40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 1 Samuel 17:12-51 (Episode 242)

Episode Date: November 23, 2020

It's all David and Goliath in this episode. David arrives at the battlefield to check on his brother and is deeply offended by the insults of the Philistine Champion and the lack of faith in the Israelite army. David volunteers to fight Goliath but he isn't doing it alone. 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. While you're over there, make sure you go to the events page to sign up for the events that are coming up. The first one that's coming up is in Bentonville, Arkansas. The Great Ozarks in the Spring.

It's in April, 16th and 17th, two-day event. You want to be there. I mean, you've probably been all cooped up. Come out to the great northwest Arkansas and hang out with Chad and me and a whole bunch of other people. We're going to have a concert with Andy Gullahorn. It's going to be a great time. You can get all the details, see the whole roster of who's going to be speaking over on the website.

And also, you know, we are doing Here We Still Stand again, and you can get tickets for that. And it is the early bird time to get tickets for that. So you want to get those tickets before January 1st. But don't just wait. Christmas is going to come around. You can get busy. You're going to forget. New Year's Eve is going to roll around.

Boom, gone, missed it. You want to get in for that low, low rate, you got to get in right now. So get over there and register for that. That is in October of next year. Chad, we got some David and Goliath here. We're dabbling into the most famous of Bible stories. Yeah, and it's all about moralism. Or not.

Yeah, this is, as we talked about last time, this is like one of the favorite go-to stories of people who like to moralize the Old Testament. Be like David. Be brave. Be strong. Kill the giants in your life. I hate to disappoint anyone, but that is not the approach that we're going to take.

Yeah, we got 11 verses into chapter 17 of 1 Samuel this last time. So we got to see exactly what Goliath looks like. He's a big dude, depending on whether you follow the Hebrew or the Greek. He's either, you know, about nine foot nine or he's six foot nine, whatever. He's a big guy. He's either three feet, three inches taller than me, or three inches taller than me. Which, still, he's a tall guy. There's a big difference.

I know guys that are three inches taller than me. I don't know anyone that's three feet, three inches taller than me. Yeah, that's slightly different. And, of course, he's not only tall, he's evidently a pretty hefty guy because he's got all this armor, and he's not crushed under the weight of the armor. his uh his armor alone weighs like 125 pounds now chad you're a guy that that visits the gym on a pretty regular basis so i mean you're you're you're in pretty good shape how much impaired as a you know as a dude who lifts weight as lifts weights and stuff how impaired would you be in a

with 125 pounds of armor on you i i would be i would be a sitting duck is what i would be If I had that much armor on me, yeah, the guy could dance in circles around me, and I would be unable even to defend myself. Now, I'm sure Goliath, of course he's a lot bigger, he probably would have been able to defend himself fairly well in close combat. But if there's a guy standing up 20 yards away with a bow or 15 yards away with a spear or however close the David got when he pulled his sling out, this guy, he doesn't have a chance. and he is like we like we talked about last time this is mainly a show you know this is this is the the circus act where the big guy comes out and he hollers some threats and looks all menacing in order to scare the the opposing army i actually have an example that doesn't work perfectly but just just the other day i was helping my brother-in-law pick up some bags of concrete

and uh he'd ordered the the 80 pound bags of quick dry cement why they don't look like they weigh 80 pounds they're not so small they're not that big i grabbed one of these things and like sort of like in a big motion grabbed it and threw it over my on my shoulder i just wasn't thinking that 80 pounds was that heavy and threw it and like it i almost ate it like i almost fell right i mean i didn't and then i like waddled over the truck and throw it in the back of the truck if i i couldn't i couldn't have run with it no no like on my shoulder there's no way like that was like i was very much weighed down like with 80 pounds of concrete on my shoulder i was a young man uh for several summers i was a i worked for a roofing crew and i can remember

