Samuel No.13 The Logic of David

Let's read together from the Old Testament and from the first book of Samuel. We're into the 17th chapter, the glad and well-known story of David and his conquest over Goliath. It's a long chapter.

We pick up the account from the 16th verse. 1 Samuel 17 verse 16, For forty days the Philistines came forward every morning and evening. Goliath took his stand.

Now Jesse said to his son David, Take this ephah of roasted corn and these ten loaves of bread for your brothers, and hurry to their camp. Take along these ten cheeses to the commander of their unit. See how your brothers are, and bring back some assurance from them.

They are with Saul and all the men of Israel in the valley of Elah fighting against the Philistines. Early in the morning David left the flock with a shepherd, loaded up and set out as Jesse had directed. He reached the camp as the army was going out to its battle positions, shouting the war cry.

Israel and the Philistines were drawing up their lines facing each other. David left his things with the keeper of supplies, ran to the battle lines, and greeted his brothers. As he was talking with them, Goliath the Philistine champion from Gath stepped out from his lines and shouted his usual defiance.

And David heard it. When the Israelites saw the man, they all ran from him in great fear. Now the Israelites had been saying, Do you see how this man keeps coming out? He comes out to defy Israel.

The king will give great wealth to the man who kills him. He will also give him his daughter in marriage and will exempt his father's family from taxes in Israel. David asked the men standing near him, What will be done for the man who kills this Philistine and removes this disgrace from Israel? Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God? They repeated to him what they had been saying and told him, This is what will be done for the man who kills him.

When Eliab, David's oldest brother, heard him speaking with the men, he burnt with anger at him and asked, Why have you come down here? And with whom did you leave those few sheep in the desert? I know how conceited you are and how wicked your heart is. You came down only to watch the battle. Now what have I done? said David.

Can't I even speak? He then turned away to someone else and brought up the same matter. And the men answered the same as before. What David said was overheard and reported to Saul, and Saul sent for him.

David said to Saul, Let no one lose heart on account of this Philistine. Your servant will go and fight him. Saul replied, You're not able to go out against this Philistine and fight him.

You're only a boy, and he has been a fighting man from his youth. But David said to Saul, Your servant has been keeping his father's sheep. When a lion or a bear came and carried off his 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 delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine. Saul said to David, Go, and the Lord be with you. Then Saul dressed David in his own tunic.

He put a coat of armor on him and a bronze helmet on his head. David fastened on his sword over the tunic and tried walking around because he was not used to them. I cannot go in these, he said to Saul, because I'm not used to them.

So he took them off. Then he took his staff in his hand, chose five smooth stones from the stream, put them in the pouch of his shepherd's bag, and with his sling in his hand approached the Philistine. Meanwhile, the Philistine with his shield-bearer in front of him kept coming closer to David.

He looked David over and saw that he was only a boy, ruddy and handsome, and he despised him. He said to David, Am I a dog, that you come at me with sticks? And the Philistine cursed David by his gods. Come here, he said, and I'll give your flesh to the birds of the air and the beasts of the field.

David said to the Philistine, You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the Lord will hand you over to me, and I'll strike you down and cut off your head. Today I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth, and the whole world will know that there's a God in Israel.

All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the Lord saves, for the battle is the Lord's, and he will give all of you into our hands. As the Philistines moved closer to attack him, David ran quickly towards a battle line to meet him. Reaching into his bag and taking out a stone, he slung it and struck the Philistine on the forehead.

The stone sank into his forehead, and he fell face down on the ground. 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.

David ran and stood over him. He took hold of the Philistine's sword and drew it from the scabbard, and he killed him. After he killed him, he cut off his head with the sword.

Have your Bibles open at 1 Samuel and chapter 17. Visiting friends might have grasped from our notes and news that we've been working our way through the first part of this remarkable historical book in the Old Testament and drawing lessons from it to help us in our lives as Christian people today. Look at verse 37, will you? The Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine.

There's never a time when one is preaching that within the congregation there isn't one, and perhaps many people who are confronted with particular challenges and difficulties. It might be that you're facing circumstances that are inevitably changing in this next week or this next month. You wish that the relentless turn of the wheel of time might stop, and that life may just sort of freeze as it is at this moment, because the changes in your circumstances and the particular obstacles through which you have to go through and overcome are ones that frighten you.

