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The following message for the moment is delivered by the Reverend Dr. Bruce Wheeler Thielman. Today's sermon is entitled "The Fine Art of Using." Let us continue in worship by giving attention to the reading of the Word of God written, 1 Samuel chapter 21, beginning at the verse numbered 1. "Then came David

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to Nob to Ahimelech the priest. And Ahimelech came to meet David trembling and said to him, 'Why are you alone and no one with you?' And David said to Ahimelech the priest, 'The king has charged me with a matter and said to me, 'Let no one know anything of the matter about which I send you and with which I

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have charged you. I have made an appointment with the young men for such and such a place.' 'Now then, what have you at hand? Give me five loaves of bread or whatever is here.' And the priest answered David, 'I have no common bread at hand, but there is holy bread. If only the young men have kept themselves from

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women.' And David answered the priest, 'Of a truth, women have been kept from us as always when I go on an expedition. The vessels of the young men are holy even when it is a common journey. How much more today will their vessels be holy?' So the priest gave him the holy bread, for there was no bread there but the bread

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of the presence which is removed from before the Lord to be replaced by hot bread on the day it is taken away. Now a certain man of the servants of Saul was there that day, detained before the Lord. His name was Doeg the Edomite, the chief of Saul's herdsmen. And David said to Ahimelech, 'And have you not here a spear

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or a sword at hand? For I have brought neither my sword nor my weapons with me because the king's business required haste.' And the priest said, 'The sword of Goliath the Philistine whom you killed in the valley of Elah, behold it is here, wrapped in a cloth behind the ephod. If you will take that, take it, for there is

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none but that here.' And David said, 'There is none like that. Give it to me.' And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his Word. Pray with me. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen. I would wager, quite safely I believe, that there are a great number of you who

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know the old hymn, 'This is My Father's World. I rest me in the thought of rocks and trees and skies and seas. His hand the wonders wrought.' That hymn has been sung about a thousand times ten thousand Christian campfires. But I wonder if you know that the man who wrote that hymn died by his own hand, a suicide. The

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beauties of nature, the creation of the hymn which he himself had written, the presence of the Father of whom he speaks in the hymn, none of these were enough to sustain him in life, at least as he viewed life. The fact is that most people don't know how to deal with defeat and discouragement and disappointment, to make

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goodness out of abuse. And this is what I would like to think about today, about how to profit from our problems. I want to deal with difficulty by showing how David dealt with the difficulty he confronted. Saul had turned against David. He had been friend, now he was enemy. And David flees, trying to get away from Saul

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lest he lose his life. He goes at night. He has no opportunity to pack anything, to take anything with him. He gets out of town as quickly and as silently as he is able. The first place he comes to is the small town of Nob, and there he speaks to the old priest Ahimelech. And he says to Ahimelech, "Have you bread for me?" And

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Ahimelech is surprised. He says, "Why are you on this journey?" And David lies. He says, "Well, I'm on a secret mission. I cannot report to you where it is, but do you have any bread for me and my few followers?" And the priest gives them bread. And then David says to the old priest, "Have you a sword I might use?" "I'm

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surprised," says the priest, "that you do not have your sword with you. You have it with you at all times." And David replies, "Well, I had to leave in such a hurry that I had no opportunity to pick it up. Do you have a sword?" And Ahimelech replies, "The sword of Goliath the Philistine, whom you killed, it is here. If you will,

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take it." And David responded, "There is none like that. Give it to me." Now notice what David is doing here. He is taking a weapon which was first used against him and is now going to use it for his own good. Every sword has two ends. When David first saw this sword in the hand of Goliath, the blade was pointing toward

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him and he was in danger of his life. But now he has the opportunity to pick up the sword by the other end, by its hilt, and to use the sword for his own defense and the advance of goodness. There is in every situation, you see, both obstacle and opportunity. David's response to that is, "Give me the sword." Our first

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principle, then, in learning how to profit from our problems is to remember that every situation has within it two possibilities, the possibility of injury and the possibility of good. One must learn, then, to take the sword by the hilt and not by the blade. Back in the year 1464, an Italian sculptor by the