climbing ladders with a bundle of shingles slung over my shoulder and that was that was not easy yeah and they don't weigh 120 pounds and they don't weigh nearly 120 pounds yeah i i don't know the whole uh the whole scene here is is a little bit ludicrous with with this much stuff on him but uh i guess you know he wanted to look impressive well and with all this armor maybe i think of uh you know what is it the hobbit you know with the it's got the dragon it's got like all the all the scales and it can't you can't uh you can't penetrate it with a bow and arrow or a spear or any of this kind of stuff it's got one missing scale underneath its wing or whatever and you got to hit it right there it seems like maybe this is goliath's tactic well if i just put

you know iron all over my body and since i'm big enough that i could move around a little bit with it all over me i'm gonna be impossible to kill you know unless someone hits me right in the forehead yeah that's the chink in his armor right there it seems like that's the what you're doing there you're like you can hack away i've got cast iron all over my body except for my face yeah good luck with it that's what he looks like and uh he also is he's not silent in uh verse eight he uh he walks out there in front of the ranks of israel and he defies them right why do you come out to draw up in battle array. Am I not the Philistine and you servants of Saul? Choose a man for yourselves and let him come down and fight. So he's challenging them. He's, as I discussed last time, this was a,

this was a military tactic where you would have the champions from each army face each other and whoever won, that would be the winning army. But as we see from verse 11, this is not going to happen, not with any of the Israelites who are currently there. Saul and all Israel heard the words of the Philistine, and they were dismayed and greatly afraid. So that's where we left off last time. And in verse 12, we're going to be introduced to our friend David, find out what has been up with him. So we've already met him in chapter 16. He was a shepherd, and then he was anointed secretly as the replacement king. And then we find out in the latter half of chapter 16, that he is also a very talented musician.

So his resume is going to be filled out even more because we find out not only is he a shepherd, not only is he a musician, but he's pretty unafraid when it comes to taking on something that's dangerous. Verse 12. Now, David was the son of the Ephrathite of Bethlehem and Judah,

whose name was Jesse. And he had eight sons. We know this already. Jesse was old in the days of Saul, advanced in years among men, and it says that the three older sons of Jesse had gone after Saul to the battle, and the names of those three sons were Eliab and Abinadab and Shammah. Now, all of this is just kind of recounting information that we have been exposed to in chapter 16, but this is often the way the Bible works, right? the Bible does not hesitate to repeat itself. And it might tell us something that it told us a chapter before or five chapters before, but this is just kind of the way that repetition seems to be a favorite rhetorical device of the biblical writers. So we're reintroduced to David's

pedigree. These are his brothers. This is his dad. This is where they live. And then it says that David was the youngest. Now we're told something new here that the three oldest sons, they were already soldiers. They followed Saul. And David, he would go back and forth. So he went back and forth from Saul to tend his father's flock at Bethlehem. So we're finding out a little bit more about what David was up to. We know that he was playing his harp for Saul because he was troubled by this evil spirit but evidently he would kind of go back and forth so he'd you know with Saul for a while at home for a while taking care of the flock back and forth back and forth in verse 16 says that the Philistine came forward morning evening for 40 days and took his stand

yeah so this is this is quite the quite the thing man over a month of this guy coming out every day saying send someone out here and let's let's all go home let me just kill him and we'll just we'll call this good you have like i'm thinking what's going on in the camp of the israelites during these uh this month i mean are they like just sitting around are they are they training uh what's going on here it's got it's kind of an odd scene when you think about it two armies camped close to each other for 40 days and nothing happening except one of the philistines going out every day and defying the ranks of israel i tell you the most shocking thing about this Chad is that it was, you know, 40 days and not, you know, 34 days or 27 days. Yeah. Yeah. Very

