1 Samuel 17:47 And everyone assembled here will know that the LORD rescues His people, but not with sword and spear. This is the LORD’s battle, and He will give you to us!”
The Philistines and Israelites faced each other on opposite hills, with the valley between them.
Goliath, a Philistine champion from Gath, was over nine feet tall! He wore a bronze helmet, and his bronze coat of mail weighed 125 pounds. He also wore bronze leg armor, and he carried a bronze javelin on his shoulder. The shaft of his spear was as heavy and thick as a weaver’s beam, tipped with an iron spearhead that weighed 15 pounds. His armor bearer walked ahead of him carrying a shield.
Goliath stood and shouted a taunt at the Israelites, for forty days, every morning and evening. “I am the Philistine champion. Choose one man to come down here and fight me! If he kills me, then we will be your slaves. But if I kill him, you will be our slaves!”.As soon as the Israelite army saw him, they began to run away in fright.
David took Goliath’s challenge and insisted that he will fight Goliath. Saul tries to match David’s armor with Goliath’s, by giving his own armor – a bronze helmet and a coat of mail. David put it on, strapped the sword over it, and took a step or two to see what it was like, as he was just a simple shepherd boy. So David takes the armor off, picked up five smooth stones from a stream and put them into his shepherd’s bag. Then, armed only with his shepherd’s staff and sling, he started across the valley to fight Goliath.
Stirs our thoughts, doesn’t it? Goliath, a nine feet man, trained for war from his youth, comes with heavy armor. His armor itself weighed more than 150 pounds, all this while his challenge was to fight against one man from the Israelite army. Probably because the whole world knew of the God of the Israelites, who demonstrated His Mighty hand to the Egyptians and many other enemies. While David, a young shepherd boy, refused to wear such armor, and goes with just 5 stones, a sling and his shepherd’s staff.
Goliath cursed David by the names of his gods. David replied to him, “You come to me with sword, spear, and javelin, but I come to you in the name of the LORD of Heaven’s Armies-the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. Today the LORD will conquer you, and I will kill you and cut off your head. “
Reaching into his shepherd’s bag and taking out a stone, he hurled it with his sling and hit the Philistine in the forehead. The stone sank in, and Goliath stumbled and fell face down on the ground. Ideally, would he not fall backwards? But when it is the LORD who fights the battle, the enemy has no choice but to fall face down in front of the Almighty God, the LORD of hosts.
David ran over and pulled Goliath’s sword and used it to kill him and cut his head off.
The battle of His children belongs to the LORD. Amen! And He never, ever lost one and never ever will!
