40 Days in the Word: 1 Samuel | March 22 2026 (Part 6)

Morning everybody. It is my pleasure to introduce

to you Rob Lodge, who's gonna be sharing the message with us

today at this is Rob second time up here on the pulpit at Forest.

You sharing a message with us. And I've had the pleasure of

getting to know Rob a little bit better over the last few months.

I'm meeting with him every Thursday with Pastor John.

And it's just so awesome to see the excitement that he has for

the Word of God and just how he's taken on this new challenge

of preaching with gusto and and an excitement for what he's

discovering and learning. I'm excited to hear what he has

for us today and what what he's taken from from First Samuel 17.

So I'm just gonna invite you up, Rob, and I'll pray for you

before you get started. Now, we thank you for Rob, thank

you for his willingness. To serve your church.

In this way to be faithful to listening to what it is that

you're speaking to him and and to.

Us through your word. And to share that with us and

Solo, we pray this morning with the words that come from his

lips and the meditations of our heart.

Be pleasing to you in Jesus name, Amen.

Amen. Thank you, Jacob.

Morning everyone. They let me back up.

Let's see. So if you've been reading along

with Samuel, the book of Samuel this week, then you will have

read, we're going to be talking about a little bit this morning,

David and Goliath. But I wonder what you think of

with the David and Goliath story.

Some of it just got shared at the children's message, which is

completely right. It's often thought of with us

facing our giants, the tough times.

Maybe you look at it from the Philistines point of view where

they're trusting in this big physical force that's Goliath,

and when it's gone they have nothing and they run away.

So there's lots of lots of things in this story.

It's kind of got this mythological background to like

I shared last time, I didn't grow up in church, but I still

remember being told the David and Goliath story, right?

It was still one of those stories that gets told as a as a

means to help and to face the giants.

But we're gonna look at it a little bit, maybe differently,

but look at what I think I've found it really means.

And it means so much more. And, and even that I'm just

touching on some of this. There's so much in it that I

couldn't believe. So before we do, let's, let's,

we'll pray. Lord, thank you for your word.

Thank you for your spirit being with us here this morning.

And we pray that it ministers to each one of us as we hear your

words and it goes deep into our hearts, Lord, and we experience

some more of you. Pray this in your name.

Amen. So 1717, you can turn there.

It's the longest chapter in the book.

Thanks, John. But we're not we're not going to

read it all, but I am going to go through it all.

So I'm going to go through fairly quickly, but I'll be

reading certain verses of it. So the first half will do that

in the first half, like we're going to have an intermission.

There's no ice cream. We're not going to, but it is

roughly the first step. So we set the scene first.

That starts the chapter, starts with the scene of the

Philistines and the Israelites facing off.

They're at the Valley of Ella. This is not the greatest

picture, but that's a flat where the value is.

That's a flat spot. Philistines on one side is the

lights are on the other. And there's a reason they're on

this standoff. No one wants to take the low

ground first. So they, they, whoever does is

going to have the most casualties, right?

So they are watching each other, facing off.

There's a tactical moment here that needs to be resolved.

So we meet Goliath as part of that, trying to resolve the

situation, which is called representative or champion

warfare. Not totally unheard of.

So one person has put forward, neither side wants to lose a ton

of casualties. Let's put our best guy forward

and if we will resolve our issue with that.

So it's not unheard of. This isn't a unique story.

We've now of course, the Philistines want that and we'll

talk about the size of Goliath in a second, but of course they

want that. So in this as we get in verse

411, it describes really explicitly describes Goliath and

the size of him. It's not this, right?

So this is what I talk about the mythological size of Goliath.

This is what I remember as a kid.

He's not that big, but I'll just show you.

I've left my tape measure either you're going to help me out this

in my coat pocket next to your mom and then you can come up the

reality of his size doesn't need to be exaggerated.

This is Robert Wadlow. He was the tallest man recorded.

So obviously he probably sees recent memory and I, I decided

to bring a tape because I, you keep going that way and then

we're going to see we stay this way.

Hang on, hang on. Slow down, slow.

All right, let's try about there and see if we can get this to

stand up. So that is 9 feet.

So when I looked up pictures of Robert Wadlow, there's a lot of

fakes. So suddenly at this moment, I'm

like, hang on, let's get a tape out and real and see what is

actually the size. These are these are real

pictures. So he was this big.

Goliath was about half a foot taller.

