considered the prophet, the judge. And he comes unexpected, uninvited, unannounced to Bethlehem and the whole city trembles and says, Do you come peaceably?

And he says, I come peaceably. There's a lot of excitement involved around Samuel showing up in this very little town in Bethlehem. And so after some talking there and after Samuel saw that it was none of these seven men, he asked, Is there not another one?

And the way Jesse says this, he says like, in verse 11 he says, Samuel asks, Are these all the young men? And he says, There remains yet the youngest. And there he is taking care of the sheep. The impression I have is that he was somewhere on a distant hill within sight, but probably outside of ear reach.

It wasn't like Jesse just hollered over and said, Hey, David, come on in. He had to send somebody out to bring him in. And I just, again, I'm adding some of my imagination in here, but just imagine all the excitement surrounding this happening of Jesse coming in here and David out there on a distant hill very likely able to see all this excitement, seeing that the whole town is coming together for a sacrifice.

But he just stays there. He's got an assignment. It's to keep the sheep. And he keeps the sheep. And I don't doubt that there's many a 14, 15, 16-year-old boy whose curiosity would have got the best of him.

And they'd have been tempted, very much tempted and possibly would have done, left the sheep there and gone to sneak up there and see what's going on. They want to be a part of this excitement, but not David.

He has a charge to keep, and he keeps it. He keeps it faithfully. It doesn't matter if he misses out on the excitement. It doesn't matter if at the end of the day he's the most unnoticed person in the whole town.

It didn't end up that way, but that's David. A shepherd's life was a life of getting up day after day after day and getting up early and taking the flocks out. Often the flocks belonged to someone else.

It wasn't even as if you were taking out your own sheep. You were taking care of someone else's sheep. And seasons brought changes. Maybe in the spring they could graze their sheep real close to the village, real close to home.

But once the crops were planted in the fields, they had to take them out to the wilderness. And this wasn't even the wilderness like we would look at, where there's all kinds of green. This is barren land if you look at it from a desert.

And they would take them far out there into the hills and the mountains to find forage for their sheep. And then maybe in the fall after the fields are harvested, they could bring them back into the fields and graze the stubble.

They endured the heat of the summer. They endured the frost of the winter. They endured day after day of being out there all by themselves. Lonely hours. Those were all just common things to a shepherd's life.

A shepherd always had to be watchful. There were always things, there could always be a chance of some predator lurking around, looking for a sheep. They always had to be watchful. And at the same time, they always had quite a bit of idle time.

It wasn't like they were always active. And yet they couldn't just lay down and sleep all afternoon. Or fiddle their time away being distracted. You know, most people, especially young people, I don't know about mostly young people, most people when they have a lot of idle time on their hands, they get into mischief.

They don't know what to do with not being active, not being in something all the time. And they get into bad things. They start entertaining bad thoughts. And they get into idle time is the devil's workshop is a common saying.

And it just is so true. And yet it doesn't have to be that way. Not for David. What I think David was about when he was out there on the hills all these day after day all by himself, I think I have this impression mostly based on the Psalms that he wrote.

He wrote most of the Psalms. Maybe not necessarily all while he was a shepherd, but he did write some while he was a shepherd. But even just the impression of the man, David, that I get is that he observed nature.

He worshipped the Creator. He wrote poetry. He played music. He was a man of much meditation. His Psalms express it over and over. In the 143rd Psalm he says, I remember the days of old. I meditate on all your works.

I amuse on the works of your hands. There's something valuable, even priceless, about being able to learn the laws of God from history, from nature, and from creation. There is something just really, really valuable.

When someone can just patiently observe and learn the ways of God. And I have nothing against schooling. I have nothing against education systems. I have nothing against textbooks. I'm not even altogether against colleges.

All these things can have an appropriate place. But there's just something about when somebody can be educated by their daily tasks, and just by careful and patient observation can learn the lessons in life, and learn the laws of God, and the things about the ways that are right and wrong that puts such a person far ahead of the textbook scholars.

Sometimes, now and then, one of my children will express something that they learned, and they didn't learn it because I told them. They didn't read it. They didn't watch it on a YouTube. They just observed it by the consequences of something natural, and it warms my heart.

It's special to me if they can learn something like that. And I guess I want to challenge us all, myself first and us all, what do we do with idle time? What do we do when the work is over and we sit down for a little bit?

Just take notice of what it is whenever you have these moments, whether it be the half minute you sit at the traffic light waiting to go, or the half hour you take a lunch break, or whatever. What is it that we automatically tend to do?

And this is what I want to challenge us with. If our automatic tendency is to pull out our smart devices and be connected with everything that's going on across the world, really, really, we're in the ages of, in the time that humanity has been here, like we're in this, the fact that we can even do that, we're in this wee little span of time.

