CALL TO CONFESSION

Hebrews 10:23

Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. 

PRAYER OF CONFESSION

Faithful God, we come to you today as deeply forgetful people. You have been so much better to us than we deserve, faithfully fulfilling your commitment to give us good things in Christ. Yet we quickly forget all the wonderful gifts that you have already given us, and feel angry and bitter when you won't answer our prayers the way in which we want you to. Instead of remembering Your deliverance and running to You daily as our shield of refuge, we prefer to remain in bondage to our idols, because we enjoy our sins. We often doubt Your goodness and power and resent the race of obedience that You call us to run. Father, forgive us.

Jesus, thank you for remembering the truth faithfully on our behalf. You worshiped your Father daily, with unwavering faith and unshakable hope in His goodness. You submitted to His perfect wisdom and trusted Him completely in all the circumstances of your life, even when it was most painful. Now your obedience becomes our strong encouragement to hope in the midst of continuing weakness, and you continue to advocate our cause as our heavenly High Priest. We have no other hope, nor do we need one.

Holy Spirit, we need your power at work in us to stir up our hope. Help us to know and worship our God as He is, the unchangeable, Sovereign King, who has sworn by himself to save us in spite of our perverse foolishness. Cause us to know the certainty of God's great love for us, until we are transformed into people who love him deeply, and are able to run the race with strong confidence and joyful hope in Christ. Help us to look forward to the triumphant coming of our heavenly King and long for his appearing. Amen.

“Take a few moments to personally confess your sins to the Lord.”

ASSURANCE OF PARDON

“Hear these words of comfort and assurance.” 

2 Timothy 2:19

 But God's firm foundation stands, bearing this seal: “The Lord knows those who are his,” and, “Let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity.”

• The story of David and Goliath is one of the most remarkable and unforgettable stories in all of Scripture.
• The phrase, “David and Goliath” has worked its way so deeply into our language that we use it as shorthand for any underdog story.

• But here’s the danger of a familiar story. We think we already know what it’s about. 
• And because we already know what it’s about, we stop listening carefully. 
• My prayer is that the Spirit of God would help us hear this story again, as if for the first time. 
• Because if we’re not careful students of God’s Word, we will easily fall into a trap. 
• The trap is taking away from this passage that the main message is, “Be like David.” 
• I’m not saying there isn’t some real personal application we can draw from this story. There most certainly is. 
• There are giants in our life and we all face problems bigger than we know how to handle.
• We all know what it is to have some problem in your field of vision that is so large you can’t see anything else. 
• And the story will have something to say to every one of us about those moments. 

• But I want you to see over the next three Sundays that this story is so much bigger and so much more important than “Be like David!” 
• Israel’s problem in the Valley of Elah was not that they needed to find more courage. 
• Israel’s problem was that they could not save themselves. 
• They were standing on a hillside, looking at a giant they could not defeat, under a king who would not fight, and the only hope they had was for someone to come down from outside the camp and do for them what they could not do for themselves. 
• They needed a champion. 
• And so do we! 

• The story of David and Goliath is the story of a helpless people, a failed king, and the champion God sent to save them. 
• It is a story about God, and we are in it because he comes to fight for us. 

• Saul was rejected by the Lord because he had rejected the word of the Lord.
• And the Lord sent Samuel to Bethlehem to anoint a new king; the youngest son of Jesse. There we were reminded that “man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” 
• Ch 16 ends with David playing the harp in Saul’s house while a tormenting spirit from the Lord troubles the king he has been chosen to replace. 

• So as we read chapter 17, you and I know something Israel does not yet know. 
• There’s already a king-in-waiting. The man God has chosen for himself is already anointed. 
• But out in the Valley of Elah, the armies of Israel do not know that. 
• All they can see is a giant. 

