40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 1 Samuel 16:14-17:11 (Episode 241)

Episode Date: November 16, 2020

Saul is struggling with an evil spirit, so David is called in to play the harp for him. Saul decides to keep David around him. And the Philistines have gathered for war again, but this time they have a very large man with them. Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network HWSS Conferences 1517 YouTube Donate

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast. Check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. And while you're over there, you can check out the events page where you can come and hang out with Chad and I and Loso and Scott Keith and Gretchen Ronovic and Jared C. Wilson and come listen to Andy Gullahorn play a bunch of music. That's all going to be taking place in Northwest Arkansas, Bentonville to be exact, April 16th

and 17th, 2021. I know you haven't been doing a lot of stuff this year. I know you've been locked up. I know you haven't been able to go hang out with people. Now's your chance. You can come hang out with us in the spring in the Ozarks. go get all the information just go to the events page or you can go to here we still stand.org click on that northwest arkansas event it's a two-day event we'd love to have you

come hang out with us chad your uh your book is officially out officially out officially out no more of this pre-order guys maybe you're one of those people that's like oh i don't pre-order i order when i know it's going to get stuck in the mail the day i click buy well this is your time now guys this is your time this is it you can get it you hit bye it's gonna go in the mail to you right then and there so unveiling mercy uh if you if you didn't pre-order and you're just uh you're waiting for it to be released it is released get that thing now get your uh get your christmas gifts going you know you can hang out with me as i go through it next year this is my plan chad i mean i've read a lot of it already but my plan is to actually read it every day next

year that's my plan all right cool cool yeah i guess i should probably reread it for like the fifth time i'm just i'm just like i just i just can't wait for how holy i'm gonna come out on the other side of this oh man you're gonna be so sanctified you're gonna yeah you can be like high pre-sanctification by the end of the year i assume like all that hebrew yeah the magic language it's gonna be awesome right everything went well uh super exciting day so uh glad to see it's finally there always when you do like this pre-order phase it always feels like it it goes for like four or five months yeah yeah so and then all of a sudden the day arrives and it's like yeah finally get that in people's hands yeah that's awesome so yeah man check that out i'll

put a link in the show notes all right well we left off with samuel uh anointing david as king while another king still remains yeah it's like a dangerous situation yeah this is this is not the way that you you don't you don't usually want to do it this way no it's gonna well and we'll see of course in the the next few chapters just how badly this goes you know i don't know if i don't know that saul ever actually finds out what samuel did i mean as far as like what happens in bethlehem maybe he did maybe he didn't but he certainly realizes pretty quickly that his his kingship is over and uh a new man is is on the horizon and he figures out of course he's already been told that god is going to raise up someone else he just doesn't know who this is but he's going to

figure he's going to put two and two together pretty quick yeah it's almost as if uh david is king elect here and uh and and current king is not a fan of this arrangement yeah yeah that would be the appropriate way to put it. So we have a juxtaposition between the two halves of this chapter with talk of the spirit. So the way this anointing scene ends in Bethlehem is that Samuel takes this horn of oil that he's brought with him, and he anoints David in the middle of his brothers. Of course, you probably all know that that word for anoint, the verb for anoint is where we get our word Messiah. So he Messiah-ed him. So an anointed one is a Mashiach. So he was Mashiach-ed here, anointed in the midst of his brothers. And interesting, when this anointing

happened, something else happened. It says the spirit of Yahweh came mightily upon David from that day forward. So this connection between anointing and spirit is pretty obvious here. You might think of Jesus' baptism like this, too. Even though his baptism was not his anointing, that wasn't when Christ was Messiah, still, you have him baptized, and what happens? Well, immediately, the Spirit of God descends in the form of a dove and lights upon him. So David here is little M, Messiah. He becomes the anointed one, and the Spirit rushes upon him.