shocking for something to be 40 days in the Bible. Very odd. So, uh, no one, no one of course has come down to fight him. And we find out that, uh, Jesse is going to send David to check on his brothers. That should sound familiar. That's exactly what Jacob did with Joseph way back in the book of Genesis. Jacob's like, hey, Joseph, I want you to go check on your brothers, see how they're doing. They're shepherding the flock at such and such a place. So here we have a repetition of this, a father sending his younger son to check on the brothers. And as we'll see, once he gets there, these brothers, these older brothers aren't too happy to see their younger brother. Now they don't do to him what the brothers of Joseph did to him, but we do have

kind of this thematic repetition right where the the older brothers are not happy to see the younger brothers show up especially when he starts mouthing off so uh jesse sends david he says uh take some food take this uh take this grain and take this bread and and go to the camp where your brothers are at oh and by the way and take some cheese he's got these uh 10 cuts of to the commander of their thousand and says, look into the welfare of your brothers and bring back news of them. So Jesse just wants to see how everything's going. These three older brothers, we don't know how long they've been fighting for Saul, but evidently they've been with him for a while. And so Jesse just basically wants to find out how things are, how things are going.

so david gets up and uh leaves the flock with somebody else takes the supplies went as his father commanded him so he gets close to where the camp is at and it says that this was happening while the army was going out in battle array and shouting the war cry and israel and the philistines drew up in battle array army against army so i suppose this is when goliath would come out every day, right? Two armies go out. Goliath steps out and issues his challenge. So David is about to be privy to everything that's been happening. He leaves his stuff with whoever was in charge of the baggage, and he runs to the battle line in order to greet his brothers. And he's talking with them. And then all of a sudden, the champion, the Philistine from Gath named Goliath, was coming

up from the army of the philistines and he spoke these same words and david heard them and then verse 24 tells us what we have already been told that all the men of israel saw the man and they fled from him and were greatly afraid so if this seems kind of drawn out it's on purpose i mean this is a this is a long chapter it's like 50 something verses so i think the reason that it's kind of repetitive and drawn out is because it wants to draw us in it's trying to set the stage for everything that is that is about to about to go down so it wants it wants to impress upon us so that we have no doubt that there's there's nobody there nobody there who's a regular soldier either a regular soldier or a commander or even their leader Saul who was a big guy right no don't

forget, Saul was the taller than any other Israelite. So if anybody should have been out there fighting Goliath, it was Saul. But nobody is. And this has been happening over and over and over. And now we're told not only that they were afraid, but they ran away. So this is not looking good for Israel. The men of Israel, they start talking in verse 25. Have you seen this guy who's coming up surely he's coming to defy israel and then we add this this little detail here this is going to spice things up a little bit it will be that the king will enrich the man who kills him with great riches and will give him his daughter and he will make his father's house free in israel so you're gonna if you if you kill goliath you're gonna get rich uh you're gonna get you're gonna

marry into the royal family and your your house your family is going to be free that probably means like free from taxation or free from servitude or something like that in a way it's it's pretty sweet deal right that's all it's all dependent upon the fact that you have to kill goliath that's there's a little caveat big caveat there that's the only caveat there so uh david speaks up now david said to the men who were standing around him what will be done for the man who kills this philistine and takes away the reproach from israel for who is this uncircumcised philistine that he should taunt the armies of the living god so right away i mean david barely gets these words out of his mouth before you you even if

you don't know the story, you know what's going to happen here. Because no one so far has spoken like David has spoken. First of all, he highlights the problem. So it's not just that this guy is wanting to kill one of the Israelites and win the battle. It's that he is reproaching Israel. So that's the one thing here. He's reproaching the people of God. He's basically defying them. And as I mentioned last time, this is not just army against army. This is also God against God. This was a theological war as much as it was a regular military conflict. It seems like David is pretty offended at this entire thing,

probably offended that this has gone on this long. I mean, it seems that in his mind every day that Goliath marches out there and talks a bunch of smack uh on the god of israel that this is like you just lose every day like you're just allowing your god to be uh to be reproached for 40 days straight i mean he david is almost uh it seems like appalled at the faithlessness of this entire army yeah yeah that's the accurate way it's the accurate way to put it and uh i think the people around him are are catching that hint and certainly his brothers are right so the people around him they say well here's what's going to be done for the man who kills him and then the oldest brother Eliab of

