You're not David fighting Goliaths in your life. You're not Peter needing to step out of the boat. The Bible is about Jesus; not us.

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You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. - John 5: 39-40 (ESV)

The Gospel of Me. You cannot turn a corner in pop Christianity these days without hearing a "sermon" or new theology that is squarely and solely about you. Often times the use of Scriptures is secondary to the overall point the "preacher" wants to make. That you are wonderful. That you are powerful. That you are good enough, smart enough and gosh darn it, people like you. Don't believe me? Here are some of the book titles from the most popular preachers in this country today:

"Destined to Reign"

"Unmerited Favor"

"You Can, You Will"

"Your Best Life Now"

"It's Your Time"

"Become a Better You"

That's five usages of YOU and in case you were wondering it is YOU that is destined to reign and YOU that has unmerited favor. Hallelujah, pass the offering plate. It is a little light on God however. Joel Osteen is quoted as saying that he often does not bring a Scripture into his messages until the end and he is not going to apologize for that. Instead his sermons always start with a joke, are founded on a carnal thought he wants to teach, and are supported with anecdotes and personal experiences. Eventually there may be a verse taken out of context here or there but they are not relevant. They are merely window dressing. Mega church pastor and lord of hyper grace, Joseph Prince, has a similarly dangerous way of approaching the Bible. He has his own gospel, which is merely the old heresy of antinomianism. He then does not approach the Word to hear from God but rather to find verses or stories he can leverage to try and prove that his gospel is authentic. Either way, the overall focus is once again - you. Well preacher those are just their books. OK, let us look at recent sermon titles then:

"You Are Anointed"

"God's Plan to Bless You"

"God Is No Longer Angry With You Today"
"Awesome - Building Great Relationships"

"Keys to a Blessed Life"

I hope we get the point. THIS is what modern Christianity has devolved into. People who fancy themselves Christians pack into stadiums every Sunday to hear how great they are. How much God wants to bless their socks off. How they are all that and a bag of chips. No confrontation with the real Gospel. No discussion of sin and the need for a savior. No picking up the cross and following Him. No leaving it all behind to follow Him. Heck, no following Him! In this theology God is following us around asking what else He can do for us!

While this problem stems from the compromises pastors are willing to make to build a purpose driven church, the hermeneutical problem lies in how we approach Scripture. The seeker friendly and new generation pastors approach the Bible to try and make it relevant to the listener. In other words, how can I make the story of King Saul and the Amalekites relevant to Bob the electrician or Mary the homemaker? This is going to be unsettling for many but the Bible is not about you. It is not about me. It is about Jesus. We are not David staring down the Goliaths of our lives with five smooth stones of faith. The storm on the Sea of Galilee was an actual storm; not a word picture of the latest challenge we face requiring us to step out of the boat. We are not Joseph waiting to go from the prison to the palace. We are not Ruth waiting for our Boaz. We are not Lazarus waiting to be called forth. These types of usages are known as allegories.

Well what's is wrong with allegorizing the text? In a vacuum? Nothing is wrong with it. You can be motivated, inspired, or even moved to tears. There are two primary problems however for us as church going believers. The first deals with the primacy of Jesus Christ. When we make the story of David and Goliath to be about us, we miss what God actually wants us to see and hear. We miss the point. David is actually a type of Christ. He is a foreshadowing of our Savior to come. He was a shepherd. He was anointed to be king. Even when suiting up to face the giant, he could not use the weapons of Saul, this world, because he "had not tested them." Even in victory we should see the cross:

So David triumphed over the Philistine with a sling and a stone; without a sword in his hand he struck down the Philistine and killed him. - 1Samuel 17: 50 (NIV)

And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.- Colossians 2: 13-15 (ESV)

Without a sword he triumphed over Goliath. Without a sword He triumphed over sin and the devil. To make this story to be about us is to miss the entire point that God is trying to make. Can you use allegory successfully in preaching? Absolutely as long as you do not miss the point. As long as the sermon is about Him. Always about Him.

The second problem however is that as Matt Chandler once preached - what if you miss? The true story about David is one of dependence upon God. He has faith because of what God had already delivered him from in the past. He views Goliath as an "uncircumcised Philistine" to remind himself that the giant is not under covenant with God. We can know these truths yet still be led to think that we need to choose the five stones. We need to approach the giant when the mighty men of Israel were cowering. Like we need to "step out of the boat" - we need to employ the slingshot of faith. The question again from Pastor Chandler is sobering. What if we miss? Because when you allegorize this text and we become David and our problem becomes Goliath; exactly where is God in that equation? If we are viewing the trouble in our marriage as our Goliath and we try and try but it does not seem to be getting better then eventually we will doubt. We may question our own faith, our own slingshot. The truth is that this view shackles us. When we run out of stones and the giant is still standing - where do we go from there?

Here is another hard nugget of theology for today. Sometimes the giant wins. Sometimes he is not slain with a pebble. The Apostle Paul faced trial after trial after trial. Were his stones not smooth enough? Of course not. The reality is that God is sovereign and the bless me theology of everything always being puppies and rainbows is simply unbiblical. Sometimes there is suffering. Intense suffering. Life long suffering. Maybe living in this country clouds our discernment of these matters. Think about the Christians living in persecution around the world. Martyred for refusing to renounce their faith in Jesus Christ. Do we honestly think they somehow had deficient faith? That if they had just stepped out of the boat they could have had their best life now? If only they had picked their five smooth stones they could have slain that giant that was blocking their blessings? No beloved. Here are the words of God through the Apostle Peter:

Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these, be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace. And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures.You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen. - 2Peter 3: 14-18 (ESV)

This is the closing of his letter. In it however are invaluable teachings for us to remember today. The preceding context shows that what we are waiting for as believers here is the second coming of Christ. We ought to be diligent to be what? Found in a church? Found in a ministry? Found in a purpose? No. Found in Him. He is His Word. We ought to be found in His Word. That is how we strive towards being unblemished and unspotted by this world. Peter then reflects to the letters Paul had written which eventually would become the canon of Scripture we live by today. Peter reinforces that the wisdom contained in these letters is from God Himself. We ought not treat the Word so cavalierly to appropriate what was written to point us to Christ and think it points to us.