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name of Agostino di Drusio from Florence was asked by the city of Florence to carve a statue of David. He went and brought a great block of marble from Carrara and he began to work on it. But shortly after he began, he died and unfortunately, in the brief work that he did, he managed to disfigure the stone in

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some terrible ways. He did much damage to it. Twelve years later, another sculptor, this one named Antonio Rosolino, decided that he would take on the task of sculpting a David. And he set to work. But he only marred the block of marble even worse than it had been wounded before. For 25 years, then, that great piece of

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marble stood in the courtyard of the cathedral in Florence, wounded, ruined, largely ignored. And then on August the 16th, 1501, a young man who wanted to make a name for himself as a sculptor announced that he would take on the assignment. Now, most people thought that his volunteering was a joke, but to

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Michelangelo, this was no joke. The great block of marble was commonly called the "Giant." That was its nickname because of its size and because of its ugliness. Michelangelo saw in that giant piece of stone two ends. Yes, there was an obstacle. It was scarred, marred, wounded, ruined. But there was also an opportunity.

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He would create his own giant, his own David. And so he set to work. And two years later, he produced the David, a picture all of you have in your bulletins this morning. A piece of statuary at which the world still wonders. It stands 13 feet 5 and 3/8 inches tall. It is full of power and

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proportion and grace. Michelangelo said, "Give me the sword!" And what he did with it still leads sensitive people to hold their breath when they see it. Ahimelech had kept Goliath's sword wrapped up, brought it up occasionally for memory's sake. But David takes the sword and uses it in the defense of good. Florence had

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taken this marred piece of marble and left it standing where it was largely ignored. But Michelangelo came along, took the hilt, not the blade, and created something that is truly magnificent. There's always two ends in a situation, and the secret is in knowing which to select. This is a proven fact of human

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experience, and it is so because we are the children of God our Father. And God has given to every one of us the innate capacity to turn typhoons into tailwinds, to turn problems into profits. We have this gift by the grace of God. Some years ago there was a Dr. Minot here in the United States who was doing some

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experimentation with dogs, and he ran out of funds. And so all he could buy to feed the dogs was the cheapest form of meat available, which was liver. And so he bought the dogs liver, and only liver, and fed it to the dogs. And because his experiments were largely ruined now, he began to focus instead on the effect

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that liver might have upon dogs. He said, "Give me the sword." And he very quickly discovered that when the dogs ate that liver, the quality of their blood was vastly improved. Now out of this, Minot brought a liver extract, which was the first real weapon we had in the fight against pernicious anemia, a disease

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which until that time was almost invariably fatal. Today we use B12 to fight pernicious anemia, but even that is built from the same extract of liver. He was confronted, you see, with the absence of money, couldn't buy what he needed to carry on his experimentations, an obstacle, a sword. But he took it by the

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hilt, not by the blade. And that's part of the fine art of using. Now it's interesting to notice that David says to Ahimelech, "Do you have a sword?" And Ahimelech replies, "I have only the sword of Goliath. If you will, you may have that." And David answers, even before he says, "Give me the sword," he answers with

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these words, "There is none like that. Give me the sword." What did he mean when he said, "There is none like that"? Well, he was referring, of course, to its size. Goliath stood approximately nine feet tall. His weapons are described in Scripture as being very large and very heavy. This sword was probably the

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biggest sword that David had ever seen. David said, "I've never seen any sword like that." But then he says, "Give it to me." And why? Here's our second principle. Bigger problems make bigger profits. You ever watch a baseball player when he steps up to bat? He'll pick up three or four bats and swing them together, and

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then, just before he steps into the batter's box, he'll drop all but one, the one he's going to use at the plate. Now, because he's been swinging so many, when he drops all but one, it feels like nothing but a feather in his hands, and he can handle it with great skill. Basketball players will often throw a

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heavy-weighted medicine ball around on the basketball court. Why? So that later, when they pick up a real basketball, which is full of nothing but air, it seems like nothing to them as they throw it from one to another. In other words, when difficulty comes and you handle it, then that which comes after it is easy.

