Rev. Jared Buss
Pittsburgh New Church; January 19, 2025
Readings: 1 Sam. 17:38-50 (children’s talk); Matt. 7:24, 25; John 4:10-14; Secrets of Heaven §4884.2
Today’s sermon is about the tools we’re meant to use against the Goliaths that we meet within ourselves. When David went out to fight Goliath, “he chose for himself five smooth stones from the brook” (1 Sam. 17:40). These smooth stones symbolize powerful spiritual tools, and they’re tools that are within our reach.
A good portion of last week’s sermon was about the spiritual quality, or state of mind, that Goliath symbolizes. In brief, he symbolizes pride. Specifically, he symbolizes conceit in our own intelligence (Faith §52)—that is, the belief that what we see for ourselves is the truth, and that we don’t need to be taught by God in order to understand how things really are. Our pride, like Goliath, poses as the mightiest of warriors, equipped with all the best weapons, the best arguments. But pride doesn’t actually make us happy. This idea that we don’t need the Lord doesn’t make us happy. But how to get rid of it? Even if there’s a part of us that wants to learn humility, pride is a giant that doesn’t want to be pushed around. If we’re going to confront the spirit of pride, we need smooth stones.
Of course, pride isn’t the only demon that people encounter. It isn’t the only thing that can cast a long shadow over our minds. Other spirits, like apathy and despair and anger, can be just as menacing as Goliath. The Word only mentions smooth stones in context of David’s battle with Goliath, which symbolizes a battle against conceit in our own intelligence. But let’s look more closely at what these smooth stones stand for. It’s probably fair to say that these are the tools we need no matter what kind of giant we’re facing.
To put it very simply, smooth stones symbolize truths. Throughout the Word, rocks of any kind symbolize truth. The stones that David used were taken from a brook. They were stones that had been worn smooth by tumbling in running water for ages. And throughout the Word, waters also symbolize truths. So there you go: to fight giants you need truth.
But there has to be more to it than that. Because everyone knows true things, and we still struggle with spiritual giants. It’s clear that learning as much truth as possible—reading as many books as possible—isn’t the answer. It might help, but it isn’t the answer. Sometimes when we hear that we’re supposed to “use the truth” against our spiritual enemies, we visualize ourselves taking a random teaching out of a book and throwing it into the dark. Clearly that’s not effective.
The truths that are effective against giants are truths that have been worn smooth over time. They’re truths that have been tumbled in the water of life for a long time. In other words, they’re truths that we’ve tested, truths we’ve wrestled with, and truths that we’ve used again and again.
We’re going to turn, now, to a series of passages from the Word that shed light on the specific kinds of truth that stones and waters symbolize. The first is a familiar passage from Matthew about building on the rock [read 7:24, 25].
In the teachings of the New Church we’re told that the rock upon which the wise man built his house symbolizes Divine truth from the Word (AE §411.11; cf. AR §409; AE §644.24). The teachings specifically say that stones represent the lowest level of Divine truth, which is the letter of the Word, because the letter of the Word is the foundation upon which higher things rest (SH §§8609, 9025, 10376; AR §231). The truths written in this book are what they are—they’re like a rock, in that they don’t change.
But note how the reading connects building on the rock with hearing the Lord’s teachings and doing them (v. 24). The Word doesn’t become a rock in our lives until we act on it—until we obey it and do it. Ideas that we know but never put to use have a vague and airy quality. Whereas actions are concrete: actions are the building blocks of anything that ever becomes real. So when the Word speaks of stones, we’re meant to think of truths that come all the way down to earth, as it were: the truths that are written in the Word that we obey as we’re meant to obey them.
Water also represents truth, but the quality of water is very different from that of stone. Water—and running water in particular—is notable for its energy and its adaptability. Water seems much more alive than stone. And of course, we need water to keep our bodies alive. So it isn’t surprising that in the Word, the Lord frequently talks about living waters. Here’s a portion of a conversation that the Lord had with a Samaritan after He had asked this woman to give Him a drink from a well: [read John 4:10-14].
In this passage, the Lord makes it pretty clear that the water of life is something internal. The thirst that it quenches is not physical thirst. The water of life gives life to the spirit. The teachings of the New Church say in many places that water symbolizes the truths of faith (e.g. SH §§2072, 3058). Truths of faith are truths that flow from an internal sight of the Lord and of the spiritual life that He wants us to lead. These are truths that have some amount of life from the Lord in them. They’re higher and more alive than the kinds of truths that rocks symbolize.
Smooth stones from the brook are stones that have been worn smooth by running, living waters. So they’re concrete, actionable teachings from the Word—but teachings that we’ve exposed to that stream of spiritual thought again and again. To put it simply, these are truths that we’ve really tried to understand—truths that we’ve worn smooth by constantly handling them, constantly turning them over. But they aren’t truths that we ponder simply because pondering them makes us feel smart. They’re truths that we work with and wrestle with because we want to understand how to use them. Because they matter to us.
