The Lord’s Victory

The Honor of God’s Name in David’s Battle with Goliath

Well, I continue in this somewhat ad hoc, not complete series in the life of David. And as you know, I've been going through some major epochs of his life and some of the big things, the big events, if you will, that have happened to him, but we've not been going chapter by chapter, much less verse by verse through it.

So this morning, we are going to look to 1 Samuel 17, 38 to 54. Before I have you stand for the reading of those verses, 38 to 54 in 1 Samuel 17, the big point here, as you might see in the bulletin, is the title of the message, the Lord's Honor.

As we just sang a minute ago, we want to sing out the praises of his name, the honor of thy name. God's name is a name to be honored. God's name is a name to be held high. God's name is in many ways himself because his name evokes who he is and what he does.

His name is to be held in high honor. You shall not take the Lord's name in vain comes first of all the commandments that we're to honor his name, we're to use his name properly and correctly and in accordance with his will.

And this God willing is what we will see as we go through this epic battle between the young shepherd lad, David, and the giant and highly experienced warrior, Goliath. So please stand for the reading of God's word, 1 Samuel 17, 38 to 54.

Then Saul clothed David with his armor. He put a helmet of bronze on his head and clothed him with a coat of mail. And David strapped his sword over his armor and he tried in vain to go for he had not tested them.

Then David said to Saul, I cannot go with these for I have not tested them. So David put them off. Then he took his staff in his hand and chose five smooth stones from the brook and put them in his shepherd's pouch.

His sling was in his hand and he approached the Philistine. And the Philistine moved forward and came near to David with his shield bearer in front of him. And when the Philistine looked and saw David, he disdained him for he was but a youth, ruddy and handsome in appearance.

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. The Philistine said to David, come to me and I will give you, I'll give your flesh to the birds of the air and to the beasts of the field.

Excuse me. Then David said to the Philistine, you come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a 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 to the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel and that all the assembly may know that the Lord saves not with sword and spear for the battle is the Lord's and he will give you into our hand.

When the Philistine arose and came and drew 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. So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and with a stone and struck the Philistine and killed him. There was no sword in the hand of David.

Then David ran and stood over the Philistine and took his sword and drew it out of its sheath and killed him and cut off his head with it. When the Philistines saw that their champion was dead, they fled.

And the men of Israel and Judah rose with a great shout and pursued the Philistines as far as Gath and the gates of Ekron so that the wounded Philistines fell on the way from Shaarim as far as Gath and Ekron.

And the people of Israel came back from chasing the Philistines and they plundered their camp. And David took the head of the Philistine and brought it to Jerusalem, but he put his armor in his tent. God bless the reading of his word.

Please be seated. Let us once again ask God's blessing upon our assembly. Our great heavenly Father, we again are thankful and grateful to you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ for bringing us together once again to come together in unity with one accord, with one spirit, Father, to hear from you, the living God and the living Spirit who gives us this word.

So Father, once again, be pleased to show us the wonderful truth of your word. May the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Savior, for we ask it all in Jesus' name, amen. Sometime in the second century BC, a man named Ben Sirach wrote this about David's battle with Goliath.

In his youth, did he not kill a giant and take away reproach from the people when he lifted his hand with a stone in the sling and struck down the boasting of Goliath? For he appealed to the Lord, the Most High, and he gave him strength in his right hand.

So remember the situation here. We've been looking at this. With an entire army cowering behind cover, frightened beyond fright, with all of them dismayed and distraught and drained of all their courage, the big question to be asked is who will go forth to defend the God whose name was being blasphemed by this giant day after day after day?

Now I hope that you who have read this before and even knowing how the story turns out find it a little bit exciting to hear the end of the story. This epic battle, this well-known battle, this children's favorite in their Sunday schools between this young lad, David, with virtually nothing to protect himself, well, other than his faith, against this giant and well-armed and highly experienced warrior named Goliath.

And for me it is exciting and I like to liken it to when I read through the book of Acts and I get to Acts chapter 8 and Saul is persecuting the church and the church is under great persecution and they're in great danger even of their lives and they disperse away from Jerusalem and out into the countryside.

And my heart gets a little bit racy when I read that and it's like, oh my, what's going to happen? How will they ever survive against this persecution? Well, of course, we all know that God is going to give them strength and success in bringing forth the gospel as they go out.

But we should read the Bible this way and even this well-known battle, we know the end of it, and I read to the end of it, that Goliath gets his head cut off by David and it should be kind of exciting to wonder with the army there who will go forth and who can recover God's honor and his name.

