Text: 1 Samuel 17
Today's sermon is about one of the great stories of the Bible. It's a story that is mostly told in children's Sunday School classes with vivid pictures of the giant Goliath and the shepherd boy David confronting each other. But it is also a story for adults. And I want to suggest that it provides a wonderful character study for the boy who would become King David.
The story begins in verse 1 of this chapter where we are told that the armies of the Philistines and the armies of the Israelites gathered for battle. The Philistines assembled on one mountain with the Israelites on the facing mountain, preparing for the battle.
But there came out from the camp of the Philistines a champion named Goliath, whose height was over nine feet tall. He had a huge bronze helmet on his head, and he was armed with a coat of mail weighing 125 pounds. The shaft of his speak was like a weaver's beam, and the spear's head weighed fifteen pounds.
There was a time when very few young people knew what a coat of mail was. But since the Lord of the Rings movies, the young people know better than the adults. A coat of mail is a coat made of metal rings, almost like wire mesh. When a soldier was hit with a sword, the metal prevents him from getting cut. It was an amazing technology for the times.
So this giant of a man came out each day and shouted to the Israelite armies, "Why have you come out to draw up for battle? Choose a man for yourselves, and let him come down to me. If he is able to fight with me and kill me, then we will be your servants; but if I prevail against him and kill him, then you shall be our servants and serve us."
When Saul and all Israel heard these words of the Philistine, they were dismayed and greatly afraid. Goliath did this for forty days, morning and evening.
I admire Goliath for his creative solution to war. It is a method that has often been proposed, it never really seems to prevent wars. In this case, after Goliath is killed, the Israelites still pursued the Philistines and killed most of them.
After the first atomic bomb was exploded, General Douglas McArthur said, "We must put an end to war." He loved war when it was a test of wills. But he thought that the atomic bomb would totally changed war. Regretfully, we still have not ended war.
We must still pray for Isaiah's vision to come true. "And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more" (Isaiah 2:4).
Next we learn that David was youngest of eight children. Three of his older brothers went off to war with King Saul. But David was left to feed his father's sheep in Bethlehem.
David must have been humiliated to have to stay and tend sheep while his brothers left for the glamour of war. But we have no record of David's complaints. Then one day, David's father Jesse said to him, "Take for your brothers an ephah of this parched grain and these ten loaves, and carry them quickly to the camp to your brothers; also take these ten cheeses to the commander of their thousand. See how your brothers fare, and bring some token from them" (v. 17-18).
So the scene is set, but I want to skip ahead to verse 40 to find the structure for this character study. "Then he took his staff in his hand, and chose five smooth stones from the creek…" We can picture him searching among the stones for those of the perfect shape. He found only five that satisfied him completely and those he took with him into battle.
Today I want to suggest that David also carried five great character traits with him into battle. So the five stones are symbolic of five character traits.
1) Great Commitment
First, David had a great commitment to the little things in life, which prepared him for the great responsibilities he would one day have. Verse 20 tells us, "David rose early in the morning, left the sheep with a keeper, took the provisions, and went as Jesse had commanded him. He came to the encampment…"
Let's focus on the parenthetical note hidden between the commas: he "left the sheep with the keeper." David did not forget his small responsibilities. The sheep were his responsibility, and he did not forsake that responsibility when he had the opportunity to go to the front lines of the war.
Then we find another similar note in verse 22, "David left the things in charge of the keeper of the baggage, ran to the ranks, and went and greeted his brothers." When he got to the field of battle bringing with the gifts from his father, he again took care of his responsibilities. He left those things with the keeper of the baggage, and then "ran to the ranks, and went and greeted his brothers."
Sometimes we are so eager to fight the great battles of life that we forget about the importance of tending sheep. Young people often want to move quickly into some of the big responsibilities of life, like having a driver's license or taking the family car on a date. But they are not so interested in taking care of the small responsibilities like taking out the trash or cleaning up their rooms. They don't realize that one must be responsible in small things before they are ready to take on the big responsibilities.
I once read a story of two boys in a store. The busy store clerk gave one of the boys 20 cents in change, and then after an interruption gave him the 20 cents in change again. And the boy didn't bother to correct the clerk. Many years later the first boy had and opportunity to hire the second, but chose not to. He knew that one who did not take care of the little responsibilities of life, did not have the character for the big responsibilities of life.
2) Great Control
Secondly, David had great control. You remember that I said that David was the youngest of eight children. Well, I shouldn't have to tell you that younger siblings often have a rough time at the hands of their older brothers. Look at the way Joseph's older brothers treated him! Many younger brothers have the kinds of same troubles. I know I did.
I will never forget the time when I returned home from my first grade class one day, only to have my older brother blurt out my terrible mistake of the day. As soon as he hit the door, he said to my mother, "Mickey hit a teacher with a rock at school today!"
Personally, I didn't think it was so important for him to tell my mother that bit of news. Of course, it was true! I had indeed hit the teacher with a rock, but I wasn't particularly eager for that news to spread to my mother.
