If you would turn back again
to 1 Samuel chapter 17 this morning, I want to talk to you about Christ
our Champion. Most everybody has heard the
Bible story of David and Goliath. But as I hope we know, it is
more than just a story. This is an actual event in history. Somebody has rightly said that
history is literally His story, the Lord Jesus Christ. And I hope that the Spirit of
God will enable us in our minds to come down to this valley that
we have read about in this passage. The army of Israel, with Saul
as its leader, is encamped on one side of the mountain. And their enemy, the Philistines,
with this giant Goliath as their head, they are encamped on the
other side. And it says that the army of
Israel is set in array against the Philistines. In other words,
they are making their preparations. They are getting ready, supposedly,
for the fight. They are sharpening their swords
and their spears. And I know that you rightly understand
the things that men and women will do in preparation for a
fight that they really don't want any part of. You can spend
a long time sharpening your swords and packing your stuff and all
if you really are afraid of the fight. And there is undoubtedly a tension
that charges the air. And these men of Israel, they
are much afraid, and their king is towering in his tent. He doesn't know what to do. He
has no ability and no real plan, and this has been going on for
forty days. Forty days this champion of the
Philistines, a giant by the name of Goliath, has been challenging
the army of Israel. I wanted to see exactly what
that word champion means. It actually means something like
this, a man between the two. A man between the two, and as
it is also in another verse here, a different Hebrew word which
means a mighty man. And this man has been coming
out and defying and mocking them and prophesying their doom for
these forty days and nights. And they have heard this there
in that valley, the valley of Elah, which is the valley of
the tree or the valley of the oak, and they have not moved
or responded or done anything for forty days. Well, there are three types,
three pictures, that I want us to see in this chapter this morning,
because I believe them to be three very real types of someone
other than the individuals here. The first type or picture is
this. and that is those that Saul and
these people of Israel picture. Because Saul and his people are
very much like Adam and his race, the race of which every one of
us is a part. Not very long before this occasion,
God sent Samuel the prophet to Saul, and this is what he told
him. It says in chapter 13 that Samuel
said to Saul, thou hast done foolishly, thou hast not kept
the commandment of the Lord thy God which he commanded thee,
For now would the Lord have established thy kingdom upon Israel for ever,
but now thy kingdom shall not continue. Because of your disobedience,
your kingdom shall not continue. The Lord hath sought him a man
after his own heart, And the Lord hath commanded him to be
captain over his people, because thou hast not kept that which
the Lord commanded thee." In other words, the disobedience
of this king has now put every one of his people in jeopardy. And the consequences of his sin,
contrary to what most people think, the consequences of his
sin have now come to rest and bear in the circumstances of
all his people. And that is just what has happened
with Adam and all of his race. And he, by his sin in the garden,
brought great consequences and condemnation on all his race,
every one of us. Let me read you Paul's words
in Romans 5. He said, Wherefore, as by one
man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death
passed upon all men, for that all have sin." In other words,
by that one man, Adam, he says sin entered in, and death by
sin, so that in him Him being the head of His race, when He
sinned as this man, every one of His race sinned in Him, and
in Him fell to the great depths that sin always brings. Not only that, but Paul continues
in Romans 5, and he says this, through the offense of one, many
die. He goes on. He says the judgment
was by one, this one man, to condemnation. You know, we have
this idea We like to believe that our sin, that our disobedience
has no consequence on anybody other than ourselves. That is
not even true in the natural realm. It has a bearing on those
close to us. It has a bearing on family. It has a bearing on virtually
everyone around us. but never to the degree like
Adam's fall had on all our race. In him all sinned. Paul continues on in Romans 5. He says, by one man's offense
death reigned by one. He says, by the offense of one
judgment came upon all men. And then he says this, by one
man's disobedience many were made sinners. If you remember
back when the Gulf War began, one man by the name of Saddam
Hussein, by what he did, In other words, in commanding his army
to attack the nation of Kuwait and try to capture it by his
one act, by his command, in that he brought a severe consequence
on all of his nation. Likewise, when Adam sinned, we