and then at after that samuel basically just goes home it's like his job his job is done he's going to the next game that's kind of a weird thing right like all right man get that shepherd out here roll him up anoint him and then you're just like and i'm out yeah that's kind of weird conversations going on afterwards if you're david are you like uh so what am i doing yeah i know like you leave him some instructions like yeah just wait around yeah you know or start doing this or like how do you how do you get ready to be a king yeah i mean especially when there's one already you already there is a king just like hey you're the new king okay are you like am i the new king am i the next king i gotta wait for that like what's going on here

there's a big difference between new and next right and this is not real explicit uh what's going on yeah yeah so with a lot of unanswered questions i wish we i wish we do in fact a lesser man than david you know and we'll see this play out this way might be like well i'm the king now so that means i'm taking over uh i'm the man your time has come to an end it was short-lived and now it's me david doesn't doesn't do that because he's not interested in and going to war of assault or anything like that but it's not because he was given some special instructions here not to do that yeah yeah it is fascinating uh now when you said that i was thinking ahead yeah how many times david will say something like you you shall not touch the lord's anointed so he continues even

though saul is just horrible to him you know tries to kill him hunts him down gives him no peace despite all that even though david has multiple chances actually to kill saul he says nope nope I won't even I won't touch the Lord's anointing, even though he himself is anointed, even though that God has designated him to be the next king and even and even anointed him. He won't do anything to to expedite his his reign. He's going to wait and let the Lord do what the Lord's going to do. Yeah, I mean, I think David thinks like, well, God plucked me out of obscurity and said that I was going to be king. But I am not going to put myself in that position by removing the one that he had put in there in front of me. He might have chosen me to be king, but he's also going to have to remove him as king.

I'm not going to be the one to do that. Yeah, yeah. So David's restraint is exemplary. We've not seen that same restraint in other people in the narrative so far. people are always uh kind of rushing to make sure that you know god might promise something i'm thinking of abraham and and sarah god might promise something but you know if he drags his feet too long yeah well let's take measures into our own hands yeah help him out a little bit david can help god out let me go ahead and get rid of this other king so i can go ahead and have your

will come to pass where i'm king i think there's some practical wisdom there yes so i mentioned earlier the juxtaposition with the spirit so here's what happens between verses 13 and 14 so the spirit of the lord comes on david and then verse 14 which begins the next section says now the spirit of the lord departed from saul and not just that but it says an evil spirit from the lord terrorized him so a lot of spirit talk here and we're going to see more of this spirit talk through the next few next few verses i don't really know i'm not sure exactly what to make of all this? It's really a, it's quite a fascinating, fascinating description of how the Lord is at work here. I mean, as we all know, we tend to, we tend to talk about secondary causes.

So rather than saying God directly caused A, B, C, we'll say, well, this caused A, this caused B, this caused C. And yeah, we might trace all the causes back to God, but a typical Old Testament way of approaching things is to say, God did it. God closed her womb. God sent an evil spirit. God killed him, whatever it might be. That is the typical way that the Old Testament speaks. They don't talk of secondary or tertiary causes. And that's kind of what's happening here. So God takes his spirit away from Saul, and he sends an evil spirit to terrorize him or to assault him. And that verb can be translated several different ways. Whatever is actually happening here, it becomes pretty obvious that this signals a radical transition.

So even though Saul still came, he stole the Lord's anointed, the spirit that he once had has now been replaced by a spirit that is going to continue to kind of wreak probably physical and certainly psychological havoc with him. I wish we knew more about exactly what was happening with Saul when this went down. but it's evident it's obviously bad whatever's going on with him you know whether it's some sort of mental issues or just just kind of the sheer psychological terror that's happening to to him whatever he needs some uh he needs some assistance which of course is what we're about to have explained to us this is a tough thing i think for people you know when you read something like now the spirit of the lord departed from saul and a harmful spirit from the lord tormented him now there's a difference between the spirit of the lord and the spirit from the lord

that these are not the same things and and you might be like well really like a harmful spirit from the lord is that a thing right um and i think as you know at least the way that i read this is uh i think it's luther that says like the devil is god's devil yeah right um it seems to me that like when when the spirit of the lord departs it creates space for something to take its place yet even for something to take that space that is created um god has god has to allow it uh and so i mean we see the examples of this you know like when you know uh the the devil approaches god about job and this sort of thing and so it seems it seems that this is not like a the spirit of the lord obviously but that because god has suffered and because god has