You see, there's more than one Goliath. There's more than one personification of evil or of challenge that comes across us in our Christian lives that might cause us to cringe, that might cause us to be very full of fear. And so I want to try to address this particular problem this morning, the problem of fear, the problem of looking into the future and being absolutely horrified at what might be there and wanting, as I say, to freeze at this moment and to have nothing more than life as it now is, because here you can cope, but tomorrow, next week, next year, you can't.

And it seems to me that one of the ways in which we can deal with this particular challenge that must confront all of us here, at least at some stage, is by drawing our attention to what I have called the logic of David, the logic of David. Now, just a sketch in the scene, and I must do it briefly because this is a generous chapter that's filled with information. Here the Israelites are gathered in the valley of Elah, and over on yonder side are the forces of the Philistines.

Down the mountain, to the valley, each day has come Goliath, the champion, the overgrown soldier of the Philistines, and for that number of days he has struck fear into the hearts of the Israelites, as he has cried out, verse 10, this day I defy the ranks of Israel, give me a man, and let us fight each other. And as soon as the Hebrews heard those words, they just cringed. Courageous men broke out in a sweat.

The adrenaline went into the blood, and hearts were quickened, but there wasn't one son of Israel that was prepared to take on the challenge of this huge Philistine. And you remember how young David, who's been looking after his father's sheep, he comes on the scene, not sheerly out of curiosity, as he was somewhat cruelly criticized as doing, but rather to bring some food for his brothers. And he sums up what is happening, as he goes from his brothers to some men who are more prepared to give him information.

And David, in what seems to be, though I don't think it really is, the brashness of a youngster says, well, you know, there's really no problem. I mean, if you want someone to fight him, well, here I am. And his brothers, they then froze.

I talked about freezing in your circumstances, as they froze. This young whippersnapper of a shepherd lad, who they were very glad to be without, or whose company they were very glad to be without, he's now embarrassing all the sons of Jesse. And what's more, he speaks in such a loud voice, that the word of his volunteering to tackle Goliath has actually reached Saul.

And as events just accelerated, and the brothers could do nothing about it, they had the spectacle of young David being brought in front of the king. And the king is somewhat alarmed at the size and the stature of the lad, compared with the giant Philistine. And so he remonstrates, verse 32, 33, you are not able to go out against this Philistine and fight him.

You are only a boy. And he has been fighting men. He has been a fighting man from his youth.

But then David engages in what I call his logic. And it's well summarized in that 37th verse, the Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine. Now, my friend, it's not my concern merely to engage in a historical excursion into 1 Samuel 17.

You see, as I've said before, these battles in the Old Testament, they illustrate in a very graphic fashion the sort of problem that confronts you today as a Christian. You see, Jesus calls us to be soldiers, and this is no phony war. There are great difficulties that burst in upon the Christian that he has to cope with.

There are many Goliaths, many challengers, many things that might cause a Christian to cower in fear. It may be a change of circumstances. It may be a bereavement.

It may be an emotional complexity that's dawned in your life. It may be some decision that you have to make, and you're so afraid. So how do you go about it? How do you fell the Goliath that confronts you? Well, if you're wise, you will engage the logic of David to your advantage.

What does he do? Well, with this challenging situation in front of him, I argue this. He recalls the past. He recalls the past.

His soul, you see, and rightly he's saying, you're just a stripling, and look at that huge fellow out there. How can you cope with that? And so David gives him just a little cameo, a little picture of what he has been about in his life before this event. Now David's not a boastful man.

There are certain things here that only God has seen prior to him being forced into public testimony, but they have to be shared. The point has come now when David is going to boast, but the boasting of David is centered very much in the character of God, and within his rehearsing of testimony of past experience, he's also quick to say to Saul, I'm really no one. Your servant has been keeping his father's sheep.

I'm just like, well, Moses was, a shepherd in the backwoods of Bethlehem, on the undulating slopes of Bethlehem. I don't even own the flock. They're my father's.

