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Pastor’s Message
David and Goliath
Dr. Adrian Smith
If you grew up in Sunday School, you no doubt heard the classic ‘underdog’ story of David versus Goliath. And, I venture to say, you probably learned ‘the moral of the story’ along these lines: “Be strong in faith, just like David!” But what if, in reality, you are more like Saul and the Israelite soldiers, trembling in fear at the sight of 9 foot tall, heavily armed Goliath (1 Samuel 17:11)? How helpful, then, is the exhortation to “be strong and courageous!”? If you are more like Saul than David, then I have good news for you; allow me to suggest an alternative reading of the David/Goliath episode—a reading more in keeping with the function of that episode within God’s Big Story . . .
The Sunday School message—"You too can be a hero, just like David!”—would have sounded very strange to the ancient Israelites who first heard the story of David and Goliath. In the ancient world, heroic status belonged only to the rare and privileged few; those heroes had a god-like status (think of Achilles in Homer’s epic, or Aeneas in Virgil’s epic). Indeed, when ancient Israel asked Yahweh to give them a king, this request recognized that the average Israelite was not a hero: “We want a king over us! Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to go out before us and fight our battles!” (1 Samuel 7:19-20).
In that context, the David/Goliath episode had a very different meaning from the Sunday School exhortation to “be like David!”. The episode was part of a larger narrative (in 1—2 Samuel), designed to answer the question, “Which royal line will God use to establish his kingdom? The house of Saul, or the house of David?” The Goliath episode helped answer that question rather clearly; it even contains a symbolic scene where Saul hands over his royal armor to David! (1 Samuel 17:38).
So then, the original message of the Goliath story was that God will establish his kingdom through David’s line. The message for us today is that God is establishing his kingdom through a descendant of David, Jesus Christ. Many of us have Goliath-sized problems that are too big and overwhelming for us. Confronted with the overwhelming, most of us are more like Saul than David; we are “discouraged and frightened” (1 Samuel 17:11).
The good news is that we do indeed have a champion to fight on our behalf—Jesus Christ, the Son of David. Goliath mocked the terrified Israelites for 40 days (1 Samuel 17:16). In the Church calendar, the 40 days of Lent recall Jesus’ battle in the Judean desert (Matthew 4:1-11) against an adversary far more fearsome than Goliath. Therefore, instead of exhorting one another to “be like David!”, we would do far better to pray the words of the blind beggar on the road to Jericho: “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy upon me!” (Luke 18:38).
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