1 Samuel 17:1-30
Turn in your copy of God’s Word to 1 Samuel chapter 16 and we’re going to read that, leading into chapter 17 and chapter 17 is actually the largest, the longest chapter in 1 Samuel. And it’s a very, very long, 58 verses, a lot of text to go through as I was looking to translate last week. It’s just a monstrous text. And so we might just read through the first 30 verses because that’s all we’re going to cover tonight.
But as you’re turning there and before we read, I’ll just summarize a few details leading up to chapter 16. So at the beginning of the book, we are introduced to a couple who turns out and ends up to be Samuel’s parents. Samuel is the central figure at the beginning of the book.
And really, he’s the central figure in Israel’s history for decades. He was a faithful man of God who at certain times in his life traveled around Israel teaching them. He would go on circuit throughout Israel and teach the people how to walk faithfully before Yahweh, their God.
And as Samuel grew older, as everybody was observing his life, they were also observing his children. And they’re thinking, Samuel’s getting older, we don’t want his sons to be succeeding his place. And so they actually went to Samuel and demanded a king. And God judged them by giving them Saul as a king. And over the course of six chapters, that’s chapters 9, 10, and 11, chapter 12 is really all about Samuel and his ministry to Israel.
So chapters 9, 10, and 11, and then 13, 14, and 15, over the course of those six chapters, we saw Saul anointed as king. And then he really made mistake after mistake after mistake until he disqualified himself as king. And God revoked his blessing from him, essentially snatched the kingship from his hand.
Saul, we might say, no longer had the divine right to rule as king. God rejected him for his high-handed sin, and the kingship would pass to another. And that is where we pick up in chapter 16.
I did teach through this chapter a couple years ago. It’s essential that we read this just for review. But for the sake of my voice, if we got the mic runners, I’d like to ask a couple volunteers to read because there’s a lot of stuff here.
So this is where we pick up the story, which is the transition of favor from Saul to David. So if you read 1 through 7 in 1 Samuel chapter 16. “Then Yahweh said to Samuel, how long will you be grieving over Saul? I have rejected him from being king over Israel. Fill your horn with oil and go. I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite. For I see among his sons a king for me.
“But Samuel said, how can I go? Saul will hear of it and will kill me. Then Yahweh said, take a heifer with you and say, I have come to sacrifice to Yahweh. And you shall invite Jesse to the sacrifice. And I will make you know what you shall do. And you shall anoint for me the one whom I say to you. So Samuel did what Yahweh said and came to Bethlehem.
“And the elders of the city came trembling to meet him and said, ‘Do you come in peace?’ And he said, ‘In peace, I have come to sacrifice to Yahweh. Set yourselves apart as holy and come with me to the sacrifice.’ He also set apart Jesse and his sons as holy and invited them to the sacrifice.
“Now it happened when they entered, he looked at Eliab and thought, surely the anointed of Yahweh is before him. But Yahweh said to Samuel, ‘Do not look at his appearance or at the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For God sees not as man sees. For man looks at the outward appearance, but Yahweh looks at the heart.’” You have a pause there for a second. There’s just a couple of things I want to note here.
There is the hanging question left here that gets answered in the text that we’re going to cover tonight. There’s something fundamentally different between Eliab and David. So Yahweh rejects Eliab as king. And there is the question here, why? We find the answer to that in the next chapter, which is why he’s brought up in the next chapter.
We also have this fundamental principle of a Christian worldview. God sees what we can’t see. We cannot see into other people’s hearts. All we can do is look on the outward appearance. We’re going to come back to this a little bit later.
So go ahead and read 8 through 13 now and then I’ll make a couple more comments. “Then Jesse called Abinadab and made him pass before Samuel. And he said, ‘Yahweh has not chosen this one either.’ Next, Jesse made Shema pass by and he said, ‘Yahweh has not chosen this one either.’ Thus Jesse made seven of his sons pass before Samuel.
