Well, here in this chapter, in the 17th chapter of 1st Samuel, we have one of the great stories of the Bible, David and Goliath. And every child who has been brought up in the Christian home knows this story so well, and we all are familiar with it. And yet in the midst of that familiarity, as I suggested as we prayed, there can be a failure in our comprehension of what is taking place. We can be so enamored with David and with his great courage and so taken with the story of how this boy went out against that hulking great giant and surprised him with his slingshot and slaughtered him before the armies of Philistines and the Israelites. And that's it, that's the great story of how weakness can prevail against power when God is on our side. Well, there is so much more in this chapter that we can learn. And I guess there are different ways that we could approach this. I want to approach it by thinking about the Israelites and who they were. as a nation, as a people, as an army gathered on one side of this valley facing their enemies, the Philistines. And with what reluctance then they faced their enemies. And that's the first thing I want to speak to you about, Israel's reluctance. may have gathered together and each army is on a mountainside facing one another across a valley and nothing seems to happen. We are used to armies gathering in this way in the stories of the Bible as well as in the stories of history. They gather their ranks, they set themselves up against one another and then we expect to hear the trumpet sound, don't we? And the infantry march forward and the artillery, the bowmen in that day, would have shot their arrows over their advancing troops' heads. into the armies of the troops of the enemy. And so the battle would begin and those with the greatest strategies and the greatest skills would win the day. But nothing happens, no trumpet sounds. There is no signal from the commander of either army to set the advance going. Nothing happens day after day after day, but for one man from the Philistine camp, day after day, he comes forward. He enters into the valley. He's a monster of a man. He stands three metres tall. In most of our houses, he wouldn't be able to stand up straight. His head would be through the ceiling. That's how tall he was. A great hulk of a man with muscles that rippled, carrying armour that was impenetrable, it would seem. And this man, enormous, armed, and no doubt skilled as Saul testifies that he has been a warrior since his youth. This man challenges the Israelites. He challenges the Israelites to a one-on-one battle and this one-on-one battle would settle the matter for both armies. Whoever came out against this Hulk Goliath and whoever won the battle between them won the war. That's the idea. A winner takes all challenge is presented to the Israelites and of course the Israelites don't have a man to match this giant. There's King Saul Well, he was a giant of a man himself. By comparison with other Israelites, he stood head and shoulders above most men in the Israelite army, but he was nothing compared to Goliath. When Saul heard the challenges of this Philistine, he was dismayed and greatly afraid, along with all of the army of Israel. And so, day after day after day after day, this challenge is made, morning and night, from Saul, the king, To the humblest foot soldier in the Israelite army there is fear and dismay. Israel was reluctant to do anything. They just stood there in battle array, not moving. The trumpets are silent. You could hear a pin drop. as the thud of the boots of Goliath marked his advance to give the challenge once again. So for more than a month, Israel has been reluctant to do anything. And why is that? They've had battles with the Philistines before. Why is it that Israel are reluctant to do anything? They are reluctant because they're looking on the outward appearance of this great giant. They're looking at his bulk. They're looking at his spear. They're looking at his armour. They're hearing his challenge, his curses. And that's what they see. And that's all that they hear. They are looking on the outward appearance. This is the way of life. This is how men function, isn't it? When Saul was first anointed as king, people looked at his stature. Here was a man who stood head and shoulders above others. He could be a leader. when Samuel went to Jesse's house to anoint a new king after Saul's failure to honour God. He saw Eliab, the firstborn son of Jesse. He saw here a warrior. He saw a great strong man and he thought to himself, surely this is the one. This is the Lord's anointed. The Lord said, no, this isn't the one. Man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart. And so now with the enemy forces arrayed against them and this giant Goliath coming out before them to issue a challenge against them, all they see is the Hulk. All they hear is his challenge and they don't see beyond those things. They say, we haven't got a man who can go against this man. We haven't got anyone who can win, who can beat this man. And how often, how often we are paralyzed in our lives by focusing on the outward. by focusing on the circumstances of our lives, by focusing on that which seems to us to be beyond our ability to overcome. And it doesn't have to be a giant. It can be anything that paralyzes us, that prevents us from acting, from moving. that gives us a reluctance to do what is right. Someone surely should have done what was right and approached this Philistine and silenced him. But no one did. There was a general reluctance, a paralysis in the camp, and so it can be for us as Christians. We can be paralyzed by looking at the world, by looking at the circumstances, by hearing the voices of colleagues who defy Christianity, who defy us. for our faith in God and we keep silent and we remain inactive and we hide our allegiance to our God. Now Israel's reluctance is presented to us in graphic detail here by the narrator of this story but then he introduces into the picture another man. We've had Goliath introduced to us And now