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The giant you face doesn’t invade, he summons. He has no authority in the camp of the Lord. All he can do is call you out to lower ground. The real battle is fought in the valley between two places. It is spiritual before it is anything else, and once it’s won there, it stays won. The giant is not an obstacle but an opportunity.
The Israelite army stood on one mountain, the Philistine army on the other, with a valley between them. Both armies were safe on their mountains, but nobody wins from high ground. The descent costs you the appearance of safety, not any real advantage. The decision and the victory happen in the valley.
Out of the Philistine camp came Goliath of Gath, their champion, the man who stepped out so the armies didn’t have to. He wore a helmet of bronze and bronze shin guards from ankle to knee. He wore a coat of mail which was hundreds of plates of bronze sewn overlapping each other, weighing about 125 pounds; a soldier’s complete combat gear weighs 60-80 pounds. He carried a bronze javelin hung across his back between his shoulder blades. His spear had a shaft like a “weaver’s beam”, the thick wooden roller on a loom. Picture a fence post, not a pole. Its iron head weighed 15 pounds, a bowling ball on the end of it. A shield-bearer walked before him, allowing Goliath’s hands to remain free, never having to defend himself. He was encased in metal from head to shin. Nothing exposed.
Goliath stood crying out to the army of Israel to “choose a man for yourselves to come down to me.”
Goliath never entered the camp of the Israelites, he had no authority there. The enemy cannot enter the camp of the living God, he can only call you out to lower ground.
Goliath continued to proclaim, “I defy the armies of Israel this day; give me a man that we may fight together.” (1 Samuel 17:10)
Israel stood silent morning and evening for forty days. Then Goliath stated his terms:
“If he is able to fight with me and kill me, then we will be your servants. But if I prevail against him and kill him, then you shall be our servants and serve us.”
1 Samuel 17:9
David walked into the camp. Jesse his father sent him to deliver food to his brothers who served under King Saul. Samuel the Prophet had already anointed David; the Spirit had rushed on him from that day. The anointing didn’t spare him the valley, the valley was the testing after the anointing.
David left the supplies with the keeper and ran to the battle line. Goliath came out again with the same words, as the Israelites ran away afraid. David overheard men talking about the reward of the king for any man who could kill Goliath; riches, marriage to his daughter and the family exempt from taxes. Everyone was fleeing, or negotiating but no one confronted the giant.
“Then David spoke to the men who stood by him, saying, ‘What shall be done for the man who kills this Philistine and takes away the reproach from Israel? For who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God?'”
1 Samuel 17:26
Everyone saw a fight with a prize attached. David saw a man defying the living God. He corrected Goliath in saying he “defied the armies of Israel” by stating “the armies of the living God.” Same verb, different object; David states the true one. He does not forget to whom he belongs or who is actually being defied.
Eliab, David’s brother, heard him speaking and anger burned within him.
“Why did you come down here? And with whom have you left those few sheep in the wilderness? I know your pride and the insolence of your heart, for you have come down to see the battle.”
1 Samuel 17:28
Eliab took what’s true and twists motives into accusations. The accuser’s script is guilt and shame. God was working through an ordinary errand with an assignment that was unknowingly a divine one. Stepping into something new inconveniences the people served by where you were. David didn’t argue and he didn’t turn back.
David’s words were reported to Saul, and he sent for him. David spoke plainly to the king to let no one’s heart fail within them, for he would go and fight. Saul objected that David was unable to fight being a youth, and Goliath a man of war from his youth.
David answered that the Lord who delivered him as a shepherd boy from the lion and the bear when they took from the flock, would deliver him from this Philistine. He measured the giant against what he had already beaten, not against himself. His training had prepared him in private to trust the Lord for the battle he now faced.
Saul clothed David in his own garments: a bronze helmet and a coat of mail on his body. David strapped the sword on and said “I cannot walk with these for I have not tested them.” He took off the armor.
Saul clothed David in the same things Goliath was wearing. The Hebrew word used for Goliath’s “coat of mail” is shiryon qasqassim, which means “coat of scales.” It is the same root used in Ezekiel 29:4 to describe the scales of Pharaoh, represented as a great monster or dragon in the Nile. Bronze was the metal symbolic for judgment, the metal of the serpent Moses lifted on the pole in Numbers 21. Goliath was not a man in armor. He was dressed as an armored serpent.
