1 Samuel Lesson 25

David Meets Goliath – 17:38-47

We’ll continue out study with David and Goliath. This passage has to do with the confirmation of David before the nation. And because it is a confirmatory passage it is necessary for God to openly expose David’s talents to the nation, in two areas: one in the area of music, that was given in chapter 16, and secondly, in the area of military chokmah or wisdom. This passage has been a long one because of the detail involved, we have studied the fifteen centuries of preparation of God the Holy Spirit in history to arrange the trial, so that we therefore, in this military crisis that faced the nation Israel, we have a perfect trial, reminiscent of the New Testament doctrine in 1 Cor. 10:13 that every trial that the Lord Jesus Christ permits in our life is a perfect trial. There are no accidents in the Christian life, there are not pressures that God drops in your lap for which He has not in advance adequately prepared you for, or adequately somewhere within reaching distance provided the solution for.

So therefore 1 Cor. 10:13 is the New Testament counterpart to 1 Samuel 17 as far as Israel is concerned, that there’s a perfect trial here. On the surface it looks like a disaster; to Saul, to the army who for forty days heard loudmouth get up and desecrate their God and embarrass their army, and ridicule their nation, it certainly did not look like a perfect trial. But we, from retrospection we can look back and say yes it was because we know somebody is on the scene who is going to make the difference. Now at that particular point in time Israel was not aware of who was on the scene who made the difference, and the lack of that, the decline in their perception of not seeing the answer to their trial, made them think at that moment this trial was far from perfect. Just as it is with any of you who are believers in Jesus Christ, you will face trials and heartaches and pressures and disasters of a personal sort or a group sort, and at the time they will seem like anything but perfect to you, and that’s simply because like Israel you are not aware of what is already on the scene, trained, ready and so on to help you, of the assets that you have in Jesus Christ. But the nation Israel was faced with a perfect trial, designed by God, to manifest the hero, David.

And then we found also perfect timing; not only was it a perfect trial but the timing of the trial was perfect because you remember David arrived in the camp at just exactly the right moment; had he arrived any later in the day he would not have heard Goliath. Goliath came out of his cave two times a day and then went back. So every morning when the army rose up instead of hearing revile they heard Goliath; and in the evening they heard Goliath. So morning and evening Goliath; in the middle, the noonday, nothing. And so had David come during the daytime he would never have heard this and the trial would not have taken place. So we have perfect timing, just as in our own lives all trials are perfectly timed. You trust the Lord with the timing of various pressures in your life. Don’t try to rearrange the process of sanctification. You just accept what the Lord Jesus Christ has designed for you and don’t try to tamper with it and don’t try to tell Him how to do it. He is in charge of the time and the trial and the place.

Then we began to study the third element in chapter 17, which is David’s perfect training or perfect preparation. And this training consisted of a series of trials. The first trial in verses 28-29 consisted of intimidation by human good family members. And this was when his brother, who was the one that Samuel wanted to pick out as king, Eliab, Eliab wanted to put his brother down. Eliab was a jealous person, he was jealous for the same reason Saul, we are going to find, becomes fantastically jealous, and that is that believers who operate on human good can never stand believers that operate on grace. There is always an animosity between these two kinds of believers. And if you have many believers operating on human good there’ll be animosity between them. One human good believer cannot stand another human good believer because basically they are carrying on a contest to see who can crank out the most human good. So there’s always tension and never any kind of a relaxation among this kind of a situation. So Eliab can’t stand David because he happens to know David is probably right, and David probably will kill this giant, when He, Eliab, has sat there for forty days worrying about it, doing nothing.

So the first trial is intimidation by human good family members. I want you to notice that, before David goes out and kills the giant he has got to overcome members of his own family; just like believers have to overcome members of our own families. Therefore, the believer is not to become discouraged, he is to handle this and move on through; God can get you through this and if you don’t get through this you’re going to have trouble on the outside. David offers you a beautiful illustration of this in verses 28-29, he handles it very graciously but without compromise, because remember in verse 29, after he said “what have I done now” to his older brother, he then adds, “is this not an issue.” In other words, David is quietly with dignity, without insolence, rebuking his brother. He’s saying Eliab, this is an issue, a spiritual issue and therefore it is because of this spiritual issue that I am doing what I am doing. It has nothing to do with what our relationship is. And David knew, we can gather from the first part of verse 29 that the relationship had not been good in this particular family unit because David adds the word “now,” “what have I done now,” implying that he has been accused of doing these things over and over by his older brothers. But at this point David says look, let’s just stop the family hassle; Eliab, this giant has created a spiritual issue, now let’s get to the spiritual issue and forget all the hassle.

So David puts away pettiness here and this is the first trial that David passes and shows great training on David’s part. He puts away the petty things. He could have at this point reacted very violently toward his brother Eliab; he could have ridiculed Eliab, he could have used sarcasm with Eliab but he doesn’t. He passes on and moves on to the issue at hand. David is a man who is great, therefore, because he doesn’t major on pettiness and all the rest that goes with it. He moves on to the basic point.

