“Your Servant Will Go” | Rt. Rev. Peter Buss, Jr.

(1 Samuel 17:33) We focus this week on two major battles where heroes step forward to fight. These are David who willingly took on Goliath, and Michael who fought against the dragon. There can be great strength and blessing in our efforts to live our faith. Can we have the courage and the trust to step forward, knowing that the Lord will be with us in all of our efforts to put our beliefs into action?

Readings: 1 Samuel 17 31-37; Charity 166; Revelation 12:7-10, 13-14; True Christian Religion 389:3 

Minister: Rt. Rev. Peter Buss, Jr.

Delivered June 14th, 2026 at the Bryn Athyn Cathedral in Bryn Athyn, PA. 

The Bryn Athyn Church is a congregation of the General Church of the New Jerusalem, located in Bryn Athyn, PA. We are committed to helping each other draw closer to the Lord God Jesus Christ through lives of love and useful service, guided by the Old and New Testaments and the Heavenly Doctrine for the New Church (contained in the theological works of Emanuel Swedenborg). Please join us for worship on Sunday mornings; services and times can be found at brynathynchurch.org.

Transcript

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We focus today on two major battles where heroes step forward to fight. This is Michael who fought against a seven-headed dragon, and David who stepped forward to take on Goliath. And our theme is on courageously living our faith or putting our beliefs into practice, even when it's challenging. Hear now the word of the Lord, first from Revelation chapter 12. And war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought with the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought, but they did not prevail, nor was the place found for them in heaven any longer. So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world. He was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. Then I heard a loud voice saying, In heaven now, salvation and strength, and the kingdom of our God and the power of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren who accused them from the day before, both day and night, has been cast down. And then a portion of the story of David against Goliath, focusing on David stepping forward. Now when the words of David, which he spoke, were heard, they were reported to Saul, and he sent for him. Then David said to Saul, Let no man's heart fail because of him, your servant will fight it with this Philistine. And Saul said to David, You are not able to go against this Philistine to fight for him, for you are a youth, and he is a man of war from his youth. But David said to Saul, Your servant used to keep his father's sheep, and when a lion or a bear came and took a lamb out of the flock, I went after it and struck it and delivered the lamb from its mouth. And when it rose against me I caught it by the beard and struck and killed it. Your servant has killed both lion and bear, and this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, seeing he has defied the armies of the living God. Moreover, David said, The Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear, he will deliver me from this Philistine. And Saul said to David, Go and the Lord be with you. Reading further from the heavenly doctrines, first concerning charity in the common soldier. If he looks to the Lord and shuns evils as sins, and sincerely, justly, and faithfully does his duty, he becomes charity in form. Before the battle, he raises his mind to the Lord and commits his life into his hands. And after he has done this, he lets his mind down from its elevation into the body and becomes brave. The thought of the Lord, which he is then unconscious of, remaining still in his mind above his bravery. And then if he dies, he dies in the Lord. And if he lives, he lives in the Lord. And finally, one sentence from the true Christian religion. In faith alone there is no action or work, and yet religion consists in living. Here end our lessons. Blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it. Amen. Today we're introduced to two battles in the Lord's word. Battles that have become synonymous with good versus evil, where evil seems so powerful as to be the one that would win, and yet, against all the odds, the good wins. This is David fighting against Goliath, and this is Michael fighting against a seven-headed dragon. Now we're going to get into what that story is all about, those two fights, and they're like us fighting for what is most important about the faith of the new church, which is that we need to stand up and raise our hands and do what we can with the Lord's help to put our faith into practice, to live the way the Lord wants us to live, to try and be the people that the Lord is leading us to be, even when it's hard, even when it takes courage. Now I'm going to be focusing a lot on the story of Michael and the dragon and the beautiful symbolism that comes there. But from the story of David and Goliath, I want to focus on five stones or five truths that are going to be unfolded in our message today, which are encouragements to us, which are things that maybe we can remember to be brave like David was or like Michael was. And the first is the thing that David said when he went to Saul, having seen the challenge of this Philistine, Goliath, this giant that nobody else wanted to take on. He said, Let no man's heart fear because of him. Your servants will go and fight against this Philistine. So the first rock says, Your servants will go. Words that you and I should say often. And then we heard Saul challenging David. And I could almost say that it's like one of those seven heads of the dragon later, or like Goliath, who taunts David almost to think that he can't do it. He is a man of war from his youth, and you are a youth. And we hear these beautiful words of trust that David issues forth. The Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear, he will deliver me from this Philistine. And so there's this rock of trust, of deep confidence that the Lord can help us. That's the second truth. And the third one is from the faith of the new church that just says, in one