So my reason for showing. Thanks season.

You're good. So it's huge, right?

Like it's massive. You don't need to make it like

the kids stories. This guy was a monster.

It's it's huge, but it's real. It's not this mythological story

where people can't grow to that size.

They do. And just a couple of things I

found out when looking at this guy, Robert Wadlow, it came with

super strength. Like I didn't realize that as I

picked up pictures when he was he turned 6 foot when he was 8,

when he was, when he, I know when he was when he was 9, he

could carry his dad was about, well, he was 5 foot eleven.

I'm not quite there. I'm under 5 or 10.

He could carry his dad up the stairs of his house.

So it came with this strength. He was still growing.

The only reason Robert died actually was he got an infection

in his foot and it turned septic and he died.

But so I never knew any of that. It did come with this, with this

strength. So anyway, Goliath was roughly

that size, a little taller, big guy and a a warrior, their

champion. So he comes out each day.

Let's read this bit versus 8 to 11.

We're gonna read. Goliath stood and shouted to the

ranks of Israel. Why do you come out and line up

for battle? Am I not a Philistine and are

you not the servants of Saul? Choose a man and have him come

down to me. If he is able to fight and kill

me, we will become your subjects.

But if I overcome in and kill him, you will become our

subjects and serve us. Then the Philistine said this

day I defy the armies of Israel. Give me a man and let us fight

each other. On hearing the Philistines

words, Saul and the Israelites were dismayed and terrified.

So this is what's happening each day in in this standoff.

He walks out into the valley and does this right.

We then get to meet David in this story.

It explains his role. So his role at this point is

he's a shepherd for his dad, Jesse, and he's going back and

forth to Saul. He's been picked by Saul.

If you've been reading this this week, like yours should be, then

you know some of this. He's been picked to go and play

music for soul as well. So he's going back and forth.

Whether he's doing that at the battle lines or not, I don't

know. But this is basically his role

at the moment. So 40 days is explained that

Goliath is doing this thing, coming out and defying Israel,

defying their God, defining them as people.

For 40 days we go back to David and where his father sends him

to the front with supplies for his brothers.

So the history there is people fighting for the king.

At that point, they didn't get supplies, so they had to bring

their own. So it makes complete sense that

here we are just over a month. They need some more food.

So David gets sent by his dad. Take this food to your brothers

then explains that David ran to the to the battle lines.

Now whenever it talks about David moving in this, he's

running like every time it talks about he's running.

We'll see that in other times here, but so he ran to the

battle lines and then ran to the frontline to see his brothers.

So he put the supplies with the supply keeper and then ran to

see his brothers. And he gets to see he went early

in the morning. So Glife was doing this twice a

day. He was doing this in the morning

and in the evening. David shows up early in the

morning and he gets to see this Goliath walk out.

Defy everybody. Um, and David has something to

say about this. And this is where we hear

David's voice for the first time in the Bible.

We are on verse 26. Let's read this, it's a good

one. David asked the men standing

near him. What will be done for the man

who kills this Philistine and removes this disgrace from

Israel? Who is this uncircumcised

Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God?

So David clearly sees Goliath in a different way than everyone

else has so far. He's got this very matter of

fact way of stating that. And it will see it again with

the way he talks. He's not after the reward.

He talks about what will the man get?

Who, who defeats this guy? But he's not saying he wants

that reward. He's he's he's kind of almost

mocking them. He's not meaning to.

He's just got this matter of fact way of saying, who is this?

Why hasn't this been dealt with? This is not OK, but no one's

dealing with it. But he doesn't see the threat

the same way as the others are. You know, he says he's defined

the army of the living God. So at this moment, David's

there. He's his eldest brother, Eliab.

Here's David and roast him. Let's look at that verse 28.

When Eliab, David's oldest brother, heard him speaking with

the men, he burned with anger at him and asked, Why have you come

down here? With whom did you leave those

few sheep in the wilderness? Those few sheep is mocking like

sarcasm. Go and look at those few sheep.

You're not needing. You're no one.

With whom did you leave those few sheep in the wilderness?

I know how conceited you are and how wicked your heart is.

You come down only to watch the battle conceited.

I'm not good with words. Like to look that one up.

It basically means smug, right? It's but his his arrogance or

his perceived arrogance by Eliab.

It's that same matter of fact where you talks.

It's he sees his matter of factors as arrogance and not for

what it is. Not this blatant trust in

guarding that they don't see it that way.