1 Samuel 17:1-30 

• The scene opens with geographical details of where the opposing armies gathered. 
• The Philistine threat has been in the background of the entire narrative so far and it will be until the end of 1 Samuel and the end of Saul’s life.  
• The Philistines were formidable foes of Israel and part of the motivation for the people’s demand of a king. 
• When Saul was anointed by Samuel, it was precisely to save Israel from the hand of her enemies. 
• The summary of Saul’s reign at the end of ch14 told us that Saul was not successful in defeating the Philistines.
• So the situation we have here is all too familiar and we are reminded yet again, Saul has failed to accomplish his mission as Israel’s king. 

• The Philistines were gathered in the territory of Judah.
• And Saul and the men of Israel were gathered, and encamped in the Valley of Elah. 
• The Valley of Elah is a wide, shallow valley running through the foothills of Judah about 15 miles southwest of Jerusalem. 
• The valley is flanked by two ridges about a mile and a half apart. 
• The two armies are now locked into position on opposing hills, looking at each other. 

• But take note that they are not fighting. No one has made a move. It’s a standoff. 
• The first one to come down from their position to attack across the valley loses every tactical advantage. 
• So both sides just sit and wait and stare at each other across the valley. 
• The standoff favors the stronger party. Israel would be at a disadvantage the longer the standoff drags on. 
• The Philistines can keep pressing deeper into Judah while the Israelite men are away from their families, farms, and flocks.  
• So the Philistines really don’t have to win the battle; they just need to keep Israel pinned down long enough that Israel cannot afford to keep standing there. 
• The geography is doing the work for the enemy. 

• Some of you might be feeling like you’re living in a standoff right now. 
• You’re not in active warfare; it doesn’t seem like you’re losing in an obvious way. 
• You’re just stuck. No forward movement. 
• Your marriage isn’t collapsing; it’s just not moving forward. 
• Your job isn’t in crisis, but you don’t feel any joy in going to work. 
• The struggle you’ve had with a persistent sin isn’t getting worse, but you still don’t have victory over it. 
• You might feel spiritually stuck, relationally stuck, economically stuck. You are standing on a ridge staring across the valley and you’ve come to accept that this is just what life is going to be. 
• The standoff is its own kind of defeat. 
• You can lose a war without ever fighting a battle simply by being held in place long enough that hope drains out of you. 
• That’s where Israel was. 

• The Philistines send out a champion named Goliath into the valley. 
• And this champion is given a rather lengthy introduction. 
• He is the Philistine threat embodied in a single terrifying figure. 
• The narrator piles on these details because he wants you to feel Goliath’s size. 
• First, his height. Using the usual understanding of ancient measurements he was about 9 feet 9 inches tall! 
• Second, his armor. It was made of lots of metal, mainly bronze. The superior technology of the Philistines ensured this man was fully protected.
• Third, he was armed with terrifying offensive weapons. 
• All of these details are meant to form an impression in your mind of a colossal, powerful, seemingly indestructible, menacing figure that is the Philistine’s champion. 

GOLIATH’S THREAT

• Then Goliath opens his mouth and his voice thunders across the valley, bellowing for the Israelites to send out a challenger to face him in single combat. 
• He calls for representative warfare where the two armies in a standoff could each send out a champion who would fight.
• Whichever champion won, his nation won and the other nation submitted. 
• Goliath’s offer would make perfect sense to Israel.
• Notice v10, “I defy the ranks of Israel this day. Give me a man, that we may fight together.”
• The word translated ‘defy’ is some form of the root Hebrew word that appears six times in the chapter. (Vv10, 25, 26(2), 36, 45)
• The Hebrew word means ‘to taunt, to insult, to mock, to deride.’ 
• Goliath isn’t just asking for a fight. He is insulting Israel.

• But Goliath and the Philistines also represent a major Bible theme: that of the enemies of God and his people.
• We could trace this throughout the Bible.
• We all face an enemy as real and powerful and terrifying as Goliath. Death wields its powerful sword and threatens to bring us down and Satan seeks whom he may devour. 