Maybe it's the time in which the scriptures say that knowledge is increased, but it is certainly at the expense of meditation, of being able to just patiently observe and to learn in a real way. I know I'm challenged by that.

I think these are some of the things that God saw in David that made him choose him over all the brothers that were bigger, stronger, older, just by all appearances were more likely to be anointed as a king.

And yet God saw, these were some of the things that God saw in David. I'll continue to read here in verse 14. But the spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and a distressing spirit from the Lord troubled him.

And Saul's servants said to him, Surely a distressing spirit from God is troubling you. Let our master now command your servants who are before you to seek out a man who is a skillful player of the harp, and it shall be that he will play it with his hands when the distressing spirit from God is upon you, and you shall be well.

So Saul said to the servants, Provide me now a man who can play well and bring him to me. Then one of the servants answered and said, Look, I have seen a son of Jesse, the Bethlehemite, who is skillful in playing, a mighty man of valor, a man of war, prudent in speech, and a handsome person, and the Lord is with him.

Here again we get some more description. I'm actually kind of amazed about this statement about him. Like, Jesse's still just, he's just this young man. Like, okay, in Israel you did not, according, if I understand the laws right, like you didn't join the army under the age of 20.

David has not yet joined the army. He's under 20, for sure under 20. But still it describes him as skillful in playing, a mighty man of valor, a man of war. It's giving this description of him. But one thing that I, and this is maybe one of the things that I, that I think make him, is one of the big things that make him a man after God's own heart.

I feel like David was like the full range of what a God, what God wants a man to be. He was like, he was like able to express or have either the perfect balance or the completeness of some of God's characteristics that sometimes seem to oppose each other.

And what's so common for us is that we major on one characteristic of God at the expense of another. Like love and truth have to go together. And we can so easily just major on love at the expense of truth or we can major on truth at the expense of love.

Or mercy and judgment, mercy and judgment have to go together. To be full and complete they have to go together. And we can major on mercy at the expense of judgment or major on judgment at the expense of mercy.

And I think I see this, I'm really only going to touch on a very small portion of David's life. And maybe if time allowed it we would go on through it. But if you look at other, if you look at his whole life, and I won't get to the end of his life, but like he, he met this man one time, this man named Shimei who just cursed him something awful.

And that kind of thing would deserve punishment. It would deserve, you can't do that kind of thing to God's anointed person. It's wrong. It would deserve death. And yet, and yet David says let him curse.

We'll suffer this. Let's be merciful to him. Maybe God has a purpose in this. Don't, his men, David's men that were with him said let's go take his head off. And David's like no, no, don't do that. But David was not without the reality that such a thing is punished worthy.

Like at the end of his life he made recognition to Solomon, look there's still this man Shimei here. Watch him. I can't even quite remember what the end of all that was, but like he's recognizing that.

I guess what I see there in David is that like he was, he was able to suffer long without compromising on righteousness. In other words, I feel like he was this man who could truly worship in spirit and truth.

There are so many ways in life that there's, that we need this combination of two seemingly opposing forces. If we want to hit perfection, if we want to hit bullseye, it's almost like the two limbs of a bow.

And they oppose each other. Like you've got a handle and you've got a limb going up this way and you've got a limb coming down this way. And your string is connected to both of them and as you pull back they oppose each other.

If you only had the one, like your arrow would fly way up or if you only had the other one it would fly way down. But as they oppose each other you can shoot an arrow straight. Those, in that way, love and truth and mercy and judgment, if we can have the perfect tension of both of them or balance or completeness, we can hit the mark.

And I think that is, I think I see that in David and I think that's why he is called a man after God's own heart. There's, I once listened to a message by Matthew Melioni and he said this thing that fits right in here where he said there's this, there's a propensity in men to control and to create order.

Or to create order and therefore we control, we want stability, we want predictability, we want order, we want to know what's happening and so we structure our lives with that propensity to do those things.

It's that propensity that built this building here, right? Instead of just throwing up a tent. It's that part in us that builds something and even controls the environment inside of it because we want that kind of order or structure in our life.

But the problem with that is, and there's a problem, there's a problem that goes with order. And that is that if you take it to its end without having it balanced out with anything, it leads to tyranny.

Okay, so begets security, security begets stringency, and stringency begets tyranny. It's the way it goes in life. Okay, so we might ask the question, well why then are we not all under some tyrannical regime?

Why are we not all under that kind of a control? And that is because there's another propensity that we have. It could be called creativity. There's something in us that wants to be creative. There's something in us, there's another force in us that impulses us to have new ideas, to think outside the box, to explore, to try new things.

