1 Samuel 17:31-54
We have the pleasure again of returning to this chapter where David meets Goliath. So 1 Samuel 17, if you’re not there, turn there with me. Last week we covered 30 verses. We are going to try to wrap up the story tonight. We may leave some of the postscript stuff for another time, look more at some of the Christological implications of David as a type, maybe more in the future. But last week we left off right in the middle of the story.
We’re going to read the whole chapter again. So I think it’s worth reading the entire chapter again to set the context. So 1 Samuel 17, beginning in verse 1, “The Philistines gathered their camps for battle; and they were gathered at Socoh, which belongs to Judah, and they encamped between Socoh and Azekah and Ephes-dammim.
“But Saul and the men of Israel were gathered and camped in the valley of Elah and arranged themselves for battle to meet the Philistines. Now the Philistines stood on the mountain on one side while Israel stood on the mountain on the other side, with the valley between them. Then a champion came out from the camps of the Philistines named Goliath, from Gath, whose height was six cubits and a span.
“And he had a bronze helmet on his head, and he was clothed with scale-armor and the weight of that scale-armor was five thousand shekels of bronze.” Or 126 pounds. “He also had bronze greaves on his legs and a bronze javelin slung between his shoulders. And the shaft of his spear was like a weaver’s beam, and the head of his spear weighed six hundred shekels of iron; his shield-carrier also walked before him.
“And he stood and called out to the battle lines of Israel and said to them, ‘Why do you come out to arrange yourselves for battle? Am I not the Philistine and you are slaves of Saul? Choose a man for yourselves and let him come down to me. If he is able to fight with me and strike me down, then we will become your slaves; but if I prevail against him and strike him down, then you shall become our slaves and serve us.’ Again the Philistine said, ‘I openly reproach the battle lines of Israel this day; give me a man that we may fight together.’
“When Saul and all Israel heard these words of the Philistine, they were dismayed and greatly afraid. Now David was the son of the Ephrathite of Bethlehem and Judah, whose name was Jesse, and he had eight sons. And Jesse was old in the days of Saul, advanced in years among men. And the three older sons of Jesse had gone. They had gone after Saul to the battle. And the names of his three sons who went to the battle were Eliab the firstborn, and the second to him, Abinadab, and the third Shammah.
“But David was the youngest. Now the three oldest had gone after Saul, but David went back and forth from Saul to shepherd his father’s flock at Bethlehem. Then the Philistine approached, morning and evening, for forty days and took his stand. Then Jesse said to David his son, ‘Take now for your brothers an ephah of this roasted grain and these ten loaves and run to the camp to your brothers.
“‘You shall also bring these ten cuts of cheese to the commander of their thousand, and look into the welfare of your brothers, and bring back a token from them. And Saul and they and all the men of Israel are in the valley of Elah, fighting with the Philistines.’
“So David arose early in the morning and left the flock with a keeper and carried the supplies and went as Jesse had commanded him. And he came to the circle of the camp while the military force was going out in the battle lines shouting the war cry. And Israel and the Philistines arranged themselves in battle lines, battle line against battle line.
“Then David left his baggage in the care of the baggage keeper and ran to the battle line and entered in order to greet his brothers. As he was speaking with them, behold, the champion, the Philistine from Gath named Goliath, was coming up from the battle lines of the Philistines, and he spoke these same words; and David heard them.
“Now all the men of Israel saw the man, and they fled from him and were greatly afraid. And the men of Israel said, ‘Have you seen this man who is coming up? Surely he is coming up to reproach Israel. And it will be that the king will enrich the man who strikes him down with great riches and will give him his daughter and make his father’s house free in Israel.’
“And then David spoke to the men who are standing by him, saying, ‘What will be done for the man who strikes down this Philistine and takes away the reproach from Israel? For who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should reproach the battle lines of the living God?’ And the people spoke to him in accord with this word, saying, ‘Thus it will be done for the man who strikes him down.’
“Then Eliab, his oldest brother heard when he spoke to the men; and Eliab’s anger burned against David, and he said, ‘Why have you come down? And with whom have you left those few sheep in the wilderness? I myself know your arrogance and the wickedness of your heart, for you have come down in order to see the battle. But David said, ‘What have I done now? Was it not just a word?’ And then he turned away from him to another and said the same word; and the people responded to him with the same word as before.
“Then the words which David spoke were heard. And they told them to Saul, and he sent for him. And David said to Saul, ‘Let no man’s heart fail on account of him; your servant will go and fight with this Philistine.’ Then Saul said to David, ‘You are not able to go against this Philistine to fight with him; for you are but a youth while he has been a warrior from his youth.’
“But David said to Saul, ‘Your servant was shepherding his father’s sheep. And a lion and a bear would come and take a lamb from the flock, and I would go after it and strike it and rescue the lamb from its mouth. Then it rose up against me, and I would seize it by its beard and strike it down and put it to death. Your servant has struck down both the lion and the bear; and this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, since he has reproached the battle lines of the living God.’