Then the second trial that David faced was in verses 32-33. The second trial was the trial of discouragement by those in authority, a very difficult trial for believers to pass, that when God has called you to a task, and when he has given you ample evidence of this calling, then you will find people who will discourage you. If you are going to a Christian college, God save your soul, will find Christian colleges are filled with jerks who will discourage you. The last place to send your children is to a Christian college. They will meet more fouled up carnal idiots in a Christian college than any other place on earth. The place is full of it; Christian colleges put out the worst kind of believers; they have people on the faculty who haven’t been in fellowship for thirty years, people who are busy pedaling legalism. A friend of mine was in some college and they were an engaged couple and they were caught holding hands, and they got chewed out for it; some woman said we do that in the bedroom... I don’t know what she does in the bedroom, but it isn’t holding hands. So this is what goes on in Christian colleges. Then we have college professors in Christian colleges who specialize in tearing the Word of God apart. You should talk to some of the people I talk to who are products of Christian colleges. This is one reason why you’ll always notice, Christian colleges inevitably, with a few very fine exceptions, but generally speaking you find Christian colleges are in trouble financially. That shows right away there’s something wrong. Any organization that is habitually in financial difficulty is spiritually out of it. If they were minding God’s business God would provide for them. You don’t have to go around begging every three weeks. The amount of money Christian colleges spend on the PR mail is enough to break anybody’s budget; if they stopped sending out notices it would solve half their problem right there. On Christian colleges you will find people that discourage you from grace, that will try to suck you up with their own gimmicks, who will try to get you involved in some sort of program or something.

This is one illustration of the trial that David faced in verses 32-33. The third trial that David faced in verses 34-37a is the frustrations in daily responsibilities and he passed with flying colors. Last week we concluded with verse 37, how David did not just kill one bear or one lion but the Hebrew verbs are all frequentative, that is they are speaking of an action that was frequent, an action that was repeated over and over and over again. This was S.O.P. with David. Anytime that he had his flock attacked by a lion or a bear he just eliminated the enemy. And all during this process, we don’t know how long it was, maybe it was ten years that the third trial went on in his life. David was assigned responsibility and it wasn’t a very glorious kind of responsibility, it was a very mundane type of thing, but David didn’t care.

First of all, David did his job as unto the Lord and he didn’t worry about whether his brothers heard about it or his father heard about or anybody else; he didn’t have a Christian cheering section, yeah David, go David, to clap and cheer him on. He was alone, a lot of the time it was at night. Nobody would have seen this but David did it and he did it as unto the Lord. That is a model for a Christian; when you do your job, whether it’s sweeping out the garage or whatever it is, you do it as unto the Lord and you do it well and then God will take care of it. He sees it. People think nobody ever sees my work, nobody ever appreciates it. Look, the most fantastic person of the universe sees everything you do and appreciate it when it is done as unto Him. So you can develop a very wonderful relationship of quietly doing your job, like David, as unto the Lord, and just forget about who sees it or who doesn’t see it. David went on this way for a number of years as a shepherd.

Another thing notice about this third trial, besides the fact that it was done as unto the Lord, besides that, David began to develop a certain aggressiveness that is now going to pay off. He develops the concept of killing, not people, he practices on animals, but tonight he is going to kill his first person. So here David is developing a tremendous attitude toward death. He faces death himself over and over and he knows and he programs himself to kill the enemy, kill the enemy, kill the enemy, and this is made part of his soul. We’ll see where this is going to come out in a very wonderful way.

Now we begin at the end of verse 37 with the fourth trial of David, also part of his training. And this is a temptation to use human good. He’s still not away from it, and as you might expect at the end of verse 37, who was it that does the suggestion? Saul. “And Saul said unto David,” now remember the background of this was that in verses 32-33, trial number two, David had been denied official permission to fight Goliath. And David just can’t whip out his slingshot and hit the guy in the head. What David has to do is secure official orders, not permit him to kill a giant. This may sound stupid, unless you understand how armies run and the processes of state. But David’s killing of Goliath would not have been an official act of the state of Israel until David attained permission to do that act from the head of the state of Israel, which at this point is Saul. So he had been denied official permission.

So verses 34-36 which relate his third trial, are actually to solve the problem of his second trial. Remember these trials are not chronological, obviously verses 34-36 refer to trials that chronologically preceded the first trial. But in the sequence of the text we’ll just number it the way we get it. But in verse 37 David finally secures official permission. “And then Saul said unto David, Go,” now if he’d just kept his mouth shut after that everything would have been fine, but he has to add his little five cents worth, and we’ll see what Saul really is adding, because unless you have some background here you’re not going to appreciate what Saul is trying to do. The word “Go” is the official order from the king, that now David has permission of the authority of the state to kill for the state, so that when he does kill the giant, the killing will be an official act and is therefore what David seeks. But then Saul has to add two points, the first point is given in verse 37, the second point is given in verse 38.

He says, “...and the LORD be with you.” And this, of course, is Saul’s human good coming out with his pious language. Saul is filled with pious language; he always has something pious to say. For example, when Samuel came and chewed him out about leaving the Amalekite king alive, Saul had some pious remark to say, well I’ve done this and I’ve accomplished the will of God and all the rest of it.

And this should be a warning to some of you who are very naive that just because a person uses fundamentalist language doesn’t mean a thing. Some of you would just empty your wallets if we had somebody come in here and give a few stories about how they invited Jesus into their heart and they’ve been off to some field somewhere, and here are some slides and support me for $50 a month for the rest of your life kind of thing, and you may just give without any investigation or anything else to this kind of activity. Many missionaries are very bona fide people and it’s a shame that the bona fide missionaries, the missionaries with training and preparation that are doing a wonderful job had to be placed in the same market with a con artist who are waltzing from church to church and ruining the market for the true missionary. Ultimately it boils down to the naivety of the congregation, a congregation that would accept these pious little phrases, and here’s one of those points, “... and the LORD be with you David.”

