That All The Earth May Know (1 Samuel 17:46-47)

 

Saturday, June 21, 2025

Psalms 121; 122; 123

1 Samuel 17:41-54

Acts 11:19-30

That All The Earth May Know (1 Samuel 17:46-47)

 [David said to Goliath,] “This day the Lord will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you down and cut off your head. And I will give the dead bodies of the host of the Philistines this day to the birds of the air and to the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, and that all this assembly may know that the Lord saves not with sword and spear. For the battle is the Lord's, and he will give you into our hand.”

Please bear with me; comparing these speeches of David alongside Homer’s in the Iliad just makes life more exciting. I wonder if it is a boy thing, to enjoy a jolly good taunt before a big fight scene. David isn’t the only one (nor is Homer) – Arnie had plenty, as did Aragorn and James Bond. When the good guy stands up to put down the baddie once and for all, and he knows it, and we in the audience know it, there is a singular sensation one cannot find anywhere else.

The difference between the heroes of Classical Greece and 80’s action blockbusters and their biblical counterparts is the one on whom they call for victory. For while the ancients call upon their ancestors and pagan deities, and the bodybuilders with machine guns refer to their moral justification, David calls upon the name of the Lord. And no-one is a bigger, tougher, or more noble hero than Yahweh.

After all is said and done – the battle for Troy ended, the terrorist camp smoking in flames – there is still one final bad guy standing, whose name is death. No amount of speechifying or weightlifting can win against death. There was, however, one hero of old who did battle death and won – and his name is the Lord.

He fought, not with sword and spear, but with his own life. His was no normal life; he was God incarnate. Death had to be swallowed up in the ever-flowing streams of the life of the Supreme Life-Giver, through a tragic betrayal, agonising passion, cruel death, and triumphant resurrection. His ending was the one, true happy ending – because the final baddie, death itself, was locked in the grave forever. When we read lines like that of David’s retort to Goliath, the sensation of the audience knowing the good guy is about to win is greater than we can find in anything else. Because we read echoes and shadows of the greatest one-liner ever uttered: “it is finished”.

What gets you excited about the Lord Jesus? How might his style of battle – not with sword or spear – encourage you in your own pilgrimage?

Victorious Lord, our Master and Friend: inspire us through the words of your saints to have such courage in our own lives that we may know more of the extent of your victory.