removed his spirit and created the space for something else to occupy the author here is willing to say that it is from the lord since he himself is in control yeah yeah that's i think that's the best way best way to explain it it's kind of like uh i can't remember the exact language that jesus uses but about the analogy uses about the the house that's vacated and then all these other unclean spirits come and occupy that so this is a this is an interesting place in the old testament by the way that uh where we do have this kind of language you know we have we have exorcisms and demon possession evil spirits all over the gospels but it's not very common in the old testament but here we do have a case like this i mean when you look at what's about to happen

And it's almost like David is functioning as a sort of a musical exorcist, I suppose would be one way to put it. He's there to maybe not to completely exorcise Saul, but he is there to at least provide some relief through his, I guess you'd say, inspired playing of the harp. So this is one of these Old Testament parallels to what's happening in the Gospels, which I think is interesting because, of course, we have all these analogies between David and the son of David. So David is here having power over the evil spirits, just like the son of David will during his own ministry. Okay, so what's going to happen? Well, Saul's servants say to him, behold, now an evil spirit from God is terrorizing you. So let our Lord command us who are before you. And let's seek a man who's a skillful player in the harp.

and it will come to pass that when the evil spirit from God is on you, that he'll play the harp and you will be well. So somehow these guys just know exactly what's needed. So they come up, they come up with this, this proposal. And Saul's like, Hey, sounds good to me. Provide for me a man who can play well and bring him to me. Then we have this, this next verse just is a little over the top. it's almost like this has all been set up.

Like there's a guy there in Saul's court. He's just waiting, waiting for the chance because he says, so one of the young men, he steps forward. He's like, Hey, I know a guy.

So I've seen a son of Jesse, the Bethlehemite who is, he's everything. He's a skillful musician. He's a mighty man of valor. He's a warrior. He's one prudent in speech. And he's good looking.

On top of all that, the Lord is with him. I crack up because it's almost like he's a little overqualified. Most of these things don't seem like they have anything to do with the job. I need a bricklayer. I know just the guy. This guy's great at laying bricks. Also, he trains dogs. He's a very good looking guy.

He makes the best chili that you've ever had. You're like, what? you're bringing up stuff that has nothing to do you just need a bricklayer yeah that's perfect that's exactly right it's like yeah he sounds a little overqualified I mean I just need a guy

who can play the harp that's really all I'm looking for here it's almost like they're saying like this guy can play the harp he could also be your bodyguard I don't know what him being good looking has to do with anything to do with any of this I don't either

but talking about multi multi-talented he's got it all so it just comes across as a as a little over the top like this guy he's he's already like a david groupie i mean he knows this guy and he wants him there so he just kind of lavishes all these compliments on on david so saul's like hey i get sounds good to me so he sends these messengers to jesse with uh a pretty short to the point message he says send me your son, David, who's with the flock. So he, somehow he finds out his name and not just his name, but he finds out that, uh, he's going to be out there with a sheep. So Jesse, uh, maybe he's thinking, ah, you know, this is, this is kind of the, uh, this is the Lord at work after Samuel

left having anointed my son. This must be the Lord at work. Jesse's like, all right, sounds good. So So he takes a donkey and takes some bread and a jug of wine and a young goat. And he sent them to Saul by David, his son. So David doesn't go empty handed. David goes with a bunch of provisions for the king. I guess when you go see the king, you make sure you take gifts with you. And then everything, verse 21, everything looks great so far. David gets there and serves Saul and says Saul loved him.

And Saul loved him greatly. And he became not just all the other things, but he also became his armor bearer. And he liked him so much that Saul sent another message to Jesse saying, let David now stand before me for he has found favor in my sight. And then we wrap up the chapter with this. So it came about whenever the evil spirit from God came to Saul, that David would take the harp and play it with his hand and Saul would be refreshed. Literally in the Hebrew, it is, and a spirit would come to Saul.