sinned. When Adam fell in the garden,
we all fell in him, and God viewed his whole race as sinners. And so in that state, just like
these all around them, they looked around them, and they looked
among them, and they by their natural eyes, they had no champion
of their own. They're just like Saul, cowering
in that tent. They're sitting there in dread
and in fear, and they are doing things that men do, and they
themselves were no match for Goliath, and like us, fear and
sure condemnation and useless works fill their days. as they virtually waited for
death or slavery. And they sat there, I'm sure,
sharpening their weapons and talking in the bravado that men
do and bragging on their past conquest and in all these things
just waiting to face a sure judgment. My friend, that is just exactly
the way of a lost sinner, alienated from God. This is a picture of
that just condemnation, that impossible situation that we're
in. And the Bible describes us as
being without hope and having no peace and simply sitting in
the armor of our self-righteousness and without strength, and waiting
for the judgment of God to fall, and just doing nothing, but leaning
on the arm of sinful flesh, lost and not realizing it, not willing
to face the fact, but it is inevitable if left in our hands. There we are in Saul and in Israel. in a hopeless and desperate situation. And then here is the second picture,
and that is Goliath and who he pictures because Goliath is a
picture of Satan and of sin, both of which are against us
and able to destroy us. It describes him as a giant. And one of the meanings of that
word giant is exile. He is described as an exile. And when you read what the Scriptures
say in Isaiah and other places concerning the devil himself,
who has many names, the devil, Satan, Beelzebub, Lucifer, all
these names and many more picturing the various aspects about Satan
himself, the Bible says that when pride was found in him and
he would have usurped the authority of God in heaven, he was exiled. Was he not? When he said, I will be as the
Most High, when he sought to rebel against God and he led
one-third of the angelic hosts in his rebellion, the Bible says
that they were all cast out and bound in chains of darkness and
reserved to eternal judgment. They were exiled. And we have the tendency sometimes
to forget how things were on this earth at one time, and so
the notion of a giant just coming out as a story figure is something
of a fantasy of sorts. I saw on the news this week,
the man that now is the tallest man in the world, and they showed
him getting out of a British taxi in London, and when he started
to get out, he just kept on getting out. He's over eight feet tall. And when you read back in the
book of Numbers, According to the spy's report who went into
the land at the command of Joshua, he says, they said, the land
through which we have gone to search, it is a land that eats
up the inhabitants thereof, And all the people that we saw in
it are men of great stature. And there we saw the giants,
the sons of Anag, which come of the giants, and we were in
our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight." He was a giant. And not only
that, But when you read that description that we read of him,
of his size, according to the measurements that are given here,
and as they were in that day, he was probably something like
eleven feet tall. Is there any wonder that they
were afraid? But yet, he is a picture of the
power and the defiance and the strength of that one he represents,
who is the devil himself. Listen to what Peter says. He
says, be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary, Who's
that? Somebody says, well, I don't
have an enemy in this world. Oh, how foolish. He says, for
your adversary, the devil, as a roaring lion, walks about seeking
whom he may devour. The Bible says that when Michael,
the archangel, was disputing with the devil over the body
of Moses, he said, the Lord rebuketh. The Lord rebuketh. And we've
got all these preachers running around here, and they don't have
any reservation about saying this, and they do so in such
great stupidity. They say, we're going to rebuke
the devil. No, you're not. We can of ourselves no more face
the adversary of our souls because Satan is the destroyer of men's
souls. He's the great adversary of God
and of man. He's described as the prince
and the power of the air, the God of this world, and we're
no match for his strength and much less for his subtlety. Because the Bible says that Satan
himself is transformed into an angel of light. He comes in the name of truth. He comes to us in the most clever
of disguises. And not only here is Satan pictured
in this giant, but also the one from whom this sin that overpowers
us and rules us and damns us and has dominion over us comes. It's a picture of our sin. Let me ask you this. How many
times have you said in your life, I'm going to quit doing that. I've got to clean up my... I've
got to turn over a new leaf. I've got to get straightened
out. I've got to... I've got to get a hold of myself.
