And as we work through this section of the account of David and the giant Goliath, the Philistine that David will deal with as we work through the narrative, we remember that although this was a real event, there are things that are sitting on top of, within, and beneath the surface of this story. Read with me now chapter 17 verse 12. Now David was the son of an Ephrathite of Bethlehem in Judah named Jesse, who had eight sons. In the days of Saul, the man was already old and advanced in years. The three oldest sons of Jesse had followed Saul to the battle. the names of his three sons who went to battle were Eliab, the firstborn, and next to him Abinadab, and the third Shammah. David was the youngest. The three eldest followed Saul, but David went back and forth from Saul to feed his father's sheep at Bethlehem. For forty days the Philistine came forward and took his stand, mourning evening. And Jesse said to David his son, take for your brothers an ephah of this parched grain and these ten loaves and carry them quickly to the camp of your brothers. Also take these ten cheeses to the commander of their thousands. See if your brothers are well and bring some token from them." Well, we pick up the narrative with these words, with this continuing section of the story. And the writer is again telling us who David is, reintroducing David into the text. And then it tells us of the three oldest sons by name. And you wonder, why be so specific? Well, one of the reasons I think the writer is specific is that these details serve to give us something to put reality on, something to separate the story, if you will, from that of being a fanciful fable. A little boy, a young man, kills a giant with a rock. It ends credibility and removes it from a fable or a myth. We have real people with real names, genuine places, the writer is trying to get across to us the reality of what has occurred. But there is a second reason that I think that the writer includes names and places, things that add credibility and reality to the story, and it is that it gives us a further record of the lineage of Christ. It adds a reality to the existence of King David, and if you have followed any of modern archaeology at all, you know that the existence of a king named David has been brought into question. And by extension, no David, no lineage, no lineage, no Jesus. This is one of those times when the details get important. Amen? It is one more careful evidence in the pages of the Hebrew Scriptures as to the existence, not only of David, but of the lineage of Jesus. And there is in verses 14 and 15, as we continue to walk through the text, there is a sentence that you could read easily and skip over, and I will confess in my hurriedness that I did this in my studies. And the only thing that saved me was a practice of rereading the entirety of the passage I'm working on every morning before I begin to study it. I have incorporated the discipline of reading the text once again before I begin to break it down. And the third time, I would love to say the first time through, but it was the third time through that I noticed this. It's verses 14 and 15. And it says, David was the youngest. David was the youngest. The three eldest followed Saul. You say, what in the world is so important about that? Seems like a rather trivial detail, doesn't it? Verse 15, but David went back and forth from Saul to feed his father's sheep at Bethlehem. While the older sons were serving the king, Saul, his army. The writer, I think, wants us to begin to look at David, the shepherd, faithful over the sheep. He didn't run off to join his brothers in the fight against the Philistines, which he easily could have done. Some stories that you've heard, if you were raised in the church, paint David as a little boy, Most commentaries, Reformed commentaries, don't treat him that way. I think he was a young man, still young, but a young man nonetheless, and able to fight. But the three oldest sons followed Saul while David was faithful to take care of the sheep, going back and forth between his duties as a shepherd and playing the lyre for Saul upon whom the evil spirit would come. and torment him. And I think the writer in this case is pointing this out to us to begin to draw distinction between those who followed Saul and those who were of the house of faith. Then we come to verse 16. We had the introduction of David, and of his brothers, and the discussion of Jesse. And it says in verse 16, For forty days the Philistine came forward and took his stand, morning and evening. Imagine with me for a moment, forty days of this, morning and evening, listening to this guy throw out blasphemies and taunts to the armies of Israel and blasphemies toward the God of Israel as he steps out of the ranks of the Philistines and issues this challenge. And the men of Israel are helpless. No one will fight him. Mighty King Saul is helpless. He won't fight him. So Jesse has gone. He brings grain and bread and cheese to take to his brothers and to the commanders of the army, as the story progresses. Jesse's worried