The Battle Is the LORD's

Everyone knows the boy and the giant, which is why almost nobody knows the story. It is not about a small person beating a big one. It is about forty days of a whole army being afraid, and one shepherd who had already been anointed king and was still running errands, and what he said to a nine-foot man about whose battle it was. The stone is the least of it.

Forty days

"And there went out a champion out of the camp of the Philistines, named Goliath, of Gath, whose height was six cubits and a span" (1 Samuel 17:4). Nine and a half feet. Bronze from head to foot, a spear like a weaver's beam, a man to carry his shield. And every morning and evening, for forty days, he walked out into the valley and said the same thing: "choose you a man for you, and let him come down to me… I defy the armies of Israel this day; give me a man" (17:8-10). And "Saul and all Israel… were dismayed, and greatly afraid" (17:11). Saul, who stood head and shoulders above every man in Israel, and had been chosen for it, sat in his tent for forty days while the giant asked for one man.

Meanwhile the youngest son of a farmer in Bethlehem had been anointed king. The prophet Samuel had come to Jesse's house looking for the next king, and looked at the tall sons, and God had told him: "Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the LORD seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart" (16:7). They had to send for the boy from the sheep. "the Spirit of the LORD came upon David from that day forward" (16:13). And then he went back to the sheep. That is where he was when his father sent him to the front with bread and cheese for his brothers.

Is there not a cause?

He arrives as the giant walks out for the eightieth time, "and David heard them" (17:23). And he says what nobody in the army has said in forty days: "who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God?" (17:26). The living God. Everyone else had been measuring the giant. David measured the One whose army was being insulted. His eldest brother hears him and turns on him with the contempt only a brother can manage: "Why camest thou down hither? and with whom hast thou left those few sheep in the wilderness? I know thy pride, and the naughtiness of thine heart" (17:28). Those few sheep. And David: "What have I now done? Is there not a cause?" (17:29).

Saul tells him he is a boy. And David tells the king what he did with a lion and a bear, and then says the sentence that is the whole of his faith: "The LORD that delivered me out of the paw of the lion, and out of the paw of the bear, he will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine" (17:37). Not "I killed a lion." The LORD delivered me. He had been keeping a ledger of what God had done, out in the fields where nobody was watching, and now he read from it. Saul puts his own armour on the boy, and David tries to walk in it, and takes it off: "I cannot go with these; for I have not proved them" (17:39). He would not fight in another man's armour. "And he took his staff in his hand, and chose him five smooth stones out of the brook… and his sling was in his hand: and he drew near to the Philistine" (17:40).

The battle is the LORD's

The giant sees a boy with a stick and is insulted: "Am I a dog, that thou comest to me with staves?" (17:43), and curses him by his gods. And David answers, and this is the part to read slowly, because it is the only speech in the chapter that matters:

That all the earth may know. That this assembly shall know. He is not fighting for himself, or even for Israel, exactly; he is fighting so that a watching world and a frightened army will know two things: there is a God in Israel, and He does not save with sword and spear. The battle is the LORD's. Then, and this is easy to miss, "David hastened, and ran toward the army to meet the Philistine" (17:48). Ran. Toward. The one man in the valley who was not afraid, running at the thing everyone else had been running from for forty days.

"So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and with a stone, and smote the Philistine, and slew him; but there was no sword in the hand of David" (17:50). No sword in the hand of David. The narrator says it on purpose, because David had just said the LORD does not save with the sword. And then he takes the giant's own sword and cuts off his head with it. Augustine loved that detail:

Where this lands

Here is what the story is not. It is not "you are David, and your problems are Goliath, so pick up your sling." Read the chapter again and notice where you are in it. You are in the army. You have been on the hillside for forty days, dismayed and greatly afraid, listening to something too big for you tell you every morning that it will destroy you. And one man walks into the valley on your behalf, one you did not choose and would not have chosen, who has already been anointed and is still unknown, and he fights the champion alone, and when the champion falls the whole enemy runs, and the army that did nothing but watch gets up and chases them. That is the story. David is not you. David is the one who fought for you.

And the shape holds all the way down. A shepherd from Bethlehem, anointed by God and despised by his brothers, comes to the front with bread, and is mocked by the enemy for coming without a weapon, and wins with no sword in his hand, and takes the enemy's own weapon and turns it on him. "that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil" (Hebrews 2:14). Death was the giant's sword. The Son of David took it out of his hand and used it on him. "And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it" (Colossians 2:15). The battle is the LORD's. It always was. The army's part is the part it has always been: to stop being afraid, and get up, and follow the One who ran toward the thing they had run from.

Related: David's Mighty Men, Lest Israel Vaunt Themselves, Thou Art the Man, and The Atonement. Scripture from the King James Version, linked to BibleHub; the words of God are marked in gold, the words of Christ in purple.