“And David said, ‘Yahweh, who delivered me from the hand of the lion and from the hand of the bear, He will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine.’ And Saul said to David, ‘Go and may Yahweh be with you.’ Then Saul clothed David with his robes and put a bronze helmet on his head, and clothed them with armor. And David girded his sword over his armor and tried to walk, for he had not tested them. So David said to Saul, ‘I cannot go with these, for I have not tested them.’ And David took them off.
“Then he took his stick in his hand and chose for himself five smooth stones from the brook and put them in the shepherd’s bag, which he had, even in his pouch, and his sling was in his hand; and he approached the Philistine. Then the Philistine came on and drew near to David, with the shield-bearer in front of him. And the Philistine looked and saw David. And he despised him; for he was but a youth and ruddy, with a handsome appearance.
“And the Philistine said to David, ‘Am I a dog, that you come to me with sticks?’ And the Philistine cursed David by his gods. The Philistine also said to David, ‘Come to me, and I will give your flesh to the birds of the sky and the beasts of the field.’ Then David said to the Philistine, ‘You come to me with a sword, a spear, and a javelin, but I come to you in the name of Yahweh of hosts, the God of the battle lines of Israel, from whom you have reproached. This day Yahweh will deliver you up into my hands, and I will strike you down and remove your head from you. And I will give the dead bodies of the camp of the Philistines this day to the birds of the sky and the beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel’
“And David continues and he says, ‘so that all may know that there’s a God in Israel, and that all this assembly may know that Yahweh does not save by sword or by spear for; the battle is Yahweh’s, and He will give you into our hands.’ Then it happened when the Philistine rose and came and drew near to meet David, that David ran quickly towards the battle line to meet the Philistine.
“And David sent his hand down into his bag and took from it a stone and slung it and struck the Philistine on his forehead. And the stone sank into his forehead, so that he fell on his face to the ground. Thus David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and a stone, and he struck the Philistine and put him to death; but there was no sword in David’s hand. Then David ran and stood over the Philistine and took his sword and drew it out of its sheath and put him to death and cut off his head with it.
“Then the Philistines saw that their champion was dead, so they fled. But the men of Israel and Judah arose and shouted and pursued the Philistines as far as the valley and the gates of Ekron. And the slain Philistines lay fallen along the way to Shaaraim, even to Gath and Ekron. Then the sons of Israel returned from hotly pursuing the Philistines and plundered their camps.” And we’ll stop there.
So if you were here last week, I told you that I broke this up into six points, but the main point that we were gonna cover tonight, I’ve split it into two. So there’s seven points altogether. That’s why I hesitated to give you points last time, because I knew I’d probably change it.
So I’ve turned those six I talked about last week into seven. We’ll talk about the ones that we went over last week, the setting, which is verses 1 to 3. I also labeled this Israel’s typical position, that is Israel’s at battle with an enemy that has come against them. This is a typical position, that is the setting, but then that typical position quickly reveals a not so ordinary adversary that led to point two, the antagonist where we meet Israel’s giant problem in verses 4 to 11.
As the two armies are encamped across from one another, the Philistine champion Goliath comes out of his tent, presents himself to Israel, challenges them to a man-on-man duel. And he was no ordinary man. He was a ten-foot giant decked out in full armor in the minds of the Philistines; this would be like a common infantry soldier going up against an armored tank.
Humanly speaking, Israel needed something more, they thought. But then we read in verse 12, a “but God statement” as the author of first Samuel introduces David with, a “but David” or a now David.
And that led to the third point, the protagonist Israel’s puny proponent, in verses 12 to 27. We’re reintroduced to David after he’s been anointed king in the previous chapter. We know that he is small in stature, smaller than his brothers. He’s not physically impressive. Goliath mocks him for being handsome. He hasn’t been marred by battle scars. And that’s because he’s not even old enough to be in the army yet. But David has something that no one else in Israelites army had and that was faith, greater than Goliath.
He fears David, that is he fears Yahweh the living God more than he fears Goliath. And David, he can’t stand listening to this Philistine come out and reproach and mock the living God by mocking Israel’s armies. And that brings us to a bit of an interruption in the story where David is deterred or challenged by someone who’s supposed to be on his side.
That is point number four, the contagionist. Israel’s arrogant perceiver. The contagionist is someone in the story who’s supposed to be on the hero’s side, but hinders him. Eliab, David’s brother accuses David of having a wicked heart. This is where we read through these verses, but I wanna stop and ask you a question. One commentator I read, in commenting on verses 26 and 30; I’ll just read those so you have those in your mind. “David spoke to the men who were standing by him saying, What will be done for the man who strikes down this Philistine and takes away the reproach from Israel?’”