So a spirit coming to Saul is translated here as he would be refreshed and be well, and the evil spirit would depart from him. So through whatever means, I don't know exactly how this worked, but God was using David's playing of the harp to drive away the evil spirit and then to bring a, I guess, a soothing, refreshing spirit to Saul in its place. Yep, God of means, even if it's playing the harp. Yeah, whatever God chooses to use, whatever earthly means He uses to accomplish His will, that is in accord with the way that He always works.

He's the God of means. You do have to wonder, if you're David or if you're Jesse, and then uh you know samuel comes in anoints david king and then saul's like yo send me your son up here this is a little sketch right you're like uh how's this gonna go did you hear something because i mean you have i mean we have to assume that saul doesn't know anything about this right yeah not at this point but it would seem like a little bit of a weird coincidence if you know if the kingdom is like immediately like send your son over here i want him to you know hang out with me for a little while i mean i don't know about you but

i'd be like i don't know if i'm sending my son up there i'm sure jesse had a little talk with david like hey uh you know when you get up there let's just not talk about the whole samuel thing let's let's avoid that conversation yeah i mean that would be a little nerve-wracking i would think when you first walked into the into the room with him for the first time yeah because as far as we know nothing else was communicated to david or to jesse it just says send me your son yeah okay yeah that's that could be sounds very threatening that could be it could be good or it could be very bad yeah yeah whenever someone that powerful sends for you it's probably gonna be one of the one of the other it's gonna be like a very very good day or it's gonna be the very

worst day of your life. One of those, one of those two. Well, and as it turned out, at least for David, it started out great. Saul liked him, not just liked him as a person, but he was able to benefit of course, from David's heart playing ability. So right away, what do we know about David so far? Well, we know that he's a shepherd. He is the youngest. He's obviously pretty good as a, as a musician. He's good looking. If, if we can trust the guy on the court, he's got all this other stuff going for him too you know i don't know how in the world he called him a mighty man of valor and a warrior because he was too young to be going to to battle yet must have heard about the the lion and the bear or whatever yeah rumors spread about this shepherd boy in

bethlehem who would seize a lion by the beard and strike him down yeah i'm surprised he didn't just go on you should see this dude with a slingshot it's out of control yeah so this is all is set up for what's about to uh what's about to come up in one of the most well-known chapters in the bible this is the the story the beloved story that anyone who went to school to sunday school uh grew up uh learning about david i mean i mean this is like uh i don't know i i don't maybe i'm hesitant to say the most but i don't know like i mean as far as like culturally appropriated stories in the bible i mean this is i mean it's got to be number one right yeah it's in the top three for sure yeah i mean just think of i mean there's a lot of biblical names and expressions

idioms that have entered into our our language but goliath is pretty close to the top there yeah i mean if you're if you're into sports like i am i mean you hear this all the time oh the analogy yeah over almost over yeah overdone right yeah i mean it's it's uh every march i mean my favorite so my favorite uh sporting event of the year is is the ncaa basketball tournament march madness you're gonna hear this term a million like every time that little school upsets that big school that's what it is i mean like it's the it's the regular david and goliath matchup i mean like it's that and cinderella story that's that's that's the two things you know so i mean i don't i don't know if you just walked up to a maybe that's because i

live in the south i don't know but if i i think i i could walk up to a hundred people and make a reference to david goliath they all know what i was talking about yeah i think even people who have not stepped foot in church yeah their whole life who've never read a page out of the bible they might not be able to tell you anything about the details of the biblical story but they know exactly what david goliath means they know it's little guy versus big guy little yep yep underdog versus the the powerful yeah so in that way the story has become uh thoroughly entrenched in our in our culture and as there's as a result of that as you might expect the kind of the the flip side of that is it also has become the most uh abused and misunderstood and misused portion of the old

testament as well i mean i mentioned earlier about sunday school anyone who's gone to sunday school Let me put it differently. Almost anyone who's gone to Sunday school has heard this story twisted into a moralizing fairy tale-ish kind of account. I mean, we've all heard, you know, you need to slay the Goliaths in your life or whatever trite expression is used. which uh as as will become obvious as we work our way through this pretty long chapter is not the message that that is being sent here i mean if anything one of the things that that uh comes across about goliath and we'll see this in the opening few verses is he looks like just this huge monstrous goofball out there on the battlefield who couldn't hardly defend himself to save his life because he is uh he's like he's like got 500

