DAVID AND GOLIATH (1 Samuel 17)

by Ken G. Cooper

I’d heard the rumour.
Felt the fear with which the stories sped their line.
The Philistines had a giant.
And I could see him now.
Huge.
He must be well over six cubits!
His armour alone would be sufficient to crush a normal man.
Goliath of Gath.
A death-dispensing monster.
The very name engendered terror.
Forty times, each of forty days, he’d challenged, confident none dare reply:

“Choose you a man for you, and let him come down to me. If he be able to fight with me, and to kill me, then will we be your servants: but if I prevail against him, and kill him, then shall ye be our servants, and serve us.”

The persistent mocking, his knowledge of invincibility, dragged all down.
I looked round.
Our army, our very king, sore dismayed and greatly afraid.
They didn’t know what to do.
No one could fight on his terms and win.
It seemed like certain death.
Israel destined to slavery.

The enemy had to be faced, not run away from. Fleeing only built up hidden fears, constant checking, looking for signs of the enemy, - where was he, how close, where close? The defeatist question: How long have we got till we are his?

I knew there was no mortal answer; nothing we had could match him. His brazen arrogance had within it his expectation of victory and ours of defeat. I shook myself free of the fearful mesmerism, this so-called unstoppable threat. And remembered.. I had beaten a bear and a lion, not from any power of my own, but with the hand of the Lord! Why should this Goliath be any different?

I heard my voice speaking to Saul!
“Let no man's heart fail because of him; thy servant will go and fight with this Philistine.”
I began to dress with armour not mine.
Something was wrong. I had not proved the armour, but I had proved my God.

My forbears had spent forty barren years in the wilderness before they came to trust sufficiently in the Lord. Our army had now shown forty days of barren doubt. Now lest we have forty years of slavery, we must place our reliance totally on God. Immediately.

I drop all material defence and reasoning and feel the onrush of spiritual inspiration.

God cannot run from anything! His all-power is comprised in His ever-presence. How can he run from anything when He is everywhere? How can I ever be outside His Existence? How can I fear when the Almighty is ever with me?
 
I take my staff, (for I will lean on God),
I choose me five stones from a babbling brook, (rounded by the constant flow of inspiration, God its only source)
I have my sling, (God is my deliverer).

Goliath scoffs when he sees me coming. He was only looking at what he saw, not at what I had with me. He stretches out to his full height and reach:
“Come to me, and I will give thy flesh unto the fowls of the air, and to the beasts of the field”.
Threats that once seemed real will now prove empty in their vacuous boasting.

It’s my turn to set out the true battlefield:
 
“Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a shield: but I come to thee in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied. This day will the Lord deliver thee into mine hand”

I run towards this mountain of a man, adorned in his armour and ferocity, snarling and stamping his rhythm of war. I reach into my bag, draw out a stone, and place it in the sling.

The victory is already mine even before I sling the stone. I feel the presence of my God, the might of His power, myself as his instrument of deliverance, unstoppable, more invincible than any army. His All-power is the nothing-power of His foes. I see Goliath as though I see an empty dream. There is no fear because there is nothing to fear. I run with the confidence and knowledge of victory guaranteed.

I feel at one with my sling and its snug stone. No longer David, but God’s emissary, I focus on the forehead of Goliath and let loose the whirling slung stone with the inevitable accuracy of utter dominion.

The stone sinks deep into his forehead. Strikes at the very source of his empire, the belief of life in matter, which kills itself. He thumps to the ground, to move no more.

A single stone the master over a terror a hundred times its size. It could have been a thousand times, the result the same. I stand victorious, knowing it was the hand of God.
 
I take Goliath’s sword from its sheath, - he hadn’t even drawn it before he was killed. Unprepared for my battlefield, he’d had no chance! I use it to cut off his head, its lifelessness the ultimate symbol of defeat and victory. There was no coming back.

I look up: the enemy has seen its mascot humiliated and defeated, and they flee. They cannot fight on the same ground; they have seen that God the Lord is with us.

And who then can be against us?

The omnipotence and omnipresence of God fills my consciousness once more.
I stand in awe at His sovereignty, and am at peace.

* * * * * *
Goliath: The false belief of life separate from God. Terrorism; anything that causes fear; belief in the five physical senses, (taste, smell, hearing, sight, touch), being more important than God. Idolatry.
David: The knowledge of life inseparable from God, Spirit; spiritual sense recognising and proving God supreme; the “do it now” demonstration of faith; humility (the Lord will deliver thee) demonstrating dominion.

©Ken G Cooper 2017