And from it we get a lot of innovative ideas, and we get art, and we get music. But if you take that thing to its end, it creates chaos. And I would say something like creativity begets disarray, disarray begets confusion, and confusion begets chaos.

But with the perfect balance or the perfect completeness of these two in men is where men seem to do the best. It's where we, it's where man thrives. It's where, it's the equal tension of those two that makes an arrow fly straight.

I think I could say within the church, it is the perfect balance of those two where we do the best spiritually. It's where, I think I dare say, the spirit can have its most effective workings within the church.

I see in David this full range of these characteristics. He's skillful at playing, right? He loves music, he's skillful at playing. And yet he's a man of war. He's bright-eyed and fair-headed, and yet he's a mighty man of valor.

He can pen the most inspiring poetry and do the most dull, monotonous work, like keeping his father's sheep. Okay, we'll go on to chapter 17. And here's now, I'll just, this is all pretty familiar text to us, but maybe I'll start reading.

Now the Philistines gathered their armies to the battle and were gathered at Soka, which belongs to Judah. They encamped between Soka and Azekiah and Azka in Ephesus de Mem. And Saul and the men of Israel were gathered together and they encamped in the valley of Elah and grew up in battle array against the Philistines.

And the Philistines stood on a mountain on one side and Israel stood on a mountain on the other side with a valley between them. And a champion went out from the camp of the Philistines named Goliath from Gath, whose height was six cubits and a span.

He had a bronze helmet on his head and he was armed with a coat of mail and the weight of the coat was 5 ,000 shekels of bronze. He had a bronze armor on his legs and a bronze javelin between his shoulders.

Now the staff of his spear was like a weaver's beam and his iron spearhead weighed 600 shekels and a shield bearer went before him. Then he stood and cried out to the armies of Israel and said to them, Why have you come out to line up for battle?

Am I not a Philistine and you the servants of Saul? Choose a man for yourself and let him come down to me. If he is able to fight with me and kill me, then we will be your servants. But if I prevail against him and kill him, you shall be our servants and serve us.

And the Philistines said, I defy the armies of Israel this day. Give me a man that we may fight together. And when Saul and all Israel heard these words of the Philistines, they were dismayed and greatly afraid.

Now David was the son of that Ephrathite of Bethlehem, Judah, whose name was Jesse and who had eight sons. And the man was old, advanced in years in the days of Saul. The three oldest sons of Jesse had gone to follow Saul to the battle.

The names of the three sons who went to the battle were Eliab, the firstborn, next to him was Abinadab, and the third was Shammah. David was the youngest and he and the three oldest followed Saul. But David occasionally went and returned from Saul to feed his father's sheep at Bethlehem.

And the Philistines drew near and presented himself forty days, morning and evening. Then Jesse said to his son David, Take now for your brothers an ephah of this dry grain and these ten loaves and run to your brothers at the camp and carry these ten cheeses to the captain of their thousands and see how your brothers fare and bring back news of them.

Now Saul and they and all the men of Israel were in the valley of Elah fighting with the Philistines. So David rose early in the morning, left the sheep with the keeper and took the things and went as Jesse had commanded him.

And he came to the camp as the army was going out to fight and shouting for battle. For Israel and the Philistines had drawn up in battle array, army against army. And David left his supplies in the hand of the supply keeper, ran to the army and came and greeted his brothers.

Then as he talked with them there was the champion, the Philistine of Gath, Goliath by name coming up from the armies of the Philistines and he spoke according to the same words. So David heard them. And all of the men of Israel when they saw the man fled from him and were dreadfully afraid.

So the men of Israel said, Have you seen this man who has come up? Surely he has come up to defy Israel and it shall be that the man who kills him, the king will enrich him with great riches, will give him his daughter and will give his father's house exemption from taxes in Israel.

Then David spoke to the man who stood by him saying, What shall be done for the man who kills this Philistine and takes away the reproach from Israel? For who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God?

And the people answered in this manner saying, So it shall be done for the man who kills him. Now Eliab his oldest brother heard when he spoke to the men and Eliab's anger was aroused against David and he said, Why did you come down here?

And with whom have you left those few sheep in the wilderness? I know your pride and the insolence of your heart. For you have come down to see the battle. And David said, What have I done now? Is there not a cause?

Then he turned from him toward another and said the same thing. And these people answered him as the first ones did. Now when the words which David spoke were heard, they were reported to Saul and he sent for him.

And David said to Saul, Let no man's heart fail because of him. Your servant will go and fight with the Philistine. And Saul said to David, You are not able to go against this Philistine to fight with him.