about his sons being at war with the Philistines, and he tells David to bring something back from them to show they are still alive. A proof of life, if you will. Now, if you and I were the parents of those sons, knowing they were following Saul, we would ask for proof of life too. Amen. Now Saul and all the men of Israel were in the valley of Elah fighting with the Philistines. So there's this war scene happening. And David rose early in the morning and left the sheep with a keeper and took the provisions and went. Now remember this becomes important in just a little bit. He's been given the charge by his father to take provisions, and he has left the sheep with a keeper, rose early in the morning, and set out for the battle. And he came to the encampment as the host was going out to the battle line, shouting the war cry. And Israel and the Philistines drew up for battle, army against army. And David left the things in charge of the keeper of the baggage and ran to the ranks and went and greeted his brothers. As he talked with them, behold, the champion, the Philistine of Gath, Goliath by name, came up out of the ranks of the Philistines and spoke the same words as before. And David heard him. And David heard him. Simple, isn't it? but profound. David, standing there talking with his brothers, hears the blasphemous words that Goliath bellowed out, the same words the entire army of Israel and Saul had listened to for forty days, morning and evening, over and over and over again. So David comes into the camp. perhaps just in time on the 40th days of Goliath's rant as the army once again marches out to battle, to the battle line to face off against the Philistines. And we begin to see something of the character of David because twice in this narrative we see that he leaves the sheep with a keeper. Hint of the faithfulness of the shepherd. He comes to the camp and he leaves the provisions with someone who would watch over them. You think, well, very small details. There's one very important reason why the details that we are given here are not small, and it is this. The writer included them. Amen? But nonetheless, they are a mark of David's faithfulness. So he comes to his brothers and he greets them and begins to speak with them about everything back home and what's happening with their father and the war and perhaps even Saul the king. And in the middle of his conversation, he hears a loud, obnoxious and blasphemous sound as the giant Goliath steps onto the battlefield and begins to taunt the armies of Israel. and to blaspheme against God. To the men of Israel, it's another day in a long line of nearly 40 days of listening to this. To listening to this wild beast shouting at the armies of Israel. But something is different this day. Something has changed. As David now hears his blasphemies against God and his taunting of the armies of God. The days of Goliath. are about to come to an end. Well, as we read this, the Christian hears these words, we hear the narrative of this blasphemous giant And if we are to be thinking Christians, we use the opportunity of a text like this to consider something. And what I want us to consider for a moment is the perennial question for the Christian who lives in a modern-day society that is full of men and women who constantly blaspheme the name of God. And we hear it, don't we? You turn on the television and you hear it. you might be in the workplace and you hear it. If you watch a movie, you hear it. And there is a sense in which the Christian sometimes can become almost immune to hearing it. I hope that's not the case. And the reason I hope that's not the case, Christian, is I hope that your love for Jesus Christ is so deep and sincere that to hear his name used as a cuss word brings you pain. I hope your love for him is such that it grieves you in your soul." It obviously grieved David. We hear it all the time, though, don't we? We hear the name of God used as a cuss word, Jesus used as a cuss word, and men will take the word God and follow it with an expletive. What is the Christian's response to be? Have you ever thought about that? How am I to respond when I hear this come out of the mouth of someone? Sometimes Christians are quiet. Most often Christians are quiet. And I will concede there is not always the opportunity to defend God. defend the name of God, there also is the understanding that the almighty God of the universe who could take the life of the person who just blasphemed his name really does not, in the end, need my defending, does he? A God who could end your life in a moment doesn't need my defense. And yet there is a part of me, and I know this is in you as well, that when you hear When I hear my God's name blasphemed and used as a cuss word, there almost is an anger that wells up in me, and I want to fight. Have you ever felt that? And you want to correct the person, you want to say, do you have any understanding of the words that have just left your mouth? Do you have any understanding of the account to which you are about to be held on the day of your death before