David and Goliath: Defending God’s Name

Today on the Saturday edition of Renewing Your Mind, The Life of David. One of the most famous stories in the Bible begins with a young man's fierce anger. A pagan lawyer is blaspheming the name of God, and young David isn't about to put up with it. As we continue Dr.

R.C. 's Sproul series on the life of David, we'll be challenged to ask ourselves, are we willing to defend the reputation of God? As we continue now with our study of the life of David, we remember in yesterday's message how that David was selected among the sons of Jesse by the prophet Samuel, and that Samuel anointed David to be the king who would replace Saul.

What happens next? It's not that suddenly a delegation from the palace comes down and says, oh, long live the king, David. Come up with us to the palace and let us have you replace Saul. No, Saul stays being the king. And one of the ironies of the story is that it's here that the Bible tells us about this madness and derangement that comes upon Saul, where he goes into these rages, these fits of anger of an insane proportion. And the court officials say, we have to do something to calm this man down. And so the irony is this.

Here was their decision. One of the servants said to Saul, I have seen the son of Jesse, the Bethlehemite, who is skillful in playing. He's a mighty man of valor, a man of war, prudent in speech, and a handsome person, and the Lord is with him. And so Saul sent a messenger over to Jesse's place and said, send me your son David, who is with the sheep.

Sometimes we do have to read between the lines. What do you think is going through Jesse's mind when he gets a message from the palace that Saul wants his son David? If I'm the father, I'm terrified.

Oh, no. He knows about the anointing. He's going to take my son, and he's going to execute him.

But this isn't the purpose of the summons. And so we read that Jesse took a donkey loaded with bread, a skin of wine, and a young goat and sent them by his son David to Saul. And so David came to Saul and stood before him, and he loved him greatly, and he became his armor bearer. And so Saul sent to Jesse, saying, please let David stand before me, for he has found favor in my sight.

This is Saul's first declaration about David. Let him stay with me. I love him. He's fantastic. His music is great. He soothes my spirit. Please, Jesse, let your son stay with me. I want him to be my armor bearer. I want him to stay at the court because he has found favor with me.

We have the expression, thank God for small favors. This was a small favor because it didn't last very long until Saul hated David. But you know, even throughout Saul's life of madness, we see, as we shall see, this tremendous sense of ambivalence with the king. In his madness, he despised David. He was insanely jealous of David.

But yet there was still a sense in which Saul at times loved David like a son. But the history here that is provided for us in the Old Testament changes its focus rapidly. After this brief report of how David comes to the employ of Saul, we get the record of a new crisis.

And it's a military crisis. The traditional enemy of Israel is the Philistine nation. All through the Old Testament, we read of bloody conflicts between the armies of the Philistines and the armies of the Israelites. And now, as we continue in the history, we turn to chapter 17 of 1 Samuel, and we read of a gathering storm where these two nations line up against each other with the assembling of their battle lines over against themselves. If you've ever seen the movie Gettysburg, you get the idea of what takes place when whole armies are assembled and stand face to face ready for engagement. When those kinds of engagements took place in the ancient world, the casualties were enormous. It would not be uncommon for 20,000 or 30,000 men to die in one battle. In a sense, what happens here seems to be almost a step toward civilization because they decide to settle their differences not by all-out engagement between the complete forces of both nations, but rather the suggestion is made, at least from the Philistine camp, that the conflict between the Philistines and the Jewish people could be settled by hand-to-hand combat by champions selected one from each side.

Let's look at the story. Chapter 17, verse 1, the Philistines gathered their armies together to battle. And we read in verse 2 that Saul and the men of Israel were gathered together, and they encamped in the valley of Elah. And they drew up in battle array against the Philistines. Now the Philistines stood on a mountain on one side, and Israel stood on the mountain on the other side with a valley between them.

I once had a course in the geography and customs of Palestine by a man who was one of the most distinguished Old Testament scholars and archaeologists of the 20th century. And one of the things he told us about this incident was that in Israel the atmosphere is so thin and the air so clear that the human voice without amplification can be heard for over a mile. And so it would not be uncommon for one army to gather on one side of the mountain with a valley separating them from another mountain and have these conversations going across the valley.

The atmosphere was such that they could communicate without bullhorns or microphones or any of the things that we use today. And verse 4 tells us that a champion went out from the camp of the Philistines named Goliath from Gath, whose height was six cubits and a span. He had a bronze helmet on his head, he was armed with a coat of mail, and the weight of the coat was five thousand shekels of bronze. He had bronze armor on his legs, a bronze javelin between his shoulder, and the staff of his spear was like a weaver's beam, and his iron spearhead weighed six hundred shekels, and a shieldbearer went before him. Now we hear this description of the size of this giant, and there are all kinds of arguments about how to translate the Hebrew weights and measurements into our system of weights and measurements, but we can pass on beyond that.