For you are a youth and he a man of war from his youth. But David said to Saul, Your servant used to keep his father's sheep. And when a lion and a bear came and took a lamb out of the flock, I went out after it and struck it and delivered the lamb from its mouth.

And when it arose against me, I caught it by its beard and struck and killed it. Your servant has killed both lion and bear. And this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, seeing he has defied the armies of the living God.

Moreover, David said, The Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine. And Saul said to David, Go and the Lord be with you.

So Saul closed David with his armor and he put a bronze helmet on his head and he closed him with a coat of mail. And David fastened his sword to his armor and tried to walk. For he had not tested them.

And David said to Saul, I cannot walk with these for I have not tested them. So David took them off and he took his staff and his hand and he chose for himself five smooth stones from the brook and put them in his shepherd's bag in a pouch which he had.

And his sling was in his hand and he drew near to the Philistine. So the Philistine came and began to draw near to David. And the man who bore the shield went before him. And when the Philistine looked about and saw David, he disdained him for he was only a youth, ruddy and good-looking.

So the Philistine said to David, Am I a dog that you come to me with sticks? And the Philistine cursed David by his gods. And the Philistine said to David, Come to me and I will give your flesh to the birds of the air and the beasts of the field.

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

This day the Lord will deliver you into my hands and I will strike you and take your head from you. And this day I will give the carcasses of the camp of the Philistines to the birds of the air and the wild beasts of the earth that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel.

Then all the assembly shall know that the Lord does not save with sword and spear for the battle is the Lord's and he will give you into our hands. So it was when the Philistine arose and came and drew near to meet David that David hurried and ran toward the army to meet the Philistine.

Then David put his hand in his bag, took out a stone and he slung it and struck the Philistine in his forehead so that the stone sank into his forehead and he fell on his face to the earth. So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and a stone and struck the Philistine and killed him.

But there was no sword in the hand of David. Therefore David ran and stood over the Philistine, took his sword and drew it out of its sheath and killed him and cut off his head with it. And when the Philistine saw that their champion was dead, they fled.

Now the men of Israel and Judah rose and shouted and pursued the Philistine as far as the entrance of the valley and at the gates of Ikron. And the wounded of the Philistines fell along the road to Shariam even as far as Gath and Ikron.

Then the children of Israel returned from chasing the Philistines and they plundered their tents. And David took the head of the Philistine and brought it to Jerusalem but he put the armor in his tent.

And we'll just stop there. Okay, there are so many lessons we can get out of this. And I'm guessing I'll only be scratching the surface of what we can all get out of this story. There's a warfare between good and evil.

There's that passage in Revelation 17 about the war that was in heaven between Michael and his angels waging war against the dragon, that old serpent that one named the devil and Satan. And they cast him out and he came down here on earth.

And there was great rejoicing in heaven but it says, Woe to the inhabitants of the earth for he goes about and knows that he has a short time. Well, that's where we're at. We're here on the earth. And that old dragon, that old serpent named the devil and Satan, he's here.

And he's waging a war. He's against God. God defeated him and he's against God. And he's against us because we're made in the image of God. And the more we try to conform ourselves to the image of God, the more he is against us.

There are things that threaten us in our personal lives. There are things that prowl around, instigated by this enemy. But they prowl around and they try to attack us as an individual in our personal lives.

Things like lust and greed and anger, jealousy, sexuality, gluttony, drunkenness. These kind of things that affect you as an individual. And maybe to varying degrees from one to the other. But of this list, and the list is not extensive, but of this list we all face these things.

They're like, they're kind of like the lions and the bears. You know, in the animal kingdom, if there's any two animals that are described as like the enemy of man, it's the lion and the bear. And these are the things that you face in the wilderness.

These are the things that David faced when he was out there all by himself. Nobody was around. And he faced these enemies. He was so diligent. If you read carefully how he described that, he was so diligent in keeping his father's sheep, that he wasn't about to even let this enemy destroy anything in his father's household.

If these bears and lions are these personal kind of sins, he was diligent about it, not harming anything that belonged to his father. And not only when one of these things came and snagged one of the sheep, did he take the remainder and flee.

No, he says, I went after them. And I struck them. And then when they turned on me, I got them by the beard and I killed him. He took the battle to them. He wasn't just playing defense. He was playing offense.

Most sports teams find out that the best defense is good offense. And I just think that that is how we need to face the enemy and his attacks. If our idea of dealing with the things that want to come against us is to retreat, and to try to build us a strong enough fortress to hide in, one way or another, he'll get inside there.

The way to attack these things is to confront them. To go out and to deal with them. I think it's probably what Jesus meant when he said to Peter, Peter, upon this rock will I build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.