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Greater problems create greater people. Now, it's generally agreed that Michelangelo was the supreme artist of all time. He was a superb architect, a magnificent sculptor, one of the finest of all painters, and he was also a brilliant poet. How did he develop all of these skills? Well, once in a

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conversation with his friend Vasari, who wrote the first biography of Michelangelo, he said, "I grew up in a world of stone. I was born in the small town of Carpezi in the Apennines. Every building in the town was made of stone. The town sat in the depression, surrounded by the stone walls of high

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mountains." He says, "I took in the love of stone from the milk of a stonecutter's wife. All of my life," he said, "I have dealt with stone. I have cut it. I have beaten it. I have loved it. I have hated it. I have polished it. I have left it in great irregular masses. I have been dealing with it for 75 years. Hard, alpine

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stone." And it was dealing with that, the hardest kind of medium for an artist to use, that he became the kind of artist that he was. You see, when a painter makes a mistake, he can simply paint it over and do it again. When a poet makes a mistake, he can throw away the paper and start once more. When a playwright makes

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a mistake, he can drop out the scene and put in another. When a musician makes a mistake, he can throw aside the paper and compose again, or if he's playing, he could stop and start to play the scene once more. But you can't do that with stone. When you have cut a piece of stone from the block, it is gone. You cannot

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put it back. And that's the reason stone is the most difficult of all artistic mediums, but its very difficulty creates excellence. Tougher problems make tougher people. They put muscle into the soul. They put strength into the hand. The nickname of this statue, when Michelangelo finished it, was Manu Fortis.

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It was called that around the time. Now, Manu Fortis means "strong hand." Look at the picture of the hand. One hand is up in the statue and the other hand hangs down. You see the power and the strength that are in that hand. His hands are actually too large for the body of the statue. But those hands speak of what we discover in

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both David and Michelangelo. Both of them, you see, face their own Goliath, and both of them won. The size of the problem only developed the size of their spirits. And so here is our second principle in the fine art of using. First, remember that every obstacle has an opportunity hidden within it, and secondly, the bigger the

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problem, the bigger the profit. There is none like that. Give me the sword. Now notice how David, as he is fleeing Saul, recognizes immediately that he's without food and he is without weapons. He is without the basic needs for himself and the few men who are with him. And so he immediately tries to meet those needs.

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In the very first place he comes to, Noab, he asks, "Do you have bread and do you have a sword for me?" He catches at that first chance and turns it to his advantage. That's the third principle to remember in triumphing over your tragedies. What we don't use, we lose. Great opportunities come to us, but they

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do not come to us endlessly. Now what gave David the courage to launch out against the king, Saul? It was his respect and his love and his obedience to God. And what was it in Michelangelo that led him to take on the task which he did? You have only to read his correspondence and his sonnets to know. It was because he

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loved and obeyed God. To both of these men, humankind was the crown of creation, made in the image of God himself. You will never find in any artistic work of Michelangelo a wounded body. He painted and he sculpted battle scenes, but you will never find in them any body that has been cut or slashed or broken. He had

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such respect for the body as the temple of the Holy Spirit of God that he would not depict it in such a way. Even in his last judgment at the end of the Sistine Chapel, even there, not a single one of the souls in torment is being tormented physically. And this is why Michelangelo did all of his figures in the nude. He

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does not want to conceal the beauty of the human form. Look at his David, young. His head, his hands, and his feet are too big for the rest of the body. He's not full-grown yet, heavily muscled, obviously not pampered. This fellow is used to struggle. The statue, incidentally, is not perfect. The left eye is a little

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higher than the right. The bridge of the nose is compressed a bit too much, and then in addition to that, the eyebrows, if you look on the second side, are a little too shaggy. The forehead is too depressed on one side. The neck has in a tendency that are both tense and relaxed. But to Michelangelo, this is

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representative of the perfection of humankind. Now, we are not perfect either. We have all sinned and come short of being the image of God which we are intended to be. But still, we are made but a little lower than God himself, and that is why we are so beautiful on the outside and on the inside as well. It's

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interesting when you look at the statue, the only other thing that appears is the sling which is just a strap over the shoulder of the statue. Now, why is that underplayed? Because Michelangelo wanted to point out that it was David that defeated Goliath, not a sling. This was a victory for a man, not for a