“But Samuel said to Jesse, ‘Yahweh has not chosen these.’ And Samuel said to Jesse, ‘Are these all the young men?’ And he said, ‘There remains yet the youngest and behold, he is shepherding the sheep.’ Then Samuel said to Jesse, ‘Send and bring him for we will not turn around until he comes here.’
“So he sent and brought him in. Now he was ready with beautiful eyes and a handsome appearance. And Yahweh said, ‘Arise, anoint him for this is he.’ Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers. And the spirit of Yahweh came mightily upon David from that day forward. And Samuel arose and went to Ramah.”
So before we read the next section, it’s important to stop and just note a couple of things. First, the author as he leaves this section into the next section, he really brilliantly leaves us in anticipation regarding David, this new king. He’s there, he anoints him, and then he leaves.
And we really know nothing about David other than he’s described as a rosy-cheeked, or you might think of a baby-faced kid, that’s not really physically impressive. And again, as we read this, we think, okay, why Samuel picked Eliab out of the crowd? Why David, not Eliab? And the narrator leaves us in great anticipation and eagerness to learn more about this David. Why was he chosen to be king over Israel?
Second, and I mentioned this a little bit ago, this is the hinge point that details or narrates the transition of Yahweh’s favor from Saul as king to David. We just read in that last verse that the Spirit of Yahweh came mightily upon David from that day forward. And what we read next is the narrator goes over to look at Saul on the opposite end of that transition of favor to the Spirit departing from Saul. And we kind of get the sense that the Spirit leaves Saul and goes to David.
If you can read 14 to 23, that’d be great. “Now the Spirit of Yahweh departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from Yahweh terrorized him. Saul’s servants then said to him, ‘Behold, now an evil spirit from God is terrorizing you. Let our Lord now speak to your servants who are before you. Let them seek a man who is a skillful musician on the harp. And it shall be that when the evil spirit from God is on you, he shall play the harp with his hand, and you will be well.’
“So Saul said to his servants, provide for me now, a man who can play well and bring him to me. Then one of the young men answered and said, ‘Behold, I have seen a son of Jesse the Bethlehemite, who is a skillful musician, a mighty man of valor, a warrior, one who is understanding in speech, and a man of fine form, and Yahweh is with him.’ So Saul sent messengers to Jesse and said, ‘Send me your son David, who is with the flock.’
“And Jesse took a donkey loaded with bread and a wineskin of wine, and the young goat, sent them to Saul by David his son. Then David came to Saul and stood before him, and Saul loved him greatly, and he became his armor-bearer. So Saul sent to Jesse, saying, ‘Let David now stand before me, for he has found favor in my sight.’
“Thus it happened that whenever the evil spirit from God came to Saul, David would take the harp and play it with his hand, and Saul would be refreshed and be well, and the evil spirit would depart from him.’” There is a great deal of situational irony in this chapter. The newly anointed king, that it was purposely hidden by Samuel, by Yahweh, so Saul didn’t know, because Samuel was certain that if Saul knew, Saul would kill him and most likely whoever he anointed.
So there’s a great amount of irony that this newly anointed king has been brought in to be one of the most intimate ministers of the king. When he was being tormented in his thoughts, David would be brought in to play, and it would drive away the evil spirit. So we can all imagine David, he’s brought into this situation, he’s brought into a close position to serve the king, and we can imagine that David would go on from here only to continue to gain favor with Saul as he ministers to him.
We could imagine how David would really ascend slowly through the ranks as a servant of Saul, maybe work his way up the chain from the armor-bearer to another position, but actually that’s not the case. He’s an insignificant servant that we find out in the next chapter. He gets, really, sent home every time Saul feels fine and doesn’t need him anymore.
And that’s where we pick up in chapter 17. David’s been sent home, because Saul doesn’t need him to play for him, he feels better. And this brings us here to this colossal chapter. Without further ado, let’s see what makes David worthy of being anointed the next king of Israel. What is so special about him?
So I’m going to read chapter 17. “Now the Philistines gathered their camps for battle; and they were gathered at Socoh, which belongs to Judah, and they camped between Socoh and Azekah in Ephesdammim. 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. And 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.
