AND ... what would you do after you had been anointed King, if a giant showed up ?

This is Javier Bardem,
     a young Javier Bardem.
                                                
You may have seen him in movies like "Eat, Pray, Love", "No Country for Old Men" This is a picture of him when he was young. I include it because if I was going to cast parts for a movie about these stories, I would cast Javier as David, the lead role.

 David is king
                        ...well kind-of.
In the truest sense, by authority given by God and by anointing, he is king. Unfortunately he still lives at home, is the family 'sheep-sitter', and has a side-job working for Saul who, by the by, is the sitting king  ...  who God has stripped of His authority and Holy Spirit, but has left sitting on the throne.

So Saul is the "real" king, but David is the "true" king.

David must have wondered what the heck was going on...anointed by Samuel, Spirit of God comes on him with power, then  ~ nothing! Then one day...
... the Philistines gathered their forces for war and assembled at Socoh in Judah.
The Philistines occupied one hill and the Israelites another, with the valley between them.
Then Goliath, a Philistine champion from Gath, came out of the Philistine ranks to face the forces of Israel. He was a giant of a man, measuring over nine feet tall! He wore a bronze helmet, a two-hundred-pound coat of mail, bronze leggings, and carried a bronze javelin several inches thick, tipped with a twenty-five-pound iron spearhead, and his armor-bearer walked ahead of him with a huge shield.
He stood and shouted across to the Israelis, "Do you need a whole army to settle this? I will represent the Philistines, and you choose someone to represent you, and we will settle this in single combat! If your man is able to kill me, then we will be your slaves. But if I kill him, then you must be our slaves!  I defy the armies of Israel! Send me a man who will fight with me!" (1 Samuel 17:1-10)TLB 2

So David worked two "part-time" jobs ~ shepherd for his family, and armor bearer and court-musician for Saul. Scripture tells us that --
David went back and forth from Saul to tend his father's sheep at Bethlehem. (1 Sam 17:15)
Because, I guess, he was on his way to polish some armor, and to sing and play for Saul, David's dad, Jesse, asks David to bring lunch to his three oldest brothers who were soldiers in Saul's army. When David gets there, Goliath is strutting up and down, shouting insults at Israel and at YHWH, in very blue language. We all know the story...little guy, David, takes on big BIG guy, Goliath. David wins! It may be one of the MOST popular Sunday School stories ever. It is famous even outside of "church" circles and a metaphor of the triumph of the good little guy over the BIG bully. I am pretty sure most everyone knows the story. It is such an intriguing story.

When David walks up he kind-of overhears someone talking about how Saul has offered a huge bonus to anyone who takes Goliath out. David turns to someone standing near him and says, "So WHAT is Saul going to give the guy who kills Goliath? Cuz that $#!(*&$$#(!!?& Philistine is defying the armies of the living GOD!" (Ok, literally when you read the story, you will see that David  called him an 'uncircumcised Philistine', but when you look up the word, uncircumcised, it is pretty clear that it is euphemism for ... well 'soldier talk'.) This is the point in the story when Eliab, David's older brother, climbs David's frame...interesting cuz Eliab knows David has been anointed king, and that David is armor bearer to Saul ~ too bad for Eliab. He is about to find out just how wrong you can be!

 Anyway, it intrigues me that David wants to know what he'll "get" if he kills Goliath. It does, on the surface, seem to make David seem mercenary...like his motivation was "what's in it for me?" I don't think so. The fact that he says, "Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God?" (1 Sam 17:26), sounds to me like he had already decided that he was going to take Goliath out. He seems ... well, nonchalant.

Someone hears David talking and goes and tells Saul (probably something like) -- "hey, that kid you like, yeah, the harp player guy, well he is about to go take on Goliath!" Saul likes the kid...he probably says a few choice words and sends for David.

Saul: "So, you are going to ... accept Goliath's challenge."
David: "Well . . . yes!"
Saul: "You are not able to go out against this Philistine and fight him; you are only a boy, and he has been a fighting man from his youth." 1 Sam 17:33
David still stands there with a look on his face that said, "and...so? that affects me . . .how?"
Saul: "Ok, go get me my armor." {maybe David thinks Saul is going to go face the giant himself...not to be outdone, you know.}
Saul: "Go ahead, put it on..."

Of course it MUCH too big and David might have stood there like a fool for a second. Saul is trying to give David a reality check...like, "Get REAL! If you can't even walk around in my armor, how are you going to kill someone twice my size?"

David strips off the armor ~ he is not interested in what is real...he knows what is true. It doesn't matter how big he is or how big his enemy is; it doesn't matter if he is able to walk around in Saul's armor -- what matters is not what he can do...what matters is what God can do. Truth: God has anointed him as king. Truth: he knows how to rely on God's help, no matter what reality faces him. He strips off Saul's armor and begins to tell Saul about being a shepherd --  "Your servant has been keeping his father's sheep. When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, 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.  Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living God." (1 Sam 17:34-37)

I think David had come to a very important realization -- TRUTH: he was the king. I think he realized that kings and shepherds have something in common: they should protect the "sheep". If the giant continued to demoralize the army, and the Philistines won this confrontation, it would be HIS kingdom that would be lost. If he was going to EVER have a kingdom, this battle had to be won.  I suspect that he thought, well, if I am the king ... I better go act like the king! I think he knew he could...I think God reminded him of the victories over lions and bears
and
 David believed God!











1 Giving credit where credit is due: The germ of the idea for this blog came from a teaching done by a man named Graham Cooke. 
2 yes, TLB does stand for "The Living Bible" ~ I don't usually use TLB as it is a paraphrase, not a translation, but this paraphrase gives good modern language descriptions for the size and magnitude of Goliath and his weapons