“Five Smooth Stones”What is most fascinating about the Bible is its depth of content, I think. Sometimes I read a certain passage, or story in Scripture and I suddenly notice an element (seemingly unimportant) that had previously been unacknowledged, and that same one small element changes the entire context; the entire message that God has for me. Such was the case this week while preparing my Sunday morning sermon. I was searching both my mind and God’s Word for good examples of individual responsibility, which happens to be the topic of this morning’s lesson. As I pondered , I thought of the story of David and Goliath in 1 Samuel chapter 17. We see there the story of David, a small Israelite shepherd boy squaring off against the arrogant Philistine giant of Gath, Goliath. As I read of David’s preparation for this battle, I considered something I had not considered before: “But
David said to Saul, “Your servant has been keeping his father’s
sheep. When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock,
I went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When
it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it. Your
servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine
will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living
God. The LORD who rescued me from the paw of the lion and the paw of
the bear will rescue me from the hand of this Philistine.” “Five smooth stones”, the Scriptures say. In the passage we read that David purposefully and carefully selected these stones from a river bed. But, if David was such a great man of Faith, and was so convinced that God would deliver him from the hand of this powerful Philistine warrior, why not just pick up any old five stones, smooth or not? Why choose them so carefully? And if David was such a great man of Faith, why pick up five stones? If God was going cause David to slay this boastful heathen giant, he wouldn’t need five stones to accomplish the task would he? One would be more than enough, wouldn’t it? We see in this small detail the wisdom of David. David realized the necessity for personal responsibility, individual responsibility, and the role it plays in our service to God. David realized that God would give him the strength to conquer Goliath, but his arm was required to do the actual labor. How often do we surrender our personal responsibility by simply saying, “God will get that done if it is His Will.”? Or maybe we just transfer our personal responsibility to someone else: “Oh, there is no need for me to do it, I’m sure someone else will take care of it.” God works through us, as we read in Philippians 2:13: “For it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.” So if God works through us, we can be sure that God’s Work is also just as much our work. Are we preparing ourselves to do His work, as David did? Are we busy gathering stones, or gathering dust? When we see our duty, and recognize our responsibility, are we rising to meet the challenge, or are we sinking into the shadows; comforting ourselves that either God or someone else will do it for us? We read Jesus’ words in Matthew 9:37-38 “Then he said to his disciples, "The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field." The workers are few, so we can spare no one. No one is exempt from laboring for Christ, no matter how we choose to justify our own lack of participation. So we need to realize that we should not only pray to God for more workers, but recognize our OWN responsibility in not only being diligent workers ourselves, but also in recruiting others to work with us. — Paul Seely, September 25, 2011 |