1 Samuel Lesson 24
David Confirmed Before Nation –
We’ll continue our study on David.
Again for the setting of chapter 17 recall that David must evidentially
prove his position as the anointed one, Mashach,
from which we get Messiah. David must
prove that he has skill in at least two areas.
Those of you who have studied classic literature will recognize
immediately the twin theme of music and military arts. David proved himself in music in dealing with
the demonic depression in Saul and he is about to prove his military prowess
here. We have had to go slow through
chapter 17 so that we could understand the details. We have understood at least one principle, a
principle that is reiterated time and time again in the New Testament and
that’s the principle of 1 Corinthians 10:13, that every testing, every trial,
every pressure that the Christian faces is actually a perfect one. It is perfect because according to that verse
and according to similar verses throughout Scripture God in His sovereignty
So we go back to the essence of God and understand again that God is a
sovereign God, and therefore since God is a sovereign God, before there can be
a pressure or trial faced in your life it is okayed by His sovereignty. That’s what 1 Corinthians 10:13 says several
things about that trial. It says number
one, it was chosen by God because He loves you, so the source of the trial is
ultimately love. Intermediately it is
not because intermediately the child is the secondary means to Satan. But the ultimate choice is because God loves
you and He wants to get you in shape for eternity, that is the doctrine of
predestination. Now this is what
predestination means, not all this gobbledygook that you get in the classroom
discussion on predestination because neither the class nor the professor has
ever studied the New Testament. But when
you have people who understand predestination, then you understand it has
nothing to do with what is usually discussed in these groups.
Predestination has to do with your ultimate destiny that is fashioned in
the image of Jesus Christ and it is a term that is not used of
non-Christians. Predestination is
skewed, it’s asymmetrical, there is no such thing as double
predestination. There is only one
predestination; it’s predestination in Christ.
So we have in Sc the fact that God loves and that is the basis for the
decision and though we may not like it, and we may kick and scream and yell and
complain and gripe and malign, nevertheless, in back of it all is a God loves
us very deeply, so deeply that while we are such spiritual brats He does not
abandon us but goes in to work out a solution.
You see, if someone loves you, they’re going to work with you and if they
don’t love you they’ll abandon you. So
sometime when you have a person who’s training you, it may be anything from
football coach to a piano teacher or something and you may get a little hacked
at the methods they use to teach you.
Just remember something, generally speaking they are very dedicated
people and because they are dedicated, that is why they take all the effort
they do to put up with your nonsense. It
is precisely the severity of the training that is a proof of the love.
The second thing we learn from 1 Cor. 10:13, not only is there a God who
loves us, but there is a God who knows what is good and what is best; in other
words, He is omniscient. We are not
omniscient and we do not know what is good for us. This is why in the introduction to Proverbs
you recall the dilemma that Plato put forth in the Republic when he pointed out
that the doctor, the physician, never really can tell that he has done
something good because he never really can be sure that eventually his medicine
won’t turn into some sort of a poison or have some ultimate bad side
effects. He never can be absolutely sure
that that will not be the case. And that
being true, then a God who omniscient alone is qualified to design trials and
pressures. Footnote: don’t you try to
invent your own special sweet ways of sanctification. You leave that in the Lord’s hands, He will
do it and He will do it magnificently; don’t try to tell Him how. You just accept what He delivers and leave it
at that and give thanks for it.
The third thing about what we learned about God is that He will never
give us a trial for which grace has not been provided sufficient to that
trial. Therefore, it is impossible for a
Christian to ever face a trial for which God has not provided. In other words, 1 Cor. 10:13 is a very
condemning verse. But do you know what
this verse ultimately says? It says that
the only reason why you should fail a trial that God gives you’re a quitter,
not because God hasn’t provided. So
actually this is a condemning verse because it says every failure in the
Christian life is due to the believer; it is due to the believer who says I am
not going to take what grace has provided for me. And so believers who negative towards God’s
grace are always the believers who are going to fail, they are quitters because
they, in the final analysis, do what the little sign in my office says, we have
a very relaxed congregation here.
Someone put on my desk a very interesting sign that epitomizes every
Christian’s problem; it says: Be reasonable, do it my way. This is what Christians are basically saying
when they go negative to grace, God, be reasonable, do it my way, I don’t want
it done Your way, I want it done my way.
So these are the things that have to do with the perfect trial, and
David in this chapter, faces a perfect trial.
God has engineered the perfect catastrophe to show His man. Let’s review the factors of this perfect
trial as they appear in the chapter.
First of all, for fifteen centuries God has been working with a Hamitic
group; the Hamitic group is made up of the Anakim, who are giants, and the
Philistines. Both of these are Hamitic
peoples and both of these people have been carefully cultured and nurtured and
guided for fifteen centuries so they’ll be exactly in exactly the right
condition at the right time. So for
fifteen centuries God has provided working in and through history in His
sovereign way, without tampering with volition, but nevertheless bringing and
setting up the trial, far before David, and yet all this time God had in His
mind one day there’d be a young man who had to prove himself king of
Israel. One day fifteen centuries hence
there would have to be a man who would be able to use grace. There’d be a man who would show
Furthermore we have other things to do with this perfect trial. We know that not only has God set up fifteen
centuries for the trial, but He’s also set up Saul as the first king,
deliberately. God knew Saul would fail
when God anointed Saul to the office.
When God, through Samuel, anointed Saul as the first king of
Last week, from verses 2-31 we dealt with the perfect timing of the
trial. Not only is it a perfect trial,
but the timing of the trial was perfect.
