A Story That's Not About David
Notes
Transcript
Handout
Your real battle isn’t against flesh and blood, but your true enemies want you to believe it is.
Your real battle isn’t against flesh and blood, but your true enemies want you to believe it is.
The chapter begins with the Philistine army massing on the edge of Judah’s tribal territory. Saul responds by deploying the Israelite military to defend the border. But after battle lines are drawn, focus rapidly shifts away from the two armies and onto the Philistine champion.
Details regarding this champion are listed in the following order:
His name
His hometown
His size
His armor
His arsenal
If I were to take a guess, most people would be able to give his name if I only supplied the phrase, “David and _____.” They would, of course, fill in the blank with, “Goliath.”
If pop culture is your only educator, you’ll at least tell me he was a giant. If you’ve really studied your Bible, you might tell me how tall he was, how dense his armor was, or how long and heavy his spear was.
The one thing you probably wouldn’t give me is a history of his hometown. Frankly, prior to this week, I probably wouldn’t have either. That Goliath hailed from Gath almost appears to be a throwaway piece of information, especially when set next to gems like him being over nine feet tall (a cubit is approximately 18 inches).
But there might not be a more important thread to pull on than Goliath’s hometown if we really want to know where this chapter fits into the big Story God uses the whole Bible to tell. Let’s back up and figure out why Gath is so important.
1 Now it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born to them, 2 that the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves of all whom they chose.
3 And the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, for he is indeed flesh; yet his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.” 4 There were giants on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.
Nobody likes to talk about this passage. It’s weird. Commentators twist themselves in knots to try and explain why it doesn’t mean what it clearly says. But those are all modern commentators. If you go back and look at ancient Jewish interpreters of this text, they very clearly understood it to mean exactly what no modern wants to believe.
Certain angels did something they never should’ve done. They fathered children with human women, and those children—half-breeds somewhere between angel and man—possessed superhuman abilities which led to great fame and renown.
God wasn’t happy with the situation. He put a limit on the physical lifespans of these things: 120 years. Genesis then tells us something very important for our text today: these half-breeds existed both “in those days, and also afterward.” After what? There’s one clear candidate for such a dividing line, and it’s right here in this chapter: the flood. The flood wasn’t the end of these creatures. The flood didn’t wipe out humanity, and the flood didn’t wipe out rebellious angels. As long as those existed, the potential for more of these things also existed. And more of those things did exist, and their existence posed a problem for God’s people.
26 Now they departed and came back to Moses and Aaron and all the congregation of the children of Israel in the Wilderness of Paran, at Kadesh; they brought back word to them and to all the congregation, and showed them the fruit of the land. 27 Then they told him, and said: “We went to the land where you sent us. It truly flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. 28 Nevertheless the people who dwell in the land are strong; the cities are fortified and very large; moreover we saw the descendants of Anak there.
32 And they gave the children of Israel a bad report of the land which they had spied out, saying, “The land through which we have gone as spies is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people whom we saw in it are men of great stature. 33 There we saw the giants (the descendants of Anak came from the giants); and we were like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.”
When the Israelites came to the border of the promised land, they saw the Anakim. The Anakim, as Moses so helpfully notated in Numbers 13:33, were the descendants of the giants—the same kind of demonic half-breeds we saw in Genesis 6. Upon seeing the Anakim, the Israelites froze. They didn’t go in. They didn’t believe they could win, even though God told them they would. How were they supposed to beat a nation of demons with supersized human bodies? The only ones who believed were Joshua and Caleb. It’s no coincidence then that those two lived through the forty years of punishment God used to wipe out the doubters.
When the next generation of Israelites finally did enter the land, they did it under Joshua’s leadership.
The New King James Version Chapter 11
21 And at that time Joshua came and cut off the Anakim from the mountains: from Hebron, from Debir, from Anab, from all the mountains of Judah, and from all the mountains of Israel; Joshua utterly destroyed them with their cities.