Now Saul doesn’t mean a thing about this because in verse 38 he’s going to reverse everything he just got through saying. Now he doesn’t mean “the LORD be with you,” in the next verse we’re going to show how what he’s really saying is I want to be with you. This is almost a blasphemous statement for Saul to say, “the Lord be with you,” doesn’t that sound sweet. What else is he going to say?

Now in verse 38 he shows what’s really on his mind. And this is something that’s very interesting. “And Saul armed David with his armor,” except it doesn’t say “armed.” What Saul does now is he grabs David and he grabs his armor and he actually forces David to put on his armor. The word is the Hebrew word to get dressed in the hiphil stem which is the causative stem, and it means that he forces David to put on his armor. This is not just here son, would you like something to use. He’s grabbing David and said now son, you get in that armor and you get in there now. Now why is Saul interested that David wear his armor when he goes out to fight the giant? [38, “And Saul armed David with his armor, and he put an helmet of bronze upon his head; also he armed him with a coat of mail.”]

We have some insight into this if we go back to some of the classical literature, in this case the Greeks and Homer, where these incidents occur again and again with armor and the age of heroes. Armor was used in the Homeric tales not only to protect yourself but it was also used to identify yourself and your cause. For example, at one particular point in the Iliad Achilles is sulking by his ships and he’s the kind of fellow that is like a lot of believers, he sits there, somebody took his girlfriend away from him so he says I’m not going to play ball, if that’s the way you’re going to play I’ll take my marbles and go home. So Achilles took his marbles and went back to his boat and sulked. Meanwhile the Greeks were getting clobbered and it was getting worse and worse, and the Trojan line was coming up to the boats and the battle got closer and closer and closer, and finally one of his friends, Patroclus, decided he would go out and lead the Myrmidons who were the group that Achilles brought to the Trojan wars and so he realizes Achilles is still sulking and pouting about it so he realizes Achilles is not yet ready to go to battle and Patroclus says let me wear your armor, the Trojans may thus mistake me for you and quite the field. So his scheme is to put Achilles armor on and walk out there hoping that everybody is going to think he’s Achilles. Well, nobody is fooled and finally Patroclus gets a spear in his back and down he goes.

But the point is that armor was used, it was a highly individual thing. This is something that you’ve got to get away from; modern warfare uniforms all looked the same, but in the ancient world these uniforms and particularly the leaders had fantastic coats of armor, and they would be known by the coat of armor. Every soldier would not have the same weapons; the great leaders would have their special shields, their special swords, their special helmets, their special plumes and therefore whoever wore the armor was identified as the friend of the armor-wearer. So at this point when Saul actually forces David to wear his armor there’s a hidden motive here; he wants the glory for this thing. Saul is a human viewpoint coward, he is a human good schemer, and he sees there’s a chance this kid might actually knock off the giant, and I want to horn in on it. So Saul’s attempt is to horn in on it by getting David to wear his armor.

And as we will notice David passes this trial, again with extreme graciousness because in verse 39, “And David girded his sword upon his armor, and he assayed [attempted] to go; for he had not proved [tested] it.” The text at this point is very difficult here as to what’s happening, the verb “assayed” is very ambiguous in the original text, but you can get the meaning out of it that David had not proved it or had not tested the armor. Now immediately if you recall something about Saul and how tall he was, it should tell you immediately that there’s going to be something wrong with the armor, because what was the distinguishing feature of Saul above all the Jews? He was head and shoulders in height above all the men, including David. So obviously if you have a suit of armor that’s suited to Saul it’s not going to fit on David. David was a shorter man than Saul so right away you know the armor isn’t going to fit. But Saul wasn’t concerned with that, and I want you to notice something and this is a fine point, and I want to develop it out of the word “test” or “prove” so you see something here and this is something very sinister about human viewpoint people and shows you some of the crassness that’s involved.

When it says that David had not “tested it” and then David says so I can’t go with these, “for I have not tested them,” it doesn’t mean that he didn’t use them, that David was some little boy that had a sling shot sticking out of his pocket or something and he’d never seen a sword before; get rid of that picture, David is not a little boy, he’s an older person, about 20 years old at this point and he has had military experience, he does know how to use the sword, and he does know how to use the shield. We know this because of 16:18. So David is experienced in the military art and that’s not the point of verse 39. David is not saying I don’t know how to use it; what David is saying is I can’t fit into this thing and it won’t work with me.

Again, using an illustration from Homer, this time again of Achilles, after Patroclus was killed in battle he had the brilliant idea of using Achilles armor and so Hector, who was in on the thing stole his armor, stripped Patroclus, which you’re going to see David do Goliath here, when they kill somebody they cut their head off to make sure they were dead and that was the easy way of getting the helmet off and when they got the helmet off and the rest of it they took this back as a trophy. And so Hector takes the armor of Achilles off of Patroclus’ body and makes back for the city of Troy. While this was going on, this leaves Achilles standing there and now he hasn’t got any armor, so he cries to his goddess mother, Thetis and she goes to the god who makes him another set of armor, and there’s a very interesting passage, Thetis comes out of the sea and she presents the armor to Achilles and Achilles is described as testing the armor. And here’s the passage: “Then Achilles made a test of himself in his armor to see whether it fitted him, so that his limbs could play freely under it.” That is a picture of what it means to test the armor. Achilles would put the armor on and then just see if he’s got agility and mobility to swing his sword, spear, throw his javelin and so on, get everything together. So that’s what the testing means, it means to test the mobility.

