Little David Meets Large Goliath:Confronting Our Biggest Challenges

I Samuel 17:32-49; Mark 4:35-41

          Some of you know the acapella jazz ensemble Take 6.  They formed just up the road at Oakwood College in 1980.  They have since won Grammy Awards, Dove Awards, and just about every singing award there is.  They’ve worked with Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, Don Henley, Whitney Houston, and many other famous singers.  They have a rather humorous song about David and Goliath.  It tells in popular language the classic story from I Samuel 17.  It describes Goliath as stronger than a lion and taller than a tree.  It describes David as the jungle boy in Rudyard Kipling’s book, The Jungle Book:

Well, he looked like a jungle boy and he sang like a bird (But he fought like the devil when his temper got stirred).

          Here’s their description of the battle between David and Goliath:

Now David heard him bragging, and said, “I declare that giant’s got an awful lot of mouth up there.”  So he strolled to the brook, and he picked up a pebble.  It was smooth as ice, but hard as a devil.

He starts out for the giant, dancing on his toes.  He was whirling away with his slingshot.  He was singing a song like so…goes:  “Rock of ages, cleft for me”—like so.  The giant looks at David and lets out a laugh.  He laughs like a tiger being sassed by a cat.  He laughs like a hyena, grins from ear to ear, Bangin’ on his armor with his ten-foot spear. 

He starts out for David, bangin’ and a-clankin’.  He said, “Come here, Junior!  I’m gonna give you a spankin’!”  David took his slingshot, and swung it ‘round his head.

Out flew that pebble and the giant dropped (He dropped dead)

          It ends with this line, “You know little David made a —good shot!”

          That story has become an archetypical story about hope when it seems there is no way forward.  It’s about courage when the odds are stacked against us.  This story is about faith, trust, in a power greater than us when we are faced with giants that threaten to destroy us.  It makes the audacious claim that God can make a way forward when it seems there is no way.  Young David, who fought like the devil when his temper got stirred, is a model for how you and I can face our biggest challenges.

          There is some discrepancy as to how tall Goliath of Gath was.  According to our text, he was “six cubits and a span” tall.  That would be about 9 feet 9 inches!    I’m six feet tall, so imagine how he would tower over me.  Other accounts put him at 6 feet 9 inches.  The average height of a man back then was about five feet, so by either figure he would have been a giant.  The text says that he wore a bronze helmet.  Bronze armor weighing 150 pounds covered his torso.  More bronze covered is legs.  He carried a bronze javelin and a spear, the head of which weighed 19 pounds. Goliath appeared to be invincible. 

          And what a braggart!  Nobody likes a braggart, right?  For forty days every morning and evening, he would run before the army of Israel and taunt them, daring them to come out and fight.  He told them that he would fight any soldier in their army.  If Israel’s soldier won, the Philistines would be their servants.  But if Goliath won, the Israelites would be their servants.  Dressed in full armor, he shouted to the soldiers of Israel, “Today I defy the ranks of Israel!  Give me a man, that we may fight together.” 

          And the text says that when King Saul and the army of Israel heard Goliath’s humiliating taunt, “they were dismayed and greatly afraid.”

          David was still a boy at this time, “a youth, ruddy and handsome in appearance,” it says. He wasn’t actually in the army.  He was a shepherd, shuttling food and water back and forth from his father’s house to the battlefront.  While his older brothers got to serve in the army, David had to tend the sheep back home.  When his chores at home were finished, he would rush back to the battlefront to get the latest news.

          One day, as David arrived back at the battlefront, Goliath was issuing his humiliating challenge: “Give me a man, that we may fight together.”  David heard it.  The men in the army were terrified, asking, “Have you seen this man…?”  I can just imagine the scuttlebutt making its way through the ranks.  “This guy must be fifteen feet tall!  It would be suicide to go out there.  Only a fool would dare.  What are we going to do?”