“He also had a 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 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.’ And 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 in 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.”
So there he is indicated, he goes back and forth between his father to shepherd the flock and to play music for Saul when he’s needed. Verse 16, “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 and ephah of this roasted grain 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 thousands, 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 rose 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. And he was speaking with them, behold,” or as he was speaking with them, behold, “the champion, the Philistine that 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.’ Then 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? 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?’ 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;” that is Goliath, “‘your servant will go and fight with this Philistine.’ And 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 when it rose up against me, 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 the 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 he 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 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.
He, Saul, was a fearful man, fearing for his own life. He was not concerned above all else for God’s glory, but his own glory.” Bret Hastings
“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, 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 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 in 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 his sheath and put him to death and cut off his head with it. And then the Philistines saw that their champion was dead, so they fled. But the men of Israel and Judah rose 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 David took the Philistine’s head and brought it to Jerusalem and he put his weapon in his tent.”
It’s a very large chapter. I’ve broken this chapter up into six points and we are going to attempt to, and I think we will, cover four of those points tonight. I’m not going to give them to you all up front, you’ll just have to to keep along as I go. But we first have the setting, the setting of this scene.
And it is, if you want to do point one, the setting, you can put a colon and then Israel’s typical position verses 1 to 3. It’s just a typical position that Israel’s in. If you’ve read the Bible up to this point, Joshua and Judges before this, you know that this is just typical life in Israel.
There’s nothing special about this situation. People are always coming up against them to try to kill them. It’s actually the same as it is today, up to their history today. If they have a land, people, enemies come up against them. But for this battle in particular, it’s important to know where it is in Israel. So it’s just a little bit of a geography lesson because there’s some significance there.
So particularly Benjamin and Judah, all of Israel is really a mountainous region, but particularly Benjamin and Judah, there’s a particular characteristic of terrain there. If you want to travel north and south through Israel, you have to do that either on the coastal highway by the Mediterranean coast. If you guys are looking at a map, it’s on the west side over here.
On the Mediterranean coast, you can travel along the coast, and there is a coastal route. But further inland, you could travel north and south, what’s called, The Way of the Patriarchs, traveling through the valleys of really the heart of the country there. This is the route that passes through the valley where Jerusalem is, and then south of that is Bethlehem.
That’s the way, it’s called, The Way of the Patriarchs because that’s the way Abraham traveled down through from north to south. That’s the way Jacob traveled north to south through the land. And all through the land of Judah and Benjamin, you have the western highway, the coastal highway, and you have The Way of the Patriarchs, the eastern route.
And in Judah and Benjamin, you have these two routes, and then between them are mountain ranges that run this way. And so you have these two routes that you have to travel north and south, and then east and west, you have to follow those valleys. We’re very familiar with this terrain.
If we want to go to Estes,(Colorado) we don’t just drive straight, we have to follow the valley routes through the mountains to get to Estes. Same way they had to travel to get east and west throughout the country; there were limited places to travel from east to west. A victory for the Philistines here would have provided a great strategic place to enter into really the heartland.
Having a victory here, which is why Saul and all of the Israelite forces, they come out, it would be like them coming out of Estes and camping at the bottom of the mountain, and the Philistines coming up to enter into it. If they get past them there, there’s really nothing stopping them after that. And if you were to look at a map, where they are camped, the mouth, where they enter into the mountains and come out the other side, when they come out the other side, 15 miles away, it’s right at Bethlehem.
Right where David lives, right where his family is. And from there, there’s multiple directions that they could go to go throughout the country, and so it’s a very strategic place that Saul brings his troops to, to stop them there. Because if they let them past, they can really go and have their way in the heartland of the country, go in any direction that they want. So that’s a little bit of the setting. Israel is in another situation. An enemy has come up against them.
It’s very typical to what we find in Scripture. This battle is extremely important. It is typical, but it’s very significant. It’s vital that they stop the Philistines here, or really their country could be divided. If they get into the heartland and they cut off at Bethlehem, in particular, they’re really separating Judah, which is to the south. They’d be separating that whole tribe from the country to the north.
