If you would please turn to 1st Samuel and chapter 17 and we'll be continuing in that great book and we're at the kind of the climactic event, the battle between David and Goliath. So many things have been kind of working up towards this great event and now we get to the actual battle and one of the things we find out is it's over really fast and the speeches beforehand are much longer than the battle itself and so It's kind of interesting the the priority God puts on things Because the speech the word was actually more or less the point of David's rebuke and we'll we'll look at that But before we get into that we want to see again the the David and Goliath's big conflict teaches us a number of things, including that we are in constant warfare. And the nations of the earth have declared war in a sense on God and upon his people. Christians around the world are persecuted. They're disliked and they are attacked and vilified and everything else. And the people who do that do not realize that so much of their prosperity has been brought to them through Christianity. And they actually ignore that truth to their harm in many ways. And yet, it's simply the way things are. We have had an enormous history here in our nation where we have been free, by and large, from persecution because Christianity has affected the culture so much, the culture itself ended up being pro-Christian. Well, we're past those days now. And not only is Christianity attacked, just absolute truth, principles of truth that in many ways almost every culture has embraced are being attacked even now. But we shouldn't be surprised by that. We are, but we shouldn't be surprised by that. Go all the way back to Psalm 2. And Psalm 2 starts off amidst the very beginning of the Psalter. Why are the nations in an uproar and the peoples devise and evade things? The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed. Saying, let us tear their fetters apart and cast away their cords from us. He who sits in the heavens laughs, the Lord scoffs at them. Then he will speak to them in his anger and terrify them in his fury, saying, But ask for me, I have installed my king upon Zion, my holy mountain. I will surely tell of the decrees of the Lord, he said to me. You are my son, today I have begotten you. Ask of me and I will surely give you the nations as your inheritance. and the very ends of the earth as your possession. You shall break them with a riot of iron. You shall shatter them like earthenware. Now therefore, O King, show discernment. Take warning, O judges of the earth. Worship the Lord with reverence and rejoice with trembling. Do homage to the Son. that he may not become angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath may soon be kindled. How blessed are all who take refuge in him." You read that psalm and you see David, the king, installed on Zion, and Jesus installed on Zion, waging war against the king of this earth. And it's a powerful prophetic sign, but it's also a warning. And we see this same kind of warning from David out of David's mouth To Goliath before this battle ensues and the one is this is if you're on God's side You will be preserved and you will be blessed and you'll be saved. But if you are opposed to God you will be judged And we see that on the battlefields and the valley of Eli and we see that around us every single day. So let us learn more about that great truth as we look to first Samuel 17. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father, we thank you for the truth of this event. We thank you, God, that this event that we're going to read about today is set at a particular time in a particular place. It is not myth. It is not fable. It is in a historically accurate account. of the battle of good versus evil, of light versus darkness, of the true faith against the false faith. I pray God that like David, we would be champions of the living God and that we would be willing to wage spiritual warfare for your glory and for the good of your church. Bless us now, encourage us, strengthen us, give us an eye for holy battle. We pray in Christ's name. Amen. If you would, we're gonna look at beginning verse 41 here and verses 41 through 44 sort of get us started here with the setup of the battle. Then the Philistines came on and approached David with the shield bearer in front of him. When the Philistine looked and saw David, he disdained him, for he was but a youth and ruddy and handsome in appearance. And the Philistine said to David, I am a dog that you've come to me with sticks. Am I a dog that you've come to me with sticks? And the Philistine cursed David by his gods. The Philistine also said to David, come to me and I will give your flesh to the birds of the sky and the beasts of the field. So you remember what happened prior to this, David shows up, he's attacked in a sense verbally by his older brother. You got the sibling rivalry that comes up here and his older brother sort of treats him like a troublemaker. He hears the taunt of Goliath and David is just, he's just filled with righteous anger. How can anybody blaspheme the name of the Lord and insult his army? So he wants to be the champion He goes to see Saul Saul looks at him and think you're crazy. This guy's going to crush you He's been a warrior since his youth. You're just a lad And but David presses on through that now he is standing before Goliath but not before he stops and gets five smooth stones out of the creek and puts him in his His bag God uses means he's not going to likely use a lightning bolt to shock Goliath So he heads up towards the battle and then Goliath has been coming out for 40 days Taunting the armies waiting for some response and all of a sudden he sees this little tiki-tiki stampering youth come out dressed as a shepherd literally he's got his staff in his hand he's got his stick and he's and he's got I don't even know at this point in time he's got his sling in his hand he's