Normally, I would read the text, I'm going to preach, so I'm going to do it a little differently. I'd like to pray first, and then we will jump right in, so let us pray this morning. While they're praying that is we look at this last part of the David and Goliath story that you pull things together in our mind that you would show us with clarity, the gospel of your great son David named Jesus. And I pray that you would open the eyes of the blind and the ears of the deaf and pray that you be in my head and in my thinking, in my heart and in my understanding, in my mouth and in my speaking. In Christ's name, we pray these things, amen, amen. I was trying to think of how to identify with Goliath in this story. I think I told you that sometimes when I preach, I try and put myself in the position of different people, and I was thinking about it this week, and I thought of a sort when I was in the army, I was in a range of battalion for four years. And every now and then, someone would slip through the cracks on their way into a range of battalion that shouldn't have made it there, in other words, you'd look at them and say, how did this guy ever end up in a range of battalion? And at that point, my job as a sergeant in a range of battalion was to make sure he decided to leave the range of battalion. Since it's all voluntary, I just had to make his life miserable enough to volunteer to leave. And I would do that every now and then, and there was a guy named Rich, that's not his real name, who was just made my life miserable. And the thing is, I would never just punish someone. I would never, you know, ride beside them on a bike while I made them run 10 miles, or whatever I made them do to make them miserable, I would do myself with them. And one day after, you know, we'd work basically from about five in the morning until five in the afternoon when we were in Garrison. And I told Rich, I want you to meet me outside the barracks because you and I will be going on a pleasant five mile flat vest run. And which basically means you wear your flat vest and run five miles and keep up with me if you can. And we went on this run and for five miles, almost complete five miles, I was dragging this guy yelling at him. I couldn't believe it. And then right as we were almost at the barracks, and I could see the barracks where maybe five hundred meters away, and all the rest of the sergeants were sitting outside or around the fence just relaxing some of more smoke and cigarettes. And Rich saw them too, and so there was a huge open field between us and them, and all of a sudden he took off at a dead sprint. In other words, he was trying to make me look bad, so that we would finish this run. And he would come across a field that a dead sprint weighed long before me. Well, that was his biggest and only mistake because I basically ran and caught up to him, passed him, and then he was gone in a couple days. Why was I so worried about him beating me? Because if any of you who have been in the military or if you've been in sports teams, I can't speak for women because I just don't know. But if you've ever been in the military or played on sports teams, I would never have been able to live it down. Had I come in behind this private that I was trying to get rid of, the rest of the sergeants would have just given me a hard time and razzed me for the rest of my army career, and I would have rather done anything than have to live through that. That is the tension that Goliath faces as we look at this Texas morning. What do I mean by that? Up to this point, right, we've been talking about the story of David and Goliath, and in the story of David and Goliath, basically the King Saul, who is currently Israel's King, should have faced Goliath. Goliath came down and Goliath faced. It was a trash talker. One Israel was on one side of the valley of Ila and the Philistines were on the other, and for 40 days Goliath would come down in the valley and say, send out your champion. We will fight, and if I win, we take all the money and the girls in the land, and if you win, you take all the money and the girls in the land, but it's only going to be the two of us, 40 days, and no one came out. And the Bible says that Saul and all of Israel were very afraid, and then David came along. And all David did was ask question. David happened to hear Goliath talking trash and said, who is this uncircumcised Philistine to challenge the armies of the living God? That's the right question. And to call Goliath an uncircumcised Philistine, isn't to mean he's uncouth or he's dirty or something, it just means who is this uncircumcised person, someone who's outside of the covenant with God, because to be inside God's covenant means that you are protected and blessed by God. Who is someone outside to defy all of those of us inside? And the biggest roadblocks that David ran into were those inside. In other words, it would have been the Old Testament's version of church people. The first person he ran into was his brother, and his brother said, you know, you're just smug. You just came down here to fight the fight. And David said, hey, I'm just asking the question. And then King Saul, we looked at last week, had heard that David had been asking these questions, and Saul was so desperate that he was willing to pay someone else to fight for him, and apparently got into the point where he was even willing to see if a 16-year-old boy might have what it took. And David came and said, I'll fight him. And Saul said, you can't. And David said, oh, I can. He says, I fought the lion, beat him, fought the bear, beat him. The Lord delivered me from the paw of the lion, and the paw of the