They’d be essentially cutting Israel in half. So we’ll come back to that in a little bit, the significance of that. It’s a typical situation for Israel, but that brings us to point two.
So we’ve got the setting, point one: the setting. Israel’s typical position, but point number two is the antagonist. The antagonist, and if you want to put a colon, Israel’s giant problem, verses 4 to 11. This is where we find that this typical situation is not so ordinary.
We are introduced to the antagonist of the story, a man by the name of Goliath, a champion. He was six cubits and a span tall, or in our English system, nine feet nine inches tall. This is a monster of a man.
So if I put my hand up here like this, the tip of my fingers are about eight feet tall. That means that if I reached my hand up as high as I could, I couldn’t touch the bottom of Goliath’s chin, unless his head was over 21 inches tall, which isn’t likely. Then maybe I could just touch the bottom of his chin.
So this typical situation, there is then this giant problem. We’re introduced to this Goliath. He comes out of his tent. He’s this towering figure, this monster of a man. Not only is he almost 10 feet tall, he’s then decked out. There’s an extensive description of his armor.
Most commentators note that all the details of this chapter, the purpose of all the details is just to slow down the narrative, to create more anticipation, and it really does that. If we look at verses 5 to 7, again, this is a significant detail of one guy and just his armor. Verse 4 notes his size, and then verse 5, he had a bronze helmet on his head.
He was clothed with scale-armor, and the weight of that scale-armor was 5,000 shekels of bronze. 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 600 shekels of iron. His shield carrier also walked before him.
So Goliath’s chest armor that he wore, we have a specific weight there of what turns out to be 126 pounds. So just his chest armor was 126 pounds; his spear, just the head of his spear, was another 15 pounds. That’s over 140 pounds, and we don’t even know the weight of his helmet, his greaves, the spear that he wore on his back. He’s probably carrying well over 200 pounds of gear.
This guy, his description here, he is absolutely decked out in armor. Every square inch of him is covered as he walks out. This towering man comes out, not only would his size frighten everyone, but then he’s just decked out in all this armor. He looks like what I would imagine many of the soldiers in World War I, when they saw a tank coming. Just totally decked out in armor. There’s no weakness.
There’s no way that they can go up against this. There’s nothing to do but run away. So he’s a monster of a man. He looks like a tank, and then he speaks. This is also one of the longest speeches of any enemy of Israel ever recorded in scripture, verses 8 to 11.
This is what he comes out and says, “He comes out and he stood. He called out to the battle lines of Israel and said to them, ‘Why do you come out to arrange yourselves for battle as if you’re going to come and attack us?’” I know you’re not going to come and attack us.
“‘Am I not the Philistine and you the slaves of Saul? Choose a man for yourself 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. And if I prevail against him and strike him down, then you shall become our slaves and serve us.’
“And again, the Philistine said, ‘I openly reproach the battle lines of Israel this day. Give me a man that we may fight together.’ And when Saul and all Israel heard these words of this Philistine, they were dismayed and greatly afraid.”
The word translated there as dismayed in Hebrew, it literally means to be shattered or to be broken into pieces. And it’s often used metaphorically as it is here to refer to really the shattering of their spirits. They were absolutely broken to pieces in their spirits. All Goliath had to do was come out, stand there and utter this challenge. And all Israel was dismayed. They were shattered to pieces. He didn’t have to fight anyone. And Israel was already defeated in their spirit. And who wouldn’t be? I mean, this guy’s huge.
So here’s this champion, this superhuman, godlike man standing before them. No one wants to go against him. Everybody is dismayed. They’re despairing. Nobody wants to fight him. Certainly not Saul, who we’ve already seen as a coward.
The only person we might hope would stand up to this man would be Jonathan, who had the faith to go against an entire army himself. But after Saul tried to kill him, he really fades into the background. This is Saul’s fight.