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weapon. What's being said to us in this is that you can't hoard life. You can't say to your memory, "I may need you later, so I'm not going to use you now." You can't say to your muscles, "I may need you later, so I'm not going to stretch and strain and develop you now." That which we preserve and protect, we almost

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invariably lose, and what we spend comes back to us manyfold. Jesus puts it this way, "He that saves his life will lose it. He that loses his life for my sake, he is the one who will save it." Every cut at that great block of marble out of which Michelangelo fashioned this statue, every cut tore away some stone that could not

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be replaced, and yet so bold and confident was Michelangelo in the use of his skills that he used a chisel with three blades so that he could cut three times faster than anyone else. Now, where did he get the confidence, the courage to cut like that? Why, in the knowledge that he was made in the image of God, that he

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had been given gifts by God, and that he was to use those gifts. He took the sword and he used it. If you pass it by, you may lose it, and when you lose it, you may lose the battle. So here is our third and last key. Obstacles can become opportunities. Tougher problems make tougher people, and we must use or we

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will lose. There is no sword like that. Give me the sword. Once you have seen this statue in person, you can never forget it. It has been damaged across the years. It stood outside for many years and the elements wore away portions of the head and the shoulders, and then there was a riot in the year 1527 and

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someone threw a bench and it hit the statue and broke the left arm in three different places, but the pieces were kept and the statue was restored. The stone was injured, but the conception was not injured. Michelangelo, like David the King of long ago, loved God. The chapel ceiling that we call the Sistine is

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nothing but testimony to the love of God. The dome of St. Peter's is nothing but an announcement of the majesty of God. The only time that Michelangelo sculpted his own face was in a Pietà. You know what the Pietà is. That's the dead body of Christ held by his loved ones. Michelangelo sculpted the Pietà four

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times, and in the last one, which was the next to the last statue that he ever carved, he has in the group of figures holding the body of the deceased Jesus, Joseph of Arimathea, the old man you will remember who gave Jesus his tomb in which to be buried. And on the face of Joseph of Arimathea, Michelangelo carved

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his own countenance. And what is he saying? He is saying this, "I have given everything I have to the glory of God. Even in death I hold my Savior to my heart, and as I offered him my living, so I offered him my dying." And that was the spirit that made David of the Old Testament so great. It was the love of

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God that made Michelangelo what he was and made David what he was. It is the knowledge that you are a child of God, that you're greater than anything that can ever oppose you, that you are one who is after God's own heart. Look at this thing. Alive, the veins surge with blood, the muscles of the belly contract, the

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chest is swollen with the air that has been sucked into the lungs, the nipples shrink and are erect, the whole figure quivers with power, it looks like it's ready for battle. And yet, on the face, there is the look of some uncertainty, as if David has within him some internal struggle. That's where the greatest

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battles are always fought, internally. It's like he is asking himself, "Will I be able to be all that God has given me the ability to be? Can I take whatever comes into my life and use it for good? Will I live and act and think as a child of God after his own heart?" That was David's question and Michelangelo's

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question, and it should be our question too, if we're going to learn the fine art of using. Will we see in every obstacle an opportunity? Will we be made strong because we wrestle with giant matters? Will we use our gifts so that we do not lose our gifts? Will we be victors in life, as Michelangelo and David were?

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Will we be, will I be, will you be the noblest fruit of the infinite creative genius of Almighty God? Let us pray. We thank thee for the holy scriptures and for the way, Father, in which thou

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didst use thy spirit to write upon their pages those truths we need to learn for the living of our lives. And we thank thee for those who down through the ages, gifted not by themselves but gifted by thee, have brought the pages of scripture to life in word, in song, in pigment on canvas or in stone. We thank

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thee for those who have proclaimed the truth to us through art, which is one of the greatest gifts thou has bestowed upon us as thy children. And we pray this morning that we might be worthy of this book and worthy of those who have made it live for us with their art, and most of all that we might be worthy of being

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called the children of God. Amen. you [BLANK_AUDIO]