Now, some have asked me if we'll ever get to David's victory over Goliath. It's been some time. We started in 1 Samuel 16 when David was anointed as the next king to replace Saul and we've been going very slowly.

I'm not up here Sunday to Sunday. Well, when is David going to finally win against Goliath? Well, our message this afternoon brings an end to Goliath. He had arisen from the Philistine ranks like the beast of Revelation 13, dispensing blasphemies with abandon, one stone to knock him unconscious, and then he's decapitated with his own sword.

So from Genesis chapter 3 verse 15 to the new creation of Revelation 21 and 22, the battle is the Lord's and the victory forever sealed in his blood is Jesus'. Now, what is at stake here? For David, who was a type of Christ, and we'll talk about topology in a moment, what was at stake for David wasn't so much the victory that he was going to attain, and it wasn't his own honor and his own credit, but the name of the Lord God that was being blasphemed by this uncircumcised and gigantic Philistine.

See, David is a type, as we say, a type of our Savior, a type simply means a forerunner, a sort of prophecy of something greater to come. David was a type of none other than his greatest son, who is Jesus Christ, Christ who one of his favorite appellations was son of David, hearkening back to this very David.

So David was this type of Christ, he's a forerunner who prophetically displayed some of the traits of the one to whom he pointed, which of course is Jesus. David's victory over Goliath was a type, a forerunner, if you will, a prophetic display of the ultimate victory won by his greatest son, Jesus Christ.

And all this for the honor of God's name, for the glory of God our Savior. In 1 Samuel 16, David was anointed by Samuel to be Israel's next king, and here we have this topology, this type thing happening, because in Matthew chapter 3 verse 13 to 17, who is baptized, or we could even say anointed, well it's none other than Jesus Christ, none other than Jesus our Lord.

Both are these public testaments of God's will, God's will that David should be the next king, God's will that Jesus is the world's Savior. In 1 Samuel 16, 13, the Spirit of God rushes upon David, the newly minted successor to King Saul, and then in Matthew chapter 3 verse 16, showing that David was only a type of Christ, in Matthew 3, 16, the same Spirit of God descended like a dove and rested on Jesus with the voice from heaven confirming all this, saying, this is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased.

Then Jesus, like David before him, is driven to go do battle against God's enemies, Jesus against the devil himself, David against Goliath. So you see these parallels, this biblical redemptive history that flows consistently from beginning to end.

The story here is about God, it's about the honor of his name, as we just sang in 4 ,000 tongues to sing the honors of his name. The victory is God's, David will be the first to say so, it was the Lord who trained his hand for battle, it was the Lord who gave David a heart that could not abide hearing him challenged and insulted and blasphemed, even at the hazard of his very life.

The victory, you see, that God brings is complete, whether his people seeing his enemies vanquished will go forth in confidence, might be another matter. But the victory that God brings is full and complete in every way according to his will.

Behind David, for this brief shining moment, Israel stood confident, they stood secure in the Lord, beginning with David's defeat of Goliath. So I want to look first on David and how he was dressed for battle, and we'll go through it pretty quickly in verses 38 to 40.

I want to look at this first, Saul provides him with armor, we just read that. The scene is sometimes described as David in armor that fits Saul, and because it fits Saul who was of enormous stature, he was the tallest man in Israel, if you recall, when he became king.

So it's pictured often that this was way too big for him, everything flopped around, his shoulders couldn't fill the epaulets and such like that. I doubt that Saul would have done anything like that. You see, Saul was an experienced warrior, he knew how important proper fit was.

And so to test the thing, you had to have something that fit correctly and all the joints would work correctly, the articulation as they call it between the pieces of armor had to work so that you could actually swing your sword or bring your shield up to defend yourself.

It all had to work together. And so he wouldn't have given him something that was way too big for him, but he had to test it. David had to be familiar with the armor in order for it to do him any good.

You know, I read once that Jerry Rice, who was one of the greatest NFL wide receivers to ever play, that he would practice everything, that even before game day, he would practice how to suit up. He would even tie his shoes so that the pressure of the laces on each foot was exactly the same.

I mean, he would run and see which pressure on which foot and which lace would give him the most maneuverability or the greatest speed. He put on that eye shadow that they put in to keep the sun from reflecting back, and he put in the same thickness and the same angle.

He would work and work and work it, tucking his shirt the same way so that everything fit just right. And when he got out on the field, there'd be no distractions. And I think this is sort of a picture of what David is saying here when he says, I haven't tested them.

Nothing wrong with armor. It makes perfect sense to go fight a man who's fully armed and has great armor with armor on yourself. But if you don't know how to use it, as David might not have yet, and if it doesn't fit you correctly, it would be more of a hindrance.

