Slaying Giants: David's Battle for Redemption

David Pt. 2

Based On A True Story 2

This series of posts is from a Flatirons series from 2016 called “Based On A True Story”. To hear and learn more, feel free to watch that series on flatironschurch.com.

David and Goliath

In the last post we learned about David and where he came from. We learned about how he was the outcast of his family, but never stopped trusting in and searching for the Lord. Because of that, God chose Him above his “more qualified” brothers, and everyone else in Israel for that matter, to be the next king of Israel. In this post, lets continue the story and see what happens next and continue with the theme that if God never changes, then the same God that is in these famous Bible stories can still be active in similar ways in our lives today.

So, David is anointed to be the next King of Israel. You’d expect his life to immediately have some drastic changes. You’d expect him to move into a palace or something, and his whole family would finally respect him, but you’d be wrong. Honestly, nothing really changes at all for David, at least right away. He remains living at home, tending sheep, while his brothers go off to war against the Philistines. He does get a part-time job playing music for the current king, but that’s about it.

So let’s pick it up where we left off last time. You can read the entire story in 1 Samuel 17, but I'll paraphrase bits of it here. One day, David’s dad, Jesse, sends David to the front lines to bring food to his brothers. David does so and notices that the entire army is terrified of what is happening down in the valley where the battle is supposed to take place. A giant of a Philistine  named Goliath, is taunting the entire Israelite army. He is challenging them to a one-on-one, winner-take-all type of battle. But no Israelite is willing to take up the offer. 

This upsets David. He is offended by Goliath, and doesn’t know why no one will stand up to him. So he goes before the king and offers to go himself. Let’s read this part directly from the Bible:

1 Samuel 17 32-37 (ESV): 32 And David said to Saul, “Let no man's heart fail because of him. Your servant will go and fight with this Philistine.” 33 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.” 34 But David said to Saul, “Your servant used to keep sheep for his father. And when there came a lion, or a bear, and took a lamb from the flock, 35 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. 36 Your servant has struck down both lions and bears, and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be like one of them, for he has defied the armies of the living God.” 37 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!”

David lists his qualifications, but never loses sight that it was God who was actually doing all the heavy lifting.And since God had delivered David in those circumstances with the bear and the lion, he has utmost confidence that God will show up again if he goes out and fights Goliath.

So David heads down into the valley to confront Goliath. WHen Goliath sees a little boy coming to fight him, he is not amused.

1 Samuel 17:42-47 (ESV): 42 And when the Philistine looked and saw David, he disdained him, for he was but a youth, ruddy and handsome in appearance. 43 And the Philistine said to David, “Am I a dog, that you come to me with sticks?” And the Philistine cursed David by his gods. 44 The Philistine said to David, “Come to me, and I will give your flesh to the birds of the air and to the beasts of the field.” 45 Then David said to the Philistine, “You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with 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 defied. 46 This day the LORD will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you down and cut off your head. And I will give the dead bodies of the host of the Philistines this day to the birds of the air and to the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, 47 and that all this assembly may know that the LORD saves not with sword and spear. For the battle is the LORD's, and he will give you into our hand.”

Then Goliath rushes toward David, but David takes out his sling and rockets a stone right into Goliath’s head. He then goes over and cuts Goliath’s head off with his own sword! Because of the confidence David had in God, he knew that Goliath never stood a chance. And he was right.

Trusting God

But the point of this series isn’t just to see what God has done in the past. That’s important, but if the Bible is true and God never changes, the goal is to have the same confidence in God in our lives today that David had then.

Unfortunately, a lot of us don’t have that confidence in God. A big part of that is because we’ve been sold a bad version of Jesus–one that lacks any sort of characteristics that really allow us to have confidence in Him. The church has dumbed down the type of man that Jesus is, and masculinity in general, so it’s no wonder a lot of us have trouble putting our trust in Him.

But I promise that David would not have walked into the valley and faced Goliath with that version of God in his mind. He went down there with a true version of God in mind, the Lord of angel armies.

With that version of God/Jesus in our mind, we can walk up to whatever Goliath is in our own lives and we can say this along with David: “You come at me with a sword and a spear, and everything else you can muster against me, but I come to you in the name of Jesus, the Lord of angel armies. And He is going to deliver you into my hand, and everyone will know that He is my protector.”

Takeaways

There are three takeaways I want to leave you with before we transition to another Bible story. These three takeaways are true no matter who you are, where you came from, what people have said about you, or your family background.

1. Stop comparing yourself to other people. Others may compare you to other people, but God doesn’t compare you to other people. He looks at your heart. Instead, compare God to what is in front of you. Compare the God of angel armies to your “Goliath” and remember that it isn’t about what you can do, but what He can do.

2. “Whom God appoints, God anoints.” I heard it preached that way one time, and I love it. God is never going to tell you to do something and then forget to give you what you need to pull it off. He is never going to be surprised by your “Goliath.” He is going to adequately prepare you to do whatever it is He has called you to do, and He already knows how it is going to turn out.

3. Stop talking like a shepherd. When David talked to both Saul and Goliath, he did not sound like a little shepherd boy was supposed to sound. We spend all our lives talking about and singing to and claiming to have faith in “God Almighty,” but then walk around all the time like the sky is falling, and that there’s nothing anybody can do. But if God is truly who He claims to be and has been since the beginning of time, we have to trust that He’s got this, whatever “this” is, and that He is still in control.

Everybody reading this has a “Goliath” in their life. A hard marriage, health problems, kids, miscarriages, infertility, betrayal, finances, abandonment, abuse. The list goes on. How can someone like you defeat a giant problem like that? How are you going to make it through the day.

The only answer worth giving is echoing David in the face of Goliath because it is still true today: I am not alone. God is with me, and He will deliver me.

TL;DR

• Not much changed in David’s life after he was anointed King.

• He faced Goliath based on the confidence that God would show up for him like he had before.

• Many of us do not have confidence in God like David did because we were sold a bad version of God/Jesus.

• However, with a correct view of God in our minds, we can have confidence and trust in Him.

• 3 Takeaways: 1. Stop comparing ourselves to others. 2. “Whom God appoints, God anoints.” 3. Stop talking like a shepherd.