pounds of armor and weaponry on him i mean there's very little that goliath could do uh against maybe anyone except his own size because he's got he just like i mentioned he he just looks like a big uh big fool out there with like 125 pounds worth of metal strung over his body yes a hard guy to kill it would seem yeah yeah hard guy to kill but an easy guy to attack if you have any kind of projectile like a sling or a bow and arrow uh or even a spear a javelin i mean he's not gonna be that difficult to uh uh to engage in in battle with well anyway we're getting ahead of ourselves so let's start at the beginning so we're back with the philistines now our uh our enemies we have encountered for quite some time now dating all the way back to the book

of judges the philistines gathered their armies for battle so i'm thinking probably what happened was you know they heard rumors of saul's problems and so they thought we're going to take advantage of this and we are going to go on the offensive and try and get back some of the land which saul has taken away from us so they get their army together and they gather uh to to fight against the people of Judah. And verse 2 says, Saul and the men of Israel were gathered, and they camped in the valley of Elah, and they drew up in battle array to encounter the Philistines. So you got verse 3, the Philistines on one side of the mountain, and you got the Israelites on the other side of the mountain with a valley between them. So everything is set up here, right? And you

would think, if that's all you knew, those first three verses, you think, oh, we're about to have like a big battle between the two armies. But that's not going to be the way that it works. Verse four introduces us to the man, to Mr. Goliath. It says a champion came out from the armies of the Philistines named Goliath. He was from Gath and his height was, well, most translations will put in cubits uh six cubits and a span which is uh about so a cubit is usually designated as a foot and a half 18 inches so and a span is like the span of your hand so most of your most your measurements will come out to something like nine feet nine inches i guess something like that now one thing i will point out probably just this once i might mention it

once or twice after this, if it's significant. But for Old Testament scholars who like compare the Hebrew and the Greek, the Septuagint together, this is like one of the go-to places. Evidently, there's a number of discrepancies between the Greek translation's version of events and the Hebrew's version of events. the Septuagint, the Greek translation, is significantly shorter than the Hebrew version is. And people have various theories, you know, as well as the Septuagint, like the original story, it was shorter than the Hebrew expanded that, or was the Hebrew the original story and the

Septuagint shrunk that down? I mean, there's all kinds of theories. In the end, it really doesn't matter. Just pointing out, the reason I brought it up now is because the Septuagint also differs in some of the details. So the Septuagint only has Goliath being six feet, nine inches tall, which is just what a couple inches taller than what you are dan uh i'm six five almost almost so if the septuagint were right you're almost goliath's height there you go you're almost almost there yeah and that would be you know especially if you're not built like i am so i'm like i'm like a lean six you're leaning five machine yeah i'm a lean six six uh five and a half if a regular like a big dude like a big six five and a half dude is a is a pretty big guy i

mean i'm just a tall guy this happens to me a lot uh people ask if i shop at the big and tall and i say uh no because i'm only tall so the other stuff that big part those clothes don't fit me like i'm not big i'm just tall seems that the goliath is probably a big and tall shopper seems like what he is and you have to remember that the average height of people back then was shorter than it is now and so as much as probably five three ish i'd say five four or something like that yeah i mean so you know average height in the united states is something like 5 10 or something like that for a guy now and you know i i get asked all the time how tall i am uh now imagine you know the average height it's not 5'10 but it's 5'4 you know like well you're talking about a guy that is probably

you know 14 inches taller than everybody else there's a big guy yeah i wish we knew his weight uh that's one thing that that we're not that we're not told well the reason i'm saying he's probably a big guy because if you have like a hundred and something pounds of armor on uh i just know as you take my frame you throw a hundred and something pounds of armor i'm gonna be i'm gonna be struggling yeah oh yeah he's obviously not just tall but he's big there's there's no other way that he'd be able to hold up this uh this much weight so whether whether we take the uh the the extravagant number from the hebrew which is about nine foot nine or even the number from the septuagint which is six foot nine i mean either way comparatively this guy's big

