Well, it's a great honor and joy to get to speak to you this morning about the man I was named after.

Though, I haven't always appreciated it.

David is a fairly common name, at least in my generation.

There were times when I wanted something more distinctive.

But over the years, I've grown to appreciate David, the first David, more and more.

He has his clear failures.

And so somebody with his name thinks about those really quickly.

And yet, he is such a compelling and genuinely good king.

And genuinely good man.

That's what we want to talk about in this first session.

His manhood. not meaning his humanity as much as his masculinity.

Now I owe special thanks to Bethlehem College and Seminary for one of the promotional emails a few months ago.

The email featured a headshot of each of the speakers and underneath it was the title of

their session. So I opened my email one day in June and I

see my smiling face and it says immediately underneath it, David the Giant Slayer.

I get a text that morning from one of our congregants went to screen grabs saying, congratulations, Playing The Giant.

Made sure to show my wife and my kids,

tucked that screen grab away for later.

To encounter the life of David,

some 3,000 years later can be a challenge for us as

modern men. You linger here, you linger on this life for a little bit, and you might find a call to cultivate

some reasonable, Davidic strength of body and of soul. Whether in a king or a father or a husband or a friend, our people don't want men

...