Again, the other example I would think of is firemen. You know, firemen will practice how to go down that pole that they go down and jump into their fire suits and grab all the equipment they need and just jump onto the truck, even when there's no alarm, so that when the alarm comes, they can move quickly and they know they haven't forgotten anything.

The armor. The armor is sort of a controversial matter. A fellow pastor of mine told me that he read once, and he can't remember where, so I can't tell you who said it, and I can't tell you any more about it than a man who I trust a lot told me he read this.

He read someone who said that David couldn't wear Saul's armor because the mail, the scales on it, reminded him of the scales of the serpent. So it would harken back to Genesis 3 in a negative sort of way.

Well, that's attractive for a preacher, and what preacher couldn't run with that? But it's more fanciful than anything the text would support. No, David didn't want the armor simply because he wasn't used to it.

Armor had a lot of components, and each one had to fit and to be used correctly. The soldiers needed to practice and train with it, and unfamiliarity would lead to failure or disaster. So just to take this business with the armor and put it in a very practical sense, it was good armor.

It was actually the proper armor in the human sense in the horizontal plane to use. It's just David wasn't used to it. We do need to be trained up in the resources God gives us. It's like what we read in Hebrews 5 .14, but solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.

And this also would inform our understanding of the armor of God in Ephesians 6 .10 -20. Before he goes strapping on the accoutrements of war in verse 10, it tells us what? Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might.

And it ends in verse 18 with praying at all times in the spirit with all prayer and supplication. David rejected the armor simply because he had never used it before. Once he was king, armor would be second nature, but not yet.

And likewise for us, brethren, let's not go too quickly into the fray, though into the fray we must go if we don't practice putting on that armor. And it begins with being strong in the Lord and the power of his might and to be sure there's nothing of us in the battle, but all of God and all of faith, praying at all times in the spirit with prayer and supplication.

And then you can backtrack up the verse a bit and put on armor that's been tested and practiced and you know how to use and you know how to edify others and you know how to rebuke and you know how to use the resources that God has given by practice so you can distinguish good from evil.

Goliath could have been defeated by another man. I want us to think about this for a moment too. He could have been defeated by another man had any other man been willing to go forth. Now we read in 2 Samuel 21, you don't have to turn there because I'm going to go through it very quickly.

We read there how some of David's soldiers later killed the rest of Goliath's line and one-on-one combat. It seems that they killed them with swords, sword and spear, javelin, whatever the case, but not in the miraculous way that David killed Goliath.

This came later really towards the end of David's reign as king. But we read this, after this there was war again with the Philistines at Gab. Then Sibachai the Hushatite struck down Soph who was one of the descendants of the giants.

And there was war again with the Philistines at Gab and Ilhanan the son of Ja 'ar Oregim the Bethlehemite struck down Goliath the Gittite, the shaft of whose spear weighed was like a weaver's beam. And there was war again at Gath where there was a man of great stature who had six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot, 24 in number, and he also was descended from the giants.

And when he taunted Israel, Jonathan the son of Shimei, pardon me, David's brother struck him down. These four were descended from the giants in Gath and they fell by the hand of David and by the hand of his servants.

You see, Goliath and his brothers were not invincible. They were scary. They were powerful. They were extremely dangerous, but not invincible. Abishai killed Ishbi-benab, Sibachai killed Soph, and Ilhanan killed Goliath's namesake.

And David's brother Jonathan struck down the six-fingered and six-toed giant. The point here is twofold. First of all, while those heroes were among Israel's finest and were included in the roles of David's mighty men, they killed Goliath's brothers with common weapons, with weapons they had tested and weapons they knew how to use.

When David had asked earlier in the early part of 1 Samuel 17 why Goliath's challenge wasn't taken up, there must have been some in the ranks who were at least of the same caliber of these ones who later killed those four.

Well, that's the first point. The second point is that when David stepped out against Goliath armed only with a shepherd's sling, his very vulnerability was a mirror that reflected and amplified God's glory.

Now, I think I mentioned a few weeks ago that the sling that he used was no children's toy. Slings were deadly past a hundred yards. The great armies of the day, including the Israelites, including the Assyrians and the Babylonians, they used slingers in their ranks and they considered them elite and very important in their army.

Yet the visual effect, I mean we have to imagine this, the nine-and-a-half-foot well-armed giant with his shield bearer bearing a shield in front of him, shouting out these blasphemies and these challenges, and who steps out?

A shepherd in a tunic, a staff in one hand and a sling in the other. It would have to have been stunning, and if you were one of the soldiers of Israel, you'd be looking and say, he's going to defend our honor?

