Giant Slayer

Connection

Have you ever had the thought of God how am I supposed to accomplish this? How can I do the thing you’ve asked me to accomplish?

Now David lived in a very violent time, in fact most of us have no idea what warfare was like in those days.

Hollywood has done a good job of trying to show it to us, but we can never quite get the picture.

We glamorize it, fictionalize it, and sanitize it.

It’s gotten better with our understanding, Gladiator – Braveheart but even on it’s best day Hollywood can’t really bring us there.

Bc you need to smell it. You need to experience it firsthand. You need to feel the fear of walking in a shield wall down the valley to face the enemy troops. You need to see what happens when a spear or sword clashes with your shield. If the person to your left or right runs in fear your flank is now open and you would likely die a gruesome and painful death. If you didn’t die from the wound, you likely die from the infection. In fact, most men wouldn’t wear a lot of clothes b/c they didn’t understand germs, but they understood that if a piece of clothing went into the wound with the blade it would mean infection. In order to understand ancient warfare, you would have to understand what it felt like to be covered in blood after battle, maybe yours, maybe your enemies…

Now that I have your attention…

Word

1 Samuel 17:1–3 NIV

1 Now the Philistines gathered their forces for war and assembled at Sokoh in Judah. They pitched camp at Ephes Dammim, between Sokoh and Azekah. 2 Saul and the Israelites assembled and camped in the Valley of Elah and drew up their battle line to meet the Philistines. 3 The Philistines occupied one hill and the Israelites another, with the valley between them.

Describe the situation.

1 Samuel 17:4 NIV

4 A champion named Goliath, who was from Gath, came out of the Philistine camp. His height was six cubits and a span.

9 1/2 ft

1 Samuel 17:5–11 NIV

5 He had a bronze helmet on his head and wore a coat of scale armor of bronze weighing five thousand shekels; 6 on his legs he wore bronze greaves, and a bronze javelin was slung on his back. 7 His spear shaft was like a weaver’s rod, and its iron point weighed six hundred shekels. His shield bearer went ahead of him. 8 Goliath stood and shouted to the ranks of Israel, “Why do you come out and line up for battle? Am I not a Philistine, and are you not the servants of Saul? Choose a man and have him come down to me. 9 If he is able to fight and kill me, we will become your subjects; but if I overcome him and kill him, you will become our subjects and serve us.” 10 Then the Philistine said, “This day I defy the armies of Israel! Give me a man and let us fight each other.” 11 On hearing the Philistine’s words, Saul and all the Israelites were dismayed and terrified.

Goliath came out day-after-day and taunted the Israelites and they needed a champion and they looked to their king…for two reasons, number 1, he was the king a powerful warrior. Number 2 he was “head and shoulders taller than any other man.”

King Saul was conspicuously absent and with each day his credibility slipped further and further away. And as his credibility slipped away, the armies of Israel lost more and more hope.

But then comes this little 15-year-old shepherd boy. His father sent him to go check on his brothers who were serving in the king’s army and he finds them.

1 Samuel 17:23–24 NIV

23 As he was talking with them, Goliath, the Philistine champion from Gath, stepped out from his lines and shouted his usual defiance, and David heard it. 24 Whenever the Israelites saw the man, they all fled from him in great fear.

This made David angry. Very angry.

1 Samuel 17:25–32 NIV

25 Now the Israelites had been saying, “Do you see how this man keeps coming out? He comes out to defy Israel. The king will give great wealth to the man who kills him. He will also give him his daughter in marriage and will exempt his family from taxes in Israel.” 26 David asked the men standing near him, “What will be done for the man who kills this Philistine and removes this disgrace from Israel? Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God?”

David has some righteous anger right now. who does he think he is?

1 Samuel 17:25–32 NIV

27 They repeated to him what they had been saying and told him, “This is what will be done for the man who kills him.” 28 When Eliab, David’s oldest brother, heard him speaking with the men, he burned with anger at him and asked, “Why have you come down here? And with whom did you leave those few sheep in the wilderness? I know how conceited you are and how wicked your heart is; you came down only to watch the battle.” 29 “Now what have I done?” said David. “Can’t I even speak?” 30 He then turned away to someone else and brought up the same matter, and the men answered him as before. 31 What David said was overheard and reported to Saul, and Saul sent for him. 32 David said to Saul, “Let no one lose heart on account of this Philistine; your servant will go and fight him.”

I’ll do it.

1 Samuel 17:33–39 NIV

33 Saul replied, “You are not able to go out against this Philistine and fight him; you are only a young man, and he has been a warrior from his youth.” 34 But David said to Saul, “Your servant has been keeping his father’s sheep. When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, 35 I went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it. 36 Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living God. 37 The Lord who rescued me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will rescue me from the hand of this Philistine.” Saul said to David, “Go, and the Lord be with you.” 38 Then Saul dressed David in his own tunic. He put a coat of armor on him and a bronze helmet on his head. 39 David fastened on his sword over the tunic and tried walking around, because he was not used to them. “I cannot go in these,” he said to Saul, “because I am not used to them.” So he took them off.

Dave is MAD and confident.

Remember from last week? He’s been worshipping in the wilderness and he has seen the Lord provide and he has drawn close to him. Side note: Worshipping the Lord gives you confidence not inn yourself but in him.

Worshipping ahead of time gives you confidence when the giant shows up.