probably got tucked into his in his belt and he comes out that day Goliath is confused he doesn't understand here he just shows disdain for David David is literally armed with sticks and stones but Goliath is going to find out they do in fact break bones. So he's got this disdain. He looks at him. He sees his appearance. David's handsome. I guess a warrior wouldn't necessarily be thought of as being a handsome person if they actually fought in battles they would be scarred and mangled or something like that. They would show some experience and that kind of thing. Here comes David. He's looking like a lifeguard or something like that. And it just insults Goliath who's this lifeguard kid this GQ boy coming up to attack me with a stick in his hand And he's just furious about that that would have been worth the price of the ticket just to see Goliath offended at David and but it's a build-up because what kills Goliath is his pride and That's what ends up getting him. So as has been the theme throughout 1st Samuel, Goliath is doing what? He's looking at the outward appearance. He's only looking at the outward appearance. He is not looking at the heart. He can't look at the heart. So he sees this this that David is being weak in which is a theme you see throughout here Both David's brother and Saul thought he was also too weak and he says is in my dog that you come out with me with sticks I mean David's literally holding his staff in his hand and he's just overwhelmed by that and then what is the Philistine to do notice this he cursed David how and He cursed David by his gods. You remember there's more to this event than is being played out right here. These men are both champions. They are representing their deities. And you often see this when with the armies of Israel, God is considered the God of hosts. And it's basically a battle of the gods. And that's certainly the way ancient people saw them. The reason why they said you choose your champion and we'll choose our champion is because they figured these things were actually being battled out in heaven and the stronger god would win. So that's why they could choose a champion. Remember they had the rule that whichever champion won the other group people would serve as slaves. So he's cursing them and his god is Dagon. His God is Dagon. So, by Dagon I curse ye, you know, the great fish God that curses you and your God and he's all upset. Now that's not a bad thing. It's probably good to get him a little frothy and a little bit angry because he might react without thinking through things. So perhaps this is all part of the plan as well. And then he says, I'm going to give your flesh to the birds of the sky. He is boastedly mocking the the camp of Israel here and basically said this is going to be such a slaughter they won't even have time to bury your bones and that happened often in ancient happened during the American Civil War as the battlefields would go back and forth they would come back on a battlefield and there would be the skeletons laying out on the field from a battle two three four years before and imagine how demoralizing that would be And how do you bury 10,000 people in a field if you're running away? So that was kind of the he's but it would also be demoralizing if that's what someone was taunting with right So he is he is shot. He's boasting. He's bragging He's incense and his pride is going to become his undoing. It's a great lesson here folks I mean Goliath had all the attributes, right and If this had been a bet in Las Vegas, it would have been 9 to 1 for Goliath, if not more than that. And yet Proverbs 16, 18 says what? Pride goes before destruction and a hearty spirit before a fall. Right. So Yahweh is going to bring deliverance. And one of the things as Ralph Davis says, what matters is not whether you have the best weapons or whatever, but whether you have the real God. In fact, your inadequacy may be precisely your qualification for serving God, for his strength shines most brightly behind the foreground of your weakness. You know, we need to remember that because because we do emphasize obedience, we emphasize the importance to take this gospel and share it with others, we emphasize in a sense our obligation to serve others and to be faithful and to be ladies and gentlemen and those kind of things. And sometimes we forget it's actually our weaknesses, our failures that are going to be the very things that cause God to use us. In the world's eyes, David was a loser. In the world's eyes, you're a loser. But it's actually that loser aspect that's actually going to cause you, first of all, to cry out for grace and come to God. to recognize the fact you just don't have your act together, but it's very often that same sort of humility that actually opens up your influence for others for the sake of the kingdom. And now we see verses 45 through 47, the great speeches here. Then David said to the Philistine, you come to me with a sword and a spear and a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have taunted. this day the Lord will deliver you up to my hands and I will strike you down and remove your head from you and I will give the dead bodies of the army of the Philistines this day to the birds of the sky and the wild beasts of the earth that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel and that all this assembly may know that the Lord does not deliver by sword or spirit for the battle is the Lord's and he will give you into our hands." Is that not one of the most awesome speeches in all the Old Testament? I mean David is just giving it back to Goliath and you can see him holding his fist out like this and just giving it back and that had to have shocked Goliath. And this guy's got some, well we would say faith, some chutzpah is what the Hebrews might have said. And he ends up, as he's given this speech, basically, in a sense, given the gospel. He's portraying the righteousness of