• Now, when Saul and all Israel heard the taunting, they were dismayed and greatly afraid. 
• Stop and think about this for a moment.  Who should fight Goliath? It’s Saul. 
• Saul was the closest thing that Israel had to Goliath. In ch9, when we were first introduced to Saul we were told that he was the tallest man in Israel. 
• He is the only man in Israel who would even visually look like a match for Goliath. 
• Not only that. Saul is the king. He has armor. He has weapons. 

• But Saul doesn’t move. 
• And that’s the heart of the crisis. The king will not fight. 
• Saul was the one the people chose to go out and fight their battles for them.  That’s what they wanted Saul for. They wanted a champion. 

• And here is the king they chose. Looking at Goliath. Listening to Goliath. Saying nothing. Doing nothing. And cowering in fear along with the rest of Israel. 
• He is exposed in this moment as completely incapable of being the king they demanded. 
• Saul cannot save them. and he will not save them. 

• Israel has placed their hope in a man, and the man cannot bear the weight of it. 
• In the very moment they needed him most, the king they chose failed them. 

• That happens to nations. It happens in families. It happens in our own hearts. 
• We place our hope in things that cannot bear it. 
• We chose our Sauls, and our Sauls have failed, and we’re left standing on the hillside with no one going out before us. 
• This is the moment Israel is in. They have a king and the king will not fight. 

• The standoff continues for forty days. 
• Forty days, twice a day. Eighty appearances. Goliath would march out into the valley, defying Israel, taunting them, and not one Israelite moved. 

• Forty days is a significant number in the Bible. 
• It’s the number of testing, trial, and preparation. 
• Forty days of and forty nights of rain in the days of Noah. 
• Forty days of Moses on the mountain. 
• Forty years of Israel’s wilderness wanderings. 
• Forty days of our Lord Jesus in the wilderness being tempted by Satan. 
• These forty days were a period of testing for Saul and Israel. 
• Day after day, they failed the test of faith by trembling in fear. 

• Look at v24, “All the men of Israel, when they saw the man, fled from him and were much afraid.”
• "When they saw the man...". They are not fleeing because arrows are coming their way. No, they are fleeing from the sight of him. 
• There is something deeply demoralizing about a fear you keep on living with. 
• It changes you. It changes what you think is possible. It changes what you expect from God. 
• You start to settle. You stop praying for deliverance and start praying for the strength to keep surviving and enduring. 
• You stop expecting the Lord to act on your behalf and you start managing your situation around the assumption that he won’t. 

• You’ve experienced this or you know someone who has. 
• The wife who prayed for decades for her husband to change, and somewhere along the way she stopped praying and started enduring. 
• The father who prayed every night begging God to save his prodigal child, and somewhere along the way stopped pleading, and started preparing himself for the worst. 
• The young man who battled a particular sin for years and somewhere along the way stopped really fighting, and started managing his disappointment with himself. 
• Forty days will do that to you. 
• The standoff erodes your confidence in God to do what he said he will do. 

• Sometimes the most dangerous spiritual season of your life isn’t the season when you are in an active crisis or active spiritual warfare. 
• It’s the season when you’ve just gotten used to the giant in your life and learned to live with him and no longer expect him to fall.

• That is where Israel is and nothing in the camp itself is going to change it. 
• Saul will not act. The army will not act. The standoff will continue, day after day, until something happens from outside. 

• The narrator reintroduces David to us as if we are just finding out about him for the first time.
• David is the son of an Ephrathite of Bethlehem in Judah, named Jesse, who had eight sons. 
• The language is significant. The narrator is placing David in the same family line of Boaz in the book of Ruth. Bethlehem is where covenant kindness was seen before. 
• Bethlehem is where the Lord has been doing his quiet work for generations and the narrator wants us to remember that. 