1 Samuel 17:40–50 NIV

40 Then he took his staff in his hand, chose five smooth stones from the stream, put them in the pouch of his shepherd’s bag and, with his sling in his hand, approached the Philistine. 41 Meanwhile, the Philistine, with his shield bearer in front of him, kept coming closer to David. 42 He looked David over and saw that he was little more than a boy, glowing with health and handsome, and he despised him. 43 He said to David, “Am I a dog, that you come at me with sticks?” And the Philistine cursed David by his gods. 44 “Come here,” he said, “and I’ll give your flesh to the birds and the wild animals!” 45 David said to the Philistine, “You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. 46 This day the Lord will deliver you into my hands, and I’ll strike you down and cut off your head. This very day I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds and the wild animals, and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel. 47 All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the Lord saves; for the battle is the Lord’s, and he will give all of you into our hands.” 48 As the Philistine moved closer to attack him, David ran quickly toward the battle line to meet him. 49 Reaching into his bag and taking out a stone, he slung it and struck the Philistine on the forehead. The stone sank into his forehead, and he fell facedown on the ground. 50 So David triumphed over the Philistine with a sling and a stone; without a sword in his hand he struck down the Philistine and killed him.

Epic right? The underdog delivered by God…not quite. David was delivered by God, but he wasn’t the underdog, he was the unsuspected hero.

There are some facts that science has taught us about this epic battle to see that God had equipped David from the very beginning. I learned this first from Malcom Gladwell in his Ted Talk and his book David and Goliath (not a Christian book) but and then it caused me to dive more into the topic.

3 types of warriors. Infantry – Calvary – Artillery. Artillery was used to defeat infantry.

The stones here are barium sulfate – rocks that are twice the density of normal stones. If you work out the ballistics on the rock fired from David’s sling you’ll find that it has roughly the same stopping power as a 45 millimeter handgun. Wow!

How accurate? Archeologist have found records that document experienced slingers maiming or killing targets at nearly 200yds. And Medieval tapestry shows records that some slingers could even hit birds out of the air. This weapon can be VERY accurate in the right hands. David was the right hands.

Goliath is infantry. He expects to fight David the way he was prepared to. Sword and shield. “Come here,” he said, “and I’ll give your flesh to the birds and the wild animals!”

Goliath…

Shield bearer, with his shield bearer in front of him, kept coming closer to David.

Eyesight - “Am I a dog, that you come at me with sticks?” And the Philistine cursed David by his gods. “Come here,”

Acromegalia – tumor on pituitary gland. Andre the Giant – Abraham Lincoln

Why is all this important? David was not the underdog. God had equipped him his entire life to take down this particular giant.

If this was a man on a horse he wouldn’t have done well, if it was an archer he wouldn’t have done well, but it was a sword and shield guy…who was struggling to see David, who had large heavy armor on.

And God had David out in the fields his whole life with a sling fighting off lions and bears, a slow moving, big Philistine was nothing for him.

David believed that God’s hand was at work his whole life. You can see it in the Psalms when he’s in the field. He is trusting and believing that he’s out taking care of the sheep for a reason and then when the day came, goliath showed up he was prepared b/c God had been preparing him his whole life to fight this giant.

Application

Now… I’ve taught this lesson before and I taught it from the perspective that you are David running through the valley slinging stones at Goliath. God’s been preparing you for that Giant! Not in and of itself untrue, however I have since come to think of our role a little different in this story.

Jesus is David

We are the stones

Goliath is the problems in this world.

God placed those stones in that valley for a purpose. They perfectly placed and perfectly weighted. Everything in history, the erosion with water and wind, the chariots riding over them everything shaped and formed them into doing this thing.

That’s you and I. If we are willing to turn ourselves over to Jesus surrender to him then he will use us to take down that goliath.

Kelly in the Philippines

Luis in Guatemala

Pastor John here in the church (going to make him uncomfortable)

My wife when she sits with people counseling listening to the voice of the HS

You and I are the stones, we’re positioned and God has prepared us for it, again here’s the difference, the stone where just picked up, for us we have the chance to look to Jesus and say use me.

On our own, like the stones we can do nothing but in the hands of the champion, oh my goodness, He will use US to kill some giants.

Again, you and I have to respond to the invitation. Invitation

So if you’re ready I want to instead of praying, this out have us respond to the giants the way David did...say this with me...

1 Samuel 17:45–47 NIV

45 ... “You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. 46 This day the Lord will deliver you into my hands, and I’ll strike you down and cut off your head. This very day I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds and the wild animals, and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel. 47 All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the Lord saves; for the battle is the Lord’s, and he will give all of you into our hands.”

So now go, be stone in the sling of our champion Jesus, you are built for this purpose so step out!

Extras

Although you may not realize it, the same is true for you.

Maybe you’re facing your giant right now. You look at it and maybe you feel just like the Israelites did, just like Saul did.

“This is too big.” – “I’m not able to handle this.” – “I’m not sure how to get past this.”

If that’s you I want you to remember this one thing.

God has been preparing you your whole life for this giant.

Yeah yeah, other people are going to look at it and doubt you, they’re going to say you can’t do it, or it’s not possible, but remember

God has been preparing you your whole life for this giant.

Just like David, you’re a slinger. You are uniquely equipped for this battle. God has orchestrated your life in such a way that you are built for this giant.

So, don’t try to wear Saul’s armor – go and be who God created you to be.

Don’t try to be mom or dad.

Don’t try to be your older brother or sister.

Don’t try to be the boss at work

or the mentor you look up to, but who God created you to be.

Because let’s be honest, sometimes those giants aren’t as big as they seem. Especially when God has prepared you for them.

So, what’s stopping you? Head down into the valley go to battle.