If I had had the character of David, I wouldn't have gotten angry at my brother for such. But I did, and then I blurted out the rest of the story with great anger in my voice, "Well, I wouldn't have hit her if you hadn't ducked!"
With that story of sibling difficulty in mind, I want you to notice the control that David had with his older brother. In verses 28-29, the Bible says, "His eldest brother Eliab heard David talking to the men; and Eliab’s anger was kindled against David. He said, 'Why have you come down? With whom have you left those few sheep in the wilderness? I know your presumption and the evil of your heart; for you have come down just to see the battle.' David said, 'What have I done now? It was only a question.'"
Eliab, the typical older brother, ridiculed David in front of the whole army by reminding him of his little responsibilities. We can almost hear the sneer in his voice when he says, "Who did you leave those few sheep with."
But David responds without anger, "What have I done now? It was only a question." I find his control amazing. He responds without anger with a response that in today's vernacular would be, "Well, forgive me for living."
3) Great Courage
Thirdly, David had great courage. When he heard Golaith's bold challenge, he immediately said to Saul, "Let no one’s heart fail because of him; your servant will go and fight with this Philistine" (v. 32).
Saul said to David, "You are not able to go against this Philistine to fight with him; for you are just a boy, and he has been a warrior from his youth" (33). He was saying, "You're too young to fight for your life."
Then David replays for Saul stories that show that even when he was younger, David had courage:
"But David said to Saul, “Your servant used to keep sheep for his father; and whenever a lion or a bear came, and took a lamb from the flock, I went after it and struck it down, rescuing the lamb from its mouth…" (v. 34-35)
4) Great Consistency
Fourthly, David had great consistency. By that I mean that he was true to himself and his way of doing things.
In verses 38 and following we have a scene of great humor. The verse says that Saul clothed David with his own armor. He put his bronze helmet on David's head and clothed him with his own coat of mail.
We can't understand the humor of the situation until we remember the calling of Saul as king as recorded in 1 Samuel 9:2:
"He had a son whose name was Saul, a handsome young man. There was not a man among the people of Israel more handsome than he; he stood head and shoulders above everyone else."
Saul was a huge man himself. He was selected king because he "stood head and shoulders above everyone else." Saul could well have been almost seven feet tall himself. So, if Goliath's coat of mail weighed 150 pounds, Saul's may have weighed 100 pounds.
We can only imagine little David with 100 pounds of clothing, with a helmet so big that his head could turn without moving the helmet, and Saul's heavy sword. David couldn't even walk with all that load.
Verse 39 says, "Then David said to Saul, 'I cannot walk with these; for I am not used to them.' So David removed them. Then he took his staff in his hand, and chose five smooth stones…"
David knew that he must fight the giant in his own way. He could not fight his battles with someone else's armor.
In a similar fashion, we cannot fight life's battles today with someone else's faith. Our faith can sustain us, but it cannot be a borrowed faith. Our parents may have been very important people in the church, perhaps elders or deacons. But their faith will do us no good when it counts. We must get the faith inside of us. We must make it our own.
5) Great Confession
Fifthly, David had a great confession. When David and Goliath finally met on the battle field, the began their encounter with some ritual trash talk much like backyard basketball players to today, or perhaps like we would expect on wrestle mania.
First, Goliath shouted out to David, "Am I a dog, that you come to me with sticks?" Then he cursed David by his gods, and added "Come to me, and I will give your flesh to the birds of the air and to the wild animals of the field."
David responded with his own kind of trash-talk, but his talk showed his great confession of faith in God. David said, "You come to me with sword and spear and javelin; but I come to you in the name of the LORD of hosts… This very 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 Philistine army this very day to the birds of the air and to the wild animals of the earth, so that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, and that all this assembly may know that the LORD does not save by sword and spear; for the battle is the LORD’S and he will give you into our hand.” (v. 45-47)
And earlier in the text, when David was bragging about the lions and bears he had killed, he also gave credit to God when he said, "The LORD, who saved me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear, will save me from the hand of this Philistine" (v. 37).
After all this build up, the report of the actual battle is amazingly brief. Just two sentences.
"When the Philistine drew nearer to meet David, David ran quickly toward the battle line to meet the Philistine. David put his hand in his bag, took out a stone, slung it, and struck the Philistine on his forehead; the stone sank into his forehead, and he fell face down on the ground."
Then David ran to Goliath and cut off his head with Goliath's sword. The Philistines fled in terror and the Israelites pursued them.
We also need these five great character traits when we confront the giants in our lives. And there are giants to be fought still today. They may not be flesh and blood giants like Goliath, but we still fight temptation, tragedy, and life's burdens that seem like giants out to get us. I would hate to have to fight life's giants alone.
Ephesians 6:12 says, "For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places."
It takes the all of David's great character traits to defeat the giants in our lives. We too need a commitment to small things and large. We need amazing control. We need great courage. We need a consistent faith that we have made our very own. And we need to carry with us the great confession of our faith - Jesus Christ is Lord. With such traits, we too can prevail against the giants of life.