• David’s three oldest brothers are with Saul at the battlefront.
• But not David. He is moving between Saul and tending his father’s sheep in Bethlehem. 
• All of this is happening in the Valley but David is invisible to the great unfolding crisis. 
• He is a young boy doing chores. 
• His father sends David on an errand to take food to his brothers and their commander and to check in on them.
• So David rises early, leaves the sheep with a keeper, takes the provisions, and goes. 
• He arrives at the encampment just as the army is going out to the battle line and shouting the war cry. 
• David leaves his things with the baggage keeper and runs to find his brothers. 
• As he’s talking with them, Goliath comes out to do what he’s been doing for forty days. 
• But this is the first time David hears him.
• Everyone else has been paralyzed with fear.
• They know what to do when Goliath comes out. You run and hide.
• That’s what forty days of conditioning has produced. 

• David hears him for the first time and his reaction is completely different. 
• David stays and listens. And he asks a question. 
• Everyone in the camp has been asking, “How big is he? How can we possibly fight him?” Those are tactical military questions. 
• They are framed entirely in terms of human strength versus human strength. 
• And in those terms, the answer is hopeless. Israel cannot win and that’s why they are afraid. 

• David asks a completely different question. These are his first recorded words. 
• V26 “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?”
• David frames the question theologically. 
• He calls Goliath what he actually is, an uncircumcised Philistine. That is covenant language. And this uncircumcised Philistine is outside the covenant. He is not the Lord’s. 
• And he calls Israel what Israel actually is, the armies of the living God. 
• And he asks the question that everyone else has missed for forty days. 
• “Why is this uncircumcised Philistine defying the armies of the living God?"

• David has identified the real problem. It’s not Goliath’s height, armor, or weaponry. 
• The problem is not military. The problem is theological. 
• There is a blasphemer in the valley. A man who is outside the covenant is mocking the people of the living God.
• Where Israel saw a giant, David saw a blasphemer. 
• Israel was seeing as man sees. That was the point of the last chapter. 
• David was seeing with different eyes. 

• This is one of the deepest lessons for God’s people in any age. 
• What we see depends on what we’re looking at. 
• The army of Israel stared at Goliath for forty days, and what they saw was a tactical problem they couldn’t solve.
• David comes down from Bethlehem and sees the same man, and what he sees is an offense against the name of the living God. 
• In his first recorded words, David expresses indignation over Goliath’s blasphemy. 
• He is a man who sees as God sees and is zealous for the Lord’s honor. 

• How you frame the problem determines what you think is possible. 
• If you frame your problem only in terms of what is in front of you, then your hope is only as big as your resources. 
• If you frame your problem in terms of who God is and what his name is worth, then everything looks different. 
• The giant is the same size.
• But the Lord of hosts is far bigger. 

• David is putting the situation in the proper frame. 
• David is starting with who God is, and reading the giant in light of that. 
• Everyone else started with the giant, and then tried to figure out whether God was big enough to deal with him. 

ELIAB’S REBUKE

• V28, David’s oldest brother hears what David says, and rebukes him. 
• Remember from ch16, Samuel looked at Eliab, the oldest and tallest of Jesse’s sons and thought “Surely this is the Lord’s anointed.”
• And the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the LORD sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.”
• Eliab was passed over and he knows it. His youngest brother was anointed right in front of him, and the older brothers had to stand there and watch. 
• Now, the youngest brother is running his mouth asking pointed questions about the giant.
• Notice the contempt in his words, “Why are you here? With whom did you leave those few sheep in the wilderness?” 
• Not only does he belittle David, he claims to know David’s heart. 
• “I know your presumption and the evil of your heart, you’re just coming to watch the battle.” 
• This isn’t just sibling rivalry.
• For sure, Eliab’s pride is wounded. Eliab is standing on the hillside with the rest of Israel doing nothing. And his little brother is humiliating him. 
• There is something more insidious going on here. 
• Eliab was among the handful of people in all of Israel that witnessed David’s anointing by the prophet. 
• He is opposing the one that God has chosen, and so he is opposing the living God himself. 
• He has in essence taken Goliath’s side. He even sounds like Goliath.  