It was dropped into
For example, we have somebody with some problem that may be a minor of
them but nevertheless it’s made an issue of in Christian circles once in a
while, and that’s smoking. Relax if you
smoke, this is not going to be an anti-smoke campaign. But this is one that was often made an issue,
and if you have a particular habit you plug that in, whatever it is. So here it is, this is made a big issue. All right, from 1 Cor. 6 you know it isn’t
quite the healthiest thing to do and you realize that God has given you a body
and that He has given you a certain number of years of ministry and it’s
foolish to sit around and tear your body apart by this kind of activity. But the point is that though you may know
that from Scripture, that many not be what God is dealing with at this moment
at this time. You see, there are gobs of
things that God can deal with in our lives, and we have to be astute enough and
sharp enough and alert enough to understand where the Holy Spirit is making an
issue, and if the Holy Spirit is making an issue over here with some bad mental
attitude.
For example jealousy, jealousy toward older believers, and you to act
the part, and put on the phony front of imitating his superior spirituality and
you can’t do it, so therefore you put this on until some real big trial comes
your way and it’s quite obvious to you and everyone else that you don’t have
what it takes so therefore you pull in your horns and go somewhere else,
ashamed and feeling guilty all the time; tremendous guilt. Now you can save yourself a lot of sorrow, a
lot of trouble, just relax; if you’re learn to relax in God’s grace and just
act your present part. Do you know what
that’s called? That’s called meekness;
meekness is not weakness. Meekness means
you just stand in the Christian life at the status you are in and don’t try to
fake a superior status. Meekness is a
fruit of the Holy Spirit. So relax,
you’ll get there sometime, just relax about it and don’t try to be a phony by
imitating some other believer. That’s
meekness.
All right, maybe you have a problem, maybe you through pride and through
approbation lust, a very common thing, you just have to be accepted by the
group and you think in order to be accepted by the group you just have to have
their standard, or their lingo, or their way of talking, their way of praying
or something and you don’t have that you’re just not going to be accepted and
you feel kind out of it. Well you can
relax there too. That’s just approbation
lust. So here you are as a believer and
you have smoking over here as a habit, that’s external and everybody see it,
and they’re sitting there choking and coughing away, and here on the inside
there’s this mental attitude, approbation lust.
And that happens to be the thing that the Holy Spirit is working on
you. And here’s the ironic thing, and
this is why you want to be very careful about this, to sense the timing of the
Spirit in your life. He may be going to
use smoking to help you out here. Now
it’s not beyond to use one area of weakness to help another area of
weakness. Remember, God is 100%
efficient and he will use sin to deal with sin.
And He may be able to use smoking to deal with your approbation
lust. Maybe the people that you’re
seeking acceptance just can’t stand smoke, and now you’re in a jam, because you
go over to their house and there they are, sitting around and you pull out the
pack and look for something to light, and then all of a sudden you say hey,
these people can’t stand this, it’s written all over their face, there’s no
ashtray there or anything and you know they just can’t stand it. So you know they’re making an issue out of
that.
Now isn’t this interesting how God has taken two –R learned behavior
patterns and He’s using one to eliminate the other for you; very efficient of
Him to do this. So now you’ve got to
make a decision, as you light one up there goes the approbation lust; you’ve
got to cancel your approbation lust because you know that they can’t stand it,
so at this moment you’re going to have to say I don’t care whether they accept
me, so there you go and you get rid of your approbation lust, at least
there. Or, you can well now I’d rather
be friendly with the brethren and so you put your smoking away.
And you’ll find God actually putting you in a situation where you can go
one way or the other. It’s very humorous
of Him to do this, incidentally, it’s probably a lot of fun planning these
situations, and so He does this and He’s really working here on the mental
attitude. That’s where He’s working, and
now you can relax about that, deal with it later. But believers, and believers are notorious,
if you are a new believer of if you’ve just recently got in the Word, let me
give you a friendly piece of advice. You
will be in Christian circles where they are going to make the issue on the
overt behavior pattern; they are going to tell you how short or how long your
hair can be, they are going to tell you how to smoke, when to smoke, where to
smoke, and they’re going to tell you all these other things. And to some degree they can give you Biblical
advice on this but it just doesn’t happen that that’s where the Holy Spirit is
working in your life. So before you get
an inferiority complex because some Christian doesn’t like your favorite bad
habit, relax and ask yourself, where is God working with me in my life right
now, and if God isn’t making an issue, then no one else should. And if other believers are making an issue
with you they are out of line, and you’re out of line if you listen to
them. They’re just legalists, and
they’re usually self-righteous people and you can just forget it, because you’d
be better off with some other more relaxed company. Don’t bother with them, if they’re so hung up
on certain legalistic things, forget it.
Find somebody else who you can pal around with.
So remember this problem of timing and this is the second great thing
theme of 1 Samuel 17. David was there, remember, he came up at dawn, at just
the time when the armies were going out to assume their position. You recall the military situation, you have
the valley of Elah, to the south you have the Philistines on one side, and to
the north you have the Israelites, and they’re on a height of land. Now this is a wadi; now a wadi is dry during
the dry season, just like a lot of streams on the plateau here, and so there’s
no water in this thing, it’s just a convenient boundary between the two
armies. And Goliath, every morning
before the sun rises, comes over here and he offers his challenge. He’s been doing this for forty days; he’s saying,
like the great heroes of Homer, he’s saying look, let’s settle this whole war
by just one person being killed; I’m the champion of the Philistines, you get
one of your champions and we’ll battle until one of us dies, and that will
decide the outcome of the war. And every
day for forty days he’s been going over there and every day for forty days
we’ve had Saul and David’s brothers sitting there with their human good, unable
to do a thing about it. And this
happened at dawn and it happened at dusk.
So instead of having revile and taps the Israelite army listened to
loudmouth in the morning and loudmouth in the evening; it was a twice a day
treatment for forty days. So for eighty
times he came out and shot off his mouth.
And this is the first day beyond, because remember forty is the number
in the Bible of testing, God has allowed the testing to go on for forty
days. After the forty days are up, the
forty-first day along comes this boy by the name of David, and David just
happens to be in the camp to see Goliath.