I'm not really very much. I'm just your servant, Saul, but let me tell you this, for starters. I've been tested before.

I've been tested before. You see, the shepherd's life was a very rough life. The romance of the shepherd, as you see it depicted sometimes in pictures, is really completely untrue.

You need to study the story of Jacob to understand the extremes that a shepherd had to cope with, the intense cold of the Palestinian night, the heat of midday. I've had difficulties before. I remember a lion breaking in to my flock, coming within their vicinity, and this lion, he'd got a little sheep, and the sheep was almost as a dead animal in his jaws.

But I went, Saul, I went to the king of the jungle, and I prized open his jaws, and I took out the little lamb. You see, I've been tested before, and not only does David supply this information as he runs through his logic, my testing has known variations. You see, Saul, it wasn't just a lion, it was a bear as well.

Now, the way that a bear attacks is different from the way that a lion attacks. This particular problem that David has to cope with as a shepherd looking after his sheep, well, it needed great flexibility on his part in being able to cope with guaranteeing the security of the sheep that weren't his because he was doing it, as I say, for his father. So the bear came, the big ambling bear who would have squeezed the life out of one of my charge, and I got him, and I smote him, and I killed him.

And what's more, Saul, I was entirely on my own. You see, David has been forced into solitude. It's one of the perks, if you like to be lonely, if you like privacy, of the shepherd's office.

Actually, his brothers were rather glad to be rid of him, like Joseph. David didn't come high in the popularity charts, and so they're out in the slopes around Bethlehem, a rather beautiful part of the country. David had many hours on his own.

And as I was trying to tell you last week in the Academy of Nature, David was to learn lessons that theologians would marvel at, as under the bejeweled stars he'd think of the goodness and the grandeur of his God, as in the loneliness he'd take out his harp and he'd pluck melodies to the Lord and have a celebration all on his own. I was there on my own. There's no one else to help, no one else to see, only those dumb, bleating sheep.

But Saul, this is what happened when the bear came, when the lion came. I was able to resist on behalf of my sheep their murderous intentions. You see, David's running through his logic.

He's been tested before, and the testings had various permutations, and he was utterly on his own. And what's more, he'd got no sophisticated weaponry. You see, a shepherd isn't very well kitted out.

He's not in the employ of Saul. He doesn't have armor. He doesn't have anything that the soldiers there in the Valley of Elah, both Philistines and Hebrews had.

I'm just an ordinary shepherd, David, says to Saul. Oh, yes, I've got a club, a piece of wood, and I've got my rod. I've got nothing else.

Oh, and there's the sling. Just three crude implements, but David, plus faith in God with these three, is able to resist the terrorizing of the ferocious animals as they would do to death his sheep. Now, Saul, if when I went out on my own, armed only with these crude instruments, the Lord delivered me then from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear, won't he help me now? I'm not into big game hunting, although I've been in many an area where wild animals roam in both India and Africa and other parts of the world.

I've always had a sort of contempt, actually, for the old British person, nobility, who went out to some of the parks in India and shot himself an elephant and rhino or what have you, you know, and came back adorned with the head of the thing and stuck it on his dining hall wall. Trophies of spoil, big man. Of course, he was able to fell the elephant.

He got a gun to do it. But though I despise that sort of thing because that's for me. I'm on the side of the animals.

That's why you'll not get me into a zoo, either behind bars or even looking at the things. I'd let them out. Here is David, and he's got his trophies, the bear and the lion.

Not that he's stuffed them. He doesn't have to. He's got in his mind the illustrations of God's faithfulness to him in the past.

And it's these trophies of victory, don't you see, my friend? Get eyes this morning and read these scriptures so that they live for you in the 20th century, don't you see? It's the trophies of yesteryear that cause a man in the present to be able to size up to the difficulties that are confronting him here and now. When David was little in Israel, when he was an obscure lad there on the slopes of Bethlehem, that great God and father of the sheep. It's logic.

You see, he's a brilliant young fellow, is David. Having recalled the past, he can now square up to the present. The Lord, who delivered me from the poor of the lion and the poor of the bear, will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine.