David well he hears David talking and he's he's mad says his anger burned he got hot-nosed against David as the Hebrew would say it you can just you know I don't have a brother you have brothers so probably appreciate this more than more than i can but uh i can just imagine this older brother walking over to david looking down at him and saying why have you come down and with whom have you left those few sheep in the wilderness i know your insolence and the wickedness of your heart for you have come down in order to see the battle does that not just sound like one brother talking to another brother what are you doing here anyway this happened we're the sheep this is the last time i saw my little brother who by the way is bigger than me taller than me bigger than me

but he is my littlest brother and uh last time i was around him uh he shoved me out of the way because this is what we do because we're still like that he's walking by me and he's walking by me not that there's not enough room to get by me but decides he needs to walk through me just because so kind of shows you his brother yeah and i said and i told him i was like boy you better and watch it i will beat the crap out of you and uh he turns around looks at me and he's like you couldn't beat the crap out of a turd this is this is a non this is like a never-ending sort of thing uh with with the four boys in my in my parents house yeah trash talking between brothers so that's exactly what's going on here with uh with david's oldest brothers what are you doing

here you know why don't you get back to the sheep kid yeah and i know the way you are you and your insolence and your wicked heart you just came up here to see what's going on at the battle and then of course you got to appreciate david as a brother responding he's like what have i done now i'm just asking a question so this this brother to brother uh back and forth is pretty hilarious very this this is one of those one of those stories about david that you got to love because it's just so real right there's a lot of things you you you read the bible it's like yeah man i just can't it's kind of hard to put myself in that situation or a lot of a lot of people that it's a little bit difficult to understand but david david is like the most human of all the

biblical characters like you just yeah you can you can see every single one of these things happening with him just because he's uh uh he's he's he's ordinary and human in just the exact same way that we are at least that i mean that's the way the story presents him yeah he has this in this at this stage in his life anyway he has two things uh one is this sort of a youthful zeal and uh bravado bravado and arrogance probably uh but also uh i don't think that david and it's obvious this is obviously the case david is offended that there's that no man there possesses enough faith to believe that god is going to give them the victory right so i don't think david goes out there and thinks if you take god out of it me versus this guy i'm for sure

gonna win no he's not that he doesn't not that much bravado yeah he doesn't believe so david's like i think david believes it doesn't matter who you send out there and i think this is why he's so willing for it to be him i think he's like you could send send any anyone who is a believer in yahweh out there and he will win yeah yeah yeah so he's that's one of the things you got to love about him too is he has this remarkable faith you see this multiple times in his life uh i mean there's plenty of dark times too but but you see this remarkable faith that he has and and of course in his psalms it comes out over and over and over about his distrust his trust in the lord Anyway, to go on with the story.

So he starts talking to some other people around him. He's not going to talk to his brother. So he starts saying the same thing to the people around him. Well, he's talked enough to where people pick up on this and they actually go and tell Saul. They tell Saul what he's saying. And so Saul sends for him. And here's what David says to Saul when he gets there. He says, let no man's heart fail on account of him.

Your servant will go and fight with this Philistine. Now, I think this is a statement of faith from David, but it might present itself in the ears of the hearer as absurd arrogance. No one, no one, no one worry. I'll go take care of it. I got this. I got this. Yeah. Yeah. David is probably, by the way, I don't think we've talked about his age. So typically when you were 20 is when you became a soldier. We know that from the book of Numbers. So he's not 20. You know, is he 19? Is he 18, 17, 16? We really don't know.