Now this was perfect timing because had he come at noonday he would
never have seen Goliath, had he come at night he never seen Goliath; there was
only two short period of the day where he could have seen Goliath and God had
David arrive at just that time.
Now we begin another area of chapter 17, the training of David. David now only had a perfect trial, he not
only had perfect training, but David had perfect training and we are going to
go over the text leading up to the slaying of the giant, although we still
won’t have Goliath dead by the time we finish tonight, because I want to show
you all the things that David had to overcome before he even got a chance to
use the sling against the giant. David
had to come over many trials, in fact there were five trials that David had to
pass before he could kill the giant, and these are the great trials, these are
the great things that show you the tremendous background of David. David was not somebody that happened to be
good with a slingshot and trotted up there and whirled one off. That’s not the story at all. David had such thorough training that he
could get his position to shoot at the giant and that was an accomplishment.
First we’re going to go back to
verse 28 and pick up the first trial of David; we’ll get two of these trials
tonight and we’ll finish with the death of Goliath next week. Beginning in verse 18 and 19, David’s first
trial; what was trial number one. Trial
number one was intimidation by human good family, in other words, David had to
pass a very severe test and that was that he was going to be ridiculed by
members of his own family; he was going to be put down by members of his own
family and David passed this trial magnificently. Probably this was a lot harder
psychologically than throwing any rock at a giant because this is not a
physical thing; this gets to one’s soul.
So let’s look at this trial.
Verse 28, “Eliab, his eldest brother, heard when he spoke unto the men;”
now you recall who Eliab is. Eliab was
David’s oldest brother, and there’s some things to understand about Eliab, at
least five things that you want to know.
The first thing about Eliab is that he had an outstanding physique and
he was a handsome man; an outstanding physique and a handsome man. This is taught in 1 Samuel 16:6-7. Eliab had all the makings of a king from the
outside. This is why Saul, when he
walked into Jesse’s house, said hey look at that, that’s Eliab, I like the
looks of that man, he looks like a king.
He has the decorum of a king, and he has the physique, so therefore why
not anoint him. So the first thing you
want to remember about Eliab, that he himself was no usual person, he was quite
an unusual one, and he was a standout.
He was actually a better standout than David. If you had the crowd of eight brothers here
you’d pick out Eliab right away and because of the hint last week you’d pick
out David with his red hair, other than that you’d never have guessed which one
David was. But Eliab was the one who was
the standout. That’s the first thing.
The second thing you want to know about Eliab was the God rejected him
because of his lousy spiritual condition.
Eliab had a phony front because he was a man who operated on the human
good principle. He was a man who did not
realize his full sinfulness before God and therefore rely upon grace which is God’s
unmerited favor; rather he tried to earn status with God by human works; oh God
is going to be ashamed of me until I earn my way, until I earn approval. You don’t earn approval from God; no one
earns approval from God, not this side of Eden.
The human race had one chance to earn approval before God and they blew
it at the Garden of Eden; that’s the only place we earn approval before God,
elsewhere it’s always by grace.
But Eliab had all this human good, he had this big front, and it sure
looked like to people on the outside that Eliab would have been qualified to do
something, but what do you suppose has been happening to Eliab for forty
days? Why hasn’t he gone out and slain
the giant. For forty days he had a
chance; if he had the stuff that it took he would be out there. He wasn’t, because like all people with human
good and a phony front, when the trial comes they drop the ball, their lack of
spirituality glares at you, like high intensity light. It is obvious they don’t have what it takes
because they flub it when it comes to a trial, when it comes to a
pressure.
The third thing about Eliab, not only did God reject him, but God chose
his brother, his younger brother because David had a tremendous spiritual
condition, David was a very mature believer.
We’ll see evidence of that tonight.
David was a tremendously mature believer. Therefore, point 4, you have jealousy between
Eliab and David inside the family. There
is a tremendous amount of jealousy, mental attitude sin on Eliab’s part toward
his brother. Eliab is fully conscious
that his brother had it and he doesn’t.
This is always typical of people with human good. They are jealous people, they are envious
people because they say oh, he can’t do this and be a believer, or how can she
do that and be a believer. Because of
grace, how else, that’s why. And they
just cannot stand to see God work in somebody’s life especially when that
person in whom God works offends them in one of their pet little areas of human
good. They have their prissy little
self-righteous standards and when a believer violates those prissy standards,
they become envious, jealous and maligning.
They are very, very bad people all around. So the third thing we know in this family
there’s been a tremendous amount of maligning.
Finally, Eliab puts David down; he cannot stand to have his brother here
and so now he’s going to put his brother down good. And he begins in verse 28, “Eliab’s anger was
kindled against David,” do you know why?
Because David has just said in verse 26, notice what David said, “What
shall be done for this man who kills this Philistine, and takes away the
reproach from Israel” the shame that the Israel armies have stayed there for
forty days and taken this stuff off loudmouth.
Forty days this has gone on and the Israelite army sits there, with all
their people. Where is Eliab? Where is Saul? This is embarrassing to the armies of Israel
that for forty days the Philistines are sitting over there laughing at
them. So here we have Eliab putting
David down because he hears what David said; he says “who is this uncircumcised
Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God?” Now that’s what Eliab should have said;
that’s what Saul should have said for forty days, instead of letting this thing
drag on and on and on.
And so when Eliab hears this, in verse 28, immediately his mental
attitude of jealousy springs into action, that little brat of a brother of
mine, now look at him. Do you know what
really hurts? He knows the little brat
is right; that’s what really hurts and that’s what makes him angry. That little brat happened to say just exactly
what he knew should have been said for forty days and so he becomes very anger
here. “And his anger was kindled against
David, and he said, Why did you come here?”
You see, big brother speaking.
