[Darris McNeely] In 1 Samuel 13 beginning in verse 20, there was an interesting description of ancient Israel and their battles with the Philistines. Do you remember the Philistines? Goliath of Gath was a giant Philistine, their enemies. It says that the Israelites didn't have swords and instruments of war, and they had to go to the Philistines, in verse 20, "to sharpen their own plows, their spikes, their axes, and their sickles," these huge blunt instruments that would be used in harvesting and in plowing, but were not really instruments of war. This passage goes on to say that really only Saul and his son, Jonathan, had swords. The rest of the people had these blunt instruments because of just the way the economy was at that particular time.

Now, it's interesting to think about this. As I said, the Philistines were the enemies of ancient Israel. I once saw a caption on a story of Samson who had killed a bunch of these Philistines, and the caption said, "How many Philistines have you killed today?" And really, what it was saying was, "How many of our spiritual enemies have we waged battle against and actually defeated and overcome today?" We don't fight against the Philistines today, we have spiritual Philistines and spiritual battles that we have to engage in today. And this story of where all they had were picks and sickles and plowshares, big, heavy, blunt instruments of agriculture to do their fighting is kind of instructive, because sometimes today when we go up against the spiritual Philistine, the problems that we have to deal with of anxiety, of anger, of fear, of depression, the spiritual battles that we fight today, our spiritual Philistines, sometimes we wage that battle with some pretty blunt instruments that in a sense are driven by just our sheer passion.

Remember Samson? He killed many Philistines with a jawbone of an ass out of his zeal for God and for God's way. We wage a battle today for the kingdom of God, against spiritual wickedness and against spiritual powers and these Philistine evils that are ours require a zeal and a passion, and in a sense, whatever we can pick up to throw against it to wage our battle with energy, with the help as we fight for the kingdom of God and for that coming kingdom and wage that battle today.

Something to think about, the zeal, the passion, the energy that we need to kill our Philistines of evil. That's BT Daily, join us next time.