You see, the logic is flawless. David's theology is applied. Quite frankly, I have no time for theoretical theology.

Although they pushed a certain amount of information in my mind when I was studying years ago in London. I tell you anything that's philosophical and speculative, I've no time for this stuff. My life is too full.

I want something that's practical. I want something that's going to help me in the warp and woof of my life from Monday through to Saturday, as well as on a Sunday when I find it much easier to be holy because I'm with you lot. You see, theology has got to be applied.

The lessons learned in Bethlehem on the slopes where only the sheep are there. When God can tutor by His Spirit the willing heart, those are the lessons of which the staff of life really consists. That bring into your personality the ability to cope with horrific situations when they appear in the present or in the future.

His love in times past, this is how the Puritans put it. You see, this is nothing new that I'm teaching you this morning. The Puritans, they latched onto it.

His love in times past forbids me to think. He'd leave me at last in trouble to think. You see, He was there in the past.

He's going to be here in the present because the problems of the past have a relationship that's quite extraordinary with the present. There's a common denominator. You see, what David is facing with Goliath is only a sort of blown up problem that he's faced before, and David in his applied theology knows that the God who could help him with the lion and the bear can certainly help him with this overgrown Philistine.

Now, isn't that the same with you and me, my brother and sister? I speak to my older friends. What is the most hideous problem for an old person outside of bereavement? It's old age, isn't it? I've been here long enough to empathize. What's going to happen to me? You know, am I going to get geriatric and senile? Who's going to look after me? And sometimes you just want to freeze.

That's why I use that expression. I know the Americans use it in this context, but I think it's a legitimate use of the word. You'd like to freeze with what you are because you can cope with what you are, but wasn't it there yesteryear during the First World War and the Second World War when you faced a myriad of problems and wondered how you'd ever get out of them? Some of our older men, you remember some of the battles that you had to fight physically, and you wondered how you'd cope, and some with unemployment, and you wondered just where the next shilling would come from so that you could buy a couple of loaves and feed your family.

Did it let you down? Now, if you've got the successes of the past, the lion and the bear, the trophies there hung up on the wall of your mind, shouldn't it, if you apply the logic of David, help you to cope with the challenge of the present? Because both the problems, you see, are interrelated. Now I can demonstrate this historically from this book. You see, here is the army of Israel.

If you like, here is the flock of God. They're paralyzed with fear as David's flock was paralyzed with fear when he was looking after them on the slopes of Bethlehem. These ferocious animals were causing those timid little things to shake around, shake all over, and you've got timid little things on the slopes of the valley of Elah that are afraid because there's Goliath and somebody's got to come to put courage into the hearts of God's human sheep.

It's exactly the same situation. There's a common denominator. The flock needed to be looked after.

And as a good shepherd looks after his sheep, the one of whose David's life speaks so eloquently, so David is called physically to act on the part of God as a shepherd for these poor soldier sheep in the valley. What did David cope with in Bethlehem? Well, brutes. I mean, the bear, the originator of the charismatic hug, who wants to squeeze the living daylights out of you.

He's a brute. He's ferocious. So is the lion.

God's not with the bear. God was with David. God's not with the lion.

God is with David. Now, what's the difference between Goliath and those animals? In one sense, there's no difference at all because Goliath, by his own testimony, has nothing to do with the God of Israel. He's without hope.

He's without God in the world. In other words, he's like a brute beast. Not so? May not compliment contemporary men and women who are not Christians to appreciate this, but that's basically what the Bible says.

So David is coping with another brute. God wasn't with the bear. God wasn't with the lion.

God wasn't with Goliath. God was with David. You see, he squares up to the present, and he does so in such a wonderful way.

Now, I could imagine David objecting if he was made of lesser stuff. Lord, it was all right. I'm called to be a shepherd.

Now, I didn't exactly take my O levels in it, but I'm a natural shepherd. But I'm not a soldier. You see, I can perform very well in Bethlehem, but I can't perform very well in public here in Elah.

Now, don't you sometimes say that? Lord, I could perform in Verdicum as well as a mother. As a child came out of my body and as I nursed it, I could do that, Lord. I'm a natural mother or father or doctor or teacher.