Now I want you to see how crass Saul was. And you look at this and you can watch this pattern of behavior in human good believers. First of all, he sees an opportunity for big Saul. He doesn’t care anything about David; he sees an opportunity to horn in on the thing. So as far as Saul is concerned, this is plus for Saul, but what Saul forgets and he has a tremendous lack of memory because remember in battle he forgot critical things; a man who is this far into compound carnality cannot think clearly in a jam, and you remember how he lost one army because he goofed on the orders. He violated a simple principle of military logistics and lost an army over it. Now he’s just about to use a hero over it because this goof his armor that he knows, he KNOWS his armor can’t fit David, he’s taller than David. If he’s head and shoulders above everybody else in the army he obviously knows his armor is never going to fit David, but he never thinks of this. See human good believers are like that, they’re so concerned with generating their human good they become very careless with other believers, and he is a potential murderer of David at this point. He is going to dress this boy in armor and David is not going to be able to move in it. And Saul was a good enough soldier so he knew this. He was a man who tested his own armor, so the very fact that he neglected this point shows you once again how bad off Saul is.

Once again we might look at Saul’s soul. He’s on negative volition, he’s experienced darkness of the soul which always leads to dullness, and that is what we see here; he’s just not thinking, he’s slow, and if David had not had presence of mind he would have been murdered by Goliath at this point. Saul would have been the murderer of David here because he just completely ignored David’s safety; he was not concerned as a military person should always be, not primarily but secondarily with the safety of his men. He could care less for the safety of his men here and obviously therefore in this case, since you have a one on one situation, safety is simultaneous with victory.

So we see how David passes the third test in verse 39, and simply points out to Saul that he cannot use these things. And the victory in the fourth trial is given in the last part of verse 39, it’s a beautiful picture of the believer rejecting human good, “And David put them off.” Get rid of these things, Saul’s armor, I’m not going to be identified with human good. And so he takes them off and leaves them there and that’s exactly what every believer should do to all the human good and human viewpoint gimmicks. We ought to do with it what David did to Saul’s army, just drop it, leave it and walk off. That’s exactly what David did and he survived because of it.

Now we come to the most interesting trial of all, beginning in verse 40 and progressing through verse 48. This is the fifth trial of David and this is harder than all the rest. Think of this now, David has to go through all these trials before he gets to the giant. Many of you have read this story and isn’t it sweet that he just kind of waltzed up there and whipped the thing around a couple times and the rock went out and just happened to hit Goliath in the head. Now that’s just completely misreading the whole point. The point was all these trials that David had to go through, from his family to his leaders to principles of how to live the Christian life, and now to the final test which is fear in mortal combat. David had to conquer fear and we are gong to prove that by the method of the way he killed Goliath. God the Holy Spirit had David use a weapon that you can’t use when you’re afraid. A slingshot accuracy depends upon your timing and you can’t have timing if you’re afraid and shook up. The very fact that David does not use a sword and a spear but a slingshot shows you the fact that he is perfectly confident. He is so confident and so much at peace that his timing is not off. And this is a marvelous demonstration of what a fantastic believer David was in this time of mortal conflict.

Verse 40, having taken Saul’s armor off, “And he took his staff in his hand,” now the staff is interesting; the staff is a shepherd’s crook. But it had more uses than just pulling dumb sheep out of holes. That’s what it was used for. It’s very interesting to think if shepherds ran their flocks the way certain seminaries tell pastors to run their congregations, they would have no sheep left in their flock after about five minutes because the sheep would just scatter all over the place. A shepherd has to use a stick on his sheep and when they get stuck in a hole he just jacks them up and brings them back, and that’s the job of the shepherd. The stick, however, was also used another way and we found out how David was using that when we saw the two verbs in verse 35; remember how he killed the bear and the lion. What was the bear or lion doing when David came chasing after him. He was chewing, he was enjoying some good lamb chops, and while the bear or lion was sitting there munching on this, David came up to him with his crook and whacked him with it.

That’s the first “smote,” the first verb in verse 35, he took this long stick and he hit him, and he hit him so hard that the lion that was sitting there chewing opened his mouth and it dropped out. That’s why the next verb is he “delivered it out of his mouth,” it didn’t mean he walked up and yanked it out of his mouth, you try to yank a bone out of an animal’s mouth. He didn’t do it that way, David wasn’t stupid, he had both his hands left which shows you he didn’t try it that way. He didn’t yank it out of the mouth, what he did, he just came up and whacked him one hard, made him drop it, and then he just picked up, and then obviously the bear or the lion went into the action, that’s the next verb, “he arose against me” and then “I caught him by his beard.” That is, he grabbed him by the bottom of his throat and slit his throat and that’s how David killed.