Peter does not mince words here. He admits that some things are hard to understand. There is a reason why God assigns teaching and preaching within the body. Not everything is as simple as picking five smooth stones or stepping out of a boat. Those are simple messages compared to the cross. Remember the cross is utter foolishness to those who are perishing. Why? Because they do not want to look at their own sin. They do not want to realize how desperately they need a savior. Don't miss this point beloved. When the story of David and Goliath becomes the story of Joe and his troubled marriage we are letting ourselves off the hook. It is a much harder message to correctly use the story of David and Goliath to preach Christ. Why? Because preaching Christ always ends at the cross and the cross requires a sacrifice because of our state as sinners before a holy God. Whoa preacher! Don't go there! Let me chuck stones at the Goliaths in my life but do not make me look into the mirror that the Word of God is supposed to be. I do not want to see my reflection as a sinner. Realize today that you can take that first stone and slay the giant in your life. You can heal that marriage. Yet without the truth of what these Scriptures mean, you never get pointed to the cross.

Look at what Peter says people do with these hard to understand teachings! They twist them and other Scriptures to their own destruction! What destruction is Peter referring to here? Final judgment. Remember the preceding context is dealing with the second coming of Christ. When so many will stand before Jesus and say "Lord Lord, did I not pick up five stones in faith and slay the Goliath of my troubled marriage?" The Bible says He will respond - away from me you who practice lawlessness. What does the next verse from Peter say? We ought to take care to not be carried away with the error of lawless people. The ignorant and unstable will always seek to allegorize Jesus Christ right out of the book that is entirely about Jesus Christ. In the name of being friendly. In the name of being relevant. Anything but in the name of Jesus.

I listened to a sermon this morning from a mega church pastor who is doing a series based on the zombie apocalypse show, the Walking Dead. As absurd as it felt even writing that, the more important point was his defense of it. He said that he always found church boring. That it had nothing he needed or nothing that interested him. So he was trying to reach people by piquing their interest with the Walking Dead. How pathetically sad. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is always relevant because we are always sinners. It has not changed from the Garden of Eden and will not change until Christ returns. Now, people may not like the hard teachings of the cross. I understand that as much as Peter did when he wrote those verses. That does not mean people still do not need to hear them. It does not mean you stop teaching. It does not mean you twist what points to Christ into allegories about how we are destined to reign.

Songstress, Carly Simon once sang about someone she knew that was so vain they probably thought the song must be about them. For forty years she never admitted who it was written about brilliantly painting the subject into a corner. If they ever said they felt it was about them, then the song is proven right. We have churches across this country convincing people that the Bible was written about them and it is creating a generation of proud, vain Christians. Jesus dealt with religious people in His day that were proud and vain. He told a parable about how the proud and vain Pharisee approached God in prayer and how the truly penitent sinner did:

The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.' But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, 'God, be merciful to me, a sinner!' I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted." - Luke 18: 11-14 (ESV)

Do not dismiss this beloved. We have many people on the broad church path leading to destruction. They look the part and sound the part. They fast to appear pious. They tithe to appear obedient. They listen to worship telling them how much God loves them. They listen to allegorized sermons that paint them as the hero and over-comer and point them away from the cross. The only place they truly need to be found. In Him. Jesus addressed the Pharisees in his day in our key verses. There are three crucial lessons for us to learn. First of all, we need to approach the Scriptures correctly. If you want to use allegory as a technique in preaching it better just be a technique and not the message. The easy test is this. Who does the sermon point to? Who is it about? If it is not about Jesus then run as fast as you can to the cross.

Secondly from the key verses is a simple statement of fact - Scriptures bear witness about Jesus! That is who the book is about. That is who every story is about. It is about God redeeming a fallen people. His people. By sacrificing His one and only Son. That is love. That is God. That is Scripture. That is truth. That is the point. My pastor once told me that any sermon should come back to the cross or it is not worth preaching. There is real danger in following teachings that do not lead us to the cross. I do not want to be David cutting off the head of Goliath. I want to be David in Psalm 51, begging the Lord to not hold my iniquity against me and to not take His Holy Spirit from me. I want to be the tax collector; not the Pharisee. The Bible is not about me. It is about Him.

Lastly, from the key verses we see that despite these things being plain, many will simply refuse to come to Him so that they might have life. Think about it for a second. The Pharisees sure were not going to accept Jesus as Savior because He was a threat to the power they enjoyed and the religion they had created. In their world it was always about them. They had the best seats at the table. They were revered. Today we see the same thing. Try showing the truth of Scripture to a follower of Joel Osteen or Joseph Prince. Maybe some might be willing to see the truth but most will simply refuse to come to the cross. Because the cross reveals the truth about them and about Jesus. Once there, you are forced to realize that the story really hasn't been about you. At the cross you must come to grips with your own lawlessness before a holy God. You come to understand that in order to have this life in Christ we must first give up the one we hold so dear. The one where we are the lead character and we are writing the story. We do not want to lay down the five smooth stones and pick up the old wooden cross. We do not want to give up the crown of glory for the crown of thorns. As the Bible says; all is vanity.

Reverend Anthony Wade - November 8, 2014

Authors Bio:
Credentialed Minister of the Gospel for the Assemblies of God. Owner and founder of 828 ministries. Vice President for Goodwill Industries. Always remember that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.