I mean with maybe the least habit of this flesh. And you found yourself doing
it again and again and again. Because the picture here is the
true picture of how weak we are and frail we are and susceptible
we are to Satan and to sin apart from the mercy of God. Here is the very judgment and
justice of God against us because of sin, as it was this people. And if we only knew who and what
was against us, we'd really be afraid. Because there's no match. There's
no contest. If you just take the situation
for what it is in reality, in this situation, apart from the
power and grace of God, this people, they're goners. They're in a bad situation, and
they're facing an enemy that they can in no way defeat. What do they need? They need
a hero. You know, we love a hero, don't
we? The sad thing about it in our day is that we make heroes
out of people who haven't even come near being a hero. Now,
I have heard about a couple of men this week that I describe
as heroes. When a man falls on a grenade
to save his comrades, I think that's pretty much as far as
humanly speaking is concerned, a fact that he's a hero. But what they need is a champion. What they need is one that this
champion of the Philistines is like, in the greater sense, they
need a man to stand between the men. And that's who David pictures. As a matter of fact, I don't
think in all of this book there is a clearer picture and type
of the Lord Jesus Christ than this man David. You see, the Scripture said that
God had taken away from Saul this kingdom, and now he sought
to find one who is a man after his own heart. That's how David's
described. But most of all, that's how the
Lord Jesus Christ really is. David is a picture of the Lord
Jesus Christ. As a matter of fact, Christ is
described by the answer to this question. Who is David's son and David's
Lord? Now you just try to figure that
one out. And yet, the Lord Jesus Christ,
the Lord has sought Him a man after His own heart. The Lord
has commanded Him to be captain over His people. Who is He? He is David. Greater than David is the one
who is being talked about here. And not only that, David, not
only in his name, but David in his actual occupation is a picture
of Christ. What did his brother say to him?
He said this mocking. It's kind of the same mockery
that goes on in religion toward the people of God and the preachers
of God's gospel. They said to him, why are you
come in your naughtiness and you left off the care and the
tending to those few sheep? What was David? He was a shepherd. He tended the father's sheep. And just exactly in that same
character as the Redeemer and Savior of His people, what is
it that David the shepherd himself said in Psalm 23? He said, The
Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. And if you turn over to John's
Gospel in the 10th chapter, how many times does the Lord Jesus
Christ Himself say and repeat that He is the shepherd of the
sheep? So here is this shepherd lad. Some say he was 14, some say
he was 16, some say he was 20. But he was in the eyes of everyone,
even his own brethren. He was in the eyes of Saul and
all these people, too young, too weak, too inexperienced,
too unlikely to be anything of a champion. My friend, that's just exactly
the way it is with Christ. But think about this, first of
all. How did he get there? What's
he doing there? You say, well, his brother said,
well, we know you just wanted to see the battle that was going
on. You just wanted to get an eye
on what was going on. And I've often said, I thought,
I think if I'd have been David, I'd have been tempted to say
in this flesh, what battle? No, he's there because he was
sent by his Father. And in like matter, the Scripture
says of another shepherd, the Lord Jesus Christ, another David,
He says through the Apostle Paul, But when the fullness of the
time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made
under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that
we might receive the adoption of sons. He is described as the great
high priest an apostle of our faith. Apostle? What does that
mean? It means one-cent-fourth. One-cent-fourth of God. He's there. David is because
he was sent by his Father. And likewise the Lord Jesus sent
of God into this world, and as John says, in this was manifested
the love of God toward us because that God sent His only begotten
Son into the world that we might live through Him. And herein
is love, not that we love God, but that He loved us and sent
His Son, the propitiation for our sins." He's sin of His Father. But not
only that, but He is there on this occasion because He's already
the anointed You go back and you'll find out,
as you read this and the chapters prior to this, that God had already
sent His prophet down to the house of Jesse, being told of
God that he was to go and to anoint God's king. And so they, as any father would
do, Jesse, not knowing all that was going on, he paraded all
his sons before the prophet. Just these very same three men,
I'm sure, that mocked David. He paraded them before the prophet,
and the prophet looked at the first one and said, no, he's
not the one. Looked at the second one, big strong strapping boy,
I'm sure he's not the one. Here's this man wise and in the
ways of the world, skilled in battle, he's not the one. And
he went through every one of them to the last one. And he said, don't you have any
more sons? Well, we've got, I got one more, a little ruddy boy
of a fair complexion and countenance, but he's out there tending the
sheep. And they sent more. When they brought David in, the
prophet anointed him with that special anointing oil and proclaimed
him at the command of God. This is the king. And you see, Jesus Christ is
God's anointed King, and not only anointed King, but He is
anointed Savior and the champion of His people. As a matter of fact, the very
name Christ in the Greek is that word Christos, which means anointed. Who anointed Him to be our champion?