          When young David heard this humiliating challenge from Goliath, David asked, “Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God?”

          David’s brothers could see what was happening.  They told David to go home, to go back and take care of the sheep.  The battlefront was not a place for boys.  King Saul heard about the ambitious young David too, and even the king tried to convince him to go home.  Instead, David convinced the king to let him go to battle against Goliath. 

          Now, let me pause for a moment and tell you something about a shepherd’s work.  It was no job for sissies. David regularly had to defend the sheep from bears and lions.  He sometimes had to hunt down a bear or lion to rescue a lamb.  He told the king how he would catch a bear by its jaw and kill it. 

          Then David made his final appeal to the king, “This uncircumcised Philistine shall be like one of them, since he has defied the armies of the living God….  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.”

          And the frightened king said, “Go, and may the Lord be with you!”

          The king put his own armor on David, a bronze helmet and a bronze coat.  David took the king’s sword.  But under the weight of the king’s armor, David couldn’t even walk. So he took off the armor, put away the sword, and selected his weapons: a staff, a sling, and five smooth stones, the equipment of a shepherd rather than a soldier.

          Remember Goliath.  Bronze helmet, 150 pounds of bronze on his chest, bronze on his legs, a sword, a spear, and a javelin.  Goliath was covered with state-of-the-art armor and equipped with state-of-the-art arms.  Goliath was as intimidating as David was ordinary. 

But remember David’s faith.  David, clothed with the living God and armed with the power of faith, went out to meet his opponent.

It was a dramatic showdown, better than the OK corral.  Both armies watched as huge Goliath of Gath met young David.  Still cocky and arrogant, Goliath cursed David in the name of his Philistine gods.  Then he said to David, “Come to me and I will give your flesh to the birds of the air and to the wild animals of the field.”

David’s response at this point is very important to this story.  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, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied.  This very day the Lord will deliver you into my hand….”

          Upon hearing these words, the giant Goliath charged young David.  The text says that David pulled out his sling and threw one of those smooth stones at the giant.  That carefully placed stone struck Goliath in the forehead, and the text says that Goliath “fell face down on the ground.”  This is the summary statement of this famous showdown, “So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and a stone, striking down the Philistine and killing him.”  And then these seven significant words: “there was no sword in David’s hand.”

          This is a true story, though I have modified it slightly.  A young woman stopped by the church recently.  She needed a safe place to rest, she said.  She obviously was on hard times, facing some formidable giants.  She had been arrested the week before for marijuana possession.  She spent two nights in jail until her dad bailed her out.  Some of her teeth were missing, and I suspected she was using meth.  She later admitted so.  I invited her into my office, and she told me her story.  She was in a dark, downward spiral, and it broke my heart.  She asked if I would pray for her, and I did.  I prayed that she would have hope, hope that her life could be good again, that she could be clean of drugs, hope that her life could be what she dreamed about when she was a little girl.  While she waited, I arranged for her to enter in-patient treatment for drug addiction.  I was willing to drive her to the facility that very day. All she had to do was say yes.  But she wouldn’t go. 

          Here’s why.  She has not yet found the power of this story about David and Goliath.  She had not yet found the power of hope when there seems to be no way forward, of courage when the odds are stacked against you, of faith in a power greater than her.  She could not yet embrace that audacious claim that God can make a way forward when there seems to be no way.  I’ve prayed for her every day since then.  I pray she can find hope to confront her giants.

          And you too.  We all face giants of some kind, don’t we?  Some are bigger and more threatening than others.  But we all come to those places in our lives where we fear there is no way forward, where the odds seem to be too great.  If that is where you are today, hear this story of little David large Goliath.  David, a young man clothed with the living God and armed with the power of faith, is our model for how to confront our biggest challenges.  So go, and may the Lord be with you!

Closing Prayer

          Lord, you know all the giants that taunt us.  Give us hope.  Give us faith.  Give us courage.  Amen.