Joshua saw that all of the Anakim in Israel were wiped out, and most of the Anakim in the surrounding territory were defeated as well. In fact, Caleb killed three of them himself. But they weren’t completely gone. There were a few cities in which these demonic half-breeds still lived:
The New King James Version Chapter 11
22 None of the Anakim were left in the land of the children of Israel; they remained only in Gaza, in Gath, and in Ashdod.
Do you see it?
Do you know who Goliath is now? Do you know what Goliath is now? It really puts his taunts in a new light. Consider:
“Am I not a Philistine?” Is he though? Does he count as a Philistine if he’s not actually human? Goliath is lying!
“Choose a man for yourselves…give me a man, that we may fight together.” Goliath versus any man wasn’t a fair fight because Goliath wasn’t a man! He wasn’t just stronger because he was bigger. He was stronger because he was a demon in temporary possession of a body!
This knowledge of who and what Goliath is should also draw your attention to something he doesn’t do. At no point in taunting Israel does he ever taunt Israel’s God. He dances around even acknowledging his existence.
“Am I not a Philistine, and you the servants of Saul?”
“I defy the armies of Israel this day;”
When he finally gets around to seeing David on the battlefield, he curses David by his gods…he doesn’t curse David’s God. Goliath NEVER mentions the God of the Israelites.
Application:
Why? Why doesn’t Goliath curse the God of Israel, or taunt him, or even acknowledge him?
Because as outmatched as any Israelite man was by Goliath, Goliath was even more outmatched by Israel’s God. If God got involved in the fight, Goliath had no chance.
10 Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. 11 Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. 12 For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.
Why do you think Paul had to remind the Ephesian church their real enemies were not other men and women? Because it’s a truth that’s easy to forget.
“The world” is not out to get you. But the devils behind it—the principalities, powers, and rulers of the darkness of this age—are. “The world” is their plaything, and the spiritually dead sleepers who take their cues from it are puppets on a string to them.
2 in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, 3 among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.
They have no intention of manifesting their true forms in front of you. They’d rather you believe they’re not there…and even if you do believe they’re there, having you forget they are is just as good. Because if you really saw them for what they are, you might do something inconvenient...like ask God for help. You versus them one-on-one? That’s their comfort zone. They don’t want to deal with God getting involved, but they’re confident in their ability to deal with you.
Why?
Your true enemies don’t fear flesh and blood…believe sinful humanity is no threat to them.
Your true enemies don’t fear flesh and blood…believe sinful humanity is no threat to them.
Jerry Clower, “A Coon Huntin’ Story”
Everybody laughs at a certain point in the story: “John didn’t believe in guns. The coon at least had the option of whuppin’ all them dogs and walking away, it was purely his choice. Give him a sportin’ chance.”
For most of this chapter, there is no evidence Goliath even entertained the idea that he might lose.
Walk through the order of events with me. He steps out of the Philistine camp wearing massive armor and carrying huge weapons. He mocks an entire army while standing alone in a valley. He defined the rules of engagement and demanded for forty days and nights that Israel operate according to his decree.
But don’t forget—and it’s possible to forget, that’s why the Bible has to keep reminding us—there was no way for Israel to win this on their own, no matter who they sent out. You cannot allow yourself to forget who and what Goliath really was. Goliath didn’t need his armor or his weapons to kill whoever they sent out there.
Think this is a reach? What if I told you the Bible itself can give us a good idea what this fight would’ve looked like if Goliath had decided to fight without armor and with his bare hands?
The New Testament is silent on the origin of demons. There is no passage that describes a primeval rebellion before Eden where angels fell from grace and became demons. The origin of demons in Jewish texts outside the Bible (such as 1 Enoch) is attributed to the events of Genesis 6:1–4. When a Nephilim was killed in these texts, its disembodied spirit was considered a demon. These demons then roamed the earth to harass humans. The New Testament does not explicitly embrace this belief, though there are traces of the notion, such as demon possession of humans (implying the effort to be re-embodied).
Heiser, Michael S.. The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible (p. 325). Lexham Press. Kindle Edition.
1 Then they came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gadarenes. 2 And when He had come out of the boat, immediately there met Him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit, 3 who had his dwelling among the tombs; and no one could bind him, not even with chains, 4 because he had often been bound with shackles and chains. And the chains had been pulled apart by him, and the shackles broken in pieces; neither could anyone tame him.