bear, the Lord will deliver me from this Philistine. And Saul said, beautiful, you're the man, go. But before you go, you should probably take my armor. It's top of the line, newest technology. David tried it on. He said, I can't even walk in this stuff. And David made the right decision when we talked about last week. He basically said, God has called me into this battle, and God has called me into this battle using the tools with which he has already equipped me. And that happened to be a shepherd's staff and his sling. That's where we left off. And now we're going to find out Goliath. We're going to look basically three things. We're going to look at Goliath's disdain or Goliath's disgust. And the second thing we're going to look at is David's faith, and the third thing we're going to look at is God's purpose in this whole long story. So what's Goliath's disgust? Let me read it to you. In verse 41, it says, the Philistine moved forward and came near to David in a shield bearer in front of him. And when the Philistine looked down and saw David, he disdained him. For he was but a youth and a ruddy enhancement parents. And the Philistine said to David, am I a dog that you come to me with sticks?
Whenever David went in solace or when Goliath is speaking, it's almost like the narrator has been able to slow him way down, like as if he were just a big lumbering giant. And so he looks at David, it says he came near to David with a shield bearer when the Philistine looked and saw David, he disdained him. Why? Because in that moment, Goliath knew there is no way I can win. There's no way I can win this situation. At least psychologically. What do I mean by that? Because Goliath was a military man. And so he had to go back, no matter what happened out in that battlefield, he had to go back and listen to the criticism and the trash talking of all the rest of the Philistine army. And so I was imagining three different scenarios. The first thing that they would trash talk and they would criticize him about is like, oh Goliath, look who they sent out against you. They're really afraid. They sent a boy. He can't win. They sent out a boy. And so the Philistine army had to be laughing. Not Israel. They had to be laughing at Goliath. They don't think he's an idiot. They don't think he can do anything so they sent a boy. The other side of that, however, is what if, when and if they fight, what if Goliath just totally crushes this 16-year-old boy? What are his friends in the Philistine army going to say then? Oh, that was really tough Goliath. Let's send you another one. Think you can handle two. Or if he totally crushed Goliath, you see there was a sense of honor in those days, or if he totally crushed it, there was a sense of honor in those days. They would say, Goliath, you know, you didn't have to just crush the kid. You know, he's a kid. He couldn't win. And of course, if he lost, he would have not won. He would have lost. But there's something else going on here as well. When Goliath walked out, he knew that there's no way I can win this from one perspective. On the other hand, as soon as Goliath opens his mouth, David knows and we know that there is no way he can win it. This is the climax and the culmination of the whole story. You could stop here and it would be over. In fact, everything after this is gravy. How do we know and how would David have known that the jig is up right now? As soon as Goliath opens his mouth, let me read it to you. The Philistine, in verse 43, it says, 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, and the Philistine said to David, come to me, and I will give your flesh to the birds of the hare and the beasts of the field. So the first thing Goliath does is he refers to the, that he says, is he refers to the weaponry? Am I a dog that you will come to me with sticks? Because remember, all David has is this shepherd's crook and his slingshot. But that isn't how you know he's going to lose. You know how he's going to lose by what he says next. It says, and Goliath cursed David by his gods. By his, that's Goliath's gods, probably Dagon and Astro. First of all, we know from earlier in this book that God has already defeated Dagon over and over. But what's bigger than that, if you've been going to the evening service, of course, you'll know this, that what is God promised to his blessing bearer? What is God promised to his anointed? When God first calls Abraham, his first blessing bearer, his first anointed into him, and all those who would bear the blessing after him, all of Abraham's descendants, he says to him, Abraham, among other things, I will bless who you bless, and I will curse whom you curse. Or I will bless the one who blesses you, and I will curse the one who curses you, and here Goliath has cursed God's anointed. It's over. He's blasphemed. Now, you know one of the ironies of this whole text? It's actually laughable. Do you know what the Old Testament penalty for blasphemy in cursing someone was? The blessed, the anointed one? Leviticus 24, I think it's verse 16, it was stoning. Think about that for a minute. The penalty for blasphemy and to defy God was to be stoned, and Goliath would learn that in short order. So he had cursed David, God's anointed, and by doing so, he would bring the curse of God down upon him. And then the last thing he does is basically, he tries to intimidate David. It would be typical ancient Near Eastern trash talking, because the worst thing that could happen to you if you were a Hebrew soldier, would be for someone to defile your body, or to deny you a proper burial. And it's the same today for soldiers that are Muslim, or Israeli, the worst thing that could