God, the unrighteousness of man, the need for man to repent and come to God. And the warning that if he doesn't, he's in a lot of trouble, right? So first of all, he starts off with this great speech. He reminds Goliath that weapons mean nothing when God is in the conflict. I mean, God has already defeated the Philistines with hail coming out of the sky. He's already defeated them with a confusion in their camp. I mean these are a couple of battles that happened before this. So he's going to do it again. And David is in a sense warning Goliath. Jeremiah 9 says this, Thus says the Lord, Let not a wise man boast of his wisdom, and let not the mighty man boast of his might. Let not a rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast of this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who exercises lovingkindness, justice, and righteousness on earth. For I delight in these things, declares the Lord." Aren't you glad you're on his side? Aren't you glad that our God is not some kind of big cosmic bully like the other gods? That he's not just fickle like the other gods? He has got a set pattern of righteousness that he never ever violates. And part of that pattern is his great love and grace that he has for his people, how he will support and uphold us. He rebukes Goliath for his blasphemy. And basically, you know, you've been you've been mocking God and cursing God. You're going to about you're about to find out who God is. You should have used his name and praise instead of as a cuss word. He pronounces capital judgment upon him. Basically, because of what you've done, because of this blasphemy, God is going to kill you, or I'm going to kill you and leave your body here. And he pronounces victory over Dagon, one of the dead gods, and that Yahweh, the living God, is going to overcome him. So this is kind of a scene like you see with the prophets of Baal. And all of these scenes, and you see this all the way back to the Old Testament, you see all this even throughout the New Testament, a lot of these things happen so that the world would know who God is. You remember the scene in the prophet of Baal, how you had these prophets of Baal going up and you had Elijah going up against him and Elijah was there all alone. Do you ever feel alone? You've never been as alone as Elijah was on Mount Carmel with the prophets of Baal. And the prophets of Baal are calling down fire, and Elijah starts mocking them. Maybe he's deaf. You need to cry out a little bit louder. And then Elijah's got his altar, and what does he tell everybody to do? Pour water on it. Pour water on it. So just dump water. We're gonna we're gonna saturate this wood. We're gonna saturate this this This sacrifice and then he calls in the name of the Lord, of course fire comes down and just envelops everything and then first King 18 says this then you call on the name of the Lord your God and I will call on the name of the Lord and of the God who answers by fire. He is God. Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt offering and the wood and the stones and the dust and licked up the water that was in the trench. When all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and they said, the Lord, He is God. The Lord, He is God. So you've got a set up here, a battle between good and evil. You know, the interesting thing is David is rebuking Goliath for what sin? For the sin of blasphemy. You go back to Leviticus, what was the penalty for the sin of blasphemy? It was death, right? Do you remember what kind of death? Stoning. Stoning. If you committed the sin of blasphemy, you were to be stoned to death. It's about to happen, isn't it? So he says he's with the Lord of Hosts, the God of the armies of Israel. You know, again, this has made especially more progressive churches uncomfortable. They've removed they've moved martial type hymns where we're going off to battle. They remove those from the hymn book because Christians shouldn't be about warfare and battle and that kind of thing God is all about warfare. He is all about battle Jesus when he came before he came preaching Salvation and grace when he comes back. It's gonna be too late. I It's going to be too late to repent. It's going to be too late to accept that grace that he offers. He's coming back in judgment. So if you don't like the martial language of the hymns, you're not going to like Revelation 19. And I saw heaven open to behold a white horse, and he who sat upon it was called Faithful and True. And in righteousness he judges and wages war. His eyes are a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems. And he has a name written on him which no one knows except himself. And he's clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and his name is called the Word of God. And the armies which are in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, were following him on white horses. And from his mouth comes a sharp sword, so that with it he might strike down the nations. And he will rule them with a rod of iron, and he treads the winepress of the fierce wrath of God the Almighty. And on his robe and on his thigh, he is a name written King of Kings and Lord of Lords. That's our God. That's Jesus. That's Jesus coming back to judge the earth. There was passages like that that caused me to be a Christian. And the Lord used because I realized I was on the wrong side of this battle. I want to be on the winning side, not the losing side. And I just love that, that all the earth, I love David's bold, confident, but don't you just fall in love with David through this whole scene? That all the earth may know that there is a God of Israel. He is not out there to build his resume. He's not out there to get the queen. He's not out there to get the riches. He is out there because he is defending the reputation of God. And he is incensed at the sin that he's seen. And he's also incensed at the weaklings that he sees trembling in the trenches