the God who will bring you up short before His throne as the arresting officer called Death hauls you before the Judge?" Do you have any terrifying idea? How is the Christian to respond? Or is the Christian to respond? This is where I think wisdom, biblical, Christian, godly, wisdom comes in, so I want to give you a couple of responses. One last thing before I do that, though, I want to point something out that we have experienced in our own. You will often be sitting in the evening and you want to watch a movie every once in a while. Some Christians still watch movies without sin. I think that's possible. But a habit we've gotten into, because if we rent something on a channel that offers a movie for rent, is we will research the movie first. We will find one of those websites, like PluggedIn, for example, that has done a review of the movie, and they will tell you if there are elements in the movie that the Christian who has the Holy Spirit of God living in him ought not watch. And it has been our experience that well over 90% of the movies that we might even be interested in, which is only a fraction of what is available, so you can see how small it becomes, contain blasphemy. The name of God used as a cuss word. Well, can't watch that. Well, no. I'm going to change that. We could watch that. But could is not the question, is it? For the Christian, what I believe the Christian, the one whose life belongs to Jesus Christ, who has the Holy Spirit living within him, the Holy Spirit of God dwelling within him, I think it is right and proper to ask the question, would I, men, listen to me, would I subject Jesus to this. If I would not set this before the Lord of Glory, why would I set it before my wife or my children? So we review those movies. We review them for another reason, not just because I'm trying to be holy in a sort of strange sense, but we review them because Scripture says In Exodus 20, verse 7, I want to give this to you, and maybe you can spend a little time examining it on the Lord's day. We go back to the command, don't we? Exodus 20, verse 7, it says, You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain. Christian, why would we ever want to participate in the violation of that command. David said in Psalms, I will set no worthless thing before my eyes. So if you want a biblical defense of why we are to engage, not to engage in those things that would take the precious name of God and use it as a cuss word, you can lean on the words of God for that. But what about people in the workplace? You're working with someone and they take the name of the Lord in vain. I once asked a person who did that near me, I said, why do you say that? And the response was, say what? I said, well, you just took God's name in vain. He said, well, I didn't mean to. I said, well, I know you probably didn't outwardly mean to, Have you ever thought it strange that they don't take other religious leaders' names in vain? They don't take Gandhi and follow it with a cuss word? They don't take Joseph Smith and follow it with a cuss word? They don't take Charles Taze Russell and follow it with a cuss word? It is the name of Jesus that men turn into a cuss word. Their response was silence. Verse 24 says that all the men of Israel, when they saw the man, fled from him and were very much afraid. Well, we looked last time at the description of the height and the size and the armament of Goliath that this was no small man. And he would not have, as we said, been a tall, thin man. he would have been as big as he was tall. All the men of Israel fled from him and were very much afraid. When they saw the man, verse 24, they fled from him and were very much afraid. And the men of Israel said, have you seen this man who has come up? You seen this guy? Surely he's come up to defy Israel, and the king will enrich the man who kills him with great riches, and will give him his daughter and make his father's house free in Israel. Listen to David's response here. It's good. And David said to the men who stood by him, what shall be done for the man who kills this Philistine and takes away the reproach from Israel? Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God? And you read that, and there's a part of you that says, finally, somebody, amen? Somebody. And the people answered him in the same way, so shall it be done to the man who kills him. I would submit to you that what David is doing here is that in his mind, this guy's already dead. He just wants to know the reward. Christian, might I make application for you and I from that? We struggle in this life. We have the struggle against sin. We are working out, I pray, our own salvation with fear and trembling. But I fear that sometimes I get so focused on the struggles of that, of my own sin and my impatience with my Christian growth, that I forget, hey, there's a reward just sitting over here. God has already decreed it. It's already there. To David, the giant's already dead. He wants to know what the reward is. Isn't that good? No, that's not presumption, that's faith. Saul had offered a great reward to any man who would kill Goliath and take the reproach away from Israel and from Saul. It's interesting to note here that Saul is unwilling himself, the great mighty King Saul, to step on the battlefield and face this guy. But he's willing to forfeit the life of his own men to go against Goliath. So David asks a second time just to be sure he's hearing correctly what the reward will be. And all he has to do is go out and throw a rock, and he gets all the reward. 