And then in verse 30, they answered David and David in verse 30, “He turns away from Eliab to another and said the same word.” He’s asking the same question to all kinds of people. And the people respond to him with the same word as before. So one commentator that I read in commenting on this, he says that David, and I quote, “Displays a measure of self-interest and greed, as well as a healthy concern for God’s reputation.”
So let me ask you this. Do you agree with that commentator’s assessment or disagree? I wanted to raise this issue, because so many people do approach some of these Old Testament texts and I think this goes back to what I mentioned last week. We talked about last week, just assuming motives, but there’s so many people who look at Old Testament texts like this, and they kind of import their own motives and things onto these biblical characters.
And we’ve got to be sure that we don’t do that when we’re looking at God’s word. And there’s nothing in here to indicate that, as this commentator says, ‘David displays a measure of self-interest and greed.’ To make an accusation like that, like this commentator, he’s really doing the same arrogant thing that Eliab is doing, accusing David of wickedness in his heart when there’s really not an ounce of evidence for that.
David reveals his kingly character by being concerned for God’s glory first, not fearing men, not fearing Goliath, not fearing his brother Eliab here. He’s not fearing anybody else except God. So another follow-up question for this, if David isn’t concerned for any selfish gain here, why does he keep asking people what the reward is gonna be? He’s trying to figure out what’s going on here; I can’t believe these people, there’s this offer here, an offer from Saul, and nobody’s moving? What’s going on? So David’s going around asking everybody; he’s planning on exactly what happens, that Saul catches wind of it and invites him in so he can then do that.
If we approach the text thinking the best of David, which is obviously warranted, we might consider David is doing a couple things. First, I think he is trying to figure out; he’s trying to see if everyone in the camp is aware of this. He’s trying to assess: what does everybody else know? And he is asking that question, what is everybody thinking? What is everybody doing? He’s trying to assess his brothers.
But second, he could be using these questions to provoke the other soldiers in the army. He is bringing, as we talked about last time, a biblical worldview into this camp of a bunch of people who have a godless worldview. And by continuing to ask the question of verse 26 and particularly the last half of it, so the first half of it is the earthly reward. ‘What will be done for the man who strikes down this Philistine and takes away the reproach from Israel?” That gets to Saul’s offer.
But then he says, and this is what would provoke everybody else is, “who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should reproach the battle lines of the living God?” David, at least I think, if we’re thinking the best of him, he’s just trying to remind somebody in the camp of what they’re really there for.
It’s not for any earthly reward, but it is for God’s glory. God’s glory is at stake, and David, I think, has a righteous attitude that surely somebody in the camp is willing to stand up for the glory of God. I think David continues to ask around because he’s in a bit of disbelief. How could everybody know this and still stand by and do nothing? But alas, the only person stirred up by David’s questioning and maybe his provocation is David himself. If no other soldier in the Lord’s army is going to stand up to this Philistine, David’s going to have to enlist in the army and do it himself.
David has something that no one else in Israelites army had and that was faith, greater than Goliath.” Bret Hastings
And that brings us to point five: The enlistment. The enlistment or if you want to do a colon, the rest of that, I have is Israel’s contrasting propensity in verses 30-40. Israel’s contrasting propensity. Saul catches wind of David’s words and sends for him. Here in this section, we see a stark contrast between the propensity of Saul to put his confidence in fleshly things while David is revealed to be a giant in the faith.
So here underneath this point that we’re going to cover today and the next one, we’ve got some sub-points. I’ve got five sub-points here that we’re going to start. You could say it starts with Saul in 31, where he calls David, but we’re going to look at my sub-points go from 32 and on.
And first of all, the sub-point A: David’s unfailing courage. We see this in verse 32. So Saul sends for him and brings him. And David says to Saul, “Let no man’s heart fail on account of him.” Your servant will go and fight with this Philistine. Notice the narrator, he skips any speech from Saul, just goes right to David to focus on David’s unbelievable courage, his unbelievable faith. The courage isn’t found in himself alone, but it’s because of the faith that resides with him.
Well everyone else’s heart in Israel, every last warrior who was there, his heart has failed. David’s heart was filled with courage and resolve to stand up for God’s glory in the face of insurmountable odds. Which is why Saul tries to then discourage him, because in Saul’s mind, David’s dead. And so that leads us to sub-point B, that was David’s unfailing courage.
Sub-point A, that leads us to sub-point B. Saul’s royal discouragement. In verse 33, look at that with me. “Then Saul said to David, ‘You’re not able to go against this Philistine to fight with him, for you are but a youth while he has been a warrior from his youth.’” That verb there translated, as able to go against, it’s a word that when used in certain grammatical structures means to be victorious, to prevail, to win, to conquer.
But when it’s used with an infinitive construct and negated, as it is here, it refers to the inability of achieving something because of impotence. In other words, Saul tries to discourage David by telling him; David, look at you. Look at Goliath. You’re a child compared to him. You don’t have a chance. You’re powerless against him.