Saul is the king. If anyone should stand up to this champion of the Philistines, it’s Saul. So in the face of this Philistine villain, and Yahweh hater, there is none to stand up to him. Israel needs a hero of her own. And it should be the king, but Saul is no king, at least not in character. And what the narrator introduces next is the hero Israel needs, but no one expects.
That brings us to point three, the protagonist. So we’ve got the setting, Israel’s typical position, the antagonist, Israel’s giant problem, and then the protagonist, Israel’s puny proponent in 12 to 27. Israel doesn’t know it yet. We do because we’ve read the story, that this David is the hero that Israel needs, even though nobody would have picked him out of a thousand men to be the person to defeat Goliath.
In verse 12, it says, now David. That word for now is translated many different ways. It’s a wow or a vov. It can be translated as and, or then or but. This now David or but David is a lot like we learn from this passage when we know what it’s about. It’s a lot like the, but God statements in the New Testament. As we were dead in our sins, but God. This has the same effect when we realize this is the hero that Israel needed.
David comes on the scene. I don’t want to read through all these details again, but we are reintroduced to him. Details are filled in regarding how he ends up here. His father sends him to take food to his brothers. We find out in verse 16 that Goliath has come out and he’s made this challenge to Saul and the Israelites, morning and evening, for forty days. 80 challenges and no response.
Saul and Israel, they have failed their 40-day test, 80 times, you might say. No one has the faith to accept Goliath’s challenge. Forty days is a number throughout scripture used for times of testing. Jesus endured forty days of testing where Satan threw everything at him and yet he never broke. Tempted him for forty days. We might see Saul here as being tested with the same test for forty days in a row and he failed it every time.
Where Jesus was tempted in a myriad of different ways and stood up under all of them for forty days. Here we see Saul failed the same test forty days in a row and presumably David arrives on day forty-one. It’s in this section that we get our answer as to what God saw in David’s heart that made him worthy to be anointed the next king.
And this is really what’s instructive for us. This is at the heart of what we want to learn and take away from this passage which is a Christ-like character in contrast to really everyone else in the story. So Jesse issues a directive to David to take food to his brothers and then as I read the, I’m going to read verses 20 to 26.
As I read this, I want you to be thinking about the contrast in David from what we have seen from Saul. What’s in David sets him apart here from Saul. We also have another first in the scripture here.
Verse 26 records the first words of David spoken on the pages of scripture. We should be, as he is the newly anointed king, we should be in anticipation of those words. They’re going to be something important. So I’m going to read verses 20 to 26 again. “So David, he 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 carried them to the circle of the camp while the military force was going out in battle lines shouting the war cry.
“And Israel and the Philistines arranged themselves in battle lines, battle line against battle line, and 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. He was speaking with them. As he was speaking with them, behold, the champion, the Philistine of 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’s 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.
“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?’”
What sets David apart here from Saul? We’ll move on to Eliab after this. But what sets David apart? It’s really a contrast from Saul. The last chapter we saw the transition of favor. We see here why God chooses David over Saul. Especially many of you who have read this before, you know Saul’s character. What sets David apart from Saul? And you could even contrast him, this is a little easier, but you can contrast him with Goliath as well.
What sets David apart from Saul as king is he is concerned about God’s glory first.” Bret Hastings
What makes David so special? So David just wants the reproach of Israel be taken away. At this point in the text, we don’t know what David’s courage is in. We don’t know David at all. All we know is what he tells us here. “He says, ‘Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should reproach the battle lines of the living God?’”
So there’s other things in the text there that we read about David. Maybe you look through that for some of those things that hint to us that he’s different from Saul. There’s a comparison there in David and Saul. Early on Saul looks promising, but here we see the same thing from David.
He looks promising. He wants to obey his father and he does it seemingly happily and quickly. As we have seen from Saul leading up to this point, the six chapters that talked about Saul, it was very obvious that Saul, he was a man-fearer.
He was a fearful man, fearing for his own life. He was not concerned above all else for God’s glory, but his own glory. That’s really what disqualified him. He didn’t fear God. He actually took and usurped the spiritual leadership role in Israel. He usurped Samuel’s role.