I mean, a lot of the pictures show him he's like 10 years old. I seriously doubt he's 10 years old. No, he's he's probably I'm guessing he's he's a teenager. I've always thought of him and I have no reason to do this other than the reasons you mentioned he's an upper teenager he's somewhere between 16 and 19 probably

yeah so he's a junior senior in high school age something like that but he yeah he's like don't worry I'll take care of the Philistine for you and then Saul says no

you're not able to go fight this Philistine uh you're you're a kid he says you are but a youth and he's been a warrior from his youth so we of course we don't know how goliath is but uh he's been he's been at this a long time david uh you're a kid well he's been fighting since he was a kid he's got a lot more a lot more age and experience than you do david is is is convinced he can do this he says look look this is the way this is the way it works. I was tending my father's sheep. And if a lion or a bear came and took a lamb from the flock, here's what I'd do. I'd go out and I'd attack him and I'd rescue the lamb from its mouth. And if it rose up against me, well, I just seize it by its beard and strike

him and kill him. He says, your servant, he's speaking to the third person here, which is Kind of strange, but your servant has killed both the lion and the bear. And this uncircumcised Philistine, he's going to be like one of those since he has taunted the armies of the living God. Yeah, there's a couple of amazing things. One, just him saying, look, I'm out here slaying lions, slaying bears, it's no thing. Then the derogatory, this uncircumcised, he doesn't ever give this, he refuses to address this person by their name.

this uncircumcised Philistine, just letting them know that he's, look, this guy is not part of the family of God here. This is someone who is defying our God. And this is important because he says, he'll be like one of them. Why will he be like one of them? Not because David's like, because I'm incredible. But he says, he'll be like one of them because he has defied the armies of the living god yeah he almost treats him he almost like lowers him to the level of a beast he's like yeah he just it's just like another animal i've killed a lion i've killed a bear i'll kill this guy too no no problem at all yeah i mean that is something to just pause and reflect on that david has done this he's like how do you do that how do you seize a lion

by the beard and kill him uh i'm sure a lot of our listeners uh and you too dan you probably watched that video that guy was at in utah you know he's like walking out in the middle of nowhere he's got his phone a cougar out there and a cougar uh follows him for like it's like five minutes or more he's walking backward the whole time he's trying to act big and mean even even though you can you can hear the fear and desperation in his voice it is terrifying oh yeah i i could barely watch it uh but okay the reason i bring it up so all right you're in that situation can you imagine oh i no problem let's go over there and grab that mountain lion by the ear and whack it with a rock inside of its head we'll be we'll be done with it all that to say

david has at least earned uh earned my my respect if he's taking out a bear and a lion yeah david's got two things he's got he he seems that he is even in his own person pretty fearless but then he has also got a lot of faith yeah and so he's both yeah so he's someone who's not naturally afraid of stuff apparently and also believes that god is going to and he's and as i said he says that he's going to be taken down like one of these beasts because he has defied the armies the living god and then when when saul says no and we're about to see this david almost says like no you don't understand like you're you're looking at me thinking that it's me that's going to go out there and do this but i'm going to be delivered yeah yeah that next verse is i think it's i don't

know if it's my favorite verse in this chapter but it's pretty close david says the lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear he will deliver me from the hand of this philistine the reason one of the reasons i like that is because your your translations probably all have paw paw hand but in hebrew it's all hand yeah so it's like uh we don't translate it that way because we don't talk about the hand of a lion and the hand of a bear we talk about their paws but in hebrew it's all the same so the lord who delivered me from the hand of the lion and from the hand of the bear will also deliver me from the hand of this philistine so i'm not I'm not concerned because it's really not me who does it.

God's done this with me through me before, and he's going to do it again. So I guess that convinced Saul because he's like, all right, go and may the Lord be with you. But Saul thinks that he's got to make David look like the Philistine in order to kill the Philistine. So he wants to dress David in his armor. So Saul puts, you know, all his bronze helmet on David's head and all his armor on him. And David girded the sword over his armor. He tried to walk, but it just wasn't going to work out. This is he had not tested them.