26 And David said to the men who stood by him, 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? The second possibility of why David asked the question might be this. Look at all the reward. Are you serious? And nobody's killed this guy yet? Why has no one killed him? Look at all the riches waiting for the man who would take his head off and shut his mouth. He's defying the armies of the living God. Why is he still breathing? You guys are the army of the living God and you stand here and you listen to this blasphemy day after day and you do nothing? The Christian hears that blasphemy on occasion. But imagine, morning and evening, day after day after day, do you think you would offer an objection at some point? I pray that we would. Well, David cannot believe the words coming out of the mouth of the giant for 40 days. But then the older brother speaks, and if you are A student of Scripture, the older brother, should ring a bell in your mind as you consider the prodigal son. Verse 28, Now Eliab, his eldest brother, heard when he spoke to the men, and Eliab's anger was kindled against David. And he said, Why have you come down? And with whom have you left those few sheep in the wilderness? I know your presumption and the evil of your heart, for you have come down to see the battle." There's a little bit of harshness in those words, isn't there? I know the evil and the presumption in your heart. The only reason you came down here was to watch the fight. I love David's response. Christian, we are instructed by this response, are we not? And David said, what have I done now? What did I do? Was it not but a word? And he turned away from him toward another and spoke in the same way, and the people answered him again as before. Here we have the second mark of grace in the life of David. Scripture tells the Christian that we are not to retaliate in anger, but to leave those things to God. Well, as David asks a third time concerning the reward, Eliab hears him and gets angry, turns that anger toward David. In verse 31, when the words that David spoke were heard, they repeated them before Saul, and he sent for him. And David said to Saul, Let no man's heart fail because of him. Your servant will go and fight with this Philistine. 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 has been a man of war from his youth. But David said to Saul, your servant used to keep sheep for his father. And when there came a lion or a bear or took a lamb from the flock, I went after him and struck him and delivered it out of his mouth. And if he arose against me, I caught him by his beard and struck him and killed him. Your servant has struck down both lions and bears, and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be like one of them. Sounds like braggadocio, doesn't it? I've killed lions and bears, oh my. I'm gonna kill this guy too. Except for the next words. For he has defied the armies of the living God, and David said, the Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine. And Saul said to David, Go, and the Lord be with you. So David is brought before King Saul, and can you imagine for a moment, they bring this young man in, because finally somebody's willing to fight this guy, after a month and a half of this. Anybody. Saul takes one look at David, And the scripture doesn't say that, but you wonder, did Saul laugh when David walked in with one of the men of the army of Israel, saying, hey, here's the guy. He's going to go fight Goliath? You would have laughed, too, wouldn't you? I would have laughed. Well, David then recounts to Saul his care of his father's sheep, that if a lion or bear came and tried to take a lamb, he would strike it down or kill it. And then that Goliath would be like one of them, because he's defied the armies of the living God. Not because David is a mighty warrior, not because he's great, because he killed the lion or bear. No, but because he has defied, in essence, God. He's defied God. He doesn't say, I'm such a great shepherd, I'm such a mighty man of God, I'm such a warrior, I'm just gonna step on the battlefield and dispatch this guy for you. No, he says, God delivered me and God will deliver me again. You know, I know it's a simple point to make, but sometimes we need to be reminded that we as Christians live within the power and providence of God and we count on God because we all know his trustworthiness. Why do we trust God when the hard trials of life come? Because God's trustworthy and because he's delivered us time and time again. And if not, then how do I know that at the moment I close my eyes in death, I will