“And with whom have you left those few sheep in the wilderness?” Do you know what he’s saying, by “few sheep,”
he actually had a lot of sheep, David is going to point out he has quite a
whole flock, there’s not any “few sheep,” there’s a whole bunch of them. But you know why he puts in this word
“few”? Just to cut his brother, that’s
all. Why don’t you go home and tend to momma’s cookies, and all the other
little trivial toys that little brother Davy has; Davy, why don’t you go home
now. That’s the attitude, this is
sarcasm that he uses toward his little brother, go home and play ball little
boy and leave the fighting to the men.
Which was ironic because who was doing the fighting? Nobody!
They were just going out there seeing Goliath, doing a one-eighty and
going back again. That’s what’s so funny
about the last part of this remark, “I know your pride, and the naughtiness of
your heart,” this is a King James Word meaning just rebelliousness. Actually, who is proud and who is
rebellious? Eliab. See, that’s another feature of people with
human good, they always attribute to you their sins; always, that’s always the
case. They will always assume that
because you have some confidence in the Lord and you’ve learned to rely on
grace, that therefore you’re arrogant, you’re something else, “God is going to
deal with you” kind of thing. This is
human good, because they cannot imagine themselves doing that without
sinning. So they’re just attributing
their mental attitude toward you so just relax, consider the source and move
on.
“I know thy pride and thy naughtiness of heart,” so there’s another cut
at David, “For you have come down that you might see the battle.” If I had been David I’d say yeah, I sure did,
I’m watching it right now, why don’t you go down there and do something. See, David had a perfect open here, if you
want to trade sarcasm for sarcasm, this just leaves the conversation wide open
for a beautiful reply by David, yeah I came down here to see if any of my big
brothers have any guts, he could have said something like that, but what does
David say? “And David said, What have I
done now?” And that phrase proves that
there had been jealousy going on in that relationship for some time. What have I done now? In other words, you always put me down Eliab,
now what did I do to merit this?
But David goes on and he adds one thing, which I didn’t comment on in
detail, “Is there not a cause?” The word
“cause” is a Hebrew word, dabar, it’s
a word that means word, and it can often mean speech or thought, but here the
King James translation is better then all the modern translations that I’ve
checked because here they’ve caught the point.
dabar can be used in the
Hebrew for a court case; illustration if you want to check this out on your
own, this is illustrated in Exodus 18:16 where you have a legal use of dabar and there you can prove that it
means a court case. Now here’s what
David’s saying, he’s saying just a minute, this is a federal case; he’s saying
to his brother, you have put me down and I’m not going to respond to that
because that’s petty, but this giant has made an issue and the issue was made
in verse 26 when he defied the God of Israel, this uncircumcised Philistine, that
he should defy the armies of the living God.
In other words, David is saying the Philistine has made this an issue by
blaspheming the person of Jesus Christ.
Now he made it an issue.
So what David is really doing here is he is passing magnificently his
first test for his first trial, which is intimidation by family members. David could have responded on the same petty
level as his brothers; David could have given some sarcastic remark back to
Eliab; he could have clobbered Eliab, he could have beaten up his brother at
this point, David could have done a number of things to his brother but they
all would have petty. And so what did
David do? He just relaxed about that and
moved on to the issue, he said Eliab, there’s an issue here and let’s deal with
that. The issue is that he has defied
Jesus Christ, that’s the issue.
So you see David passed a tremendous trial here, a trial which you
wouldn’t even notice if you read the Scriptures fast at this point, and yet a
trial which shows you how David thought, it shows you the mental attitude of
this man, how he had a mental attitude that was fantastic. And it is going to show you why he is
successful with the giant. It’s no
accident David’s successful with the giant, look at the preparation this guy
has. He is able to move through all the
family pettiness and move on to the issue.
Now you can realize, those of you who have come from large families, the
kind of pettiness that goes on all the time and you can imagine how easy it
would have been for David to get sidetracked at this point.
But notice the tremendous trial.
I think this is one of the fantastic trials of David. This is far more than just heaving a rock at
a giant; he was able to just forget the pettiness and move on. Some of you have to learn that lesson. You’re going to find pettiness in this
congregation, we all have our degrees of pettiness and if you’re going to get
high on the hog every time somebody had a little petty jealousy or animosity
towards you, you’re out of it, and you’re going to be a miserable believer and
you might as well make up your mind, if you’re looking for the perfect
congregation, just hold your breath.
There are going to be people around here who you admire very much who
are going to turn out at times to be petty.
And you should be like David and remember his trial, just move on and
make the issue the Word, forget the pettiness and forget all the little ins and
outs on who said what, when and where, and move on.
That’s the first trial of David, the second trial, verse 32, David comes
to Saul, finally, because remember I explained how beautifully this was timed
so the word would get to Saul. “And
David said to Saul, Let no man’s heart fail because of him; thy servant will go
and fight with this Philistine. [33] And Saul said to David, You are not able
to go against this Philistine to fight with him; for you are but a youth, and
he a man of war from his youth.”
Now the first thing that David says in verse 32 has to be understood
from this perspective, and here is the essence of the second trial. David is discouraged by those in authority;
that’s the second trial. So the first
trial was he was intimidated by family members and he passed the test with
flying colors because he made Christ the issue and not their pettiness. The second trial is that he was discouraged
by those in authority. Why was this a
test? Because under the code of arms of
that day David could not go out and kill Goliath unless he had permission of
the king. So David had first to secure
the permission so that when he did kill the giant it would be an official act
of the army of Israel. So David had to
secure permission by the authorities; he had to, in other words, go through the
chain of command. This is a tremendous
trial here, because if David felt he could kill the giant, which we know he
did, think of the temptation here, when Saul says no kid, go home, you’re just
not trained, you haven’t had all the military training we have, we’re the big
boys here.
Now David could have said forget it, and gone out and killed the giant,
but it wouldn’t have done any good because it would not have been an officially
commissioned act by the army of Israel.
So he had to secure permission from an authority who was
discouraging. Well, David recognize the
principle and so when he comes to Saul, this shows you, by the way, David is
militarily very skilled, even at this point.