sense, a reading that we said before, which is very simply put, religion consists in doing. And we'll come back to that when we talk about the dragon or the enemy. And there's a third thing or fourth thing that David said, which is in response to David's call to not be uh to be faithful to the Lord, Saul said actually, go and the Lord be with you. That's another message. And the final one is just the fact that there's a common soldier who we read about in the readings, who raises his minds before the battle and becomes brave from the Lord. And it says at the end of that, if I die, I die in the Lord. If I live, I live in the Lord. So let's see how that sayings, those sayings come up in the story of Michael fighting against the dragon. In this typical way that the book of Revelation unfolds, we're introduced into the magical world of symbolism, where there's things that don't normally happen in daily life that are before our eyes. Here's a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and twelve garlands of stars around her head. And she is about to give birth to a child, and yet she's going to be attacked, and so she's given wings of an eagle to carry her away, to help her fly away from that persecutor. And who is that persecutor? It's a seven-headed dragon with ten horns and seven crowns on its head, who takes with his tail a third of the stars of heaven and crashes them to the earth. But this is a war story, and so along comes Michael and a host of angels to fight against that dragon, and they win, and that dragon is vanquished, and there is no place for it anymore against that woman or against in heaven. So, what is this story really all about? This story is about Michael and about David stepping forward with bravery and courage to do the things that the Lord called them to do. Now we heard about David saying, Your servant will go and fight. And we didn't hear exactly what was said to Michael when he was up in heaven being asked by the Lord to see if he might go and fight against this dragon. And actually, the faith of the new church says that Michael represents all people who want to live their faith in the ways that we're called to live, all angels. But imagine for a moment that you or Michael up in heaven, and you hear of this opportunity to go fight against a dragon. And you say, like David had said, your servant will go and fight. Alright, so now we've got this idea about us being willing, about the good side of us being courageous, about the trust in the Lord that might be able to help us. But what about that dragon? What about that enemy? Pictured as this thing that's almost too big to conquer. That dragon is said to us to represent faith alone, which is a construct that tries to get us to do anything it can to not step forward, to not do what the Lord wants us to do, to make excuses and do the opposite. And I love the way that we can think about that seven-headed dragon sort of weaving around with those heads, whispering into the ears of people like us, trying to get us to be weak. And what might they say? It doesn't matter. You're not strong enough. You've given up in the past and you'll do it again. This person deserves that. Or you deserve what you long for. Or even if we think about the Lord, he's a God of love. He's gonna forgive you no matter what. So you can go ahead and all will be well. Can you see those things about faith alone, that idea of this dragon whispering in all kinds of different ways, like the hell's bubbling into our minds and into our hearts to try to have us be the bad people, the people that the Lord is trying to get rid of us being and helping us to be like Michael or like David. So what tools do we have at our disposal? We have, the Lord says, angels around us all the time who whisper other thoughts into our minds and strengthen us in everything that is good and true. We have reminders from the Lord in our conscience that help us to know when we're about to do something that the Lord would frown upon that might make us feel guilty later on. And we have reminders from the Lord in our memories and from the voices of other people who encourage us of times that we have been able to do the right thing and how life worked out as a result. Relationships flourished. We felt like we were on the Lord's team. And it comes back to these rocks. I have some rocks that I have out here that I want to give you as an opportunity for you to take home as a reminder of some of these sayings that we've been focusing on. I actually tried to order some that had the word courage on them, but they didn't come in time, so that's okay. You have some other rocks that are smooth, like the rocks that David might have found to pick up against Goliath. And the first one is your servant will go and fight. Can we remember that we can be like Michael and like David in this story? The Lord can give us that energy to raise our hands and to do whatever it is that He's asking us to do, even if it's hard. Can we remember that we're called to be soldiers who raise our minds to the Lord, who pray to the Lord, who try to draw on the Lord's trust and strength, and bring back down that courage to say, if I die, I die in the Lord. If I live, I live in the Lord, no matter what, I'm gonna try and do what the Lord asks. The third one, can we remember that the faith of the new church is all about living our faith? Religion consists in doing. So what are we gonna do to step forward? Or can we have this time where we remember the strength of the Lord and we trust in him, the Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear, he will deliver me against this Philistine. And finally, there's that courage and encouragement from an unlikely messenger, which is Saul. Go and the Lord be with you. New church day is upon us. The faith of the new church calls us to step forward and live our faith in ways that bring blessing. These two stories are there to encourage us that with the Lord's help, all things are possible. No matter what the enemy, we can be those who raise our hands and say, Your servant will fight, and we can hear from the Lord and his angels. Go and the Lord be with you. Amen.