In the Name of the Lord: Run Toward the Giant

Chapman enters 1 Samuel 17 by contrasting Saul and David, and he does it carefully. Saul was not introduced to scripture as a coward. He had stature, leadership, and battlefield history. Chapman points out that Saul had once been the man found doing his father’s work. He was looking for his father’s donkeys when God called him. In other words, Saul was not first recognized by his title, but by his faithfulness to something his father valued. Chapman uses that to warn the men listening that spiritual decline does not begin with open rebellion most of the time. It begins when a man becomes more comfortable with position than with calling.

That is why Saul’s later fear matters so much in the sermon. Chapman says somewhere along the way Saul learned to trust the trappings of the kingdom more than the commands of God. He saw Goliath through the lens of military advantage instead of covenant confidence. The sermon presses that point into the present. Men can sit in church, hold responsibility, carry a title, and still quietly start measuring every challenge by what they think they can handle in the flesh. The more comfort defines the terms, the easier it becomes to forget why God called you in the first place. Chapman is not merely retelling Saul’s failure. He is asking the men whether comfort has begun to shape their own obedience. Source moment: 50:18.

Source moment 50:18

From Saul’s beginning and David’s early life, Chapman pulls a repeated theme: men are seen by God while they are tending what their father loves. David was keeping sheep. Saul was searching for donkeys. Both men were first connected to faithfulness before they were connected to prominence. Chapman uses that parallel to drive a very practical word into the room. If a man wants to go somewhere in God, he must learn to love the things of his Father. That includes the things God loves, but Chapman also applies it through pastoral covering. Love the burden of the house. Love the work of the kingdom. Love what the man of God is trying to build.

The point is not personality worship or institutional loyalty for its own sake. The point is alignment. Chapman insists that men who learn to value the things of God and the burdens of the house will stand out because they can be trusted with more. The sermon will later call men to fight giants, but here he is establishing the training ground for giant killers. The hidden field matters. The work nobody applauds matters. Before a man ever stands in public victory, he has already been formed in quiet responsibility. Chapman pushes the room away from fantasy ministry and back toward ordinary consecration. You do not prepare for a battlefield by craving an audience. You prepare by loving what God already put in front of you. Source moment: 51:57.

Source moment 51:57

Chapman says the difference between Saul and David appears in the cry each man hears when Goliath steps into the valley. Saul’s inner question sounds like this: where is the weapon, where is the man, where is the military answer that can solve this for me? David asks something altogether different: is there not a cause? Chapman lingers there because he knows a cause changes how a man reads his trouble. If the whole issue is self-preservation, then every giant looks too large. If there is a cause bigger than self, courage comes alive because the battle means more than your comfort.

That section of the sermon becomes a direct challenge to men who have lived too long trying to outmanage fear. Chapman says some men watched their fathers hide in tents, watched patterns go unbroken, watched problems circle the same mountain year after year, and now call that normal. He refuses to accept it. The church does not need more men waiting for ideal conditions. It needs men who can recognize that the giant has already spoken long enough. When a cause gets hold of a man, the field stops being optional. Chapman is urging men to let the welfare of their family, the health of their church, and the honor of God’s name outweigh the instinct to stay hidden. Source moment: 1:02:02.

Source moment 1:02:02

One of the sharpest turns in the sermon comes when Chapman talks about proving manhood. He admits his own past foolishness and the stupid things he did trying to prove he was a man. That confession gives weight to the warning that follows. Goliath called for a man to come fight, but Chapman says the giant was not asking for a man full of God. He wanted a man standing in his own power. That is where the trap lies. The enemy knows he cannot defeat the Lord. He wants to draw men into a contest where ego, self-image, and flesh carry the fight.

So Chapman re-centers the room on David’s answer: I come to you in the name of the Lord. This is not a sermon against biblical masculinity. It is a sermon against self-reliant masculinity. Men still need to stand. They still need to face devils in cities, churches, and homes. But Chapman says the stand must be taken with the clear understanding that victory does not come from natural aggression, size, personality, or experience. It comes from the Lord’s name. This exposes one of the sermon’s deepest pastoral concerns. A man can be bold and still be carnal. Chapman wants men bold in God. Source moment: 1:08:29.

Source moment 1:08:29

Late in the message Chapman moves from David’s field to Jesus’ incarnation and makes a striking observation. We often speak of Christ’s miraculous birth, but Chapman says the miracle was in the conception. He uses that truth pastorally. Men spend too much time obsessing over pedigree, background, appearance, and where they came from. Chapman has already spent much of the sermon refusing worldly definitions of manhood. Here he goes deeper. The true issue is what God has conceived in the heart of a man. If heaven has planted purpose in him, then his origin story does not get the final word.

This section helps the sermon avoid becoming merely confrontational. Chapman is not just calling men out of passivity. He is telling them that God is able to begin something holy within them that changes the whole future. That is why he can talk to city men, country men, men from intact homes, and men from broken homes without losing the room. The miracle is not in having the right history. The miracle is that God can put faith, courage, and purpose into a man right where he is and bring something living out of what looked impossible. Source moment: 1:11:08.

Source moment 1:11:08

Chapman says it as plainly as he can: you have got to stop running from your battle. He uses the image of buffalo charging a storm rather than cattle fleeing from it, and the illustration lands because it is earthy and unforgettable. Men can spend themselves trying to outrun what must be faced. They stay busy, angry, distracted, or numb. Yet the storm still catches them because the issue was never speed. The issue was direction. Chapman says if a man is ever going to get free from what stalks his house, he has to turn and face it in God.

The altar application gets direct here. Chapman names family, church, calling, and generational patterns. He asks men to make up their minds that enough is enough. The sermon is not promising instant ease. It is calling for a decisive refusal to keep retreating. Chapman wants men to go home, talk to their pastors, get under instruction, love the things of God, and engage the fight. In his framing, victory is not built on hype. It is built on surrender, responsibility, and motion in the right direction. David ran to the battle. Some of the men in the room need to run toward the thing they have named for too long without confronting. Source moment: 1:14:04.

Source moment 1:14:04

Chapman closes the sermon’s body with a childhood story about a bully and a cousin who joined him in the fight. The point is not violence for its own sake. It is brotherhood. Sometimes a man does not need another man to fight every battle for him. He needs somebody who will stand beside him until courage wakes up again. Chapman uses the story to move the whole room toward mutual ministry. Pray with one another. Get with your pastor. Put a hand on a brother. Agree in faith. Help another man refuse the lie that he is alone.

That is why the altar call carries both confrontation and warmth. Chapman is not trying to send men home as isolated heroes. He is trying to join them to a brotherhood under the Lord’s name. A church full of men who pray for one another can destroy strongholds that an isolated man keeps postponing. The sermon ends with men gathering, praying, and calling on the authority Jesus has given. Chapman’s burden is not merely that men survive their giants. He wants them to become giant killers together, and to carry that courage back into every place that depends on them. Source moment: 1:21:00.

Source moment 1:21:00