Israel’s only imaginable answer to a serpent in scales was to put their own man in scales. David takes it off. He wasn’t fighting a man in armor, he’s fighting what’s inside it. His battle was not against flesh and blood, but against the serpent(Ephesians 6:12). Saul’s armor fit Saul. Saul fought in the natural realm according to natural understanding, David in the spiritual realm according to his understanding of God. Wisdom is knowing which is yours.
David took his staff, chose five smooth stones from the brook, put them in his shepherd’s bag and took his sling. He was preparing to fight one man, yet he had picked up five stones. Scripture does not tell us why he chose five stones, but I don’t believe this number is incidental. Goliath had four more of his line born to a giant in Gath. One of whom was Goliath’s brother, Lahmi (1 Chronicles 20:5). These other four giants later fell by the hand of David and his servants years later when David was king (2 Samuel 21:22). I believe David was prepared to take down five giants, not just one.
Goliath cursed David by his gods, disdained and mocked him: “Am I a dog, that you come to me with sticks?”
Goliath cursing David by his gods, which would include the ancient gods of the Philistines, was a declaration of spiritual battle. In the ancient world this was an invocation of deities for empowerment. Dagon is named in Scripture as the god of the Philistines. All the while, David approached him with a shepherd’s staff.
“Then David said to the Philistine, ‘You come to me with a sword, with a spear, and with a javelin. But I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied….Then all the assembly shall know that the Lord does not save with sword and spear; for the battle is the Lord’s, and He will give you into our hands.”
1 Samuel 17:45, 47
David hurried and ran toward the army to meet the Philistine, took out a stone and slung it striking the Philistine in the forehead. He fell on his face. David had crushed the enemy’s head in the only vulnerable area of the armor. David’s victory is a picture of Christ’s. The promise in Genesis 3:15 was that the seed of the woman would crush the serpent’s head. What happened in the valley is a shadow of it: one man standing in for a people who couldn’t stand, striking the head of the serpent, dismantling the powers of a giant of fear. For the battle is the Lord’s. David settled whose the battle was, and he would spend the next years living like a man who believed it.
Saul took David in that day. He would not let him return to his father’s house nor did David go back to the field. He had crossed over into his destiny, even though the next few years didn’t appear that way. Jonathan’s soul was knit to his, what waited past the test wasn’t only a calling, it was the people God had for him. Those who mocked, accused and slandered him are no longer in the story. He chose to leave everything and everyone he knew to step out for God and God surrounded him with those who would continue to walk with him where the others could not go. When you conquer fear in the valley, there is no going back. You cross something you don’t return from.
The victory provoked the opposition. The women came out celebrating and singing, “Saul slain his thousands, David his ten thousands.” Saul was jealous and angry hearing this, and from that day he eyed David. The valley didn’t spare him the Saul years. It caused them. Entering into what God had for him is exactly what raised up the resistance.
Saul was the battle David refused to fight. Saul hunted him for years. David had the opportunity twice and didn’t cause him harm.
“Let the Lord judge between you and me, and let the Lord avenge me on you. But my hand shall not be against you.”
1 Samuel 24:12
David had the same conviction as he did in the valley. He was applying what he settled there: the battle belongs to God. Saul spent years trying to keep David from the throne. He couldn’t. You may not be pursued by an army with swords, but you may be pursued by accusations, gossip, slander. The divisiveness of people or even communities against you by the mouth of a “Saul”. The same heart and position that David kept in honoring God and Saul, is an example to follow, knowing that “we wrestle not against flesh and blood (Ephesians 6:12).” For Saul was the flesh and blood David refused to fight.
Goliath was not the last giant from Gath. The remaining four fell later, when David was king. They fell at the hands of David and his servants. He had an army to fight alongside. He didn’t face them alone, and he didn’t face them as a shepherd. The shepherd who won alone in the valley became the king who no longer had to fight alone. Stepping out from where you are, and meeting God in the valley to fight the giant of fear, is necessary for where He is taking you.
The spiritual battle doesn’t only decide the outcome, it decides the position you fight the next one from. You don’t meet the next giant the way you met the first one. You meet it with a kingdom. The battle is the Lord’s. It always was.