at Goliath. And frankly, it's Saul who should have been the champion. But this idea that all the world may know there's a God of Israel, y'all, that's the reason why there is Israel. Have you ever thought, where is Israel located? You know, why did God, of all the nations on the earth, why did God choose Israel to be His special people? He did it for this very purpose. They are in the Fertile Crescent. They are there in between all the great empires of Egypt to the south and Assyria and Babylon to the north and to the east and Greece and Rome to the west. Anybody who's doing anything in that area goes through Israel. They were to be a light to the nations, but they failed. They failed. But we are to be a light to the nations, and we cannot fail. So we are taking up what Israel had, but part of the point of that, why didn't God just let them out of Exodus? Why didn't God just fix your physical ailment or your financial problem? I mean, he could do that, right? He could just snap his fingers. He didn't even need to snap his fingers. He could have brought them out. He could have beamed them from all that oppression in Egypt into the promised land. He could have just wiped out all the Canaanites. That's what we want, right? Just fix everything, you know? I find myself praying, God, please, if you could just give the church $2 million. $2 million, and that would get us out of debt. We could do some other things. And he ain't answered that prayer so far yet. Think about the plagues, the 10 plagues right in Egypt. The first plagues were against the Nile gods, plagues one and two. The next plagues, plagues three through six were against the land gods and plagues seven through eight against the sky gods. He was dismantling the false hope of the Egyptians the whole way through. Okay, you're going to believe in this frog God? I'm going to send frogs all over the land. You're going to believe in this sky God? I'm going to cause hail to come out and I'm going to take away the sun. You're going to believe in the Nile gods? The Nile River is literally God. I'm going to turn it to blood and it's going to be filled with dead things and it's going to smell putrid for weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks. He's mocking their gods. Well, it's the same thing here with what David is doing. We even know that because God tells us this in Exodus chapter 9. For this time I will send all my plagues on you and your servants and your people so that you may know that there is no one like me in all the earth. For if by now I have put forth my hand and struck you and your people with pestilence, you would then have been cut off from the earth. But indeed for this reason I have allowed you to remain in order to show you my power, in order to proclaim my name through all the earth." So God kept Pharaoh on the throne and kept him oppressing Israel for his own glory. for his own glory. So that's why he doesn't just stop our trials, our difficulties, even our temptations. Because persevering through those things is what brings God glory in so many ways. It shows the world that there is a God in Israel. And then he wants to warn Goliath that the Lord does not deliver by the sword or by the spear for the battle is the Lord's. David's victory is he's given all of God the credit for his great victory. Now we see here in 48 through 54 what actually happens. Then it happened when the Philistine rose and came and drew near to meet David and David ran quickly toward the battle line to meet the Philistine. I love that David couldn't wait. He's running towards Goliath, probably using his sling while he's actually running. And David put his hand into his bag and took from it a stone and slung it and struck the Philistine on the forehead and the stone sank into his forehead so that he fell on his face to the ground. Thus David prevailed over the Philistine with the sling and the stone, and he struck the Philistine and killed him. But there was no sword in David's hand. Then David ran and stood over the Philistine and took the sword and drew it out of his sheath and killed him and cut off his head with it. When the Philistines saw their champion was dead, they fled. The men of Israel and Judah rose up and shouted to pursue the Philistines as far as the valley and to the gates of Ekron. And the slain Philistines lay along the way to Sherem, even to Gath and Ekron. And the sons of Israel returned from chasing the Philistines and plundered their camps. Then God took the Philistines head, I'm sorry, then David took the Philistines head and brought it to Jerusalem, but he put his weapons in his tent. The battle was just over that quick. I mean, I don't know how long it takes to sling a stone, but under 10 seconds. So you've had this amazing buildup, and that was part of the shock. You know, people are like, oh boy, this is gonna be, and it's over with. I mean before they can even get their popcorn, the thing is done, right? The credits are already rolling. So he took a stone and slung it. Now this, David was not unarmed. A lot of the ancient armies had slingers. And you could, a really good slinger would be very accurate. He could hit with a slingshot, with a sling. And it would be deadly. The force of those slingshots is actually that stone comes out going 100 to 150 miles per hour. And very often the stones are about the size of a tennis ball. So this is a small cannonball heading toward your head. But he was accurate. He hit them right where he needed to hit them. Remember, he's covered with 125 pounds of armor. But evidently either went through his helmet or went through on the space right between his eyes so he could see so he's got that part open and it just Went right between the eyes. He just nailed Goliath with this rock right and it crushed his skull These are the kind of details that Mitchell isn't loving right now. This is man stuff, right? So he just crushed him and Goliath was dead