I was just thinking about an analogy for this. And if David was a little small on the stature of a Israelite, typical height of an Israelite was 5’8 to 5’10, would have been a tall Israelite. So 5’9 average height for an Israelite. David was on the smaller stature from that. There’s a good four foot of difference; three or four foot of difference between David and Goliath. This means that it would be a little bit like if you’ve got Nathan Odie standing over here and Caden Odie standing over here. That would be the height difference.
Saul looks at David and he says, David, look at you. You fighting Goliath would be like a toddler fighting an adult. You’re powerless to go against him. Saul totally discourages David from enlisting and going out and fighting Goliath. But that doesn’t deter David in the slightest. David sees this whole situation from a faith-filled perspective. And he has confidence in God that is unwavering. His confidence is not in himself, even in the least bit.
His confidence is in God. And that leads to sub-point C, David’s divine confidence in verses 34 to 37. This is the longest sub-section here and rightfully so. This is where we get to hear from David again. We heard the first words of David in scripture in verse 26. Here we get to hear him again as we see that his primary concern is for God’s glory. How we see his utter confidence in God. We see how deep his faith goes here. Look at verses 34 to 37 again.
“But David said to Saul, ‘Your servant was shepherding his father’s sheep and a lion and a bear would come and take a lamb from the flock. And I would go out after it and strike it and rescue the lamb from its mouth. Then it rose up against me and I would seize it by its beard and strike it down and put it to death. Your servant has struck down both the lion and the bear and this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, since he has reproached the battle lines of the living God.’ And David said, ‘Yahweh who delivered me from the hand of the lion and from the hand of the bear, he will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine.’ And Saul said to David, “Go and may Yahweh be with you.”
There’s a few reasons implied here regarding David’s confidence that is actually in fact the exact opposite of Saul’s thinking. Saul thinks, David, you don’t have a chance. David thinks, actually it’s Goliath. Goliath doesn’t have a chance, Saul. Is David’s confidence in his own ability? He has killed lions and bears in the past. He can do it again here.
Is his confidence in his own ability here? Why or why not? And then what is it that gives him such confidence that he is going to strike down Goliath? David’s pointing out to Saul, yeah, I am on the small side, but I’ve done this. There’s no saying God can’t use me for this as well. What gives him confidence is not his own ability, but what God has delivered him from in the past. God has delivered me from this. He can deliver me from Goliath as well. God has been faithful in the past.
He sees God is gonna continue to be faithful to him. Something I didn’t have time to get to last week, one of the questions I was gonna ask you at the end was, what explains David here? And I just wanted to point back to a message that I did just about a couple years ago now regarding Samuel’s faithfulness, the results of one faithful life. It’s not just David’s parents, though that was part of it, but Samuel, he was such a faithful teacher.
He reformed Israel significantly. David’s faith, Jonathan’s faith is explained by a faithful spiritual leader in the land who was teaching them God’s word. That’s what explains Jonathan’s faith. That’s what explains David’s faith. The Holy Spirit came upon David, and David was filled with the Holy Spirit from that point forward. And yeah, it is the Spirit that leads.
This is no action of any mere man, no matter how courageous they are. No mere man does this, but only because he’s got the Spirit of God within him. David’s logic here for his confidence is rooted in an argument from the lesser to the greater.
So Yahweh has given David the ability to strike down lions and bears, and God has protected David in these situations when God’s glory is not at stake. If David’s out in the wilderness and a bear strikes him down and he’s killed, is God’s glory tarnished there? No, nobody, I mean, David was unknown in Israel. Wouldn’t have mattered.
It would have just been one more lion killing one more shepherd. And if God protected David when it was only David’s life and the life of a sheep at stake, David’s thinking, how much more so will he not protect me when his own glory is at stake? In verse 26, David declares his confidence that this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of these lions and bears, or verse 36, not 26, sorry. This uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of the lions and the bears.
Since, there’s that little word, since, that cues us off to this, his reasoning, because he reproached the battle lines of the living God. That little word, since, gives us David’s reason. He is confident not in himself, but he is confident that Goliath is marked for death because he has mocked the living God.
Psalm 2, it’s not ascribed to David, but he no doubt knew the truth, that those who set them up against God and his anointed, God sits in the heavens and laughs. David knew that while all men on earth might think it laughable for him to go against Goliath, David knew the true reality that it was laughable and astoundingly absurd for Goliath to stand and challenge the living God. David was merely going to be the human instrument standing out there to represent him.
And there’s an essential point of application here for us as Christians, verse 37, if we look at that again, “‘Yahweh who delivered me from the hand of the lion and from the hand of the bear, he will deliver me from the hand of the Philistine.’” So he’s talking about God’s faithfulness, the past, how he has protected David in the past. Just like Paul when we studied 2 Corinthians chapter 1 a couple of weeks ago, David knows that because God has rescued him; he will rescue him.