God did. He's the Christ, or the anointed
One of God. And He is the One who, though
least likely outwardly, He's the One who's entrusted with
His sheep. He calls them My sheep. These
are My people. And he's rejected, like David
was, and despised by his brethren, his own people, his own brothers. They looked at him. When he started
talking about how and what he'd do to that Philistine champion,
they laughed at him and they mocked at him and they said,
you're a total embarrassment to us. And you know what, to our fleshly
way of thinking and to the fleshly thinking of everybody in this
world, the man Christ Jesus in Himself as far as our natural
eye can see, to think of Him being a Savior, to think of one
man coming and dying and accomplishing the salvation of a multitude,
such a notion is an embarrassing thought to us. You're not even going to go.
with the very best armor, which is the armor of the king. You're
not even going to wear that and go out in that conflict. Maybe
you'd have a slight chance with that. David said, I've not proved that
armor. I can't carry that. His brothers despised him and
likewise it says of Christ that he came unto his own and his
own received him not. Isaiah said, For he shall grow
up before him as a tender plant and as a root out of a dry ground,
for he hath no form nor comeliness. And when we shall see him, there
is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected
of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we
hid, as it were, our faces from him. He is despised, and we esteemed
him not. But surely he hath borne our griefs and
carried our sorrows, yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten
of God, and afflicted." What's that expression we have,
carry the water? Who's going to carry the water
for Israel this day? Not going to be Saul. Not going
to be the captain of various platoons of men or battalions. It's going to be David. And I want you to notice his
attitude and his response in all of these things. His thought
was this. He said, who is this uncircumcised
Philistine? to defy the armies of the living
God. What's at stake here? It's not
just the lives of those Israelites. It's not just the possibility
of them being brought into slavery, their families and such as this.
The honor of God's at stake here. The glory of God. You see, David
knew of God in a way that these men did not know him, and he
looked at God as more than just like the gods of the Philistines,
such as Dagon, but he called him exactly who he is. He's the
living God. And these armies, they're not
in themselves any stronger than the ones on the other side of
that valley. But they're the armies of the
living God. They represent the people of
God. They represent God's elect, that
people that He chose in Christ before the world began and gave
to His Son as His bride. As a matter of fact, what is
the prize for David here? He gets the king's daughter. Not only that, it says that his
whole household will be so ennobled by his work that he does that
they will be free from any taxes or any problems with the king
forever. That's the way it is with Christ. He came into this world for the
glory of God and to accomplish the salvation of his people,
and he refused all fleshly means. He said, my kingdom is not of
this world. If my kingdom were of this world,
my servants would take up their swords and fight. But here's what I really want
you to notice. He met the enemy of his people alone. Alone. Verse 32 says that David said
to Saul, let no man's heart fail because of him. Thy servant will
go and fight with this Philistine. You be sure you notice in this
picture that God has given, that it is David and only David that
goes up against the enemy. Here is Satan and here is sin. And it is Jesus Christ and Him
crucified and Him alone that accomplishes this victory. Religion oftentimes talks about
somehow God helping us to get the victory. That's not the gospel. The gospel is not God doing something
to help us do something, but the gospel is the good news that,
as Paul says, Jesus Christ hath gotten us the victory. Paul says, that we are saved
by His work. Do we believe that? He writes to Titus. I'll read
it to you. He writes to Titus in chapter
3 and verse 5. He says, not by works of righteousness
which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us. I was telling Curtis before the
service this morning that Israel was always saying to Moses, you
just tell us what God wants us to do and we'll do it. And Moses was always telling
them what God commanded them to do, and they never did it. They never did it. And He showed us time and time
again through that nation and through all the plain statements
we read in the New Testament that we are saved only by His
Word. You look down here in verse 47
of 1 Samuel 17. First of all, in verse 46, he
says, all the earth will know that there is a God in Israel. But now you look at the next
verse, 47, and all this assembly What is an assembly? Well, that's
what the church is, a called-out assembly. And all this assembly
shall know that the Lord saveth not with sword and spear, for
the battle is the Lord's, and He will give you into our hands. Now, everybody in the church
of the Lord Jesus Christ is going to know this. As a matter of fact, if you don't
know this, you don't know the Gospel. You don't know the truth.
You don't know anything. What is that? That the battle
is the Lord's. And it is He, by His work, which
is the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, that saves us. That saves us. And if you notice here, the means
by which he conquered. What did he do? Well, he laid
off that old armor that Saul had tried to get him to wear.
You remember this is just 40 days and 40 nights, just like
when Christ was tempted and the devil tried to get him to do
this, and the devil tried to get him to do that, and he didn't
do any of it. And so the Lord, in the picture
of Him here in David, when David goes out to the actual conflict,
what does he do? Well, he has that staff. What's that? Well, that's typical of the Word
of God. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort
me. That's the Word of God. But he goes out in that staff
and Goliath looks at him and he mocks him even more. He said,
you coming with that stick to beat me like you would a dog
or something? And all he has is this sling.