He says, “Let no man’s heart fail because of him,” now David recognizes
a principle of war, and that is that an army must have a proper mental
attitude.
Now it’s interesting that through the years the people who have
translated this have had trouble with the word “man.” In the Hebrew the word man begins with aleph,
this is what the word looks like, it’s Adam,
the “A” is this in the Hebrew. There’s
another word that some texts have: Adonai,
and notice these two words begin with the same Hebrew character. And some texts have Adonai, which at first glance you think this makes real sense when
it would say “let my Lord’s heart fail not.”
In other words, he’s saying this to Saul, “Let my lord’s heart fail
not,” I’m going to go out and kill the giant.
But as always, if you take the text the way it stands without these
suggestions, it’s harder but finally you get to the point. He’s not just talking to Saul, he’s talking
about the whole army here, don’t let one of these soldier’s heart’s fail,
that’s what he’s saying, because what has David seen? He’s seen a magnificent military maneuver called
a retreat; the army has listened to Goliath, they have responded magnificently
by doing a one-eighty and moving back.
That’s what David has seen. So he
says now look, Saul, don’t let these guys have a fouled up mental
attitude. Let me go out there and kill
him, because David recognized that the mental attitude was the issue.
Turn to Deuteronomy 20 which is the instructions to the Israelite army
and how they were to enter battle, showing you that they put great stock in an
army’s mental attitude. Verse 1, “When
thou goest out to battle against thine enemies, and seest horses, and chariots,
and a people more than thou, be not afraid of them; for the LORD thy God is
with thee, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.” And then the priest is going to come up to
the front and he’s going to say, verse 3, “O Israel,” by the way, this is still
used in the Israeli army today, in the Six Day War the priests were actually
quoting Deuteronomy 20, it’s used even to this day. “O Israel, ye approach this day unto battle
against your enemies; let not your hearts faint, fear not, and do not tremble,
neither be ye terrified because of them; [4] For the LORD your God is He who
goes with you, to fight for you against your enemies, to save you. [5] And the
officers will speak to the people” the enlisted men, “saying, What man is there
who has built a new house, and has not dedicated it? Let him go and return to his house, lest he
die in the battle, and another man dedicate it.” In other words, if you’ve got these things on
your mind you’re not fit to be a soldier.
If you’re worried about your house and your business, forget it, we
don’t want you around. We only want
people around with the proper mental attitude.
Verse 6, “And what man is he who has planted a vineyard, and has not yet
eaten of it?” His business is on his mind, get him out. Verse 7, “What man is there who has betrothed
a wife,” is engaged, in other words, he hasn’t married her yet, “and has not
taken her? Let him go and return unto his house, lest he die in the battle,” if
you’ve got a girlfriend on your mind forget it. In other words, the soldier’s mind cannot be
occupied by anything except to kill the enemy, and David recognizes this and he
doesn’t want anything else. And so David
knows Deuteronomy 20 and he sees immediately, we’ve got problems all over, this
army is ridiculous.
And so in 1 Samuel 17 when you see this phrase, “Let no man’s heart fail
because of him” that is loudmouth, David is saying look, let’s get the mental
attitude straight around here. Notice so
far nothing has been said about weapons.
Weapons are not the issue here, the issue is the mental attitude. “Why servant will go and fight with this
Philistine.” Notice he says “thy
servant,” this is an appeal to place himself under the authority of Saul. Remember he has to secure permission from the
chain of command and so he says Saul, I am under your authority, now will you
please give me permission go kill this guy; don’t be swayed by the lousy mental
attitude of everyone else.
So as usual human good replies, verse 33, “And Saul said to David, Thou
are not able to go against this Philistine to fight with him;” so it shows you
that Saul has been infiltrated by the same bad mental attitude that the army
has and he is saying, David, I do not give you permission. Now in verse 33 we have the second great
trial of David. David has been denied
permission, he is denied permission to go fight the giant and this is the
second thing. The first trial would have
been bad enough, he gets put down by his brother, could have been sidetracked
with pettiness, but he passes that and moves on, and then he hits the second
trial, he can’t get permission to go out there and kill him. “...to go against this Philistine to fight
with him, for you are but a youth,” now how old was David when this
happened? We know from 2 Samuel 5:4 that
David was thirty years old when he ascended to the throne of Israel. However, we also know from 1 Samuel 16:18
that he also had experience in military training by this time. So therefore we must place him in his early
twenties; David was in his early twenties, possibly nineteen, but around in
there would be the age of David. He wasn’t
a little boy with a sling shot sticking out of his hip pocket. He was older.
What’s the point here? Saul could
have done this, but Saul operates on human good and Saul now faced a crisis
that human good couldn’t handle. It’s
like this, we have human good assets and maybe we’ve worked hard and we’ve got
that much human good. Do you know what
God does with us? He comes along and He
gives us a trial this big, just to show us our human good assets aren’t good
enough. And He says now believer, I’ve
provided grace with assets this big; now what are you going to try? Are you going try human good or are you going
to try My grace. And you say well God, I
don’t deserve it. That’s right, that’s
grace; now I don’t know whether I can do that, whether I can humble myself that
much to rely on grace, I want to claim something in this. You’re not going to because human good is
there and grace is over here, and that’s the obstacle right there.
Now a person who’s on human good when he comes to this kind of a
decision can go one way; he can go on negative volition and try his human good,
but since he knows the obstacle is bigger than his human good can supply he is
going to wind up on the funny farm with some sort mental illness or something
because he can’t cope with reality. Why
can’t they cope with it? Listen, there’s
not one believer that can cope with reality barring physical problems, because
1 Cor. 10:13 would be a lie otherwise.
So therefore this business, I can’t cope with reality, what you should
say is that’s right on a human good basis; let’s finish the sentence, I can’t cope
with reality using my human good and that’s exactly right. So a believer who’s on negative volition will
insist on using human good and therefore fail, and the more he fails and the
harder his heart becomes the more determined he insists on using his own human
good, the wackier he gets until he finally becomes psychotic.