Now he’s going to do the same thing to Goliath except in place of the stick he’s going to use a slingshot. The stick did not kill the lion and the slingshot is not going to kill Goliath. But the method and systems are parallel. So verse 40, so “he took his staff in his hand,” now the staff in his hand was used to ward off these animals, it was used to pull sheep out of holes and so on, and we’re going to see that this had a very angering affect on Goliath; Goliath wasn’t quite prepared for this kind of activity or this kind of weapon. And then he “chose five smooth stones out of the brook,” now why five stones? This shows you something else about this guy’s mental attitude. The little details... that’s why I’m taking so much time, I’m taking three weeks to go through chapter 17 because I want you to notice some of the details here to appreciate the mentality of David.

He’s taking five stones? Do you know why? Because there are five giants; Goliath, remember we gave you these names before, Goliath, Ishbi-benob is another one, Saph, and Lahmi, and then Mr. X, we don’t know what his name is, all we know is he had six toes and six fingers. So there are the five and it’s interesting that David picked up five stones. We have no other reason why he picked up five, or why the Holy Spirit in narrating the text, chose to record that historical fact. There’s numerous things the Holy Spirit could have recorded. He could have recorded the color of his cloak, He could have recorded how far they stood apart, but the Holy Spirit doesn’t record any of that, He just records what the Holy Spirit thinks, evidently, is sufficient and important for our use and understanding. So he records the fact, and we happen to notice that David is taking five stones out of the wadi. The “brook” is dry, there’s no water in it at this time. Remember the situation, the two armies are split by the valley of Elah; you have the Israelites here, the Philistines here and there’s a dry wadi in between and the giant has come down to the wadi and you remember on the forty-first day when David came into camp the giant started to come up on the other side and the Israelite army did a one-eighty and began to retreat. And David stood there and watched this humiliation.

Well now David is going down and he reaches the halfway point, so the word “brook” is important because it shows you he wasn’t even armed until he got to the halfway point. He had such confidence that he walked down there and didn’t even have his ammo with him until he got down to the halfway point, and then he notes that by the time he gets down there the giant is not going to do anything, you could just argue maybe if you were afraid, the thought would come to my mind, I wonder how far Goliath can heave that spear of his. And if I were walking down there I think that might be on my mind. But evidently David thought and estimated the situation out very cool and calculating, and figured out Goliath is not going to heave that spear at me now, he’s going to wait until I get closer, so I’ve got a chance to pick out some good rocks out of this wadi and they were real good because they were nice and smooth because they’d been eroded by the water.

So he picks his choice ammunition out and he “put them in his shepherd’s bag which he had, even in a script [wallet],” now that is the narrator’s way of telling you that here’s this boy, this young man dressed as a shepherd; the “script” is what the military term would be for an archer. Now there were archers in the ancient world; the weapon David is using here wasn’t used by little boys. Here’s a tracing of an Assyrian slinger and that’s what the sling looks like, if you want to see more pictures of it, Pritchard’s Ancient Text has them.

So this was a standard weapon in the service, they used it and the usually fired from behind the lines; they’d fire over and onto the enemy, and you can see pictures of it, how this weapon is used. They fired from behind the lines, over the lines, and back down. So you had this kind of a situation. When an army went into battle you had the swordsmen and you had the spearmen up here in the first couple of ranks and in back you have the slingers; they were in the back, and they used to sling the rocks over, not aiming at specific people but just showering the opponent with this kind of thing, sort of like artillery. And that’s what they were using it for.

David is not going to use it this way; David is going to use it more like a rifle than a shotgun. And this again shows the extreme confidence this fellow has with his weapon. David knows his weapon, incidentally, he practiced and practiced and practiced. Those of you who are going into the military, there’s your precedent; David knew how to use his weapon and use it well. And the word “script” is what this would be if he were, say an Assyrian slinger, it’s right here, and it’s a bag that he would have his rocks in and you can see the belt around the chest and that’s what held this thing to him. But a shepherd didn’t have that, so what the text is pointing out here, all he had was his shepherd’s bag which served him in place of this script. So again, the Ho is giving us a picture of this man, how he is filling in with a weapon, he doesn’t even have all the pieces, he doesn’t have the rocks until he gets down halfway to the enemy.

“...and his sling was in his hand: and he drew near the Philistine.” And now the picture gets very exciting in the original Hebrew because the verbs are now presented in participle, here’s where you have motion. And so both the verbs in verse 41, “And the Philistine came on an drew near unto David;” the picture of motion, and if you were putting this on film you’d have the music getting very suspenseful here as the giant starts walking close and David starts walking up. Remember the book, the wadi, that’s why I want you to notice verse 40, David is now at the halfway point, here is the armies of Israel, here’s the armies of the Philistine, here’s the valley of Elah. David has crossed the halfway point by verse 40. And so at verse 41 we find that the giant is now beginning to move.

Now this is interesting because this is another principle of war. Who has the initiative? David has the initiative; David is already attacking the Philistine before the Philistine attacks him, so again it shows you the principle that he uses here of initiative. “And the Philistine came on and drew near unto David; and the man who bore the shield,” this was his armor-bearer, they had a small shield in the ancient world and a large one. The large one looked like a portable wall, it covered the person completely and this is how they could survive tremendous onslaughts, it took one or two men to carry this thing, it was an amazing large piece, and of course the Greeks developed the concept of linking the shields together and then they would just start moving behind the shields and it was almost impossible to stop this kind of a formation unless you hit it from the side. So the armor-bearer, carrying one of these gigantic shields... now Goliath is nine foot six inches tall, you can imagine, that’s a ten-foot shield that is being carried here, and it is a wonder that you had one man able to carry it at all, but this is the armor-bearer and Goliath is walking behind the shield.