His brother doesn't see it that way.

So David is speaking with the guys in that area.

They go and report to Saw what has happened and this is verse

32. Now when he gets taken up to

Saw, verse 32, David said to Saul, let no one lose heart on

account of this Philistine. Your servant will go and fight

him. So clearly thinks this is a

joke. He's a boy.

He tells him that you're a youth, what can you do?

And then again, in this same matter of fact way, David tells

him what he's done, but not what he's done, but what he's done

with God by him where he has fought off lion and bear, not to

brag, not in this great guy who goes and kills lions and bears.

And he summarizes that with verse 37.

The Lord who rescued me from the power of the lion and the power

of the bear will rescue me from the hand of this Philistine.

It's just the fact he's just saying the fact this is God save

me from that will save me from that.

Don't worry about it. It's it's so blatantly just this

is how it is. Don't worry about it.

So Saul agrees. He has to.

He's gonna have a choice, right? No one else has come forward.

If anything, Saul should have been the one.

That's it, said previously. Saul is what, a head above

everybody else. So he's obviously a big guy

himself, not big enough for Goliath.

So David at this point, you know his brothers roasted him.

Saul is not. No one is on his side.

No ones saying good for you David, let's go do it.

No one but David is clearly resolute in not allowing God to

be dishonoured, let's put it that way.

So Soul gives him his armor, he won't wear it, tries it on.

I'm not used to this, doesn't wear it.

So his staff in his hand, he gets his goes against his five

smooth stones. There's nothing in the Bible by

mistake. Every word in the Bible is for a

reason. Even the smooth bit stones.

I found this out. Smooth stones fly better.

They're more accurate. So Goliath sees David, and this

is a good one too. Verse 42 He looked David over

and saw that he was little more than a boy, glowing with health

and handsome, and he despised him.

We're not talking about Dave being a good looking guy, he is

talking about him being a baby faced young youth with no battle

scars. Goliath is insulted by being

approached by this kid, where Goliath clearly is gonna win.

In his mind, he's not gonna get much glory from defeating this

kid. So it's not on about him being

handsome. It's on about him being, you

know, clean face, baby face. He's not a warrior.

He's not a fighter. What are you?

What are you putting in front of me here?

So then David goes back at him with verse 45.

David said to the Philistine, You come against me with sword

and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of

the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you

have defied this day. The Lord will deliver you into

my hands, and I'll strike you down and cut off your head.

Pretty pointed. So he says All we'll know,

right? All we'll know.

And then David we hear runs for the Oh no, let's read first 48

as well. As the Philistine moved closer

to attack him, David ran quickly toward the battle line to meet

him. He's running again.

This is the third time we've seen him running.

Whenever he's in movement, he's running.

Got nothing to say about that. He just runs a lot.

He doesn't hesitate. Let's, let's go.

We'll give that. Let me give that.

SO there's this. We're like 3/4 through the

chapter at least and then it's all been leading up to this

battle and it's over and adverse like it's it's quick as the

first time we've close to attack him.

David ran quickly toward the battle line to me and reaching

into his bag and taking out a stone he slung.

It struck the Philistine in the forehead.

The stone sank into his Ford and he fell face down on the ground.

Now. Yeah, now you can show it.

So this is a slingshot. Watch this.

It's not a real head because you get in slow motion too.

So that's a shepherd's sling. So that's what probably David

would have been using. Those things can fly like they

can fire us down 150 mile an hour.

It's insane. Anyway, there's lots of that

online. You can look at that later.

There's all sorts of competitions not killing,

they're just targets, targets. Um, so the point that it's over

in a flash, it's over in one verse.

If any of you been watching The House of David, I I haven't

really, but I did watch the two episodes on David and Goliath

just to see if there was anything in there and I was kind

of disappointed. It's very, I get it, it's

Hollywood stuff. But the whole moment where David

approaches Goliath is made into this long drawn out slow motion.

Goliath manages to get away 3 Spears at David while he's

running towards him. David dives out the way in slow

motion of course, and then he gets hit by 1, he gets knocked

out. And then this whole tense

moment, is he going to can't get up in time to get like like none

of that happened? None.

That's not the point of the story.

The story was that it was 1 stone out of the five is all he

needed right? It was quick and then he goes

and cuts off his head. We'll talk about that later.

And then Israel surged forward, and because of David's victory,

they pursued the Philistines. Bearing in mind Goliath had said

they would be their servants. Clearly not.

