We talk about David and Goliath, and rightly so. When he demanded to face the giant, David didn’t rely on his human ability, his strength or prowess. He wasn’t after glory or the daughter of a king. He was enraged that the name of the God of Israel was being defied and defiled by a pagan dog, a blasphemous Philistine. If ever there was a greater contrast, a starker exemplar of the context of God versus the context of man, it would be difficult to imagine. On one side was David, a stripling youth who watched sheep all day. On the other was a professional warrior, Goliath, a giant of a man with tremendous strength when battles were won by having more and superior warriors. David feared the Lord and dedicated his service and his battle to Him. He relied on the Lord to carry the day, to go before him and fight his battles for him. Goliath depended on himself, on his fearful power and successful record. And God uses the low things of this world to bring down the great things. After all the weapons and training and experience, all the odds stacked on Goliath’s size, all it took was a single stone, and faith in God. David looked at God to deliver him from bears and lions and giants, and God was bigger than Goliath. So we justly associate this story with David and Goliath.
However, there’s another element of this: Saul and Goliath. For Saul was the king. And the description of him we are initially presented with is that he was tall, dark, and handsome, literally head and shoulders above everyone else. The people said, “Yes! That’s what a king is supposed to look like! He should be big and strong and winsome. Let’s have him rule us instead of God.” And Saul did his job well, from the people’s perspective. At least in the beginning. He struck the Amalekites and slew their whole army, salvaging only the king and the cream of the crop, in violation of God’s orders. This of course led to God rejecting Saul, since Saul was interested in pleasing himself and his subjects rather than pleasing God. But I imagine that up until this impasse with Goliath, the people were quite pleased with Saul’s performance in office. If you took an approval poll early on the results would have looked good. “What do you think of Saul as king?” “Well, the economy’s fine. Oh, yeah, we really showed those pesky Amalekites what for, didn’t we? Nobody’s going to mess with us while we’ve got Saul leading us, no sir.” “What about God?” “Uh, what about Him? I go to the tabernacle like everyone else. I make the sacrifices. I’m devout. What’s that go to do with Saul?”
Here’s the lesson: There’s always someone bigger. Saul was head and shoulders above everyone else. He was probably a great warrior. When public opinion was skewing toward David, the chant went “Saul has killed his thousands, and David his tens of thousands.” Obviously this was an example of how the people revered David’s prowess on the battle field over Saul’s, but Saul to have slain thousands (if possibly exaggerated) was testament that he was no mean warrior in his own right. So when Goliath stands before the Philistine army and challenges Israel’s best to come out and face him, the immediate sentiment would probably have been that Saul was the best, and being an Israelite and the king, surely could handle even a dire foe like Goliath. But Goliath was bigger and stronger, superior to Saul in every earthly aspect that mattered. Saul had been relying on his physical attributes, had believed the hype and probably saw himself as every bit the epitome of humanity that the people thought he was. What a blow to see someone bigger and stronger, to the extent that Saul looked puny in comparison.
Whenever you begin to rely on your gifts, the physical attributes and abilities that you were born with or have cultivated in order to cope with life, there will almost always come a moment when those physical gifts will be insufficient. Someone will come along who is bigger, stronger, smarter, faster, prettier, craftier, more skillful or disciplined, more gifted naturally, than you. Or a situation will arise that finds you unequal to the task, that you must come to terms with the painful reality that you cannot handle whatever comes by sheer dint of your training and gifts. What will you do? Will you try to slink away and huddle in your tent like Saul? Will you rail and boast and set yourself up as the end-all, be-all like Goliath? Or will you walk confidently onto the plain with the simple gifts and abilities God gave you, and relinquish them back to Him? Trust Him to use you to defeat the giant? Trust Him to be strong enough to overcome where you cannot?
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