It’s that same principle that we learned from 2 Corinthians chapter 1. When we are faced with some insurmountable problem or catastrophic life situation and we don’t know how we’re going to make it through, we have to renew our minds with this truth, that God is faithful. We remember those stories. We remember the miraculous stories of how God brought them out of Egypt and all the battles that they won, that God rescued them from the hand of their enemies.
We remember that God is faithful. We renew our minds with that. He has rescued us in the past and he will rescue us. We must look at the present in light of the past. And for us, not only do we have our own lifetime to look at the faithfulness of God, but we’ve got thousands of years of history here that we can point to. God does not delight in the death of his saints, but he delights to deliver them.
David knew this. How a little shepherd boy in the field knew this? Well, faithfulness of God depends on that as well; Samuel, his parents, David knew this; Paul knew this and this is essential for us to remember, to remind ourselves of. Whenever we come into a situation and we think, and maybe everyone else thinks, I don’t think you’ve got a chance to survive this. We have to renew our minds with that truth.
The application of God’s attribute of faithfulness is this. We remind ourselves of his faithfulness. He was faithful yesterday, he’s gonna be faithful today, and he’s gonna be faithful tomorrow. The difference between David and Saul, the believing heart and the unbelieving or doubting heart is that one is able to broaden their perspective beyond the present, to import a biblical worldview into whatever situation that they’re in. And beloved, we have to be able to do the same.
We have to be able to help others to do the same when they can’t see for themselves, when they can’t broaden their perspective beyond the present as fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. And if you’ve been in a deep, tragic situation like that, a situation that seemed insurmountable, you understand the importance of somebody else speaking into that. We’ve gotta be able to do that for one another as well.
Even in the face of David’s divine confidence, we now, in the next verse, see how dull and dead Saul’s heart is. There is no faith in him whatsoever. Saul can’t help but try to give David the best fighting chance, humanly speaking. And that brings us to subpoint D: Saul’s fleshly consideration in verse 38. Saul, he wants to give David the best fighting chance humanly possible, and so he clothes David in his robes and puts a bronze helmet on his head and clothes him with armor. Saul’s solution is like so many of our attempts to fix a problem bigger than us, right? We try to come up with some human, fleshly solution to our God-sized problems.
We know that this is a solution or this is a problem that only God can solve, and we often have those in life. It’s a problem that we know only God can solve, but how often do we still try to fix it, and we still try to do this, or we still try to do this. We think, I know God has to do something, but what if I just do this? If I just give this person armor, they’ll survive the battle. If I just do this.
And I don’t want you to think I’m saying, that don’t ever act. Don’t just sit back and say, well, God’s gotta fix this situation. But what it comes down to is, where is your faith? Is it in some human solution that you come up with, which it was for Saul, or is it in trusting God? Is it trusting that the Lord is gonna bring about his will in this situation?
Saul’s deadness of heart is contrasted in the next verse by where it reveals, that where David’s confidence really is, and that brings us to subpoint E: David’s unprotected faith in 39 to 40. David girded his sword over his armor and tried to walk, for he had not tested them. So David said to Saul, ‘I can’t go with these. I haven’t tested them.’ David took them off.
“Then he took his stick in his hand and chose for himself five smooth stones from the brook and put them in the shepherd’s bag, which he had, even his pouch. His sling was in his hand, and he approached the Philistine.’” David quickly realized that Saul’s human solution was actually only a hindrance. David knew all he needed for protection was the living God, and he had faith, in that God would protect him.
He knew all he needed was one good shot. He takes his stick, his stick probably refers to his shepherd’s staff, and five smooth stones from the brook, and he approaches the giant, steps out on the battlefield. So the sling, it was considered a weapon for swift destruction. These stones that these slingers would sling, according to some commentators, would be two to three inch diameter stones, which are a good size stone. That’s a big rock.
Did David choose these weapons because they were the most strategic? Was he thinking, you know, reaching up and grabbing Goliath’s beard like I did the lion and the bear, probably not a good idea. Maybe I should go with a long distance approach and pick up the stones. Is that what David’s thinking? No, David chose the weapons he did, the sticks and stones, because those sticks and stones, look at verse 47, would bring God the most glory. “Yahweh does not save by sword or by spear, for the battle is Yahweh’s,” and He will give you into our hands.
Unlike Gideon, where Gideon was fearful, you remember Gideon, he eventually took up 300 men, but he had a larger army, and God said, no, that’s too many. I’m not going to get enough glory from this battle if you take that many people to fight. David’s picking up stones and he’s taking his stick, probably his shepherd’s staff, out with him, because he wants to glorify God in this fight. He wants none of the glory.
He takes the sword off that he had strapped on his armor, he takes all the armor off, he chooses the weapons that will bring God the most glory. So Goliath, he is decked out, ready to take on any warrior with the most impressive armor and weapons of the day, and David, Israel’s newest recruit, he stands ready to fight this armored tank with a stick and some stones. I can only imagine as David walks out there, we’re going to read about how Goliath scoffs at him, but I can only imagine what the rest of the Israelites thought. What is happening? What is this kid doing?
