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Tackling Giants

I Sam 17: 20 – 51

Rev. Peter R Green, Sunday morning, 19 June, 2005

I WANT us all to learn how to kill giants. It’s not easy, I know. I tend to run from giants myself. But, if we don’t learn to be giant–killers, giants will always terrorise us and damage our lives.

The world is full of bullies and the bullied. Ours is not a world that likes upstarts.

David’s run–in with Goliath teaches us a lot about how to tackle tough situations and come out the other end well.

Haven’t we all faced giants at some time, monsters too big for us to want to tackle? Most of us are nice and easy–going, but not too keen on conflicts. People like us often feel the world is filled with giants.

Gentleness is a Christian virtue, but don’t be weak and docile. If you are gentle because you are afraid, or because you lack backbone, or because that was what you were told since you were tiny, that is not Christian gentleness. It comes from the flesh; it is a human trait.

The world loves merely human gentleness, because that means you can be walked over, you are a dependable doormat, you are an ideal ladder for the pushy and the violent.

Satan loves merely human gentleness, too. He loves it because he can pressure you until you crumble, and damage those around you.

Satan can pin us Christians down by our gentleness bones, and that will do a great injury to the gospel, as well as to ourselves.

Satan loves to pin us down and cripple us!

But today I want to talk about killing giants, not about how bad giants are. We all know a threat when we see one, but how do we respond to it?

GOLIATH:

A Giant in dimension

You have heard about Goliath of Gath. He grew up on Gath cooking, and it did him a lot of good, because he became a big man.

In 1 Samuel 17: we read,

1SAM 17:4 A champion named Goliath, who was from Gath, came out of the Philistine camp. He was over nine feet tall.

Think about those big basketballers in the US, over seven feet tall in some cases, and think of the generally small people of that time. You get a sense of the proportion of this monstrous man. It’s not the absolute size, but it is the relative size and the perceived size that counts.

I know a man — he’s 50 — whose life is blighted by the power his father had over him as a child. Logically, his father is now a little, failed, sick old man. But he is a raging monster in his son’s psyche, and determines everything the son does. He’s a giant in his son’s eyes.

But Goliath was a physical giant. Not all giants are monsters, of course. When I was a weedy little 12 year old at High School, Robert Sutherland was in one of the senior years, and he was super tall. I used to stand on the wall beside the school steps so I could talk to him face to face. We called him, "Monster Sutherland", because he was so tall.

But we also called him that because he wasn’t a monster at all. He was a nice, gentle fellow, who kept an eye out for us first year kids, and tried to make that year a bit easier for us. It was Peer Support long before they invented it.

On the other hand, Goliath was a monster in size and a monster at heart. He used his size to intimidate. He used his size to gain an advantage in battle.

It’s like in the cartoons where the little, aggressive character tackles the big character. The big one just holds out a hand or a paw, and none of the little character’s punches can land, because that arm is too long.

In ancient battles, the long–armed warrior had a genuine advantage.

Goliath was a giant in his dimensions.

GOLIATH:

A Giant in aggression

Though Goliath was a giant in his dimensions, as I said, he was no gentle giant. He was also a giant in his aggression.

Goliath had an extra degree of aggression. He shouted at the Israelites daily. We read,

1SA 17:8 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. ⁹ If he is able to fight and kill me, we will become your subjects; but if I overcome him and kill him, you will become our subjects and serve us.”

He was confident in his ability to defeat the best that Israel could throw at him. There was a confident aggression about him.

Some people are like that. People tend either to be actively aggressive or passively aggressive.

The actively aggressive are threatening, angry, perhaps violent. Passive aggressive people refuse to comply, withdraw from a situation, will not play the game.

This was not Goliath’s way. He was actively aggressive. He threatened — and he was ready to make good his threats. Goliath was a giant in his aggression. He didn’t need to actually fight — he kept them so scared, they didn’t even try.

GOLIATH:

A Giant in possessions

Finally, we also see he was a giant in his possessions.

⁵ He had a bronze helmet on his head and wore a coat of scale armour of bronze weighing five thousand shekels; ⁶ on his legs he wore bronze greaves, and a bronze javelin was slung on his back. ⁷ His spear shaft was like a weaver’s rod, and its iron point weighed six hundred shekels.

He was armed for any conflict.

When the Normans invaded England in 1066, the English army camped in a hollow at the top of Senlac Hill. As the Norman knights charged up the hill on their horses, the English rushed out from their hollow. Some carried battle axes with long handles. They could cut a horse’s legs out from under it without getting too close to the knight and his horse.

Goliath had a similar advantage. He had a long spear with a heavy head, capable of inflicting horrific wounds at a distance. He had strong and heavy armour, and a throwing javelin as well. It was very hard to get close to him. He was a giant in his possessions.

IDENTIFYING OUR GIANTS

And that is how it is with the giants we meet: they are big in size, they are big in aggression and they are big in terms of what they possess, what resources they wield.

Tony Campolo tells how he and ten of his students faced the combined power of the giant Gulf+Western corporation. That was a true giant. It is one of the world’s big multinational corporations. It is a giant in dimension. It has a reputation for using its size. It probably doesn’t intend to be aggressive, but, in the Dominican Republic, it had wrecked the local economy by shifting local farmers from food production to coffee growing. So the effect was that it was a giant in aggression. And, with its vast size and diversity, it was also a giant in possessions.

How could anyone tackle such a giant? But they did, and they got results.

Not all giants are multinational corporations.