That was a lie. So they decided to run away

instead. They weren't going to be the

Israelites servants. Israel surged forward,

slaughtered them and plundered the camp, and that's basically

the whole chapter of David was taking us all.

After that, all this had happened, so we're kind of gonna

go back through that. That's the summary of the story.

First half, however, pretend you've had your ice cream.

So look at it. This there's gonna look at it

slightly different way. Let's just hear these few facts.

And who would you say I'm talking about?

I know you'll get it, but they're born in Bethlehem.

Came. Sorry I gotta drink.

I have sore throat this morning. Came from obscurity, lowly and

profession. Rejected by mankind, despised by

his brothers. Weaken the eyes of Israel's

shepherd, sent by his father on a mission and defeated the enemy

with his own weapon. You've just heard the story, so

you know we're talking about David, but we're talking about

Christ. The parallels are just

incredible. And we're gonna walk through

some of them. Like there's too many.

It's, it's crazy. And I've listened to some stuff

and like, my goodness, we'll do a bit as much as we can here,

but I'll try and roughly go through the story as we do some

of that. But I might jump around a little

bit. So the first thing is the

Goliath being like serpent. Like we've got a picture of his

armor. It describes his armor and it

was scales. So it, it was, you know, again,

that's not a mistake. There's not.

It was serpent like it was for a reason.

The the devil, that Satan the enemy, is often described in the

Bible as being the serpent. The couple of scriptures there

that define that. There are more you can search,

and there's more. The snake was more crafty than

any of the wild animals. You will crawl on your belly and

you will eat the dust. The days of your life.

He will crush your head. Well, isn't that what happened?

Right? That's exactly what happened.

This was talking about Christ, but this is what David did.

He crushed his head and Goliath fell face down, belly on the

ground with his face in the dust.

Verse 12, They're born in Bethlehem.

You know the parallel there. They were both born in

Bethlehem. We say shepherd.

David was a shepherd. Jesus was the Good Shepherd, the

shepherd of men, but the Good Shepherd Goliath taunted verse

16 the hat the and harassed the people of God for 40 days.

Again, it's not mistake 40 days is there?

Jesus was tested in the wilderness for 40 days.

The result? The end of that 40 days of trial

ended with a battle with David and Goliath.

Jesus 40 days of trial ended with a battle with him and

Satan. They were both sent by their

father. David was sent with bread.

We didn't talk about that. We said with bread and cheese,

but he was sent with bread. Christ came, was sent by His

Father as the bread of life, despised and rejected by men and

their brothers. We've Isaiah 53.

He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to Him, nothing in

His appearance that we should desire Him.

He was despised and rejected by mankind.

A man of suffering, familiar with pain, like one from whom

people hide their faces. He was despised and we held him

in low esteem. Again, talking about either one

of them right? Like it's the same story.

Not by sword or spear. The Lord saves is what David

said. And don't we know that about

Christ? The Zealots, when Christ came

and they wanted him as a leader, they wanted they wanted to take

up arms and fight the Romans. But when Jesus came, no, this is

not how it is. We're not fighting evil with

sword and spear. So the cutting off the head bit

Goliath sword, Goliath sword glyphs own sword that he

intended to defeat David with which at every anticipation he

was going to kill David was used as the final blow against

Goliath. Now we can assume he was already

dead with a stone in his forehead.

But David said this is what he was going to do.

And that's what he did, right? He cut off his head so the

enemy's weapon was used to defeat him himself.

Jesus did the same thing. He used Satan's weapon against

him to defeat him, saying his weapon was death and Christ

defeated it, right? He used death against him.

Satan destroyed Adam by using this tree in the garden, and

Christ came back and used a tree, the cross, to defeat

death. It's not a stretch.

This isn't trying to make it fit right.

It all goes together. It's the same story.

And then of course, we've got this, what I mentioned at the

beginning of this representative Warp warfare, this Champion

Warfare 1 for the fate of all, one champion for the fate of

all. What if Goliath had won?

What if, you know, then the Philistines, the Israelites

would be the Philistines slaves. So the whole of Israel was

dependent on the victory over Goliath.

David was there Victor for the whole nation.

Christ is our victor for the whole nation of believers.

Us. He's already being our victor.