Now that’s Saul’s path, unfortunately.
God gave Saul, at this point, a chance to go positive. You see, God is gracious, God had already
ordained David as king but Saul could have gone on positive volition here, and
began to move out with David and say all right, David, I see that you’ve been
trained, go to it son; but he didn’t do that, he’s trying to discourage David
and the worst kind of trials you will ever face from believers are people from
within the Christian camp who hold authority.
That is the worst kind, family trials are one thing, but trials from
Christian leaders are another, so watch that.
Now to sum up the second trial David is going to pass the test because
he’s not going to argue with Saul but he’s going to present persuasive evidence
and he wins Saul around at the end of verse 37 where Saul says all right David,
go. So we know the outcome of the second
trial. David wins by patiently
explaining. Now think of this, here’s a
boy who wants to go out there and kill that giant. He knows he can do it; first he gets his
brother putting him down and he moves very graciously through that. Then he turns to the kind and he can’t even
get permission to do it. Now must of us
would have phased out right there, all right, Saul, if that’s the way you want
to do it, you kill the giant—bye bye, I’m going back to my sheep. David could have acted that way, but David
knew that that wasn’t honoring to the Lord so he kept on.
Now we come to trial number three, verses 34-37. Trial number three actually chronologically
precedes trial number one. So if you
organized these trials in David’s life it goes three, one, two; trial number
three comes first. And trial number
three consists of many, many small trials, and it is the tremendous preparation
that David had. Let’s look at it in
verse 34, “And David said unto Saul, Thy servant kept his father’s sheep, and
there came a lion, and a bear, and took a lab out of the flock; [35] And I went
out after him, and smote him, and delivered it out of his mouth. And when he arose against me, I caught him by
his beard, and smote him, and slew him. [36] Thy slew both the lion and the
bear; and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be as one of them, seeing he has
defied the armies of the living God. [37] And David said, moreover, the LORD
who delivered me out of the paw of the lion, and out of the paw of the bear, He
will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine.” A magnificent speech, just magnificent, it
summarizes the whole thing right here.
Let’s go through this to see the fine points and understand the
preparation that David had. First he
says “Thy servant,” remember he’s still seeking permission from higher authority
and he uses the proper terminology and he is not undermining Saul’s
authority. Notice here’s the difference
between David and Jonathan. Remember what Jonathan did? He acted without his father’s
permission. He was a magnificent
believer but he did not have the grace orientation of David. Jonathan was fantastic but he lacked
something David never lacked and that was David always respected
authority. David, you see later on in
ensuing chapters respected Saul’s authority very much, though he hated him
personally. He couldn’t stand him
personally; he admired his authority.
So David was blessed by God and we might add at this point, I doubt, Bob
Thieme has said and I think I agree with him at this point, there’s not one
believer in God’s word that has been more blessed in more areas than
David. You look upon Moses and he was
blessed in some areas, with education, with writing, with political
organization. Paul was blessed in the
area of doctrine, but David was blessed in every area. He was blessed in his home life up until the
time when he had trouble, he was blessed in his military life, he was blessed
as king, he was blessed all over the place.
Why did God so bless David?
Because he was perfect, because he conformed to all the legalistic taboos? It’s going to be very obvious David didn’t
conform to any of the legalistic taboos.
He couldn’t have gotten into any seminary in the United States. He couldn’t sign their little statement, I
will not dance, I will not play cards, I will do all the rest of the idiotic
things that only Christians think of doing.
David would never have made it and yet isn’t it strange that God blessed
him and blessed him and blessed him, just poured out blessings on David, because
David understood grace.
Now here he’s going to start his argument, but it’s always done as unto
the Lord, recognizing the authority. He
says, “Thy servant kept his father’s sheep,” he was his father’s shepherd is
actually the way this should be, it shouldn’t be “kept his father’s sheep,” “Thy
servant was his father’s shepherd,” it loses the sense in the King James
because the point is he’s trying to say I fulfilled my responsibility and here
is the essence of the third trial of David.
David carried out his responsebility in face of tremendous
frustrations. In spite of the
frustrations of life David fulfilled his responsibility and he did it for years
before he ever got here. In the small
things David carried out his responsibilities; in the very frustrations David
carried out his responsibilities. Now
watch how he did this.
“Thy servant was his father’s shepherd with the flock,” and the way it’s
constructed is emphasis on the fact that he’s under his father and he
recognizes he’s submissive to his father, he recognizes the third divine institution
and the authority contained therein.
“And there came a lion and a bear, and took a lamb out of the flock,
[35] And I went out after him, and smote him, and delivered it out of his
mouth. And when he arose against me, I caught him by his beard, and smote him,
and slew him.” Now all the verbs from
this point on, through the end of verse 35, are very peculiar. Usually in the Hebrew text when you’re
narrating something you have what is called the imperfect. The Hebrew has two tenses, the imperfect and
the perfect, and there’s a bunch of constructions which we won’t go into. I just want you to notice that usually an
imperfect verb is used here, it means I did this, this happened, this happened,
this happened and this happened.
That’s the usual way it’s written.
But there’s a very interesting reason that is not the way these verbs
are set up here. All of these verbs are
perfect and not imperfect; because of various laws of syntax what this really
means is David is saying... and also, the word “lion” and “bear” have the
articles, “the lion” and “the bear.” Now
is this talking about two animals, a lion and a bear, or what is he talking
about. By the use of the perfect the
narrator is telling us what David is saying, he said there would come a lion,
and there would come a bear, in other words over and over and over and over
this happened; this was his frequentative construction, this is repetitive
action; David is not talking about one bear or one lion, he is talking about
many of these, he’s saying whenever this happened, then I did the following
things. So there might come a lion, or a
bear, and it might take a lamb out of the flock, whenever he would do this I
would go out after him and I’d kill him, and I’d deliver it out of his mouth
when he arose against me.