So David says to him, I can't go with these. I've not tested them. So he took them off. This is one of the themes that we're going to see developed as we go through here. that Saul is a man who likes his weapons, his spear especially. We'll get to that later in the chapter, but David does not need that. He's got something a lot more powerful than the armor of Saul. So instead, he takes what he knows.

He takes a stick, which was presumably like his shepherd's staff, and he chose the famous five smooth stones from the brook, put them in a shepherd's bag in his pouch and the sling was in his hand and he approached the Philistine. So I'm thinking these were five smooth stones because when you throw,

when you cast a rock with a sling, you want it to be as smooth and circular as possible. I speak from experience here. You want it to be like a disc. Yeah, I mean, I grew up with, I didn't have a sling, but I had a slingshot. yeah yeah you don't want to if you start if you're picking rocks that like are shaped in weird sorts of ways if they're not smooth especially round they're not gonna go

straight yeah yeah they just don't fly straight so you want smooth stones for your sling and one thing to keep in mind here too is that and this sometimes sometimes gets uh kind of downplayed david did not walk out there without a serious weapon armies at this time would uh have archers they would have uh spearmen and they had the guys who were the the slingers so a lot of professional soldiers went to battle with nothing but a sling that was their weapon of choice and they were deadly accurate with these so we know from a lot of a lot of ancient texts that armies all over the ancient near east would have soldiers whose primary purpose was to sling stones think about it just imagine getting a bunch of uh uh baseball pitchers i mean like professionals

and uh taking them into into some sort of battle where all you have are like rocks and sticks and stuff like that you're gonna have a a very superior advantage because those guys can throw hard they can grow fast they can throw accurate yeah i mean at that point a slingshot is the closest thing you've got to a bullet i mean yeah you have archers which you can you can sort of see some of that coming you know you get guys with slingshots out there that's like getting shot i mean they don't you don't see that coming right yeah i mean that really was it was the closest thing to uh a rifle i mean they were it was a an accurate projectile they could throw it a long ways and uh when you get a when you get a sling over your head and you release that rock i don't know

what the speed is that it's moving at but it's very very fast so i say all that because sometimes Most people get the impression that all he had was a sling. Well, the sling was a serious weapon at the time. So anyway, back at the story, the Philistine came out, approached David. He's got a shield bearer in front of him, and he looks at David, and it says he disdained him because he was but a youth, and he was ruddy with a handsome appearance. So the Philistine says to David, am I a dog?

am i a dog that you come to me with sticks and the philistine cursed david by his by his gods so this is hilarious because you know he's offended come on i am goliath of gath and you're sending some kid out here with a stick have a little respect right yeah yeah david does have one of the all-time great comebacks here yeah he does oh well felicity he's gotta he's gotta insult him some more he says come to me and i'll give your flesh to the birds of the sky and to the beasts of the field and here's david's reply you come to me with a sword a spear and a javelin but i come to you in the name of the lord of host the god the armies of israel whom you have taunted. This day the Lord will deliver you up into my hands, and I will strike you down and

remove your head from you. And I will give the dead bodies of the army of the Philistines this day to the birds of the sky and the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, and that all this assembly may know that the Lord is not delivered by sword or by spear, for the battle is the Lord's, and he will give you into our hands. i gotta admit i don't care who i was facing down that would freak me out yeah that that that's the kind of speech that would i think make even this philistine stop and reconsider whether he wants to go to battle against this guy yeah it's one of the it's one of the best speeches i think in the we have in the scriptures yeah just for the the power of its rhetoric and the conviction

that's that stands behind it you can tell that with david there's not there's not an ounce of fear when he he marches onto the battlefield knowing full well that he's going to win there's just like no doubt whatsoever yeah so as far as faith goes this is this is this is definitely exemplary here yeah oh yeah i mean david is basically telling goliath that he has made a huge mistake uh and this huge mistake is goliath thinking that he's fighting david yeah that's really what's going on here this is what this is uh kind of behind everything that's happening here it's not army against army it's true god against false god it's not so much a giant against shepherd as it is the false god's representative versus the true god's

representative. So David is about to make a, uh, a clear theological point in, uh, in this battle. So, uh, they, they go out against each other and David ran quickly to the battle line to meet the Philistine. David puts his hand into his bag. He took one, took one stone and slung it. And, uh, and he struck the Philistine on his forehead. The stone sank into his forehead so that he fell on his face to the ground. Thus David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and a stone and he struck the Philistine and killed him.