Instead of fearing God, he took it upon himself. So David here is primarily concerned about God’s glory. We did not see that from Saul. We saw the opposite. David also comes, we’re going to talk about this at the end as well, he comes with a totally different worldview than everybody else.
And we’ll come back to that. But we see a couple other things that you guys didn’t mention. We see David here, as Kristy mentioned, he’s eager to obey his father. And the difference in that that maybe is different from Saul is we see David as eager to get to the battle lines. The language is explicit there. He gets up early in verse 20.
When he gets there, I think this is also has to be intentional from the author, because otherwise it’s a detail that matters not at all. Instead of, as Saul’s described, and we meet him hiding behind the baggage, David leaves the baggage there and he runs to the battle line. Just a complete contrast to Saul, who was already anointed like David, and yet he was hiding behind the baggage.
Instead, verse 22, he runs to the battle line. He’s eager to get there. He’s not fearful of the battle. All Saul ever really did was avoid his kingly duties. His kingly duty to rally the troops, to lead the fight. David here is portrayed as just quickly jumping into the fray, whether it’s leaving quickly, going to the battle line quickly, or even when we get further on, we’ll cover this next week, but David, when Goliath comes to meet him, he runs towards Goliath.
I mean, that’s absolutely amazing. David’s not scared at all. He’s not standing back waiting. Takes off after him. He takes it to fight to Goliath. Saul, he was really only ever concerned with avoiding kingly duties. He loved the title. He loved that, but he didn’t want to act the part.
David here, we see contrasted, and that’s because his ultimate concern, David’s ultimate concern, is theological. He is concerned that this uncircumcised, barbaric Philistine is mocking and defying Israel, and by doing so, he is mocking and defying the living God. What sets David apart from Saul as king is he is concerned about God’s glory first.
David can’t stand that this Philistine has come out and defied God one time, much less could David have put up with that and listened to it for 79 more times like Saul did. Saul, as Kathy mentioned, he’s a man-fearer, while David is a God-fearer. Goliath is a giant, God-hating pagan, while David is a very small, humble servant to the Almighty God of the universe. We’ll come back to some application, but first we want to answer the question.
There’s this insert of Eliab here. Why is this important to the story? The narrator doesn’t want to leave us hanging. Samuel picked Eliab to be the next king because he was the way he looked, his outward appearance. Samuel thought he would make a good king. What kind of king would Eliab have made? Well, about as good of one as Saul, I would think.
And that brings us to point four, the contagonist. The contagonist. If you want to put a colon after that, you can put colon, Israel’s arrogant perceiver. So a contagonist is someone in a story who’s supposed to be on the same side as the protagonist, but creates more trouble for him by doing foolish things, annoying him, or hurling insults at him.
Eliab overhears David’s words, including his concern for God’s glory, and this is Eliab’s conclusion. Verse 28, “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?’” Eliab might have looked like a king. He might have been Samuel’s choice. In Samuel’s defense, David wasn’t there for him to pick from, but based on what we know, he still would have picked Eliab. But we’ll give Samuel the benefit of the doubt. David wasn’t there. He picked Eliab.
But here we get to see Eliab’s character, and it isn’t good. Eliab is so arrogant, he presumes to be able to perceive someone else’s motives, someone else’s heart. I love how one commentator, Dale Ralph Davis, puts it in his commentary. He says that “Eliab,” and I quote, “omnisciently declares the evil of David’s heart,” end quote.
To presume, to know with certainty what is in someone else’s heart is, in essence, to presume to be omniscient to a certain extent, to know what only God knows. To presume to know with certainty what is in another’s heart is the height of arrogance.
To understand Eliab further, Titus 1:15 sheds light on this. Paul writing to Titus, he says, “To the pure all things are pure, but to those who are defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure, but both their mind and their consciences are defiled.” Eliab sees David, and he doesn’t see, he doesn’t assume the best of David.