there's another man that the narrator wants to introduce to us. Well, he's been introduced to us before. We were introduced to him in the 16th chapter when he was anointed king. He was introduced to the royal court there in the 16th chapter. He became a musician to Saul when the harmful spirit would come upon Saul. Then this man would be summoned and he would strum the strings of his lyre and soothe Saul's nerves and the harmful spirit would depart. And so we've encountered David before but the narrator wants to introduce him again He introduces him this second time in juxtaposition to Goliath and how different these two men are. There was the giant in battle armour, strong and ready for blood. And here's David. David is sent by his father because his three oldest brothers are in the army of Israel and he's sent as a courier. He's a carrier of bread and cheese and hopes to return carrying news to his father. He's just a shepherd boy. No, he's not. He's not a young boy. He's a teenager, an older teenager probably. But he's too young to fight. He's not yet 20. He's not allowed to enlist in the armies of Israel. He's not allowed to be there on the battlefront. He's not yet old enough to represent Israel as a soldier in its army. And yet, the narrator is presenting David introducing David as Israel's representative he is Israel's representative he's not much to look at he's not a great warrior like Goliath but he's Israel's representative he's not he doesn't have the confidence of the army of Israel, like Goliath has the confidence of the Philistine army. They were so sure that if Goliath went forward and fought against any man, Goliath would win. They were betting on him and they were sure that they were going to win the lottery that day. But here is David, despised David, His oldest brother hearing him talking to the men speaks of him as having evil motives in coming to the Israelite army camp. He tells him to be quiet. David says, well, what have I done? I've only been talking. But his brother has no time for him. And then there's Saul. When Saul hears about a young man who's asking questions and wondering why no one is advancing against Goliath, he calls for him. He wants to know about this young man. And there before him stands the strummer of strings. There before him stands a shepherd boy. And he has no confidence that David can do any good. He might be able to lull to sleep a harmful spirit. What can he do against this giant Goliath? And so Saul has no confidence until David says, well, this Philistine's nothing. He's nothing. He sees him so differently from Israel, from the way that Saul sees Goliath, from the way that Eliab sees Goliath, from the way the troops of Israel see Goliath. David sees him with different eyes and he hears him with different ears. What is this man? He's an uncircumcised philistine. In other words, he's not one of the people of God. He doesn't belong to God. He lives his life in opposition to God. He is an idolater. He is a in opposition to God and those are his cries, those are his words. What was David hear? David hears a man defying the army of Israel. But it was not just the army of Israel that this man defied. David heard a man who defied the army of the Living God. The army of the Living God. And that, you see, made all the difference. The army of Israel, they only heard the taunts and the threats of this giant. David heard a man defying the Living God. The Israelites saw a man a giant clad in heavy armour. David saw an uncircumcised Philistine, an enemy of the living God. And he's undaunted then by this bragger, however big he might be in body and in words, because David trusts the living God. David's faith is in the living God and it is because he trusts the living God and he knows that this God doesn't stand for this kind of behaviour, this kind of defiance against him. And David trusts that God can do something, that God can defeat this giant and he doesn't need the army of Israel to do it. He just needs one person who is willing to go. One person who is loyal to him. One person who believes that God can do this. And David's faith is a tried and tested faith. David's faith in God's ability to deliver is a proven faith. Saul attempts to give him his armour. He puts his bronze helmet upon his head. He clads him in chain mail. He gives him a sword. But David's not tested this paraphernalia. He's not used to wearing this armour. He says, I can't wear this. This is untested. But whereas the armour was untested, David's faith was tried and tested. It was a proven faith. He believed the Lord could deliver him because the Lord had delivered him before. In his duty as shepherd of his father's sheep, he had protected the flocks from wild beasts. He had taken a bear and struck it and killed it. He had pursued lions and he had killed them. And this uncircumcised Philistine, he was nothing more than a brute beast in David's eyes. And he would be cast on the pile with the bears and the lions that had been killed before. For David's faith was solid and sure. It wasn't a faith in his abilities, in his skills with a sling. Now that wasn't where David was putting his faith. His faith was in God. 