You get the idea. Goliath was a giant. Saul himself was six foot six, and Goliath towered over Saul. His clothes had to be specially made. His armor had to be specially made. His weapons had to be specially forged.

So enormous were they to be in proportion to his physical stature and size. And so here you see this giant of giants who is named the champion of the Philistine army. And he stood and cried out to the armies of Israel and said to them, Why have you come but to line up for battle? Am I not a Philistine, and you the servants of Saul?

Choose then a man for yourselves and let him come down to me. And if he is able to fight with me and kill me, then we will be your servants. But if I prevail against him and kill him, then you shall be our servants and serve us.

The challenge is clear, very plain. Let's duel it out. If I win, you submit to us. If your champion wins, we'll bow down to you. Now let's get on with it. Choose somebody to come out here and fight me.

Can you imagine what Saul is thinking? My men must expect me to accept this challenge. I am their leader. I am their king.

I am huge myself, but I don't want to do this. I wonder if there's anybody else. It reminds me of Jim Boyce's favorite story where he tells the story of a man who is climbing a mountain, and he falls. And as he is falling, he grasps onto a twig that is embedded loosely in the side of the mountain. And he's hanging on by his fingers to this little twig, and the twig is creaking and breaking and ready to come dislodged from the side of the mountain. And the climber looks down 5,000 feet to the mountain floor, and he cries to heaven in prayer, Is there anyone up there who can help me? And suddenly the voice comes from heaven, I will help you. Have faith in me. Let go of the branch, and I will catch you.

And the climber looked at the branch, looked down at the basin of the floor, looked back up to heaven and said, Is there anyone else out there who can help me? This is the kind of feelings that I think Saul was having when this challenge comes to the army of the Israelites. And the Philistines said, I defy the armies of Israel this day.

Give me a man that we might fight together. Now when Saul and all of Israel heard these words of the Philistine, they were dismayed and greatly afraid. Now that's the setting for the crisis. The challenge has been given.

If we go and jump a little bit ahead in the text, we will see how serious the situation is. In verse 16, we read, And the Philistine drew near and presented himself forty days, morning and evening. Sometimes we miss that little detail about this narrative, don't we? When we see dramatic productions of the contest between David and Goliath, we just tend to assume that what happened one afternoon is that this giant from the Philistines came out on the field of battle and said, Send the man down here to fight me, and that all of the men of Israel trembled in fear until this little boy comes out and says, I'll go and fight him.

That's not the way it happened. Goliath didn't come out and make this challenge once. But how many times did he challenge the Jewish people?

If you read the text and do the arithmetic, you see very clearly that the number is what? Eighty times. Twice a day for forty days, morning and evening, like clockwork for forty days, almost six weeks, every soldier in the Israelite army had to contemplate his own cowardliness. Every day the troops in that army waited for their general, their king, to stop this insult. Every morning here comes Goliath. Is there anybody out there yet who will come out and fight me?

And nobody moves. And Goliath goes back to his camp and the soldiers play cards for the rest of the day, write letters home, whatever they did in those days. And the evening comes and here comes Goliath again. Who will stand against me?

Who will fight? And can you imagine the language that he's using, what he is calling? He is in their face. He is taunting them, you yellow-bellied cowards, and language I'm sure much stronger than that.

The narrative takes a turn. In verse 17, chapter 17, and Jesse said to his son David, take now for your brothers and Ephov this dried grain and these ten loaves and run to your brothers at the camp. David is still doing the chores of the younger son. David, I know you have the day off from the palace because Saul's not at the palace. He's engaged in a military campaign right now, and your brothers are in the army over there, and they're hungry, and I know you're busy with the sheep and all, but I want to make sure that my boys are taken care of, so I'm going to pack some lunches for them, and I want you to be the delivery boy from Jesse's delicatessen and take these things over and start feeding the fellows.

See how your brothers are faring, and please bring back news of them. So verse 20 says that David rose early in the morning, left the sheep with the keeper and took the things and went as Jesse had commanded him. And he came to the camp as the army was going out to the fight and shouting for the battle. And Israel and the Philistines had drawn up in battle a ray, army against army, and David left his supplies in the hands of the supply keeper, ran to the army, and came and greeted his brothers. Now it's while David is visiting with his brothers that while David is visiting with his brothers, here comes Goliath, so that David inadvertently hears the defiant challenge. I can remember that famous picture of the little boy walking out of Comiskey Park after the scandal emerged in the Black Sox scandal after the World Series. And this little boy is looking up into the face of his hero, shoeless Joe Jackson.