Several years ago, I helped a young woman escape from an abusive home situation. It was quite dramatic. The man she was afraid of made a dash across Marrickville to stop her from leaving, although he had told her, only days before, to go if she wanted to.

He arrived about 45 seconds after I drove off. But he didn’t see us go, and we got safely away.

That man had held the woman under a kind of arrest for years. He was a giant from whom she was never able to escape until that day.

But she didn’t fully escape until she escaped from his emotional control, and that took a lot longer. He was not a big man, but he was big enough, and he was aggressive, and controlled the resources. He had the aggression and the possessions of a giant.

Sometimes the giant is a spiritual thing, maybe even something in ourselves.

One of the greatest early theologians was Origen, the Principal of the famous theological school at Alexandria in Egypt.

He struggled as a young man with sexual temptations. That was a giant in his life that he could not overcome. So he castrated himself so that he would not destroy another person’s life or his own ministry through that temptation. It was a giant in his life, and he had to kill it.

I don’t know what the giants are in your life. They may be Governments or corporations. They may be community action groups or people at your work. They may be people you share your life with or strangers you meet on the street. I remember someone who became afraid even of the birds, and felt they were following him and spying on him, and trying to attack him as he walked along. The birds were the giant he had to kill. I doubt that he ever did.

DAVID'S RESPONSE

There are some great lessons in David’s response to Goliath. David arrived as Goliath was shouting his defiance to the Israelite army. We read,

24 When the Israelites saw the man, they all ran from him in great fear.

1SA 17:25 Now the Israelites had been saying, “Do you see how this man keeps coming out? He comes out to defy Israel. The king will give great wealth to the man who kills him. He will also give him his daughter in marriage and will exempt his father’s family from taxes in Israel.”

1SA 17:26 David asked the men standing near him, “What will be done for the man who kills this Philistine and removes this disgrace from Israel?

Hope

The first thing to see is that David looked beyond the immediate situation to the future. He thought of wealth, fame and marriage to a princess, and tax–exempt status. None of that would come if he didn’t kill the giant.

Most giants keep us under the thumb by leaving us with the impression that things could not get any better.

Hope is the name we give to that positive view of the future. At its best, at its most complete and comprehensive, hope arises from faith in God and his good purposes; but even hope of a princess and a pay rise isn’t too bad a view of the future.

David had hope.

Identity

Then we see that David remembered who he was.

“Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God?”

David was an Israelite. He wasn’t in the army, but he knew that the nation belonged to God and the army belonged to God, so Goliath was challenging Israel’s God–given rights.

The giants of life don’t want you to remember you are a child of God. They don’t want you to remember that you have rights, that your rights are at least equal to theirs.

When you remember who you are, you will stand up indignantly and say, “Who does this uncircumcised Philistine think he is!?”

Tenacity

Next. we see that David wasn’t put off by friendly fire.

1SA 17:28 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? And with whom did you leave those few sheep in the desert? I know how conceited you are and how wicked your heart is; you came down only to watch the battle.”

1SA 17:29 “Now what have I done?” said David. “Can’t I even speak?”

There is always someone around who should encourage you who, instead, discourages you. When I decided to go into College, the Catholics all backed me up almost passionately. They cheered all the way. The biggest discouragement I got was from an evangelical chap. I know he didn’t want me to be hurt, but he really didn’t help. He didn’t turn me away, but at other times, people on my side have dragged so hard on me that I gave up things I felt I should do. It’s friendly fire, it’s bullets from your own side. Don’t let it take you out!

The Bible tells us to run the race with patience, looking to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. Don’t take friendly fire! Listen to the Master’s encouragement!

Realism

The fourth thing we see about David is that he was realistic about his capabilities.

1SA 17:34 But David said to Saul, “Your servant has been keeping his father’s sheep. When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, 35 I went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it.”

Being realistic about ourselves does not mean you don’t have too high an expectation, or get above yourself. David saw what he had done in the past, estimated how that might help in the future, and began laying plans.

Paul said,

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

In the context, he is saying that he is capable of performing whatever tasks God gives him, because his strength is from Christ.

Faith

Finally, we see that David trusted in the LORD, not in human power. He said,

37 The LORD who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine.”

Saul said to David, “Go, and the LORD be with you.”

1SA 17:38 Then Saul dressed David in his own tunic. He put a coat of armor on him and a bronze helmet on his head. 39 David fastened on his sword over the tunic and tried walking around, because he was not used to them.

“I cannot go in these,” he said to Saul, “because I am not used to them.” So he took them off. 40 Then he took his staff in his hand, chose five smooth stones from the stream, put them in the pouch of his shepherd’s bag and, with his sling in his hand, approached the Philistine.

There is nothing wrong with using technology, whether it is better armour or the internet. There is something wrong, though, in imagining that these things will substitute for trust in God, who saves us through Jesus Christ. David used the technology of a sling and used it effectively. Campolo and his students used US Corporate Law to get Gulf+Western to change its policies. But they didn’t come as opponents, they came as concerned insiders, and spoke the truth in the same way that Jesus became an insider and spoke the truth to us.

Jesus didn’t come with superior weapons. He came with his eye on what his Father says and a ready ear to hear his Father speak.

OUR RESPONSE

So, keep your eye on the future; remember who you are; ignore friendly fire; be realistic about your capabilities — and you will be victorious in the power of the Lord. May God bless us all through Jesus our Lord as we slay giants in his name! AMEN

© Peter R. Green 2005. Permission is granted for quotation in full for non-commercial purposes provided that authorship is acknowledged and this copyright notice is displayed with the text. Portions also copyright The Bible, NIV (Zondervan Ltd.)