So the interesting thing I've got out of this, as well as all

that is we have the whole story. So we can see this story and we

know the ending. You can watch House of David and

it can be all tense of slow motion, but you know the ending,

you know what's going to happen. The thing I feel I've really

been spoken to this is, well, Satan didn't.

He's not omniscient or knowing. He's not all knowing Goddess.

So when Goliath was put in front of the Israelite army, Satan was

expecting victory. He wanted victory.

He wanted to hurt God's people. He wanted to win that battle,

but we know the ending, right? But little did see and know that

this whole story, not only was he going to lose in the way he

did from a boy David, but this whole story was mapped out by

God to show the victory to come. It's not a made-up story that

was put in there to fit later. This is 1000 years before

Christ. Already recorded, already

written down, already true. And then we can look at it and

overlay it with the story of Christ victory and see the same

thing. It's the same thing got David

was called the priestly king right?

Like this is this is the story. This is what the story of David

and Goliath is, so I'm not taking away the kids message bit

it's course. We can use it to defeat our

giants and all those good things.

It is that, but it's not to be seen as the bravery of David.

David didn't talk that way. Like I said, it came across to

his brother, this arrogance that way.

It wasn't his bravery. It's nothing to do with his

bravery. It was his faith.

It was his faith and wanting to see God honoured, but more so

not wanting to allow God to be dishonoured, right?

He saw this dishonouring of God and like, no, this is not going

to happen. God, what do you want me to do?

He didn't go around criticizing anyone else for not doing

anything. It was like, oh, what do I gotta

do? So God's adequacy isn't the

right strong enough word, but God's adequately adequacy was

seen in David's weakness. It wasn't David's bravery, it

was God's work. So then Goliath in this story,

did I say good? I've I don't know if I did.

Glyphs name is called the exposer.

The real meaning is the exposure.

Did I already say that? Thanks, Jacob.

So that's what Goliath means. It's the exposure.

So that's what he was doing. He was, you know, exposing

Israel's weakness for those for those days.

So the glyph in this story is not our personal problems like

debt, fear, worry, those sort of things.

It's it's not, it's sin, it's Satan, it's death.

It's the things we don't have control over.

It doesn't mean all those other things are true that we get to,

you know, use God. But it's about the things that

we can't defeat on our own. And we need a champion.

We need Christ. We can't do it, so we need

Christ. The Israelites couldn't do it,

so God sent David. We can't do it, so we get

Christ. He's already done it.

So we're not David fighting our Goliaths with the Israelites on

the sidelines cheering them on, right?

It's who we are in this story. We're watching our king.

We've already had the victory. It's already been done.

We don't have to cheer him on anymore.

Such we It's done, it's done. Crisis paved the way for us to

go into the world and we get to in that last one of the last

verses we read 52 where they go in slaughter and plunder and we

don't get to slaughter and plunder.

Don't use those words as you go out and talk to non believers.

We're coming in slower, but we do get to follow and share his

victory, right? That's what it's about.

We get to see the victory and follow it.

So then what does that mean? What does that mean?

So living in victory, no condemnation.

Romans 81 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who

are in Christ Jesus. So we don't fight for victory,

we're saying that we fight from it.

It's very, very different. We're not.

We do have battles, we do have these things going on, but it's

already been won, so we've nothing to lose.

It's already done. The worldly problems that I

mentioned, we don't have to be David.

We look at them that that battle has already been won.

This is already done. When we fret or worry or fear,

really we're taking out of God's hands and not diminishing, you

know, we all three and worrying fear, that's what we do.

But when we do that is us taking it out of God's hands.

It's already done. We can we can give it to him.

We give it all, everything to him and then we leave it with

him. So when we look back at these

situations, and you know, I shared a bit when I was up last

time, my situation a couple years ago, when we look back at

our desperate moments, when we look back at our challenging

moments, we don't look back and see that our courage or bravery

was born out of us, do we? We see it was him, it was him

that gave us the solution. So that's why we need to look at

that when we look at things, when we're in it.

It's his victory that's already been done.

We can let go. The victory is in how He acted,

not how we act. So what does that do to we?

We live with our eyes fixed on the things of heaven.

Gives us a different perspective on all things.

We just get to call on His victory at all times.

Simple, right? It is.

We make it more complicated, but it is His victory is done.

So I'll finish with the next scripture.

Death has been swallowed up in victory.

Where O death is your victory? Where O death is your sting?

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.

But thanks be to God, He gives us the victory through our Lord

Jesus Christ. Amen.