happen would be for someone to defile your body or do something to it. Goliath says, here's what I'm going to do to you, boy. I'm going to take your body and I'm going to feed your flesh to the birds of the air and the beasts of the field. And at this point, if David wasn't afraid, this is probably a good time, because it reminded me that I was reading this again. You know, David, it would be one thing for David to ask the question. It's easy to ask the question of faith when you're like in a meeting and say, hey, we ought to do this and do that. It's quite another thing when the rubber hits the road. Right, when I, again, when I was in the army and I was in Halo school, which is freefall perishing, the first jump, I will never forget how many guys walked to the edge of the plane and said, I'm good, they didn't jump. They didn't have to, it was all volunteer. And this is the point where David could have walked down into the valley and said, he actually is really big from this close. And he really think about that. I was sort of on the hill before looking down and it just seemed different. He could have done that. And yet, what David says here, David has done something amazing here. We look at David's faith. You know, I've mentioned in this context before that I'm constantly asking the elders and telling them, you ought to be thinking of behags for our church. You know what's a behag? It's a big, hairy, audacious goal. It's just something big, you know. And David here, he's up the notch. He's up the argument and not because David here is proposing what I'm going to call like a seahag, a crazy audacious goal or an insane hairy audacious goal. What David says here, but what David says when he opens his mouth, shows us utter faith. What does David say back to Goliath? If you look at verse 45, since the David said to the Philistine, you come to me with sword and with spear and with 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. 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 the wild birds of the earth. So David, in a way, he mirrors what Goliath has said. Goliath mentioned weaponry first and David does the same thing. He says, you come to me with sword and with spear, but I come to you in the name of the living God, whom you have defied. That's pretty big. Your weaponry, sword and spear, my weaponry, the God of heaven and earth. Now one hand, David might have still at this point had quite a bit of confidence in himself because if you think about it, David could have, he had to have known he was good with a sling shot. He had to have known that. And so he had to have known, he had to be thinking to himself, you know, this guy, he is big, but the bigger they are, the bigger the target and I've hit smaller stuff than that. So from this far away, I'm sure I could take this guy out with a sling shot. No problem. And he can even be very humble about it. You know, it's the Lord who gifted me with the ability to do a sling shot. It's the Lord who gave me the sling shot. The Lord delivered me from the lion. You know, he could have been very humble and yet still had a lot of confidence in himself. But what he says next, shows us his faith in sort of two steps. The first thing is just the irony. So remember, Goliath said I'm going to give your body to the beast of the field and what have you. Well, the first thing David said that takes quite a bit of hootspuff for a boy to say to a giant is no, no, no, no, no. Here's what's going to happen. I am going to kill you and then I'm going to cut off your head with your own sword. That's trash talking. I don't care what you say. I'm not just going to kill you, but I'm actually going to humiliate you. I'm going to give you, I'm going to cut your head off with your own sword. And even bigger than that, here's where the seahag comes in. Or the eyehag is bigger than a beehag. Remember, Goliath said I'm going to give your body to the beast of the field and the birds of the earth, of the field, the birds of the earth. Did you see what David said? David doesn't say, oh, yeah, well, I'm going to give your body to the birds of the air and the beast of the field. David says I'm going to give the bodies of the whole Philistine army to the birds of the air and the beasts of the field. That is how you know that David is acting by faith. Because with his slingshot, he probably had the confidence I would think that he could take out one guy. On the other hand, he was not crazy enough to know that with that slingshot and five stones that he could take out the whole Philistine army. But David's faith was such that because God was on his side, he would take down and face the whole army would be taken down by his faith. That is a beehag, or a seahag. That's a big one. And what is the purpose of all of this? You see, on one hand, from a ground level, it just seems like that's what people do. Philistines fight Israelite, sometimes they win, sometimes they lose. But there's a cosmic reason for this battle and there's a cosmic reason for every battle that you and I ever go through. What is God's purpose behind this battle between David and Goliath? And let me just mention, it is the same purpose for every fight and battle that you and I go through. What is the purpose? David tells us what the purpose is. And the purpose of this fight between David and Goliath is evangelism. If you're not familiar with church and linked, evangelism simply means the proclamation of the good news of what God has done on our behalf. And it is evangelism that is focused toward two groups of people, those outside of the church and those inside the church. Those outside of God's covenant and those inside of God's