But that brings us to the sixth point. So that was point five, the enlistment. Israel’s contrasting propensity, contrasting David and Saul. Again, David’s faith versus Saul’s unbelief, David comes out shining, his bright shining star of faith in Israel.
David reveals his kingly character by being concerned for God’s glory first, not fearing men, not fearing Goliath, not fearing his brother Eliab.” Bret Hastings
And that brings us to number six: The battle, Israel’s almighty power in verses 41 to 45. I’m not going to read that all, just yet, but just like every good fight, every good fight scene maybe you’ve seen in a movie, this one begins with the opponents’ exchanging words with each other. They’re going to talk it out before they fight it out. They’re going to exchange battle words. So look at verse 41. We’ll read Goliath’s speech, which is, if you want to write sub-points for this, it’s a proud reproach.
A proud reproach from Goliath. “Then the Philistine came on and drew near to David with a shield bearer in front of him. And the Philistine looked and saw David and he despised him for he was but a youth and ruddy with a handsome appearance. And the Philistine said to David, ‘Am I a dog that you come to me with sticks?’ And the Philistine cursed David by his gods. And the Philistine also said to David, ‘Come to me and I will give your flesh to the birds of the sky and the beasts of the field.’” So the Philistine, he continues to mock and bring reproach upon God by despising and mocking David, Yahweh’s servant.
Goliath, and I understand, Goliath can’t believe who has come out to fight him. And if you were him, you’d probably feel the same way; like seriously, this is the guy that you’re gonna send out against me? Like sending a toddler to fight a battle. The Philistine had every confidence that he would prevail.
I mean, what, you know, just picture one of those guys who fights for a living, one of those MMA fighters, and you just put some kid in the ring with him. He has every confidence that he is going to prevail. And probably so did everyone else.
Nobody expected David to win, except David. And that brings us to the next sub-point: A godly rebuke in verses 45 to 47. “David said to the Philistine, ‘You come to me with a sword, a spear, and a javelin, but I come to you in the name of Yahweh of hosts, the God of the battle lines of Israel whom you have reproached. This day, Yahweh will deliver you up into my hands, and I will strike you down and remove your head from you, and I will give the dead bodies of the camp of the Philistines this day, to the birds of the sky and the beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel and that this assembly may know that Yahweh does not say by sword or by spear, for the battle is Yahweh’s and he will give you into our hands.’”
So Goliath’s words were an affront to God. David courageously stands on the battlefield and issues this godly rebuke of Goliath’s grave error. His proud pontification of Israel’s insignificant God, David comes out and says, no, Goliath, you stand here as an enemy of the living God, and today God will judge you and find you worthy of death. Not only you, but the whole Philistine camp. So we’ll pause there.
This puny little proponent of Israel standing up to Goliath issuing this godly rebuke. What are some things, as we think about David, standing up to really this cultural threat to the Israelites, this giant, this enemy of Yahweh, what are some things that are an offense to God, but we as Christians, maybe we find ourselves more like Saul and the rest of Israel, ready to swallow and stuff that offense into our hearts, because we’re afraid to stand up and issue a godly rebuke like David.
What are the things that don’t bother us, but should? And when they do bother us, we don’t stand up and issue a rebuke like this. People take the Lord’s name in vain. We need to consider the person’s soul, yes, that is important, we want to see them saved, but more importantly, we want to see God’s glory fill the earth, and when we proclaim the gospel, it is an aroma that rises up to Christ, even if the person we’re sharing the gospel with is rejecting that gospel, it’s still pleasing to the Lord. So you guys mentioned some very, some things that hit home.
A lot of times we often pick on things that are far away. The church often likes to talk about this stuff over there and the big problems over there when there are issues in our own hearts that need to be talked about. So I want to just mention one thing that I was convicted about here. When it comes to being a soldier of the Lord’s army, how willingly are we, or how willingly do we put up with someone taking the Lord’s name, as if he was just like Goliath did?
Now, Goliath, sometimes people are standing up and taking the Lord’s name in vain and mocking him as Goliath did. Sometimes in life, it’s not that obvious, that’s in our face, but how often do we stand by like Saul and the rest of Israel and let our God’s name be taken in vain? And the example that I was thinking of that had convicted me was in the entertainment that we take in, the movies we watch. How often do we watch things that are an affront to God’s glory, that mock our God, mock the truth, and we aren’t too bothered by it? I think we put up a lot more than we know or that we’d like to admit.
I think as Americans, our consciences are pretty seared on this issue, at least I know that’s how it is for myself. And I’ll give you one example from my own life, but you all should probably put your crash helmets on because I know this implicates a lot of you, probably 50 to 80% of you in the room. But know that I say this with love in my heart and a tear in my eye for you. And this is where I was convicted at. I’m saying this for myself. And if the spirit decides to convict you, he will.