A lot of the time, these smooth stone truths are surprisingly simple. In the David and Goliath story, David repeatedly voices a truth that serves him as a smooth stone truth:
The Lord… will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine. (1 Sam. 17:37)
You come to me with a sword, with a spear, and with a javelin. But I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the Lord will deliver you into my hand…. (vv. 45, 46)
The Lord is stronger than our enemies. With the Lord, we can overcome. This idea all by itself is simple—even simplistic. And if this idea is untested—if it’s one that we’ve never used before, if we simply snatch it off the shelf and wave it in Goliath’s face—it’s going to feel hollow. This truth is worn smooth when we carry it into action. When we try to apply it to real-life situations. When we face real things that trouble us, and we tell the Lord that we want to believe that He can keep us safe. When we ask Him how it is that He can deliver us from our enemies, when our enemies are so big? When we ask Him again and again, and search for His answer, and live our lives like we want to trust in the Lord—that’s when this stone is worn smooth. That’s when the truth that the Lord is strong becomes a truth that we can hold with confidence—enough confidence to look a giant in the eye and say “I come to you in the name of the Lord.”
The teachings of the New Church have a lot to say about the difference between truth that we merely know and truth that we live; our final reading for today is one of the passages that discusses this difference. This passage talks about the “truth of intelligence,” and to understand this phrase we need to understand that “intelligence,” in this context, doesn’t mean book smarts: it means the ability to understand spiritual things. So the truth of intelligence is spiritual truth that we really see and understand. Here is the reading: [SH §4884.2].
Truth that we know, but have no desire to act on, has no part with us. It’s like a bit of straw that is stuck to us, and liable to be blown away in the wind. When we will a truth—that is, when we want to obey it, when we want it to be our reality—that truth stands at the threshold of our life. And when we will the truth and do it, it becomes part of us. It fills our minds, it fills our actions: it fills all of us. And, according to that reading, when we do the truth frequently, it returns to us not merely out of habit, but from affection and thus from freedom.
Whenever we begin to do something that the Word says to do, we do it because know we’re supposed to. For example, we go through the motions of forgiving those who have trespassed against us because we know we’re supposed to. We try to do our jobs honestly and faithfully because we know we’re supposed to. Over time, if we stick with them, those actions become habits. And then they become more than habits. We develop an affection for those actions, and because of that affection, we feel free when we do them. We feel free when we obey the teachings of the Word—when we forgive, when we serve honestly and faithfully. And with that freedom comes power and vitality and confidence—enough confidence to defy a giant. That’s the point at which a teaching from the Word has become a smooth stone.
So a smooth stone is more than just an idea that we’ve spent time pondering. It isn’t a hobby-horse that we like to trot out, or an idea that we like to argue about because we think we understand it so well. Nor is it an idea that we’ve always believed, and have never questioned and never tested. A smooth stone is a truth that we have tumbled in the water of life for a long time. It’s a truth we’ve wrestled with, a truth we’ve gone back to, a truth that we keep on reaching for because we want it to be part of our lives.
Here are some examples of ideas that could become smooth stones. I’m going to present these ideas as questions, because that’s the form that they tend to take while we’re “tumbling” them:
· Am I in charge, or is God?
· Is obedience to God more important to me than my short-term happiness?
· Am I fundamentally alone, or am I part of something far greater than myself?
· Am I self-sufficient, or do I need the mercy of a Divine being?
Of course, these questions don’t become smooth stones until we’ve answered them—until we’ve pushed through the veil of doubt to the truth that lies behind it. Then we have a truth that’s ready for battle, because it’s been tested. It’s been worn smooth.
So how do we acquire these smooth stones? We have to start by going to the Word. Stones represent truths from the Word, and a brook represents spiritual truth that flows from the Word. This is why it’s important for us to read the Word, and to attend Scripture study classes and so on: knowing more teachings really does help. But knowing what the book says is just the beginning. We need to distil actionable ideas from the teachings of the Word. So the Word says, “Forgive, and you will be forgiven” (Luke 6:37). We know what those words mean, but what are we actually supposed to do with that teaching? We need to put what we understand into action. And then we need to prayerfully take our understanding back to the Lord: are we seeing what He wants us to see? We need to take the doubts that arise when “real life” confronts the truth, and wrestle with them in the presence of the Lord. We need to wear that truth smooth by working with it.
And we need to let it be the Lord’s truth, and not our own. Let it be a truth from His Word. It’s powerful to say, “the Lord is on my side,” but more powerful still to say, “You come to me with a sword, with a spear, and with a javelin. But I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts…” (1 Sam. 17:45).
So which truths from the Word are you willing to work with until they’re worn smooth?
Amen.