He reaches down into that shepherd's bag and he pulls out a stone
and he puts that stone in that sling and he hauls back And he
slings that stone, and that stone strikes Goliath in the one place
where he's probably not covered, which is right around his eyes
and his forehead. And the stone, in the power of
God's might, goes so hard that it sinks into his forehead. And he falls down forward. Why a stone? Because Christ saves
His people not only by Himself, but with Himself. Why? Because He's that stone. He's
the stone. He's described in Scripture as
the stone of stumbling. He's described as the rock of
offense, the rock of ages, the stone uncut by hand, that rock
in the wilderness that Paul said, that rock was Christ. And so He, by Himself, by the
sacrifice of Himself, He gave Himself for us. He bore our sins
in His own body. We were reconciled to God by
the death of His Son. He said, I lay down my life for
the sheep. And He did two things. Number
one, he vindicated God. Both the devil and sin are a
mockery of God. And Christ conquered both. He has the keys of death, hell,
and the grave. And not only that, but he saved
all his people. And he did it by the will and
the authority of his Father. He said, I'm come in the name
of the Lord. You come with sword and shield
and spears and all these things. He said, but I'm come with something
else. I'm come in the name of the Lord. I've come at the command
of God. I've come according to the will
and purpose and authority and decrees of God. And what did
He do? Well, when Goliath, that great
giant, came crashing down to the ground, and what a thud it
must have been. He came crashing to that ground. He came and took his own sword
out of his shoe. Cut his head off. That's kind of gruesome. This
business of sin and death is a pretty gruesome thing. In other words, through death, he conquered, as Hebrew says,
this one who had the power of death. And in doing so, he freed
those who through all their days lived in the bondage of the fear
of death. Because he made an end of death.
That's what Goliath pictured. Death. Satan, sin, death. And his head's cut off. Just like when it was said by
God Himself to Eve concerning her seed. He said to the serpent, he said,
you'll bruise his head, but he'll crush your head. And so our champion, that the earth may know that
there is a God in Israel. You see, the Bible says that
in his death he accomplished something, and God raised him
from the dead because of that, and exalted him, and gave him
a name above every name, and every knee will bow. and confess that He is Lord to
the glory of God the Father. They're going to know that there
is a God in His true Israel. Turn over one chapter, two chapters,
to 1 Samuel 19. And look at verse 4. And Jonathan, who was Jonathan? He was a son
of Saul. Do you suppose there's any way
possible that a son of Saul could ever have any favor with David
after Saul goes on to treat David? Absolutely. And Jonathan spake
good of David unto Saul his father, and said unto him, Let not the
king sin against David, because he hath not sinned against thee,
and because his works have been to thee very good. He did put His life in His hand
and slew the Philistine, and the Lord wrought a great salvation
for all Israel. My friends, that's just what
Christ did. That's just what our champion
did. He wrought a great salvation
for his people. We are helpless and utterly hopeless
in ourselves. We're just like those soldiers
were on that mountain. in a tree, what was called the
tree, the cross. He bore our sins in his own body
on the tree. And in doing that, just like
David, he in that wrought a great salvation. My prayer is that the Lord would
show us what we are, and the great enemy of our souls, and cause us to look to and trust
the Lord Jesus Christ, because He's the only champion of our
souls. He gets all the glory. And that's
why He has wrought a great salvation. Our Father, this morning we pray
that You would take these things and by Your Spirit show us that
they are the things of Christ. That he is the true David's son
and the true David's Lord and the true one of whom David was
a type in a picture. That he did on the behalf of
his people work this great salvation. by which he conquers Satan and
sin and every enemy of their souls, suffers the just for the unjust,
and brings them every one to God. Lord, may we be found among that
people, and may we be found as Jonathan. thankful and rejoicing in what
Christ has done. It calls us to see that He has
done it all by Himself, that He has gotten Himself the victory,
and that He gives it to us as a gift, that we might give all the glory
and all the praise forever and ever to Him. Take your word, Lord, we pray,
and bless it to our understanding. Grant to us faith to believe
on him, the one of whom the law and the prophets and the Psalms
all speak, that we might believe on him to the saving of our souls. We thank you for this precious
example. And we pray in Christ's name, Amen.