But there was no sword in David's hand. So he runs over, stood over the Philistine, took his sword and drew it out of its sheath and killed him and cut off his head with it. And when the Philistines saw that their champion was dead, they fled. So the whole battle, when you get right down to it, is only a couple of verses long.

There's a lot of lead-in to the battle itself. Yeah, this battle seems like it lasts about 45 seconds. Yeah. Yeah, at the most. So they meet each other. David slings his stone. It's not exactly... We had him killed twice, really.

So the stone struck him and killed him. And then David takes his sword and drew it out and killed him. and the cut off his head so he wanted to make sure double sure he's double dead this guy's yeah he's double dead if you want to know and i'm sure you guys you guys get this i hope you get this um as much as an exemplar that david is of faith the point of the the story is obviously not like if if we could just have the faith of david then we can go out there and do all this crazy stuff which of course is the way this is usually taken but david as a type of christ is this unlikely one who goes out in the name of the Lord and defeats everything that would be trying to

kill us. It defeats the representative of all our enemies, right? And so David then stands in the place of Christ and takes down the giant of sin, death, and the devil, and even uses its own sword. Death is the devil's sword, and the way that Jesus defeats death for us is by dying, and so he will just he will cut off the head of death with death yeah yeah that's that's the whole point of this uh the whole point of this story and it and it fits with we've talked about this before this this theme of what i've called the uh the gospel of the crushed skull you know you we encountered this already in genesis 3 15 where you have the prophecy of the head of the serpent being crushed and then we have all these head crushings or beheadings that take place in the scriptures

where over and over the enemy either gets a severe blow to the head or gets his head chopped off. We've already seen this in 1 Samuel with the god Dagon. When the ark was taken to the Philistines, their god fell and his head was chopped off. In fact, it's kind of a repeat of the story here with Goliath falling down headfirst to the ground and having his head removed. The Philistines had their god, their idol,

But in many ways, they were probably also idolizing Goliath because, of course, he was who he was. But God prevails over them both. And so this theme of the gospel of the crushed head, we see it scattered throughout the Old Testament. And this is just all preparing the way. These are all like little good Fridays, if you will, all preparing the way for what is going to happen when the son of David comes. And I love the point that you made. I mean, death is killed by death, right? So, Goliath's sword is eventually what cuts off Goliath's own head.

And the fact that, yeah, I mean, it wasn't Saul that did it, right? It wasn't even one of his soldiers. It was this teenager that came from shepherding the flock that was able to do this. So, this is another one of those God choosing unlikely people or unlikely means in order to accomplish his will. This story, like a lot of the other stories that we encountered, are just kind of examples of the theology of the cross, where God works things backwards. Yeah, and if you're going to allegorize it, then Goliath has to be sin, death, and the devil, David has to be Jesus, and we have to be the children of Israel wondering who's going to save us. Right, yeah. That's how that goes, right?

That's how this works, yes sir. And that's it, man. We're out of time. We didn't quite get through the whole chapter. Well, I guess next week we'll wrap up the chapter and find out what David's going to do with his head. That's essentially the story, and David is going to continue to be the main character. And then next chapter, we'll see how things go with Saul. Everything seems to be pretty good right now. Yeah, well, just wait. All right, guys. Well, we will be back here next week. I'll see you then, Chad. See you then.

We'll see you next week.