Now to understand this we’ve got to understand a little bit about a
shepherd’s life to see how this trial shows responsibility. The first point about a shepherd was that the
shepherd had to establish his reputation.
To illustrate the point, turn to Psalm 23:3, you’ll understand this
point better now that you have a little bit of Hebrew culture here. In Psalm 23:3 David sees the Lord as his
shepherd. Now do you suppose this might
have any influence on the way he wanted to be a good shepherd? Do you suppose that the thought might have
run through David’s mind that I want to shepherd these sheep like I would like
the Lord to shepherd me. Do you suppose
he ever made that connection? I think he
made that connection many times. Psalm 23,
which is a Psalm of David, says “Yahweh is my shepherd, and I shall not want,”
He’s the perfect shepherd and David said I know what being a perfect shepherd
is because I’ve tried all my life to be one.
There’s a little phrase, however, at the end of verse 3 that you might
not notice. And this is the first
principle under shepherd; a shepherd wants to get his reputation. Notice what he says, “He restoreth my soul,”
verse 3, “He leads me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake,” the
sake of the shepherd’s name. In other
words, the shepherds reputation is on the line if something happens to the
sheep. This is why Psalm 23 is such a
fantastic Psalm on eternal security, because if something happens to the sheep
that is a reflection on the reputation of the shepherd.
Now turn to John 10 and you’ll understand why Jesus said what he did in
John 10:11, another proof of the deity of Christ, Christ picks up the theme of
Psalm 23, Psalm 23 says “Yahweh is my shepherd.” Jesus says I am the shepherd, therefore Jesus
is Yahweh. Verse 11, “I am the good
shepherd; the good shepherd gives his life for the sheep.” That is the best kind of shepherd. [12] “He
that is the hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, sees
the wolf coming, and leaves the sheep and flees; and the wolf catches them and
scatters the sheep. [13] The hireling flees, because he is an hireling, and
cares not for the sheep. [14] I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am
known of Mine.” Do you see the contrast? Jesus Christ claims to be the perfect
shepherd over you and over me; we are His fat, dumb sheep, and He is the
perfect shepherd in all ways.
Now that’s the first thing you want to understand about a shepherd;
Psalm 23:3; John 10:10-12, the shepherd must establish his reputation.
Point two, about the Old Testament shepherd, is found in Exodus
22:12. The shepherd’s honest had to be
proved and in Exodus 22:12 we have the test under the Mosaic Law. “And if something [it] be stolen from
someone, he” in this case it would be the shepherd, “must make restitution unto
the owner thereof.” In other words, if
David lost some sheep out there, his father would count the number of sheep and
say hey bud, what happened, you lost ten sheep, that’s my investment, how about
it? And David’s wages would have been
docked for a couple months until he could pay for the ten sheep that he had
lost, unless he could produce the evidence of verse 13, “If it be torn in
pieces, then let him bring it for witness, and he shall not make good that
which was torn.” In other words, he
would bring the pieces of the lamb that had been killed by the lion back to the
father and say father this is what happened.
To show how this actually operated turn to Amos 3:12. Here’s an
illustration of the second principle; remember the first principle is the
shepherd must gain his reputation, Psalm 23:3, John 10:10-12. The second principle of the shepherd is that
he must account for all losses. Exodus 22:12 and Amos 3:12, and God is using
here the illustration. “Thus saith the
LORD: As the shepherd takes out of the mouth of the lion two legs, or a piece
of an ear, so shall the children of Israel be taken out of that dwell in
Samaria in the corner of a bed, and in Damascus on a couch.” I don’t want to offend some of you by
developing the last part of the verse, but the first part of the verse clearly
pertains to the subject at hand and it’s a picture of the shepherd going out
and picking up the pieces and literally taking it out of the mouth. So a good shepherd would have the guts to
come up to the lion and rip it out. Now
if you have any experience with animals who are hungry, if you have a dog you
know what happens when a dog is hungry and you start to grab the bone out of
its mouth. You know how an animal reacts
when they’re hungry; well you can imagine what it would have been to come up on
this lion and you just grab it out of his mouth and take off. Obviously it would have created a little
reaction on the lion’s part. So the
second theme of the shepherd is the ideal shepherd has to do it to protect, he
would have to account for all losses.
Now back to 1 Samuel and what David is saying. We can understand a little bit more about
David’s background here. When he said
whenever there came a lion or a bear and took a lamb out of the flock, I went
out after him and I smote him. Now he
didn’t kill him; the first “smote” in verse 35 is he hit him; this shows you
how he did it. He took a stick, and by
the way, keep in mind the first verb in verse 35 is “smote” because he’s going
to do something to Goliath; he’s going to walk out with two weapons, not just
the sling, he’s going to walk out with a stick and later on Goliath is going to
say who do you think I am, a dog that you come out against me with a
stick. Well what David is going to do,
he says I used the stick against the lion and I’m going to use it against you;
that’s what he’s saying. And here is how
he go the meat out of the lion’s mouth; he’d come up to this lion and take this
long stick and whack him one with it.
That’s how he started, and that would get the lion’s attention of
course, and then what would happen, obviously as he points out here, he said
there would come this lion and I’d smote him, and deliver it out of his
mouth. The second thing he’d do, he’d
grab the meat out of his mouth. So by
this time you can imagine the lion is pretty irritated, he’d been smacked with
a stick and he had his food, his favorite veal, ripped out of his mouth. Now you might do this to a cub or something
but you don’t do this to a lion.
So obviously the next step comes as no surprise, “when he rose against
me,” he obviously is going to rise against him, “I caught him by his beard,”
now that’s really humorous, but the word “beard” is lower jaw, and this also
shows you something, how David grabbed him.