He's going to get this giant? Are we serious here? Well, how did David go into the fray? Well, David went by faith, not faith necessarily that he would win. The taunts back and forth where he said, I'm going to give your flesh to the birds of the air and the beasts of the field and all that, that was a formality, sort of like boxers when they stare each other down.

His faith was that God's honor was worthy of protection at any and all costs, including his life. His faith was in God, and he believed with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength, if you will. He believed at the hazard of his very life that nothing was to be held back in protecting the honor of God's name.

Now, what do we have here but proof of David's leadership, a confirmation, if you would like, of God's will and God's choice of David to succeed Saul. Saul, whose personal valor had been proved so many times, he failed here so badly.

We could ask again, why? Why did he fail? Was he really so afraid of Goliath? I mean, if you read about Saul, he was a mighty warrior. He was a great fighter. He was a competent general. He led them to victory after victory.

Did he completely lack confidence in his own personal fighting ability? I think Saul was every bit the warrior that these others were who struck down those four. The difference between him and them, most especially the difference between him and David, was one of values.

One of values. And it's a value that we need to think of ourselves and ask ourselves, even as Conley has been and helped and preached through the, not preached, taught the catechism through, well, he is preaching, through the catechism in our morning service, and taught about what God's name entails and what it means to not take it in vain and what it means to use it rightly.

We need to inculcate this same kind of an ethic that David had, where the honor of God's name is worth any hazard, it's worth any cost, even our very life. Don't think of David as a fable, as like Aesop's fables or something like that.

It really did happen. This young man really did go out against this huge, well-armed, highly experienced warrior and put his life at risk, not for his own glory, not for his own credit, but for the honor of God's name.

You know, the difference between Saul and David was one of values. What did he value more, his personal honor or the honor of the Lord? Would he stand by and watch the Lord's repute dragged through the mud by an uncircumcised Philistine?

And it turns out with Saul, yes, that's exactly what he would do. And this is where he failed. This is where he failed. David, as it were, said, that I cannot abide. Better to die for God than to live with this.

So what do we learn? What do we learn here right away? That God's honor, as I've said, is worth our very life. Too often, we won't even risk embarrassment, much less physical danger or financial losses.

David's outrage was born deep within him. It's almost like he couldn't believe anyone would say the kinds of things against the Lord that he was hearing. Many years ago, when I was in high school, I had a friend named Rick, and we used to hang out at his house, a whole bunch of us, because we could work in his garage.

His dad had a lot of nice tools, and we were pretty good at working on cars, especially the old air-cooled VWs. That's another story. You can ask me about that later. But we would just hang out together and work on these cars.

It was a cool place to be. And his dad was really a pretty cool guy. Well, we came inside. His mother had made sandwiches for us all. And while we were eating our sandwiches, all of a sudden, his dad started yelling at his mom.

And he started using foul language against her, because she made a sandwich for him that wasn't quite the way she knew he liked it. No more detail is necessary. I was raised in a family, though secular, not religious in any sense, much less to say Christian, where I'd never heard anything like that.

I didn't know it was possible for a man to speak to his wife that way. I'd never heard such a thing. I was just aghast. I couldn't say anything. I was a little self-conscious there. I wasn't going to stand up and defend her or anything like that.

I was just a kid. But I'd never heard anything like that before. I couldn't believe that a man would actually speak in public against his wife like that. And I think this is the kind of outrage that David had, the kind of shock he had.

Who would say something like that against the Lord? Who would tolerate something like that against the Lord? You know, when we hear Christ's name being abused, which we all do all the time, we should be appalled.

We should be appalled. Now, the command to you is you don't take the Lord's name in vain. You use his name properly. And yet, when others don't, and even from a point of disbelief and complete lack of faith in even the existence of God, it should be shocking.

It should stir something deep within us, a sort of horror like what David must have had. When we hear something like that, we should be amazed. It should just be inconceivable that anyone would blaspheme the name that's above every name, the name that is above every name in heaven and on earth and under the earth, the name of Jesus Christ.

To use God's name in an expletive kind of way, it should just make our jaws drop. And we ask how easily we ourselves might slip here. Your way of life at home or at work, as husband, as wife, as employee, as son, as daughter, wherever we are, whatever we do, it must be to God's glory.

Peter wrote of false claimants to Jesus' name in 2 Peter 2, verse 2. He said, many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of truth will be blasphemed. What was Goliath doing, blaspheming the name of God?

Paul wrote of the disconnect between claim and custom this way, when he said, the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you, no less than it was by Goliath. David proved himself here to be Israel's true leader, because he killed Goliath, because he had courage enough to go and risk his life.

