David killed Goliath, the giant of Gat
"The Philistine was advancing and approaching David, preceded by his squire. When the Philistine looked and saw David, he did not take him seriously, because he was just a boy, blond and of beautiful appearance. The Philistine said to David: Am I I a dog, to come against me with sticks? And he cursed David invoking his gods. Then the Philistine said to David: Come to me and I will give your meat to the birds of the sky and the beasts of the field. Then David said to the Philistine: You come against me with sword, spear and javelin, but I go against you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the squads of Israel, whom you have provoked. The Lord will deliver you today into my hands, I will overcome you and cut off your head. And today I will give your body and the bodies of the Philistines to the birds of the sky and the beasts of the earth, and all the earth will know that there is God in Israel. And all this congregation will know that the Lord does not save with sword or spear, because the Lord is the battle and he gives you will be in our hands. "
And you well know the rest of the story, dear listener. The time is not enough to present it in detail, but God gave the victory to David, who killed Goliath. The battle, as David said, was the Lord's; and the giant, and all the Philistines were delivered into the hands of David, and of the Israelite army.
This chapter concludes with the renewed interest that Saul expressed in David, trying to get information from his family history. In verse 18 of chapter 16, we read that one of the king's servants had described David as "the son of Jesse... Who knows how to touch; he is brave and vigorous and a man of war, prudent in his words, handsome, and the Lord is with him "Then in verse 21, we saw that Saul made him his page-in-arms but apparently never took this aspect of David as a" man of war "seriously. It was only after David killed the giant that Saul showed an interest in David from that point of view.
There are great spiritual lessons in this chapter. For example, the giant could represent the world. Saul could represent Satan and David, the believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. Believers have been counseled, in 1 John 2:15: "Do not love the world or the things that are in the world. If anyone loves the world, the Father's love is not in him." We are in the world, but we do not belong to a system or ideology that opposes or ignores God. Let's see what contrast there was between David and Samson, whom we studied as one of the judges in the book that bears that name. Samson treated the Philistines as friends; He even married a woman from that town. Instead, David treated Goliath as an enemy. The world system, the cosmos, which includes the powers, programs, and ideologies hostile to God and His Word, is today the enemy of the believer. Here it is worth noting the significant detail that David's faith enabled him to go out to face the giant and defeat him. As the aforementioned apostle John well said in his first letter 5: 4, "For all that is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that has overcome the world, our faith." This was the same lesson that Joshua learned, when entering the promised land and conquering Jericho; He discovered that this battle was the Lord's battle. And David also learned that he could not use the weapons that the world of his time had foreseen to fight in his battle. He had to use his own weapons, his own resources, those in which God had prepared him. Dear listener, the believer today needs to recognize that the world we have described can only be overcome by his faith and trust in God. And if you do not consider yourself a believer, we invite you to give your life to Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who died on the cross and rose again, because in the great battle of the centuries, the author of life fought and defeated his enemy , the author of sin and death. In other words, we invite you to share, by faith, the victory of the Lord Jesus Christ, appropriating eternal life.