But this is primarily just me explaining how I was convicted about this. We could talk about any number of things or any number of movies or things, but I just wanna talk about how this was revealed in my own heart with the most recent example. So this most recent example that exposed this in my heart was the new Spider-Man movie that came out; just came out a few months ago.
Our family, we had been planning on going, tickets were bought, and another couple from church here reached out to us. They knew that we had bought tickets, that we were going, and they said that they had some friends who saw it, they went to the movie, and they ended up walking out because of the language. How many times the Lord’s name was taken in vain? And this family, they very kindly wanted to just let us know so we could investigate and make an informed decision.
So I did, I looked up what was in the movie. And you know what bothered me most about what I found, that was in that movie was that I wasn’t really bothered that much at all. It bothered me a little bit. It bothered me that the Lord’s name is taken in vain upwards of 30 times, four times combined with another curse word. Jesus’ name in particular taken in vain several times. That bothered me, but as I read that and thought about another Christian family who had the courage to get up and walk out, it bothered me that I wasn’t bothered that much by it.
And obviously we’re not talking about apples to apples here, standing here listening to Goliath mock our God, but I realized that I was a lot more like Saul and the rest of the soldiers of Israel, far too willing to have some pagan take my God’s name in vain and stomach it. I need to be more like David that when somebody takes my God’s name in vain, even just one time, I don’t want to put up with it. Or if anything, I don’t want to subject myself to it. I certainly don’t want to pay money to go listen to it.
When we think about David standing up and rebuking Goliath here, doesn’t mean we stand up and we throw rocks at whatever it is we don’t like. But here, to our point, we should offer a godly rebuke. And the example I gave, it was just a family who had courage to stand up and walk out of the movie. That’s a public rebuke that made it from somebody on the other side of the country all the way to my heart. Just like David walking around, is nobody gonna stand up to Goliath? God’s glory is at stake.
And this movie is just one example of 1,000 I could use. I’m not picking on any of you or looking down if you went to that movie. I just know many people did. And I think our consciences are seared on this matter and mine included. That’s why I opted not to go because I realized my conscience is seared on this matter and I need to resensitize it.
We have to step back and evaluate this, beloved. We have to evaluate the things that we are willing to listen to and put up with. And I think it’s an area that we tend to be more like Saul than like David. And I do not intend to declare any one movie here unacceptable from the pulpit. But I do just want to put that before you and encourage you to examine your own heart. If your own conscience is seared on that matter. And beloved, let’s not use our Christian freedom as an excuse.
Saul and all Israel had the freedom to sit there and listen to Goliath. But that’s not a reason to do it. Rather, it revealed their weakness and cowardice. So now that I have probably hit you all in the forehead with a rock, let’s look at it happening to somebody else. Misery loves company.
That brings us to sub-point A, a long shot redemption. With the speeches over, with Goliath’s proud rebuke, or his proud reproach, rebuked by David, the battle has come. Look at verse 48. “Then it happened when the Philistine rose and came and drew near to meet David, that David ran quickly toward the battle line to meet the Philistine.”
Again, I am just absolutely amazed at David. David ran quickly to meet Goliath. Absolutely amazing. I just want to note before I read the next verse, this is the climax of the story, 48 verses leading up to this show David’s kingly character. He’s a hero of the faith. And then in just like 10 seconds, it’s over. So look at verse 49 with me. David is running quickly towards Goliath. “He sends his hand down into his bag and took from it a stone and slung it and struck the Philistine on his forehead and the stone sank into his forehead so that he fell on his face to the ground.”
This epic battle lasted not minutes, but seconds. It actually wouldn’t have taken much longer to happen than it took to read. To everyone’s utter amazement, this little shepherd with his sling killed the greatest champion that they had ever seen. This battle was over before it even started. Everyone knew that day in Israel and all the land of the Philistines that there was a God in Israel. How else could this little shepherd boy fell a giant like this?
Yahweh was vindicated through the unexpected servant of David. David. Goliath is, I would argue, dead on the ground in a matter of seconds. The battle’s over, game over. The Philistines scatter like sheep and the greatest of all victories in Israel is won here today in just a matter of seconds.
Let’s back up and go through this a little more slowly. So David, he’s running quickly to meet the Philistine, who he knows is marked for death. He pulls out one stone from his pouch. While he’s running, he puts it in his sling. He’s whipping his sling around a few times and he sends that stone through the air like a bullet traveling 100 to 150 miles an hour. However, this projectile, two to three inches in diameter, hits Goliath in the forehead, presumably in a spot that his helmet didn’t cover. The stone hits Goliath’s forehead with such a force that it sank into his skull and Goliath fell on his face to the ground.