13 Then some of the itinerant Jewish exorcists took it upon themselves to call the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, “We exorcise you by the Jesus whom Paul preaches.” 14 Also there were seven sons of Sceva, a Jewish chief priest, who did so.
15 And the evil spirit answered and said, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are you?”
16 Then the man in whom the evil spirit was leaped on them, overpowered them, and prevailed against them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded.
If you equate the demons who possessed those poor men and women in the NT with the disembodied spirits of those like Goliath from the OT, it’s very clear that the size of the body inhabited by an evil spirit is inconsequential.
This was a game to Goliath. He was toying with the Israelite army. It didn’t matter who Saul sent down to fight.
Goliath banked on his superiority over a human, and he was right. No normal human stood a chance any more than that coon had a chance of whuppin’ all those dogs and walking away in one piece. Humanity was a broken shell of what it should have been—and it still is.
That army’s problem wasn’t its size; its problem was sin. It crippled them and guaranteed their defeat—and they didn’t even know it.
Application:
What do you believe your biggest problem is?
And don’t give me your best church answer unless it’s true. We’re capable of saying “sin” and not really believing it. I’m not accusing you of lying…I’m trying to point out something that maybe you didn’t know, or maybe that you’ve forgotten. Maybe you think you believe sin is your biggest issue. It’s true, but maybe you don’t live like it is. You don’t think like it is. You don’t pray like it is.
And maybe that’s because we make a crucial mistake with sin. We think of it only as actions. Maybe in some cases failures to act. But that isn’t entirely accurate. Maybe an example will help explain.
Nobody ever dies from AIDS. Nobody ever has, nobody ever will. AIDS isn’t what kills someone who has it. AIDS demolishes the human immune system. It can’t activate. The body progressively becomes less and less able to defend itself against even the most basic threats. You’re exposed to millions of dangerous bacteria and viruses every day. But you don’t experience any of them because your body’s immune system renders them harmless. It overpowers them before they can overpower you. But a person with full blown AIDS loses that benefit. That person’s body cannot defend itself. So if the person with AIDS contracts the virus we know as the common cold, that virus could very reasonably kill the person.
So let’s say that happens. What would the doctor’s opinion be if you asked her, "what caused this person’s death?” Would she say, “this man died of a cold?” It would technically be true, but I doubt the doctor would say that, because the doctor knows the truth: the cold may be its own disease, but it could only take root and kill because of a bigger disease that made its host vulnerable to it.
That’s sin.
Sin is the root cause of all human suffering. But we miss the underlying cause when we try to solve the suffering instead of the sin.
There are lots of problems in your life that aren’t the problem in your life. Your sin is the problem in your life.
The very first sin was one in which a demon goaded a human into believing that she could make good and the right decisions based purely on her five physical senses and human capabilities. Satan goaded her into believing God was not trustworthy, he didn’t have her best interests at heart, and that she could do better on her own. She just had to reach out and take her own potential.
As long as Israel made the same mistakes—making their decisions based purely on physical senses and human capabilities, doubting God’s trustworthiness and goodwill towards them, putting all their eggs in the basket of reaching their own potential—Goliath won either way. They would cower in fear until the Philistines got bored and overran them, or they would die victims of hubris, slain at the hand of a demon and not a man.
5 “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.
Their continued sin guaranteed Goliath’s victory.
And they’re right…unless God uses humanity to beat them.
And they’re right…unless God uses humanity to beat them.
But Saul and Goliath aren’t the only memorable names in this story, are they? What made David different?
3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
His reasoning behind why he would win (Not could win…would win!); it had nothing to do with him.
Goliath couldn’t fathom losing to a human. Based on five physical senses, he would’ve been right. What he didn’t expect was a unique partnership between God and man. David was something different…a man after God’s own heart, and a precursor to someone even greater than him, another king from Bethlehem that the demons didn’t really understand.
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. 4 In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.
Comprehend/Overcome — same Greek word! Both at once.
When David won, everyone behind him did too.