so he's like you know he's like the mountain more or less he's like uh uh he's like thor you can take like certain guys I mean I think LeBron James is 6'9 you know 6'9, 280 just a massive dude now if you throw like a 5'4 guy in comparison I mean this guy looks like he will

mess you up yeah so his mirror size of his body was impressive but then we're not done yet because we have to talk about all his armor and by the way this is the most in the Old Testament, this is the most detailed description of armor that we have anywhere.

So head to toe, he's got a bronze helmet on his head, which is probably slightly different than what a lot of the Philistines wore, at least if we could trust the Egyptian art. So the Egyptians had a lot of encounters with Philistines. And the Egyptians would depict the Philistines sometimes in their in their artwork and many of them were wearing like a headdress so that's not what goliath has on and maybe he wore this because he was the man of the hour and he was ready for battle anyway whatever it was he had a bronze helmet on his head and then he was clothed with this scale like armor which weighed uh about 125 pounds something like that now many many commentators would point this out and rightly so that the word for scale that is used here is the same

Hebrew word that is used multiple other places to talk about like the scales on a fish or the on the scales on other reptiles so they suggest and I think they're onto something that Goliath is presented here is almost a a monstrous serpent kind of figure which I like because it actually fits with that kind of sub theme of the scriptures where the serpent is waiting to have his head crushed. Well, what's going to happen to Goliath's head? That's going to get crushed by David very, very soon. So even if you don't accept that, you do, I think, have to accept the fact that Goliath is one of many representations of the evil one who is going to be overcome by God's designated champion. So this isn't just a story about, you know, a superior force and an underdog. This is

a story about God working through a human being to prefigure the ultimate victory that's going to be won when his chosen one, his chosen champion, the son of David, crushes the head of another scaly one of the serpent himself so his scale armor is 125 pounds that's our reference to how much how much it weighed and not only has he does he have that on but he has uh bronze greaves which are your uh the armor over your legs specifically from your your feet to your knees so he's got those on and then we don't know for sure what he had slung between his shoulders uh the new american standard translates it as javelin i've also read it translated as scimitar i'm not sure what the esv has there say javelin too yeah javelin yeah yeah it's it only occurs this one

place in the hebrew bible so we're not exactly sure how to translate that but anyways another weapon whether it was a like a scimitar type blade or a javelin anyway it was slung between his shoulders and we're not even done yet we got to get to this spear so his spear was like a weaver's beam and the head of his spear weighed about around anywhere from 15 to 19 pounds 600 shekels of iron and then his shield carrier also walked before him now okay you're a giant i get it you're big you're tough you're strong but really throwing a spear with a 19 pound head on it that is not going to go very far i mean gravity is going to take over you're not gonna be chunking that spear 50 yards now this i mean this all seems like mostly for show right i think so yeah that's

what i mentioned earlier that he's just like he's on display out there he just made to look big and tough and strong and i'm not saying he wasn't it's just that he almost looks like a buffoon out there because there's not a whole lot he can do he's way down with all of this he's not going to be able to fight very well with the weapons that he that he does have he's going to throw that 19 pound spear five or ten yards at the most and that's going to that's going to be it so he's in other words goliath is he's positioned for hand-to-hand combat and that's about it that's really all that he's going to be able to to accomplish okay so and he has a this you know a shield bearer in front of him who's an extra extra protection in case someone

comes at him. Well, he walks out in front of Israel and he gives this little, his little speech. Why do you come out to draw up and battle array? Am I not the Philistine and you servants of Saul choose a man for yourselves and let him come down to me. If he's able to fight with me and kill me, Well, then we will become your servants. But if I prevail against him and kill him, then you shall become our servants and serve us. And then he said, I defy the ranks of Israel this day.