And the words that appear with the photograph are what? Say it ain't so, Joe. And you feel your heart melt as you sense the terrible sense of letdown and disillusionment that this boy had when he discovered that his hero was involved in a scandal of these proportions. David has older brothers. Did you ever have older brothers? I didn't have an older brother, but I had an older cousin who lived in my house, and he could do no wrong. And you know, we did the same thing as little kids. If one of the guys gave us a hard time, say, I'm going to go get my big brother, or I'm going to go get my cousin, Bob, and he's going to take him down because he's my champion.

We always look up to our older brothers. Now here, David's taking care of the sheep, and he's hearing stories around the campfire about his big brothers. They're in the army.

They're soldiers. And all David is capable of doing is taking them sandwiches for their lunch. And so he goes out, and he's sitting there, and he's talking to his brothers.

He's all proud of them. And all of a sudden, Goliath comes forth and issues this challenge. And David heard them. And all the men of Israel, when they saw the man, fled from him and were dreadfully afraid, so that the men of Israel said, Have you seen this man who has come up? Surely he has come up to defy Israel, and it shall be that the man who kills him, the king will enrich with great riches and will give him his daughter in marriage and give his father's house exemption from taxes in Israel.

Did you see this Philistine? Did you hear David, what the king said, that anybody who will go out and kill that man will get untold riches, untold fame? He'll get part of the kingdom. He'll get the daughter of the king in marriage.

But so far, we haven't found anybody who's willing to do it. And David spoke to the men, this is a boy speaking to men, who stood by him saying, And what shall be done for the man who kills this Philistine, and takes away the reproach from Israel? For who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God? David could care less about the bounty that's on Goliath's head. This young boy is full of idealism. He walks into this scene, he sees what's going on, and he is beside himself.

How can this be? How can you men who call yourselves soldiers, who call yourselves courageous warriors, stand here and put up with this insult to the Lord God of heaven? Where is the man who will step up to the plate here? Who is the man who will stop this outrageous reproach from Israel? The people answered him in this manner, saying, So shall it be done for the man who kills him.

Now Eliab, his older brother, heard when he spoke to the men, and Eliab's anger was aroused against David. And he said, Why did you come down here? And with whom have you left these few sheep in the wilderness? I know your pride and the insolence of your heart, for you have come down to see the battle. Isn't this a typical reaction when somebody questions the cowardice of the coward? The anger of the coward is fueled, and he turns down to the other lady and says, Who do you think you are, kid? Get out of here.

Go on back home and leave this thing to the men. We know what we're doing. And so the scene is set not for the battle of the century but for the battle of the millennium, if not the greatest single match-up in all of human history, which we will look at in our next session. Fear and uncertainty kept the men of Israel from defending their nation and their God. It took just one inconspicuous young man to take God at His word to turn the tide of the battle. Stay with us here on Redoing Your Mind.

Dr. Sproul will return with a final thought for us in just a moment. God gifted David with incredible skill and wisdom, and through his lineage came the one who would display courage to an infinite degree, the one who would conquer sin and death. Studying David's life provides us with a perspective on the entire Bible. R.C. traces all of redemptive history in this 57-part series, and we invite you to request it with your gift of any amount to Ligonier Ministries. You can reach us online at renewingyourmind.org, or if you prefer to call us, our phone number is 800-435-4343. Here at Ligonier Ministries, we help growing Christians dig deeper into biblical studies, church history, theology, and worldview studies. You'll find a rich source of articles, blog posts, and audio and video resources on our free mobile app.

Just search for Ligonier in your app store. Now with more on the life of David, here's R.C. with a final thought for us. I've noticed in my lifetime and by reading the lives of the saints and certainly of the biblical heroes that sometimes the greatest impediment to heroic and courageous behavior from the heroes of the faith comes from their best friends, Job's friends, Job's wife. Don't do this. The disciples saying to Jesus, don't go to Jerusalem.

You're going to get hurt. They love Jesus. Job's friends cared about Job. They didn't want to see these people get hurt. But God had made a call upon them. And what they were looking for was not somebody to tell them, don't do it. They wanted to hear their friends and their wives or whatever they say, do it. We're with you. Do you stand with those who are willing to obey the call of God? Well, the showdown between David and Goliath proves that God is never thwarted. It's an exciting story, and you'll hear it next week here on Renewing Your Mind.