But Lord, don't sort of move the chips around and push me into another category, because there I can't. There I can't cope, you see. I can cope as a young man, but not as an old man.

I can cope as a rich man, but not as a poor man. I can cope as a healthy man, but not as an unhealthy man. But don't you see that basically, it's not that David's a shepherd or a soldier.

The thing that's really important is that he's a servant of God, and that's a common denominator to being a soldier or a shepherd. You're no more a Christian now than you were when you were 18, assuming that you made your life, your life's commitment to Christ then. That the common denominator through all the changing scenes of life is the fact that you belong to Him, and He doesn't change.

He's not in the changing business. There's certain things that God can't do, and one is He can't change. That's how you see David, bless his heart.

He doesn't use this sort of twist in logic that we sometimes use. I can function then, but I can't function now, for David then and now have got such a common denominator that he's perfectly at home in Elah as he was on the slopes of Bethlehem. And he wasn't put off by people.

Do you ever get that? Remember my English grammar teacher suggesting my English, no I'm sorry, my science master at school, he's my form master, suggesting I ought to leave school early, because I wasn't doing very well. He was quite right, I wasn't doing very well. In my experience of education, it's like that quip by Bernard Shaw, it was interrupted by my school days.

Used to be threatened. Had a brother who was a wizard, never forgave him for being so clever. And sometimes when people come alongside you and they say, well you know, you can't really cope.

I mean that's what Eliab was saying, wasn't it? The oldest brother. Why don't you get back? One day I'll be able to read these numbers. 28 is it? When Eliab, David's oldest brother, heard him speaking with the men, he burned with anger at him and asked, why have you come down here? And with whom did you leave those few sheep in the desert? I know how conceited you are.

Oh sometimes the brothers unfortunately give advice and intimations that are not really very helpful at all. But when David squares up to the present situation, he spurns the advice of his brothers, because he realizes that God is in this, and that he alone of all the Israelite army is destined by God to fell that overgrown Philistine and have his head off. Squares up to the present, as you and I must do.

And what's more, David speaks loud into the future. He speaks loud into the future. We're told, aren't we, that actions speak louder than words.

Now Jesus was not just a word processor. Jesus, he spoke, but he illustrated what he spoke, wasn't he? Didn't he? In fact, the words of Jesus would not be credible if he did not illustrate his message in the life that he lived. It's that that adds credibility.

See, Jesus is the word of God incarnate. That means the word of God fleshed out. Jesus not only preached the gospel, he was the gospel.

Now here is David, and he's speaking prophetically into the future. He's speaking to the likes of you and me, if we are prepared to stop and listen to what he has to say at this particular juncture in his life. And what is he speaking? What is he saying to us? Well, he's saying to us, recognize the challenge that confronts you in terms of the reality of what it really is.

You say, what do you mean? Well, look at Saul. Look at Goliath. You see, he comes down the mountain, verse 10, and he says, this day I defy the ranks of Israel.

Give me a man and let us fight each other. He's defying Israel. When David evaluates just what the situation is as he comes to Goliath, he doesn't mention Israel at all.

He speaks of the God that there is. Well, he mentions Israel as qualifying him as the God of Israel, but he's concerned to show that it really is a contest between the forces of evil and the forces of righteousness. This day the Lord will hand you over to me, and I'll strike you down and cut off your head.

Today I will give the carcasses of this Philistine army to the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth, and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel. David recognized that the challenge that confronted him was not just a military one, it was a spiritual one. And in coping with the challenge, he'll speak this word to us, never swap your tested weapons.

Never swap your tested weapons. I mean, here is Saul. I think that for pure cheek, in the Old Testament, Saul should get the prize.

You see, I mean, here is this stripling, according to Saul, that's how he measures David, this stripling of a lad, and he's prepared to go and fight Goliath. And he's used a little bit of logic, and he's told Saul how he smote a lion and a bear, and David moves towards Goliath, and he said, hey, before you go, take my armor, it'll help you. Well, I mean, if that wretched armor was going to help him that much, why wasn't Saul down the valley cutting off the head of Goliath himself? See, there's very little logic in Saul.