Give me a man that we may fight together. And then we have this concluding verse to this particular section. When Saul and all Israel heard these words of the Philistine, they were dismayed and greatly afraid. yeah so uh well what's going on here well this is i wish i had it in front of me uh i cannot i think the word is mono is it monomachia anyway there is a there's a greek word that's used to describe what's happening here so often what you what you had ancient warfare is you would not have two armies clash with everybody fighting instead you would choose your champion and the other side would choose their champion. And these two guys would fight as representatives of their entire

army. So Goliath isn't just making stuff up when he says this. He's more or less saying, okay, I'm representing the Philistines. You send a guy to represent the Israelites. The two of us will duel it out. Whoever wins, that army will be declared the winner. And whoever loses, that army will be declared the loser. And you'll have master and servant that's established when this one-on-one battle is finished. Well, this is sort of a way to be like, a lot of guys here, a lot of people are going to die, or

we could do it this way. Yeah, so it makes sense. It's a whole lot better than having two armies clash with a whole lot of people dying. And this was not just in this particular battle. This happened a lot of times in ancient warfare. The problem was, of course, as we

saw, that nobody from the Israelite army was willing to go out and fight. Now, there's a There is an issue here, because if you think back to the days of the book of Numbers, you realize that the history is, maybe it's not repeating itself, but it is certainly rhyming here. Because what happened with the Israelites when they came to the brink of the promised land is kind of what's happening now with Saul as they're facing this Philistine giant. You will remember that this is not the first time we've encountered giants. you know there were giants in the promised land and when the israelites got to the border of the promised land they were scared to death because the spies came back and they said yeah you know

country's great however there is a problem and it's literally a big problem because there are these these big people there these giants there and us compared to them is like we're grasshoppers so what happened with the israelites the exact same thing that happened here with saul and his army. They were dismayed and they were greatly afraid. And so they refused to cross over and to do battle against them. And we all know how that story ended. The Israelites ended up wandering for 40 years in the wilderness. Now, after that time, when they came to the promised land, it wasn't as if the giants had disappeared. They were still there, except this time under the leadership of Joshua and Caleb and men such as them, they crossed over. They did battle and they killed,

they conquered the promised land and they killed a bunch of the giants and those who were left were told in the book of Joshua I think it's Joshua 11 those who were left ended up guess where they ended up in the patapalus of the Philistines they went down there to cities like Gath and Escalon and some of these other Philistine cities and that's where they settled so Goliath is a descendants of those people who were driven there by Joshua and the Israelites. So it's kind of come back again to a decisive moment in Israel's history. What's going to happen? Is Israel going to fight against these giants with the help of the Lord, or are they going to cower in fear and once more repeat the same mistakes as their forefathers?

Yeah, it also tells you that Goliath probably doesn't have a lot of real fond feelings for the children of israel yeah yeah there's uh there's a history yeah there's a history between his people and uh and the israelite people i'm sure he's been told bedtime stories about how terrible they are yeah yeah i'm sure that he was he's just itching he's itching for uh for a fight to kind of uh repay what was what was done to his to his ancestors and keep in mind too this this isn't just you know trash talking from one army to another he's not only defying the armies of israel he is also defying the god of the israelites yeah because they didn't they did not think of this as some sort of secularized warfare all of this was theological warfare so whoever won

their god would also win you know did the did the philistines win well they would have thought their god gave them victory and thus they would have thought yahweh was defeated and then the the uh opposite of that would have been true as well so what we're looking at here is a is a momentous occasion. It's a theological battle, much like happened in Egypt, that happened in the Promised Land, and now that is happening once more.

So we will pick it up there next time and see how God is going to raise up another Joshua, whose name is David, and we'll get all the details next week. Well, next week, yeah, we do the Sunday School Corrective next week. It's going to be good. Yeah, you don't want to miss it.

David and Goliath next week. We're going to do the true story. Not that Sunday School felt bored. It's more gruesome. It's very much more gruesome. It's less about you than you think. It's going to be great. All right, guys, go over to Amazon and order Chad's book.

It's out. You're going to need that to do your daily devotions for 2021. You're going to need that to get that mercy unveiled. So go check that out. Chad, I will see you next week. All right, see you here. We'll see you next time.