we need a david

The other day I was talking with steve about his preparations for devotions at bb - and I was talking about the story of david and goliath in the context of using OT stories in the right way. And that story is an easy one to get right - and wrong.

The story is about little shepherd future king david who takes on huge hero goliath, when the rest of the israel army will not, and kills him with a stone hurled from a sling.

Getting it wrong: we are david and can slay the troubles or the sin in our lives with the stones of faith, or love or hope or something.
Getting it right: we are the rest of the israelite army - confronted with something we can not deal with, people who need someone else to deal with it for us - our sin, our rebellion of God, our being cut off from God - and so we need someone to go in our place and do what we can not do ourselves to deal with it. You see David is a type, a type of Jesus, a indicator of the true saviour to come.

So, why do we need a saviour? to take our punishment that we deserve for rebelling against the God who made us. We need a saviour because we can not do a single thing to get us right with God.

It's hard thing to admit - that we are not the one in control of our lives - that we are created and sustained by someone else. It's hard for us to believe because everything in our lives seems - SEEMS - to suggest otherwise - we can see the people who work hard and they get better lives [it appears] than those who do not - we look at all we have and it is easy [and even logical when you don't have the whole story] to say "I DID THIS" it was MY EFFORT. It takes something special to turn us around, to open out eyes to the truth of our need - but that is the first thing that needs to happen.

We need to see our need for forgiveness for ignoring. refusing, turning our back on that God and the saviour he sent to get us right with God.

We are not david - we need a david to fight for us and set us free from the sin our lives is full of - and that man [who was God] was Jesus - Jesus who came and died for us taking the punishment we deserve. Jesus who lived a life following God to show us how we should live if we believe that Jesus died for our sins and rose again to give us hope.