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. It is the Lord that would deliver him. That is where his faith rested. And so David is undaunted by the size of the foe. And he's unwavering in the face of his threats. The glory of God is being belittled. by this man and his taunts and by the inaction of the army of Israel. And something must be done. And so David says, I'll do it. I'll do it. Don't live in fear of this man, he says to Saul. I will defeat this man. And so David takes on Goliath. David takes on that which was opposed to God. And David takes on Goliath as Israel's representative as he had walked into the camp that morning with 10 cheeses and bread and parched grain. No one would have imagined that this young lad would have been representing Israel before the day was out. No one would have imagined that Saul would have sent him out to face this giant. No one would have imagined any of this happening but this was God's plan, this was his purpose and so David takes on the giant, as Israel's representative, one on one, winner takes all, but David is not alone. God is with David. Goliath has nothing but his shield bearer before him. David has the God who is the creator of the heavens and the earth with him. And David goes out then, to deliver the people of God by the power of God. He goes out with his sling in his hand and five well-chosen pebbles in his shepherd's pouch and a staff and he goes out to face this giant in the confidence that God will deliver him. He goes out against this foe to maintain the glory of God in the face of defiance and the unbelief of the Israelite troops. David goes out to do a work of deliverance on behalf of Israel. And we mustn't only see a David going out to battle in this scene, We must see beyond it. We must see through the shadows, the symbols, the types, and we must get to the reality that they prefigure. We must get to the anti-type. We must get to the true fulfillment of this story of representation by which a nation is delivered. We must get to the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the great representative of the people of God. We must get to the shepherd of Israel, the one who tends his sheep, the one who provides for his sheep. The one who guards his sheep. The one who seeks and saves his lost sheep. The one who lays down his life for his sheep. And Jesus Christ then went against the foe. He went against the enemy of souls. He went against Satan and the powers of darkness and against sin and the forces of death. He went in order to bring a deliverance for his people, to free them from their unbelief, to free them from their inaction in the service of God. to free them from the judgement that they had incurred because of that inaction. The Lord Jesus Christ laid his life down for his sheep, as a ransom for many, to free them, to deliver them, to bring them together as the people of God, victorious for the honour and glory of God. This is what Israel's representative has done. This is what the representative of the people of God, the kingdom of God, has done. And what was the reward then? We must consider Israel's reward. For David went on behalf of the people and he gained the victory on behalf of the people. The people responded with cries of joy and they pursued the Philistine army all the way back to Gath and to Ekron, to the territory of the Philistines. And all along the way then were the carcasses of the dead, fodder for the birds of the air and the beasts of the field. The Lord delivered David and Israel's reward for their representative's victory was a life of freedom from the oppression of the Philistines. David's commitment to God's honour, David's trust in God's power is vindicated and David freed his people. It's a decisive victory. And so it was for the Lord Jesus Christ, that unassuming man, who didn't seem to be particularly great and particularly powerful, who ends up in the hands of soldiers, arrested, condemned, crucified. And in the weakness of that scene, in what seems to be defeat, Jesus Christ gains the victory on behalf of his people. And he destroys the power of death. And he breaks the chains of sin. And he gives life to all who trust in him. This is what our representative has done for us. The rewards of life and victory belong to those who trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so we must learn from this, not to look at outward appearances, not to look at the world and its defiance, but to look to God, to have faith in God, to have concern for the honour and glory of God every day of our lives. How may I maintain the honour and glory of God in my life and in my sphere of influence? This is the question that we must ask us. This is the question that is central to this 17th chapter of 1 Samuel. Goliath's defiance of the armies of Israel was a defiance of the God of Israel and his honour was at stake and that was what gripped David, that was what stirred David, that was what took David out to face Goliath, the honour and the glory of his God. And every day we are to maintain the honour and the glory of our God. in the face of circumstances that seem to us to be beyond our ability to overcome. Yet we must trust the Lord and we must walk in obedience to the Lord. The Lord delivers those who are concerned for His honour. And if that's our priority in every situation of life, then however impossible it may seem to us, When we put God first, the Lord will honour us. He has promised that he will honour those who honour him. And just as David was honoured because he was concerned for the honour of God, so it will be for those who walk with Jesus. seeking to glorify Jesus every day of their lives. The Lord will deliver them and get all the glory. Let's pray. Our Father, we do ask that you would help us to see beyond our circumstances, to not look on the outward appearance of our foes in this world, whether they be the people around us, whether it be the values and ways of society in general. Lord, we pray that we would look beyond those things to see that honouring you through obedience to your word, you will honour us. that you are able to deliver us when being obedient to your word incurs the scorn of those around us, you will deliver us. When being obedient to your word and being concerned for your honour means the opposition of those in authority over us, you will honour us and you will deliver us. And so in every scene of life we pray that we would not lose sight of you and your glory, and we would always strive to live for you and for your glory. And in doing so, may we know your power at work within us. Lord, we thank you for the Lord Jesus Christ as our representative, who has taken our sins and borne our punishment. so that we might be reconciled to you. We thank you that he has won the great victory. He is the shepherd who has laid his life down for the sheep. And so may we, as his sheep, honour him in our lives, we pray. In Jesus' name. Amen.