Pete sits on the street and leans his head against a building.  He’d like to beat his head against it.  He just messed up again.  Everyone misspeaks now and then.  But Pete does every day.  He blurts out wrong words like a hose spouts water.  Spraying foolishness everywhere.  He often hurts someone, but tonight he hurt his dear friend.  Pete and his quick-triggered tongue.

Then there’s Joe and his failures.  The poor guy can’t hold a job.  His whole career has been up and down, hot and cold.  He tried his hand at the family business, but they fired him.  Tried his skills as a manager.  Got canned and jailed.  Now he sits in prison, a “nowhere man” going nowhere.  You can’t blame him for feeling insecure.  He’s failed every opportunity.

So has she – not at work but at marriage.  Her first one failed.  So did her second.  By the time her third one collapsed, she knew the names of the court clerk’s grandkids.  If her 4th trip to divorce court didn’t convince her, the fifth removed all doubt. She’s destined for marital failure.

People and their weaknesses, their failings.  Pete always speaks before he thinks.  Joe always fails where he should succeed.  This poor woman can’t get the marriage thing figured out.  And how about you?  Is there a particular problem that seems to constantly get the best of you?  A “giant” hunting you down?  Some are prone to cheat.  Others quick to doubt.  Maybe you worry.  Yes, everyone worries, but you have a garage full of anxiety.  Or maybe you are judgmental.  Sure, everybody can be critical, but you pass more judgments than a federal judge.

What is that one weakness, bad habit, rotten attitude?  Where does Satan have a fortress within you?  That’s a fitting word, isn’t it?  Fortress.  A stronghold, citadel, thick walls, tall gates.  As if the Devil found your main weakness and built a fortress around it.  He wants to keep God or anyone else from helping you with your: explosive temper, your fragile self-image, your overindulgent appetite, or your distrust for authority.  You name it.  Whatever your weakness, the Devil tries to build a fortress around it.  Strongholds – old, difficult, discouraging challenges.

That’s what David sees when he looks at Jerusalem.  He sees a 1000-year-old menacing fortress, sitting defiantly on the top of a hill.  Rugged, rocky walls leading up to it.  Tall walls protecting it.  A people called Jebusites living in it, guarding it and being protected by it.  No one bothers them because no one has ever penetrated this fortress.  The Philistines and Amalekites and Hebrews fight each other, but everyone leaves the Jebusites in this fortress Jerusalem alone.

Everyone, that is, except David.  He has just finally become the king.  But he has inherited a divided kingdom.  The people need, not just a strong leader, but strong headquarters.  So he sets his eye on Jerusalem.  It is centrally located.  It is a highly defensible fortress.  It would be perfect.  But it would also be very difficult to take over.  So David, no longer a boy but now a king, sets his sights on his next Goliath.  His next giant…

Jerusalem is an ornery, old, difficult, and discouraging fortress.  From atop the turrets, Jebusite soldiers have plenty of time to direct arrows at any would-be wall climbers.  And it’s discouraging!  The people up on the walls taunt David: “You will not get in here; even the blind and the lame can ward you off!”  The Jebusites pour out scorn on David like Satan dumps out scorn on you and me:  “You’ll never overcome your bad habits!”  “Born insecure, gonna die insecure!”  “Think you can overcome your addiction?  Think again.”

Do you hear mocking like that?  Mocking like David heard?  Then there is an important word for us – one found in the next verse.  NEVERTHELESS.  “Nevertheless, David captured the fortress…”  The city was old and strong.  The walls were tall and difficult.  The voices were discouraging.  Nevertheless David took the fortress!

Don’t you want God to write that word, nevertheless, in your life story?  Born to alcoholics, nevertheless she led a sober life.  Never went to college, nevertheless he mastered a trade.  Didn’t read the Bible until retirement age, nevertheless he came to faith in Christ.  Lived an imperfect life, nevertheless God loved you anyway.  We all need a nevertheless.  And God has plenty for all of us.  Fortresses mean nothing to Him.  “We use God’s mighty weapons, not mere worldly weapons, to knock down the Devil’s strongholds.” (2 Cor. 10:4 NLT).

You and I fight with toothpicks.  God comes with battering rams and cannons!  What He did for David, He can do for us.  The question is, will we do what David did?  David doesn’t listen to those voices from the wall.  He ignores those people taunting him.  If he would have focused on his giant, his fortress, he would have stumbled.  But he focused on God, and so his giant, his fortress, tumbled!  He dismissed the discouraging words and went about his work.