open them and be in his presence? If I cannot trust him to deliver me through the trials, the temptations, the hard things that come in my everyday life, then why is it I would even think for a moment I could trust him at the moment of my death? What, I'm going to suddenly trust him when I close my eyes in death, but I can't trust him for the things of the everyday life? How's that work? And yet we all struggle in that, don't we? Everybody said a very quiet amen. The Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine. God will do this. God will do this. And David says this, by the way, in the face of Saul, the very king he's been anointed to replace, the very king who has time and time again disobeyed the word of God. There's a part of me that wishes that there would have been some commentary by Saul at that statement. God will deliver me. I wonder if Saul wished he had depended upon God. Zechariah speaks to this in the fourth chapter. In verse 5 it says, Do you not know what these are? This is God talking to the prophet. Zechariah says, I said, No, my lord. Then he said to me, This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel the king. Sounds familiar, right? And here's the part we all know as Christians, but we sometimes forget. If you know it, say it with me. Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord. We know this, don't we? It's been ingrained in us. That's really what David is saying to Saul. Not by my strength, not by my power, but God is going to do it. There is in this narrative, again, a glaring theme, a portrait of faith that God is painting for us in this story, is that apart from Him, the man can do nothing. Apart from God, I am helpless. Apart from faith in God, I will fail. And then Saul utters these words to David. And I don't, by the way, think that these are a mark that Saul is suddenly coming to faith. He says to David, go and the Lord be with you. I think what we're dealing with here is just a common Hebraic saying. The Lord be with you. God be with you. We say that today, sometimes unknowingly, don't we? What do we say? We say the word goodbye. You ever say that to somebody, you're on the phone, you say goodbye at the end of the conversation? You are saying a contraction of the word God be with you. Goodbye is a contraction of God be with you. So that even the unbeliever, when they hang up the phone and they say goodbye, do not realize that they are telling the person on the other end of the phone, God be with you. It is not necessary for Saul to have been a believer, to utter those words. Verse 38, then, Saul clothed David with his armor. He put a helmet of bronze on his head, and clothed him with a coat of mail. And David strapped his sword over his armor. And I think it's okay to see just a small amount of humor in this. And he tried in vain to go, for he had not tested them. I don't think David was able to move Then David said to Saul, I cannot go with these, for I have not tested them. So David put them off. Then he took a staff in his hand, and chose five smooth stones from the brook, and put them in his shepherd's pouch. His sling was in his hand, and he approached the Philistine." What a great scene. Amen? He lays down the armaments. the breastplate, the shield, the helmet of Saul, of unbelief, if you will, and he goes and picks up five smooth stones and puts them in a leather pouch. I say, well, Pastor, I think you're over-spiritualizing what has happened here. I don't think so. I think it is a great picture of the man of God who puts on Christ, who puts on the breastplate of righteousness shield of faith, and the helmet of salvation. David has lived his life thus far with a trust in God alone, not in a trust in the arm of man, and so he is not about to start now. He lays down his fear, he lays down the armaments that Saul has given him, and he goes with his faith toward Goliath. Well, we see in the narrative, again, the spiritual significance of what God is doing because God never just tells a story for a story's sake, amen? There was always something much greater behind it. We read this account and we see the terrified Saul and his army, afraid to deal with a blasphemous giant until a young man with a rock comes by with a sword and cuts off his head. A man driven by faith, a man dependent, wholly dependent upon God. And it says he took five smooth stones from the brook, put them in his shepherd's pouch. His sling was in his hand and he approached the Philistine. May God be glorified in teaching us from this story, amen. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the real historical events of that day and for all that it teaches us about those who are of the household of faith and their dependence upon God and those whose eyes are upon themselves, who dwell in unbelief and who do not depend upon God. May you continue, Father, to teach us to live as Christians in light of the events of that day. May we guard that which we think, that which we set before our eyes, and that which comes out of our mouth, and that which we hear. In Jesus' name we ask it. Amen.