covenant. Let me tell you what I mean. I've asked some of you this before in small groups and things. Why did David fight Goliath? And everyone always grapples. And David tells us right here, let me read it. David says in verse 46, he says, I will give the dead bodies of the host of the Philistines to stay to the birds of the air to the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know there is a God in Israel and that all this assembly may know that the Lord saves not with sword or spear. So there's one fight, one event, and there's two applications. What's the first applications? David basically says, I'm going to whip you. I'm going to kill you, humiliate you, and your whole army so that the me, a 16-year-old, is going to do that so that the world may know that there's a God in Israel. But on the other hand, you can almost imagine David with his back, Israel likes to his back turning around, but I'm also doing it so that this assembly will know that God does not save by sword or by spear. One event, two applications. One is that the world might know that there is a God in Israel in the second is that God does not save by sword and by spear. You see, a lot of times if you're a Christian, you think that I don't need to hear the gospel anymore. What I need to know is what the right things are to do, and that's why you're so miserable. In other words, there's another battle that took place in the Bible, and it actually took place with David's greatest descendant, and that great descendant's name was Jesus, and it was a battle that was fought on the cross. And at the cross of Jesus, he bore the sins of all those who had trust in him in that one event, two applications are going on. That event happened so that the world may know that there is a God not only in Israel now, but for the whole nation, a God who is willing to save, who so ever would come unto him. On the other hand, at the cross, what you also see is for those of you who have trusted Jesus who are Christians, the message for you of the cross is look to the cross anytime you feel like you are not acceptable to God, like you need to work for your salvation, because what you see there is that God does not save by sword or by spear. God does not save by a good performance review. God does not save because you've been a good mother or a good father or poor mother or poor father. The reason God saves you is because of the work of his son. There was one person who represented Israel against Goliath at the very risk of his life. He risked everything in order to defeat Israel's enemy. It's his greater son, Jesus, that didn't face our greatest enemy sin at the risk of his life. He faced our greatest enemy at the loss of his life. Remember Jesus said the good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep. The greater message here I think maybe for a church like ours is the second part. You believe that. You believe that God doesn't save by sword or by spear or any of your good works. You believe that Jesus has saved you by grace alone, by faith alone, because if you do, the first part of that takes care of itself. You can't help but tell other people. It changes everything. There's a bit of irony at the end of this text that I'll read to you. The story is sort of over now. How could you climax after this? Well, you've got to go ahead and get the killing done. David does that. But it happens so quickly. He'd almost blink and miss it. Let me read that part to you and then we'll close with this. It says, when the Philistine arose, I'm in verse 48, and came and drew a near to meet David. David ran quickly toward the battle line to meet the Philistine. And David put his hand in his bag and took out a stone and slung it and struck the Philistine on his forehead. The stone sank into his forehead and he fell on his face to the ground. Boom, it's over. And then verse 50 is the commentary. So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and a stone and struck the Philistine and killed him. And here's one of those editorial comments. There was no sword in the hand of David. And then David ran and stood over the Philistine, took his sword, drew it out of its sheath, and killed him and cut off his own head with it. And when the Philistine saw their champion was dead, they fled. So David kills Goliath here twice. At least that's what the text says. Actually, the stone killed him. Why did he, why did he, why did it say he killed him again? It's basically for the sake of the Philistines. If any of you boys were wondering whether or not he's really dead, he pulls out Goliath's sword and beheads him with his own sword. Now what's the message of the gospel there? It's a big one. Jesus did the same thing. Jesus beheaded our enemy with its own sword. Jesus destroyed our sin by becoming our sin. Jesus destroyed those who would slander and accuse us and caused us to be guilty by bearing the slander in the accusation and the guilt on himself. And remember, Satan had to rejoice and say, look at that. We've killed him. We finally ended this whole thing. And through their killing him, it was actually their own undoing. Jesus defeated our enemy with his own weapon. Not by using it, but by bearing it. Think about that. Let me pray for us. Father, I pray that this morning as we approach your table as well that you would just come and communicate to us grace upon grace that we would have more and more faith in you. And you're finished work and that we as well would see all the things that come into our lives as opportunities for the world to know that there is a God in Israel and also for those around us to know that you don't say by sword or by spear. Christ, name we pray. Amen.