Jesus did too.  He responded to Satan’s temptations with three short Bible verses.  He didn’t dialogue with the Devil.  When Peter told Christ to stay away from the cross, Jesus wouldn’t entertain the thought.  “Get behind Me, Satan!”  A crowd of people ridiculed what he said about a young girl: “The girl is not dead, only asleep.”  The people laughed at Him.  You know what Jesus did with the naysayers?  He silenced them!  “After the crowd had been thrown out of the house, Jesus went into the girl’s room and took hold of her hand, and she stood up.” 

David and Jesus practiced “selective listening.”  Can’t we do the same?  Two thoughts continually vie for your attention.  One says: “Yes you can.”  The other says, “No you can’t.”  One says, “God will help you.”  The other lies, “God has left you.”  One speaks the language of heaven.  The other deceives in the taunting words of the Jebusites.  One proclaims God’s strengths.  The other lists your failures.  One longs to build you up.  The other seeks to tear you down.  Friends, don’t listen to the one!  Don’t listen to the mockers!  Listen to the voice of God!

When you stop listening to those old voices, God will open your eyes to new choices.  When everyone else saw walls, David saw tunnels.  Others focused on the obvious.  David searched for the unusual.  Since he did what no one expected, God helped him achieve what no one imagined.  Focus on God, not on your giants.

There is a young couple who battled the “fortress” of sexual temptation.  They wanted to save sex for the honeymoon but didn’t know if they could.  So they did what David did.  They tried a different approach.  They enlisted the support of an understanding married couple.  They put the older couple’s phone number on speed dial and asked permission to call them, regardless of the hour, when the temptation was severe.  The wall was tall, so they took the tunnel.

There was a man who was battling the “fortress” of alcohol.  He tried a fresh tactic.  He gave his best friends permission to punch him in the nose if they ever saw him drinking.  The wall was too tall, so he tried the tunnel.  There is a woman who counters her anxiety by memorizing long sections of Scripture.  There is a traveling sales rep who asks hotels to remove the TV from his room so he won’t be tempted to watch adult movies.  Another man grew so weary of his prejudice that he moved into a minority neighbourhood, made new friends, and changed his attitude.  If the wall is too tall, try a tunnel.  Don’t listen to those old voices!

David found fresh hope in a hole outside the Jerusalem walls.  So can you.  Not far from David’s tunnel lies the purported tomb of Christ.  What David’s tunnel did for him, the tomb of Jesus can do for you.  “[God’s] power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms.” (Eph.1:19-20)  Your sins made a huge wall, a huge fortress, between you and God.  An insurmountable barrier – for you and me, anyway.  But God made a tunnel to Him.  Through the empty tomb of Jesus!

God gave you and me a “nevertheless.”  There was no way we could get to God.  No way we could get to heaven.  No way we could make up for past mistakes or become perfect.  Nevertheless!  Nevertheless He loved you anyway!  Nevertheless He sent Jesus to make us right with Him, to make a tunnel from us to Him, to conquer our enemies for us!

God gave a nevertheless to Pete.  Remember him?  Speak-now-and-think-later Pete?  God released Satan’s stronghold, his fortress on his tongue.  For proof, read Peter’s Pentecost sermon in Acts 2.  God turned impetuous Peter into the Apostle Peter.  And Joe?  The failure?  Fired by his family.  Jailed by his employer… Can jobless Joe ever amount to anything?  Joseph did.  He became prime minister of all Egypt.  What about the five-time divorcee?  The woman who men discarded, Jesus discipled.  Last we heard of her, she was introducing her whole village to Christ.  The Samaritan woman was Jesus’ first missionary.  Further proof that “God’s mighty weapons… knock down the Devil’s fortresses.”

Peter stuck his foot in his mouth.  Joseph was imprisoned in Egypt.  The Samaritan woman had been married five times.  Jesus was dead in the grave… Nevertheless, Peter preached, Joseph ruled, the woman witnessed her faith, and Jesus rose from the dead!  And you?  What is God going to do through you when He helps you face your fortress?  Your giant?  Amen.

 

This sermon adapted from Max Lucado’s book: “Facing Your Giants.”