And when David puts it on, it was almost like a sort of Christmas charade. It just doesn't fit him. These are not tested things.

And so David gets rid of this military hardware, and he takes his trusted sling, and he moves down towards the valley. Now, my friend, it's those things that you've proven in times gone by, the armor of prayer, the armor of Bible reading, the armor of your faith in God, the armor that I was trying to speak to you on at such great length some two years or some one year or so ago, it's that that we are to wear. And David speaks into the future, and he tells us about this.

See the challenge for what it really is. Never swap your tested weapons. Retain confidence in the arm of the Lord.

You see, this is what David is saying. He's got God on his side. You come to me with all your spear and your javelin and all your equipment, but I come to you in the name of the Lord Almighty.

The hand of God will deliver you into my hand. The arm of God is never pulsed. It's never withered.

God is always able to direct His hand towards you and towards me. This is what David believes, and he's speaking this out to people today by the power of the Spirit that makes the word of God contemporary. He's speaking it into your situation.

Don't trust in sort of ingenious plans, in your own way of trying to cope with the present and with the future, a sort of fleshly carnal approach. Take this to the Lord and use those weapons which you've proven before, the weapon of prayer, the weapon of waiting upon the Lord. Realize that the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds.

And so, David goes down into the valley of Elah, and he fells Goliath with a stone that goes at the velocity of a bullet right through the forehead of the overgrown Philistine. And David, in a bloody spectacle, takes the head from the giant and brings it back into the Israel camp and shows that the power of God has been displayed as he who stands for the tyranny of Satan has been felled. Now give me two more minutes.

You see, this David bespeaks a greater David. All the victories of David are heightened to the pinnacle in the life of Jesus. You see, it's he that I see in David so much.

There's an empathy, there's a common denominator between the two. Forty days, Goliath has come and he's challenged and brought fear into the heart of those men. He's reduced them to quivering sheep.

Forty days, our blessed Savior was in the wilderness. At the end of those forty days, he has a head-on attack from the devil. And that relatively minor skirmish in which he was supremely successful, it buoyed him up, it lifted his spirits, it increased his faith until when he climbs the hill called Calvary, he then grapples with the Goliath of sin and in his own body he takes all the evil filth and the judgment of mankind upon himself.

This plunder that the devil was bringing before God and demanding the souls of every son of Adam, Jesus took it on himself and he felled with his righteousness the power of the evil one and he hoists up high, if you like, the bloody spectacle of Goliath's head as he shows his authority over every principality and power and puts fresh heart into the lives of all those who confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father, as David put heart and life to all the soldiers of Israel so that they routed the remainder of the Philistines. You see, this is the logic of David. God who was faithful toward me in the lesser will be equally faithful to me in the greater.

What I learn in the past as I recall it buoys up my confidence and enables me to square up to the present and as I square up to the present I speak the prophetic word into the future, this God who was with me then will be with me throughout all my days. So David can say, surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I, shepherd lad from Bethlehem, will ultimately dwell in the house of the Lord forever. My friend, in the name of God, seize hold of David's logic and apply it to yourself.

It's the logic by which King Jesus lived. Amen. Let's sing that song again, shall we? For this purpose Christ was revealed.

110 if you're not looking at the overheads. One more song. Stay with Evelyn for this.

For we see Jesus enthroned on high. 114. Clothed in his righteousness we worship him.

Glory and honor we give unto you. We see you in your holiness and bow before your throne. You are the Lord.

Your name endures forever. Jesus, the name high over the world. The melody, you'll soon pick it up.

And Father, with that thought in our minds, send us out to our valley, out to tomorrow, to next week, to next month, to next year, applying ever and always the logic of David. And help us in the strength of one who is even greater than that remarkable King of Israel. Even the strength that comes from our Lord Jesus to conquer and to conquest, to slay all our enemies, and ultimately to be gathered into the Father's house without fear, but knowing your peace all the way through.

Bless these dear friends in their myriad of circumstances and send each one out, young and old, rich and poor, educated and not so educated. Send them out, Lord, with your blessing upon them. For Jesus' sake, Amen.