This must really look comical, here’s this shepherd boy coming out with a sling shot and Mr. Bigmouth is coming down, walking behind his shield. This really looks like something, so immediately not only has he seized the initiative, he is beginning to make Goliath look like a jerk. Now at this point the Philistine looks about, and apparently he was near-sighted or something, so he had to get close to see what was going on. And when he got close he didn’t like what he saw.

Verse 42, “And when the Philistine looked about, and saw David, and he disdained him” this means he disparaged him, “for he was but a youth, and ruddy, and of a fair countenance.” Now that’s not saying that David was a little boy. Let me show you what’s going on here in verse 42. First “he despised him for he was but a youth,” na‘ar, meaning the fact that he was not an experienced warrior, that’s the point that Goliath is making, I have been here forty days and I want somebody that can be a real contest with me, and who do they send out, this kid just out of basic training. So Goliath is irritated by this. And “ruddy” means red-headed; David had red hair like Esau, and this again shows you, it’s very unusual, and this apparently caught the eye of many a woman too in the ancient world, David had red hair and was kind of unusual appearance in this sense because most of the men had black hair as we know from the Song of Songs.

So David had red hair, and he was “of a fair countenance.” Now here in this context why does this bother Goliath? [Tape turns] ... they would have battle scars on their face, and David has an unscarred face. So as Goliath gets closer and closer and closer to David he begins to size him up and he begins to notice this kid doesn’t even have a scar on his face; even in sword practice they would get cut and so the warriors of the ancient world generally had very scarred faces from the numerous cuts received. David didn’t have any and this irritated the Philistine.

The Philistine got to looking more, and this goes to show you how the Philistine is sizing his opponent up, he looks at his face, he looks at his clothes, and then he looks at what David has in his hand, and the thing that really bugs him is that David is coming out here with a stick, and this is humiliating. Here he is Mr. Hotshot, walking out with his armor bearer and a ten foot shield and this kid comes to him with a stick that you beat off dogs with. So this again shows you the psychology that David is using here, whether David intended this or not, it’s happening. And the Philistine doesn’t like it, and we’re going to see something, that this may have had an affect on what Goliath did and why it opened him up for the particular blow that David’s going to give him.

Verse 43, “And the Philistine said unto David, Am I a dog, that you come to me with staves?” or sticks. Now it’s interesting that the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament here injects a little phrase or a clause; this clause is not authentic but at least it shows you what some translator wanted David to say, and at this point the Septuagint adds “and David said well, you’re worse than a dog.” “And the Philistine cursed David by his gods.” Now if you look at verse 43 in the King James it looks like the Philistine is cursing David by his gods, Dagon and all the rest of the pantheon. But that’s not true; the Philistine does a very stupid thing at this point, he curses David by David’s God. He says may you take your Elohim and you know what. So he starts to curse or pronounce an oath against David in the name of David’s God.

Now just watch what has happened here, and this is all that David needs. If David was lacking confidence and lacking the peace that God was with him, this is what played right into his hand. This is the old technique if you give your enemy enough rope he will hang himself, and Goliath at this point theologically hangs himself. If you compare this verse, the end of verse 43 where he is cursing God, and you look back to verse 36 and compare verse 35 with verse 26, you will see what has been happening here. And this is the cause that David mentions in verse 29; David went into this battle for the first place not to seek honor for himself, but to seek honor for the Lord, the God of Israel. And when he, in verse 26, found Goliath defying God, the living God, emphasizing the God acting in history and therefore God the Son and therefore Jesus Christ, and again this was on his mind because in verse 36 the exact expression is used again, so you can tell it’s very much on David’s mind. And then at the very moment before the battle begins for the Philistine, as it were, to add confirmatory evidence, that he is a blasphemous God-hating rebel, this is beautiful; this is exactly what David needed. David couldn’t have had more encouragement from the Philistine than this. This was just beautiful, worked right into his hands.

Then in verse 44, the Philistine starts out with the battle cry. The battle cry, again we can understand this from Homer and from other kinds of literature, that when the great champions would fight, they would shout out to each other, and generally the shouting would consist of two things; the shouting would be at the lineage, these warriors would give their lineage, I am the son of so and so and my father did this and my father went to bed with the goddess so and so and I’m the result of it, and so forth. And they would give their lineage back, either through men or through the gods and goddesses. Now David isn’t going to do this and yet next week we’ll see why Saul asks the question that he does. But David comes out and does not do this, and the Philistine apparently doesn’t either.

The second part of the battle cry was some sort of what we would call Psywar, it was just an attempt to unnerve the opposition, shout loud and brag. And this was an attempt to undo the nerves of the other person. So in verse 44, “and the Philistine said to David, Come to me, and I will give thy flesh unto the fowls of the air, and to the beasts of the field.” Now this is most interesting because God always works it out in His sovereignty so those on negative volition bring on their own doom.