• It’s a pattern we see in Scripture going all the way back to Genesis. 
• Cain rises up against his brother Abel. 
• Ishmael mocked Isaac.
• Esau wants to kill Jacob.
• Joseph is sold into slavery by his brothers. 
• The one the Lord has chosen gets despised by his own. 
• The older resents the younger. 
• This is just the first taste of this in David’s life. Soon, Saul will try to kill him. 
• And generations later, the true and final Son of David will come down from his Father’s house and his own will not receive him. (John 1:11)

• The one God has chosen is being despised, by his own family, before he has done anything heroic. 
• That is the consistent biblical pattern. That is what it looks like when the Lord raises up a deliverer. They are despised first. 

• David’s response is simply, “Can’t I even speak? Can’t I say something?”
• He turns away from Eliab and keeps asking others the question. 
• He is not deterred by his brother’s contempt. 

• But something has happened in the camp that has not happened in forty days. 
• Somebody is finally looking at the giant through the right lens. 

CONCLUSION

• This is just the beginning of the story, but here’s the take away from our passage. 
• Israel had two problems in the Valley of Elah. 
• They had an imposing giant in front of them. 
• And they had a king who would not fight for them. 
• Neither of those problems had a human solution. 

• We tend to focus on the first problem. We talk about the giants in our lives.
• But the deeper problem in the passage is not the giant. 
• The deeper problem is the king. 
• Saul should have gone out. He should have stood between his people and the enemy. 
• But he was the most frightened man in the camp. 

• Every human champion you and I have ever leaned on eventually becomes Saul. 
• Every human king fails. Every human strength runs out. 
• Every human resource we have set up to fight our giants for us eventually goes silent on the hillside. 
• It’s true in our individual lives. It’s true in our families. It’s true in the church. It’s true in our nation. 
• We keep choosing kings who cannot fight the battles we need fought, and then we’re shocked when they fail us. 

• If we’ve learned anything through our study of 1 Samuel it’s that we need a different kind of king. 
• A king who will not stay on the hillside paralyzed by the size of the enemy. 
• A king who looks at the giant nobody else can see past and asks the right question.
• And then walks down into the valley to take care of business.

• But David is not the end of the story.
• There is another Son of Jesse, born in the same town, sent on the same errand from his Father’s house. 
• He came down to where his brothers were and found them in a deeper standoff than this one, with a bigger giant than Goliath, under a kingdom that could not save them. 
• And he walked out into the valley alone. He was despised by his own.
• And he won the victory for a people who had not even thought to ask the right question. 
• It’s why he came. Not just fight a giant, but to fight death itself for a people who could not save themselves.
• And that means everything for how you live this week. 

• Some of you have been standing on the hillside for a long time. You came today still in the standoff. And you're exhausted.
• You’ve stopped expecting anything to change. You’ve made peace with the presence of the enemy in the valley. 
• But hear me, the fact that you’ve stopped expecting deliverance doesn’t mean deliverance isn’t coming. 
• The Lord does not move on our timetable. Lift your eyes to the King who is not paralyzed. He has already won the battle that matters most. 

• Some of you are not on the hillside. You’re out in the valley. 
• You’ve been treating your life as if you’re the king who has to fight. 
• You’ve been trying to fix your child with your own wisdom. You’ve been trying to overcome that sin by your own willpower. 
• You’ve been carrying a weight that the Lord did not give you to carry alone. 
• Come back under the King who fights for his people. 
• The battle is not yours to win by your own hand.

• The good news is not that we are stronger than we thought. 
• The good news is that the Lord has not left his people without a Champion.  

APPLICATION AND REFLECTION

In light of today's message....

• What did I learn about the gospel?
• How can I apply what I learned about the gospel to my life?
• With whom can I share the gospel this week?