instantly. He was dead instantly and then what happened? He fell forward on his face What does that sound like? A few chapters before, his god Dagon did the same thing, you remember? They put the Ark of the Covenant in the temple of Dagon and Dagon was found forward on his face. Goliath, the champion of Dagon, died like Dagon did. Dagon's head came off. Goliath's head comes off. So he ends up hitting him. He falls down on the ground just to make sure. And I suppose as a trophy he goes and decides he wants to cut off... How hard would it be to cut off Goliath's head? Here's more gory detail. Let's not go down that road. But he wants to cut his head off. He doesn't have a sword. He doesn't have a knife. He didn't even bring a knife into the battle. So he's got to use Goliath's sword. And I don't know what happened to the armor bearer. The armor bearer is probably halfway to Detroit at this point in time. He is just cutting out, probably threw down the shield, was in shock that this great champion was dead. He literally stoops over Goliath, pulls out Goliath's sword, and then beheads him with his own sword. In a sense, Goliath dies by his own sword, because he died because of his own sin. It's interesting that a few chapters from now, the same thing is going to happen to King Saul. He's going to die by his own sword. So he goes and the Philistines are in shock. The Hebrews were in shock. They can't believe this is happening. And all of a sudden, here's David hold up the head of Goliath and the Philistines scattered. Now, y'all remember the rule? Your champion goes against my champion. Whoever wins will become your slave. When y'all were kids, did y'all ever do this? You're playing a game until you start losing and then you, new rule, new rule. You know, your grandkids do that. Here's this new rule. We decided we're not going to be slaves. We're going to run back to gaff right now. So they're skedaddle and they leave everything behind. Y'all, they've been camping there for six weeks. I mean I bet that those camps were filled with stuff but to the Israelites credit they don't sit there and grab everything now they chase these literally to the gates of their cities. You imagine being the guards on the towers just waiting for news to come back from the battle or the spouses or the mothers of some of these soldiers wait for news to come back and all of a sudden you see here comes our army victorious and they're being chased by all these Israelites and they run open the gate and they flee in there they shut the gate. from the Israelites. I mean the humiliation that occurred there would have been a lesson for quite some time. So anyway, David goes up and he slays Goliath, they fled, and then it's interesting, it says that he takes, took the Philistines' head and brought it to Jerusalem. You know, we're so accustomed to Jerusalem being the capital city and David's city and that kind of thing, but did the Jews occupy Jerusalem at this time? They didn't. It was still a Jebusite city. It was still a possession of the Canaanites. So it hadn't been taken. So the sense here is that David, he went and he got Goliath's sword. This was David's victory, not Saul's victory. So he got to keep Goliath's armor and sword, which would have been worth quite a good bit of money. Later, the priests end up taking over that. charge of that but he goes back and he cuts off Goliath's head and he takes it to Jerusalem which he is going to conquer few years from now and you wonder if he's doing it just just to kind of show them that you've been a holdout here in the territory that God has given us but what happened to Goliath is going to happen to you it's kind of again a warning to Jerusalem that the same people who killed Goliath are going to be coming after you so again that doesn't matter what your weapons look like how strong you are how big you are what matters is whose side you are and your God that is behind you So David's a deliverer. I mean, he's delivered Israel. You imagine the relief. They've had to endure this mocking for six weeks. They're looking at this Philistine army growing in strength. They are the only thing between the Philistines and their loved ones back home and their farms and their villages. You know, one of the things that folks who've been to Israel will say is that you can go from Caesarea, you go to Jerusalem, you go over to the Dead Sea. It's kind of like going from Anderson to Spartanburg. everything's within an hour or two bus drive and this is a small town so they knew that if they lost that battle they would have nothing left the philistines were incensed they would just take over they would pillage everything so david delivered them from that and of course he is a type of our great deliverer that comes to us in jesus christ but what i love is he used the enemy's weapon his greatest weapon his sword against him And that's exactly what Christ did. What is the greatest weapon that our enemy, Satan, has? It's death. Yeah, death and the fear of death. What did Jesus use to defeat our great enemy? Death. First Corinthians 15. Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your toil is not in vain. Father, thank you, God, that you are our great deliverer. You have sent us a David to overcome the Goliath that seeks to destroy not only us, but our homes and our church and our nation. We take courage by this event, but we also thank you that you didn't just throw a hailstone down to kill Goliath or use lightning or open up the earth. You used means. You condescended to use a sinful man and a rock and a sling. You've been training him through victory over the bear and over the lion. You've been helping to train his arm for battle for this very moment. And when the moment came, he was ready. God, that is our great desire, that you would train us to be your means for bringing light into darkness and for conquering the domain of evil. Bless us now, we pray in Christ's name. Amen.