He doesn’t see David’s pure motives as pure. He actually twists them and sees them through his own darkened heart. He didn’t see David’s pure motives or assume his motives pure because his own heart is unbelieving and defiled.
All that to say, Eliab would have been another unbelieving king just like Saul. I want to ask one final question, and then we’ll talk about some application. What impresses you about David’s character here? Even his interaction with his brother, his interaction with when he hears Goliath, sees Goliath.
What impresses you about David’s character? What do we take away from this? What do we apply from this? He wasn’t intimidated. One of the commentators that might have been Dale Ralph Davis as well said “this must have been a typical thing in David’s family, being the youngest of that many brothers. You could imagine how he got that kind of treatment all the time.”
But regardless, he just let it roll off of his back and he moved on. Being determined to do what you know is right, man, that’s David here. He was not going to let anything deter him from that. Goliath, well, in perspective to the king of the universe, who is he? He’s an ant that God has to squish with his finger. That’s it. Then David recognizes that.
Really, the highest reward possible that Saul could offer somebody, other than the kingship itself, is what Saul offers somebody for standing up to this guy. David’s faithfulness. David was put in the position, he was a shepherd to defend the sheep, and David was willing to lay his life down for sheep, his father’s sheep. How much more so is he going to lay his life down for the glory of God? So that’s good.
All right, well, let’s wrap this up. I’ve got a few points of application for us just to consider, and I just want to flesh it out. We’ve talked about David. He’s got that laser-like focus. He’s fixed. He’s concerned about the glory of God first. Why is that? What do we take away from this? How do we be like David here? A few things that I note. I’ve got four.
One application for us is don’t procrastinate when you know the right thing to do. So if you put off standing up for God one time and you think, you know what, I’ll do that next time. I’ll do that tomorrow. If you sear your conscience on the matter one time, you might blink like Saul did and fail the test another 79 times before somebody comes along to reveal your failure.
Don’t think, I’ll care. I’ll stand up for God next time. I’ll do this thing next time. The testing time came, and Saul, what revealed his unbelieving heart is he persisted in that kind of behavior. But I think it’s exemplary for us. Like David, when God’s glory is at stake, we don’t put off dealing with it. We don’t fear, man, we don’t fear somebody else’s response. We don’t fear our family members.
We say what we know to be right. We do what we know to be right. Because if we say, I’ll do it next time, I’ll do it tomorrow, we’re going to end up like Saul. It’s just we’re going to kick the can down the road. We’ve got to, like David, when we’re punched in the mouth with something like that, that we deal with it right then and there. That’s thing one.
Thing two, just to make Bill happy, my second point is fear God. From last week, this is David as somebody who feared God. We have to be concerned for his glory first. David, he had a lot of reasons to be concerned about Goliath, about this battle. As I mentioned, the geography, if nobody stood up to Goliath there, the next stop on the way into Israel was David’s hometown.
He had every reason to be concerned about his family, his home, his own life. But he wasn’t concerned about any of those things. He wasn’t concerned about the reward that the king offered. He was concerned about God’s glory first.
In his own circumstances, those things faded into the background. Dale Ralph Davis, again, in his commentary, he explains this by saying, “David brings a whole new worldview that is onto the battlefield there. He says, to this point, the narrative has been godless.”
Then he puts in parentheses, “much like our own stewing over our own insoluble dilemmas. When we have big problems in our life, we often don’t bring a Christian worldview to it.” He goes on, he says, “but now David injects the godly question into the episode.
“Doesn’t having a living God make a difference in all of this? This fellow has mocked the ranks of the living God. If God is so identified with Israel, do you think that he is indifferent towards such slurs on his reputation? Do you expect a living God to allow an uncircumcised Philistine to trample his name in military and theological mud?” Israel thought the Philistine invulnerable. For David, he was only uncircumcised.
A living God gives a whole new view of things. That’s exactly what we are to see in this passage. David comes on the scene. He brings a believing perspective. And that’s really what we have to approach any circumstance in our own life that seems like an insoluble dilemma, a giant problem in our own life. We have to bring a Christian worldview to it.