No, he proved himself to be Israel's true leader, because he put God's honor above all else. He was a type of Christ. He was a type of his greatest son, Jesus Christ. And Jesus, for the joy set before him, endured the shame of the cross for sinners such as you and me, but primarily and before, for the benefit before is for our benefit, it's for God's name, it's for the glory of God his father who sent him for that very purpose.

This is what it means. These are the examples we have. Now you and I cannot suffer for anybody's sins, much less our own, the way Jesus did. But Jesus does set an example, as did David before him, as did others in the Bible, of what it means to hazard all for the sake of defending the honor of God's name.

And what's the hardest thing we can do? What's the most difficult task before us? Is to live in a way that does not cause God's name to be blasphemed. Now we've heard it all the time, all of us have heard this, why don't we be in that church, because they're just a bunch of sinners and hypocrites, and we all say, well of course we are, that's why we're in church.

And that's true. But there's a certain triteness to that. There's a certain aspect to that where we should say, no. We really do need to strive for holiness without which no one will see the Lord. We really do need to reach out for the prize of the upward calling of God in Christ Jesus.

Because to honor his name is worth any amount of effort, it's worth risking anything that we have. Now Paul wrote of that disconnect when he said the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.

So David, here, not only a type of his greatest son Jesus, Jesus who said I've come to do my Father's will, he came to die for sinners, he came to face our greatest enemy, not Goliath but death by defeating death's purveyor, which is the devil, not with a sling and a stone but with a tree, the cross where he hung and suffered.

He suffered blasphemies as he hung there as the tongue waggers just couldn't help themselves but to revive Goliath as they went by and said if you're the son of God, take your self down. And Jesus suffered for blasphemers, for we who by nature were children of wrath and whose lives were blasphemy against God.

Well I just really want to make one more observation on this text and then we will close and get ourselves to prayer. An observation on David and him being that type of Christ. Did you notice what David did after his victory?

I know we went through it very quickly but he slung a stone and it sank into Goliath's forehead and Goliath falls down face first on the ground. He finished off the adversary who had been the terror of the Israelite army.

Now David won the victory and then leader that he was, what did he do? Well he took time with Goliath, he decapitated him with his own sword but while he was doing that what was happening? What was David allowing to happen we could say?

This type of Christ to come. He let his countrymen finish off the battle and take the spoils of victory. So after he had won the victory, after he had paved the way for them, after he had done what none of them were even willing to attempt, after he had really done it all in the name of the Lord for the honor of God, by the power of God, even as he himself said, I come to you in the name of the Lord and he will give me victory over you, he let the army go and take the spoils.

He let the army go and take the benefit that he had risked his life for. Spoils that victory that he won, spoils that were rightly his. You know Ephesians chapter 4 verse 18, Paul refers to the same David and says, when he ascended on high he led a host of captives and he gave gifts to men.

Of course quoting from Psalm 66 which says he received gifts from men and Paul turns that around and says he gave gifts to men and I think this is a great picture of the type that David was of Christ.

As David, the man, gave the benefits of what he had done for others, so Jesus, so much more did Jesus give us gifts. Gifts that he won and then he as it were having defeated our greatest enemy which is the devil and the death that he brought into the world with sin, he, like David, lets us rush past and take the spoils that he won.

Eternal life, redemption, faith, our hope in the resurrection, the deposit of the Holy Spirit, that earnest of that redemption to come, the empty tomb and the faithful assurance of our hope in the resurrection to come.

So we've finally seen Goliath slain and as I said some of you had asked me if we're ever going to get to that point and the kids have been anxious to get there, pastor, when is it going to happen? Well, he's gone but more important for us, God's name was upheld, the honor of God was shown to be worth all risks and hazards.

This is what David really teaches us. Now can I say to you therefore be a David and risk your life for God's honor? Well that would be true enough but I think the greater lesson is that Jesus Christ died for our weakness.

Jesus Christ died because he knows how timid we get and how unwilling we are to speak up because we don't want to hazard our embarrassment, lose relationships, seem silly or perhaps lose a job or maybe even a life.

It's not the unforgivable sin or anything even close to that but know that Jesus Christ in a way so much greater than David ever could have truly won a victory for us and as David killed Goliath and stayed there with Goliath and finished off the enemy of God's people, so Jesus Christ at the cross after he was resurrected, after he died, was buried and was resurrected, gives a victory to you and to me.

He's given us the Holy Spirit, he's given us all we need to grow in holiness and sanctification and always more and more into his image. And may we be that people who will not stop risking whatever needs to be put forth in order to defend God's name by our lives, by our words, by all our actions, amen.