Now notice something that has happened here, you’ve got to keep in mind everything we’ve said up to the point. Here are the armies of Israel, here are the armies of the Philistine, here is the valley of Elah, David has crossed the valley, the wadi, he’s picked up the stones, whose ground is he on here? He is on the Philistine’s ground and all the while the Philistine has been moving out, David has been moving, and then what does the Goliath do here? He makes a tactical error; instead of moving down to chase David he stays in one place. Later on he’s going to move but the point is David is going to move a lot faster. David has gained the initiative by taking the battle to the enemy side and he is now keeping the initiative. That is the important thing to notice; David constantly keeps the pressure on and he constantly keeps the initiative under his control. So even here in verse 44, the Philistine says you come to me and so again the picture is the Philistine is inviting David to come to him. Who has the initiative? Who’s doing the moving? David. The Philistine is taking more and more of a defensive posture.

“...and I will give thy flesh to the fowls of the air, and to the wild beasts of the earth,” this is a polite way of saying after I strip you of your armament, it was a bad thing here because you see, the great thing about champions, remember I said that this word translated “champion” in the Old Testament is the word that means the man that stands between and the champion was paid off by stripping the body of his opponent. Well if Goliath wins, where’s the armament? You see, Goliath doesn’t like this at all, he has no doubt that he’s going to win, but so what, he knocks off a shepherd, that’s a real thrill, a real feather in his cap. What did you do for forty days? I killed a shepherd boy. Can you imagine going back to the Philistine cities of Gath and Ekron and saying oh, Goliath, Goliath, what are your great deeds? I killed a shepherd boy. Where is your armor? He didn’t have any. See what it’s doing to Goliath, it’s putting him into a very interesting position here.

And so Goliath is just simply saying, he makes no mention of anything else, he just says I’m going to give your flesh to the fowls of the air, these are the scavengers and I’m just going to leave your body there and it was very humiliating to have the scavengers come down and pick, pick, pick, pick, pick the fingernails off and pick the pieces of skin off and so on. That was the way the battlefields are cleaned up. After a good war in those days there were thousands of bodies all bloated all over the field and they didn’t have any way of cleaning it up so the birds came and the dogs and everything else and licked it all up and that was the way it worked in the ancient world. So the battlefields were made clean by this method. And he’s just simply referring to this.

We have other illustrations, again I use this one, again from the Iliad, Ajax is coming toward Hector and Hector does the same thing; now listen to this, you’ll see the same parallelism with verse 44. “Ajax, this day is big with destruction of the [can’t understand word] and you shall fall among them, if you dare remain, with my spear; my spear shall rend your fair body and bid you [can’t understand words] hounds and birds of pray with your fattened flesh as you fall by the ships of the Achaeans.” So it’s the same kind of battle cry, come on, and your body will be left for the garbage collectors is what it’s saying.

In verse 45 David replies, one of the best replies a believer has ever given in history, a reply the attitude of which should be our attitude in our assaults against the principalities and the powers of the air; against the whole structure and the fabric of the universe today as it would promulgate human viewpoint, ideas contrary to the Word of God, the awesomeness, and when the believer feels discouraged because of the sheer numbers, the sheer weight of the opposition, think of David and be encouraged as you listen to what David said to the Philistine.

“You come to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a shield;” the word “shield” shouldn’t be a shield, it means a javelin, “but I come to you in the name of the LORD of hosts,” now that translation does not preserve the parallelism in the Hebrew. Let me show you how it comes out in the Hebrew and you’ll see David’s point. “...with a sword, spear and a javelin you come; with” same preposition, “with the name of Yahweh I come to you.” Now do you see the parallelism and what the author is doing here? He’s taking Goliath’s means, the reliance upon these weapons and he’s pinning them against the divine essence of God. God is sovereign, righteous, just, love, omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, immutability and eternal. All these characteristics or attributes are what constitutes the “name” and David has a fantastic God image. Psychologists today are interested in your self-image. Do you know what the most important thing is? Your God-image. And that determines the health of your soul, not just self-image; your self image is going to be all right if your God-image is all right. The trouble is no one has an adequate God-image. People say I can’t find my identity; well, get a proper God-image and you’ll get your identity. You’re a miserable rebel before God, that’s your identity.

So here’s the name and this is what the name means, these are the attributes, and David has a God-image here that just is fantastic and it is so overwhelming to his mentality that at this moment, even though he’s got the sling in his hand, he’s got the rocks and the sling and he sees the weapons, and this isn’t really my weapon, my weapon is the character of my God. And that’s the fantastic mental attitude of David in this situation. You come to me with yours and I come to you with “the name of the LORD of hosts.” And notice the title of God, “the LORD of the armies,” remember I introduced this sometime ago in this 1 Samuel series. And I said watch for it because I said this is the first book in the Bible where Jesus Christ is revealed as the commander in chief of the military. “The Lord of hosts” is what you sing every time that you sing Martin Luther’s hymn, as you sing “Lord Sabaoth” and it’s not that, it’s saba oth, “oth” is the Hebrew feminine plural, saba is the Hebrew word army; Sabaoth, that’s what Martin Luther has put in there, the Lord Saba-oth, and it should be sung as two syllables, Saba-oth is His name, and that is the military title of Jesus Christ.

And notice, this isn’t going to go down very easily for all pacifists but Jesus Christ’s official title is “the commander of armies,” and these armies mean business, they don’t sign Geneva accords; these armies secure military victory by killing the enemy and not only killing them, but the armies that Christ has, you know what they’re going to do? They’re going to put people away in the lake of fire. Now that is very cruel and that’s what the armies of Jesus Christ are designed to do, to put people into the second death. David is going to do at least to the first death to Goliath right here.