We have to look up at God, at his grandeur, his might, his glory, and think, this thing is not as big of a deal as I’m making it. David gets to the heart of the matter. David had a biblical worldview. While everyone else was fixated on Goliath, the champion of the Philistines, David saw him for what he was. While David, on human terms, seemed like the puny little kid, in God’s economy, David was the giant of faith, and Goliath was the little ant that was just going to be squished. While everybody else continued to focus on the outward appearance of men, David saw by faith.
Again, we have that verse from chapter 6 ringing in our ears where God said, “I look on the inward, but man looks on the outward appearance.” Everybody else is just focused on that. David saw by faith. He saw the Philistine by faith. So, beloved, whatever circumstances you are in, whatever problems you face in life that might seem insurmountable, we have to bring a biblical worldview to it, like David.
The moral of the story is not that you can overcome the Goliath in your life. The moral of the story is that the God who rescued David, who rescued Israel from Goliath, is the same God that you serve. He’s the same God that can strengthen you and carry you through whatever troubles you have in life. So, enter every life circumstance with that perspective.
You have to see the world as David did through the lens of a biblical worldview. Whatever we face in life, we have a living God behind us, dwelling within us. We have to be concerned for his glory more than our own well-being.
Number three, don’t presume to be omniscient. I think the third thing we can take away from this is when the scriptures say that man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart, it’s not a challenge for us to look into people’s hearts. It’s a statement of fact that we cannot know what is in a person’s heart. If you’re claiming to know with certainty what’s in someone else’s heart, you are as arrogant and blind as Eliab here, for only God can see into the heart. This is, we see from Eliab, a disqualifying characteristic, not a virtue to emulate.
On the flip side of that, we have the fourth application of David in this interaction with his brother and responding righteously. When we do seek to do what is right for God’s glory, we are going to have people who are supposed to be on our side, just like Eliab was supposed to be on David’s side, who all of a sudden become that contagionist.
When we have people inside our own camp or maybe inside our own family taking shots at us, when we’re trying to do what’s righteous, we have to respond like David did here. It’s really a Christ-like response. Just like Christ, when he went to the cross, he was reviled, but he did not revile in return.
David, he doesn’t defend himself. He doesn’t try to justify, hey, I have pure motives in this, Eliab. No, he just says, no, that’s not worth it. I’m not going to fight it out with my brother. He did not revile in return. He just moved on. We’ve seen throughout, this Christ-like character from David. While David, he isn’t humanly impressive in really any way, he’s a very godly young man who surpasses almost anybody we’ve seen in scripture leading up to this.
What explains this? How does David get this godly? What explains David’s character? We might even go back and think about Jonathan, who also had this kind of faith, but we don’t have time to talk about that tonight. We’ll talk about that next week, as we finish up the chapter. Let me close us in prayer. We’ll pray and spend a few minutes praying together.
Our Heavenly Father, the living God of hosts, who is all-powerful, who is, you are bigger than any problem we might face. You are king of the universe. And if we are your children, as we learned this morning, you’ve set your seal upon us. You own us. You are a jealous God who protects what is his own, which is us. And you allow circumstances into our life. You ordain circumstances in our life. You bring circumstances into our life, just like Goliath and Israel and with David.
You bring these situations into our life to test us, to sanctify us. And we praise you for that. We want to be more like your Son, Jesus Christ. And it is through testings like this that make us so. And so we just ask, Lord, that as we do have times of testing come into our life, problems, circumstances, difficulties, we pray, Lord, that you would help us to approach those things with a biblical worldview. That we would consider when we enter into those situations or those problems come up, we think, what does the living God care about this? And you deeply care about us.
And you want to see your glory fill the earth, and we want to see your glory fill the earth. And when we raise that question, it sets everything into perspective. And so, Lord, help us when those things arise, that we not be overwhelmed by the circumstance or the problem, but that we keep our eyes fixed on you. We ask that you would help us do this by the power of your Spirit. In Jesus’ name, Amen.