Just a side note before we move on from this. That phrase fell on his face to the ground is the exact same Hebrew language used to speak of earlier in Samuel when the idol Dagon fell. Remember, they put the ark before, in the same, in Dagon’s temple and they woke up the next day and the idol had fallen over on his face.
This is a literary cue from the author of Samuel. Yahweh knocked Dagon on his face, this idol, and Goliath was just another pagan Philistine, smaller case god, that Yahweh defeated. It was no more difficult for Yahweh to defeat Goliath than it was to knock an idol off of a shelf onto his face.
But back to Goliath, just to describe what happened to Goliath and all of its physical trauma, but just to make a point that I think David defeated Goliath in just a matter of seconds. So what would have happened to Goliath’s head? At the exact millisecond of impact, the sheer physical force damages the structural components of the head.
First, a depressed or penetrating skull fracture would result, the frontal bone is strong but it can’t withstand a dense projectile moving at ballistic speeds. The stone will cause a depressed skull fracture shattering the bone and forcing fragments inwards. If the momentum is high enough, it can become a penetrating head injury driving stone fragments, bone shards, and skin directly into the frontal lobe of the brain. An object pierces the skull and directly damages brain tissue. This can be fatal.
The next thing is frontal lobe contusion. The area beneath the strike will suffer a massive bruising injury. The delicate gelatin-like brain tissue will slam violently against the jagged inside of the skull, tearing blood vessels and destroying localized brain cells. And then there’s a contracoup injury. The force will cause the entire brain to rapidly accelerate backwards through the cerebrospinal fluid and it will ricochet off of the back of the skull, causing secondary bruising and bleeding at the rear of the brain, the occipital lobe.
And then finally, the diffuse axonal injury or the DAI. The severe shock wave of the rotational torque will stretch, twist, and snap the axons, that is the microscopic nerve fibers that allow the brain cells to communicate. When these fibers tear, the damage is typically permanent and often induces an immediate coma.
The impact force stretches or tears neuronal axons, resulting in a mild form of traumatic brain injury called diffuse axonal shearing. All that to say, Goliath was probably brain-dead before he even hit the ground. For all intents and purposes, he was dead before David cut off his head. His heart might have still been beating, but his brain had been utterly destroyed.
Just this battle, this man that seemed impossible for anyone in Israel to fight, was brought down with a rock. A rock aimed and with all of the force of Yahweh behind it to vindicate his glory. Before the fight even began, it was over because Yahweh was defending his own glory. David had the faith to stand out there, to be the man who knew, who had the faith to know that God would act on his own behalf.
Just one stone to bring down the greatest champion Israel had ever seen. Just because one man dared to have faith, all Israel and all throughout the land of the Philistines, they knew that day that Yahweh was the God, the living God, because a little shepherd boy had the faith to trust that Yahweh would show up and be faithful as he always has been to glorify himself in Israel.
Obviously, David is a type of Christ, a foreshadow of Israel’s king who would come and defeat Israel’s greatest enemy, sin and death, bringing the salvation that they truly needed. Obviously, David is a type of Christ, but we don’t wanna just jump there. We do wanna marvel at David’s faith. He was just a man. We wanna marvel at David’s faith, his Christ-like character, just as another mere man. And we ought to pray for the Lord to work these same virtues in us, in the culture that we live and move and have our being in.
We wanna pray that we would fear God, as Reuben talked about this morning, be motivated by that fear of God and the love of Christ, a love for God’s glory more than even our own life, to walk in humility before others, fearing God, loving his glory. We wanna pray that the Lord does this in us. It’s not impossible, so we wanna consider David for that, and we will, at some point return and maybe talk more about David as a type of Christ.
And we’ll come back to point number seven, if you want point number seven. We don’t have time to talk about it tonight, but it is the postscript, Israel’s utter perplexity, in 55 through verse 58, which will be a great lesson on why we can trust God’s word, because so many people say that there’s contradictions in the Scriptures based on these verses in the last chapter. It’d be a fun lesson to at least go through.
But let’s go to the Lord in prayer. Father, we are always amazed when we read this story of David and Goliath. As we ought to be. It is, while we do want David’s character, we also do wanna recognize David was no ordinary man, but he was just a man who was filled with a spirit, and we, as Christians, we are also filled with this same spirit. And it wasn’t anything in David that made him like this, it was your spirit, and so we beg of you, Lord, that you would fill us with your spirit, that we would be controlled by your spirit, led by your spirit, to stand up and say the things that we know need to be said, to walk away from the things that we know we should walk away from.
Lord, please sensitize our consciences where they have been seared. Make us more like your son, Jesus Christ, who willingly went to the cross for the joy set before him, the joy of glorifying you. Help us to be like David, who, for the joy set before him, went out to face Goliath. Whatever we face in life, may we do it for the joy set before us to bring you glory, that we might be motivated by the fear of you, and the love of Christ. We pray that you would do this in us, Lord, we pray in Jesus’ name, amen.