You came to me with these things, “I come to you in the name” the essence or the character or the nature of “Yahweh, the commander of armies,” and then he repeats it as if Goliath didn’t get the point, “the God of the ranks,” the next word doesn’t mean army, it means the ranks, “the God of the ranks of Israel.” Why does David use the word “rank” here, for this is what has been defied. Turn back to verse 26, what Goliath is defying is the ranks of Israel. So this use of vocabulary is very much slanted to what Goliath has done. I come to you in His name, whom you have defied.

Now do you see what David is doing? He could say you know, you’ve humiliated my brothers and I’m going to get you. He could have said you’ve embarrassed my king and I’m going to get you. David doesn’t do any of that; David states the highest purpose that he can think of at that moment; in fact, that is the highest purpose. The purpose is that Jesus Christ has been maligned, that’s the purpose. Satan, acting through Goliath has created an issue in history that calls into question whether God will protect the armies of Israel as He promised of whether He won’t, and David says, remember he said to Eliab, is there not a cause. What is he saying? Is there not an issue? The issue is that the nature of our God has been maligned. And he says I’m coming to you with the name, or the character or the nature, using His nature, the same nature that you defied you’re going to get now.

And then in verse 46, “This day will the LORD deliver,” look at the fantastic confidence, not tomorrow, right now, “This day will the LORD deliver you into my hand; and I will smite you, and take your head from you; and I will give the carcasses of the host of the Philistines this day unto the fowls of the air, and to the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel.” Now do you suppose that David could say that and be filled with the Holy Spirit? You bet he did, he was fantastically filled with the Holy Spirit. He says not only Goliath am I going to chop your head off, but the armies of the Philistines are going to rot there and stink and the dogs are going to come and lick them all up, drop by drop. And he could speak that kind of language with that kind of a mental attitude and be filled with the Spirit. Now how does that strike you in this day of fairy Christians? How do you suppose he ever got that, the Holy Spirit must have been different back then.

There are two issues that David is going to point to here, one at the end of verse 46 and the other in verse 47. There are two issues that are in mind here because David has got to go back and redo, undo the damage that Goliath has done. Now this shows you again, think of this, all the while he’s standing there and he’s aiming that sling shot, is what he’s doing while he’s talking; he’s doing two things at one time here, he is announcing what he is doing and at the same time he’s getting his distance set on that giant; that’s what he’s doing while he’s talking here. But while he’s getting his weapon aimed and while he’s saying this, notice how accurately this boy thinks; notice how fantastically magnificent this comes out because what is it that has been called into question? The character of God! What is it he’s going to bring into battle? The character of God! Why must he do this? Because two things have happened.

Number one, the end of verse 46, “that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel,” that’s a testimony to the unbeliever. When God’s character is maligned, and the person and nature of Jesus Christ is maligned there is always a crisis to the unbelieving world because the unbeliever can walk away from that situation and conclude your God is a phony. And when Christians allow loudmouths to malign Christianity and set in motion self systems of thought the unbeliever can walk away and say there’s no God in Christianity. You Christians don’t have any God, and it’s a legitimate conclusion, unfortunately, for them to draw that. And David recognizes this; he wants to say those Philistines are going to die, in about one hour, when I get through with this giant, thousands of men are going to die. Now I’m going to give them an opportunity to trust the Lord right now before they die. We’ll going to kill them but before we kill them we’re going to give them opportunity to believe, but they can’t believe until they have information that is convincing. So there has got to be a testimony given to the unbeliever and this is why he says “that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel.”

So the first issue that has to be clarified is that the unbeliever must have available to him historic evidences. How effective are you in presenting historic evidences to the questioning non-Christian?

Then the second issue is more serious in verse 47, “And all this assembly,” those are the believers, because every time Jesus Christ is maligned the believers faith is threatened. Just like sheep who so quickly to astray, believers who listen to God maligned will quickly start to lose their faith, will quickly start to wonder, will quickly resort to all sorts of things and get away from the Word, and start doing something else, something else takes precedence, or they have no more confidence any more. And David says hun-uh, it isn’t going to happen, this is going to be public and every person in this assembly is going to know something. And then he finishes, after the to know in verse 47, [tape inaudible for a little bit], that just makes Saul so angry, as we’re going to see next week, that he never gets over it for the rest of his life. Saul is going to be listening to all this; he listens to the whole thing. And this is a barb that’s aimed at Saul as well as the other believers, David says I want everybody here Lord to see that You don’t use human good gimmicks.

For “the LORD does not save with sword and spear;” and then another even personal barb at Saul, “for the battle is” not Saul’s, the battle is not the assembly, “the battle is the LORD’s, and He will give you into our hands.” So with this David announces his point; he is going to give a witness to the unbeliever and he is going to give a witness to the believer, that God is alive and quite well and He isn’t concerned with out little gimmicks and our little deals that we have worked out to make up for our lack of spirituality.

So in verse 47 he concludes with his statement, which shows again that David realized the issue. Now next week we’re going to deal with the death of Goliath and the effect it had on two men; the effect it has on Jonathan and the effect it has on Saul. With our heads bowed.