He grabbed him by the lower jaw and held him up and he slit his throat;
that’s what he’s talking about. He
grabbed this thing by the lower jaw and that’s the way he did it. It was all pretty smooth, he evidently had it
down to an art, lift him up, whack, rip the meat out, it would jump him, whoof,
and that’s the way he would do it and he developed this technique over many,
many times. Then he killed, [“and slew
him,”] notice, David is getting used to killing, something a few squeamish
believers ought to, he was getting used to killing. Now this third test was to equip David for
something, “Thy servant” he says in verse 36, “slew both the lion and the bear,”
not just one individually but whenever they’d come, I’d kill them, “and this
uncircumcised Philistine is going to be as one of them,” he’s going to be like
them because I’m going to do the same thing to him, I’m going to hit him with a
stick and I’m going to slit his throat.
Now notice the slingshot hasn’t come up here for a reason which we’ll go
into later. The slingshot isn’t in view
at this point because David hasn’t decided his weapons yet. He is going on the basis of his past
experience, which also shows you something.
Weapons, skill in use of weapons is tremendous and David has skill in
weapons but the emphasis of this passage is not David’s skill in weapons. The emphasis in this passage is a man’s
courage, the fantastic courage that he would do this. Do you suppose the shepherd had a large group
of believers saying yeah David, let’s go, and clapping. Do you suppose that’s what went on? No, this would happen at night out in the
hills; this would happen without anybody looking it and David did this as unto
the Lord, it was his responsibility and these trials and pressures would come
upon him and he would meet them and he didn’t come home and give these glowing
testimonies to his brothers, etc. They
probably knew about it because he brought the pieces home, and he accounted for
every one of them.
Now he goes into this not that he might be glorified but simply to show
Saul that he has been trained in courage.
And remember he repeat in verse 36, “this uncircumcised Philistine,” it
goes back to the fact he recognizes the uncircumcised Philistine as one who has
violated the Abrahamic Covenant; the sign of the covenant was
circumcision. And what he’s saying here
is look, here’s the possession of the land, that possession belongs to Israel,
what’s this guy think he’s doing, he’s on the wrong property, kick him off, he
has no business being around here.
That’s what “uncircumcised Philistine” means. Now he’s going to get very humorous about
this circumcision later on so some of you who are squeamish about that, you
might as well prepare for things that are coming.
So he calls him this uncircumcised Philistine to deliberately make the
issue of holy war, and this is when he wins Saul over. But verse 37, at the end of this trial, I
want you to notice a little fine point at how it starts. You notice this seems to be part of the same
quote, yet it starts with “David said,” maybe you’ve never noticed this before
but has it ever struck you, why is this at the quote end, and the quote starts
up again, with “David said.” This is an
illustration that often happens in Hebrew prose, it’s an interpretive statement
that recapitulates; in other words, here’s what’s happening. Verse 35 and 36
give you what David said to Saul; if you had been there with a tape recorder,
this is basically what you would have heard. Verse 37 is the narrator under the
influence of the Holy Spirit summarizing for us what David meant. He says this is what David meant.
So verse 37 is a divine viewpoint analysis of verses 35-36, just so we
get the point. This is what David meant,
verse 37, “The LORD who delivered me out of the paw of the lion, and out of the
paw of the bear, He will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine.” That’s David’s point. Why is verse 37 put in there? Because God’s Word always protects the
concept of grace. How does this protect
grace? If you did not have verse 37 and
you just had verse 35-36, what David is talking about here would differ in no
great way from, say the heroes of Homer in the Iliad, what Menelaus says to Paris, or Hector, or the rest of the
great heroes of Homer, I am the big brave man and I am the courageous man, and
so on. Now if you stopped with verse 36
you get the impression this could be just human courage that David’s saying. Now in order for us not to be misled and for
us to focus in on the grace, the author of 1 Samuel puts this in, it’s an
interpretive statement to say now don’t misunderstand this, David is not
talking about human good, he’s not talking about just human courage; he has a
theological reason, he is saying by this that he trusted the Lord when he was
doing that with the lion and the bear.
Now David did not deserve, as a sinner, God’s help; no one does this
side of the fall, and yet David said I do not deserve God’s protection, but
when I go out there my father has given me a job to do and I’m going to trust
God, that His grace will work with me in that jam. And so David habitually did this. And when so when it says “the paw of the
lion,” and “the paw of the bear,” and I told you before this isn’t a situation
involving just two animals, it is a situation involving classes, whenever any
lion or whenever any bear came, so this on over and over and over again. David, in other words, trial three, met the
pressures of his responsibility by the faith technique. And he had fantastic training; it went on for
years; maybe this went on for ten years, we don’t know. Maybe he was given his first flock at age 9
and now he’s 19, for ten years David has been training. Look, some of you people that are so impatient
to grow spiritually, that’s great that you have positive volition and want to
do it but don’t get discouraged if you don’t grow overnight. Go to David, ten years it took him to
inculcate this, over and over and over and over, trusting the Lord, trusting
the Lord, trusting the Lord, trusting the Lord, and that training is going to
pay off with ten seconds, he’s going to annihilate Goliath. Training, ten years for ten precious seconds.
Now let’s get some divine viewpoint on time of sanctification. God is going to take a long time for some of
you and a short time with others, depending on what he’s got in store for
you. But you can bet your bottom dollar
that God is going to use you when you are properly trained. Now just let the Lord train you, get in the
place where he can, and the place is the Word, that’s the place where he can
train you, taking in the Word and putting it out, taking it in, studying it,
digesting it so it becomes not just what Charlie Clough told you, it’s the Word
of God that you have thought through for yourself using your vocabulary, using
all the evidence that’s available, and trusting over and over and over and over
again, so when the ten second crisis comes you’ll be able to do it because you
have training, and years and years of
practice, practice, practice. That’s how
you kill giants.
With our heads bowed.......