Pastor Steven Furtick Sermon Don’t Let The Enemy Distract You: This is what always happens when God is trying to do something in your life the enemy will always present another enemy that is not the real enemy to keep you distracted from fighting the one that you’re called to defeat. in David’s case it was his brother his big brother his name kind of sounds like Goliath but it’s not Eliab he was tall for a minute Samuel thought he was supposed to be the king cause Saul was tall and he saw in Samuel saw in Eliab what he had seen in Saul which is height not heart and God said don’t look at his height look at his heart stop judging your situation externally it’s what’s inside that counts.
Eliab starts judging David’s motives he’s like look at this in verse 28 he goes why have you come down here and with whom did you leave those few sheep now all of these things David had taken care of he’s a very responsible young man but but really what’s happening here is I believe the enemy is trying to trigger David to get him to fight the wrong person because watch if he stands here and argues with his brother he will never even see his enemy this might be the whole sermon for somebody, now just look straight ahead if you’re married, sometimes you’re fighting against what you’re supposed to be fighting for and you have to call a timeout, sometimes you have to you have to sometimes be like wait a minute, you’re not my enemy, wait a minute you’re not who I’m supposed to be fighting and if David gets caught up fighting Eliab he never sees Goliath.
some of us are defeated simply because we’re distracted. now you know how the story ends but think about how it could have ended David, if for the next two hours he defends himself to Eliab. if you would invest a fraction of the energy into blessing people that you put into defending yourself you would be Mother Teresa, you would be Saint Paul, you could change the world if you would stop trying to defend yourself because some of us trip over an offence and so we never defeat the real opponent because we stand and argue with Eliab and we never even get to Goliath.
Isn’t that so powerful, it could have had a whole different ending it could have been a whole lot different, here’s the thing that’s practical about this, some of you are fighting Eliab today and because you’re fighting Eliab Goliath continues to go unchallenged in your life, you know you’re fighting Eliab if you’re still blaming people, David did this move that we all ought to learn.
when we realize we are fighting the wrong enemy, when we realize we are fighting something outside, when we really need to be dealing with something inside, when we realize we are trying to control how other people are versus trying to have self-control, we must try our best to turn around and work on ourselves.
David did something very strategic and this is like the turning point of the story it said in verse 30 that when Eliab was going back and forth David turned and asked somebody else and when he turns away from Eliab it positions him to face Goliath.
Pastor Steven Furtick tells us that we’ll never even get to Goliath, we will never even get to the insecurity that is causing the issue, if you keep blaming the people who are bringing it out for you, Eliab wasn’t the giant, Eliab wasn’t the enemy but Goliath