1 Samuel 17:50

1 Samuel 17:50

The history of David's combat with Goliath sets before us our own calling and our conflict with the world, the flesh, and the devil.

Consider:

I. David was the son of a Bethlehemite, one among the families of Israel with nothing apparently to recommend him to God, the youngest of his brethren, and despised by them. He seemed born to live and die among his sheep. Yet God took him from the sheepfolds to make him His servant and friend. This is fulfilled in the case of all Christians. They are by nature poor and mean and nothing worth, but God chooses them and brings them unto himself.

II. David was a shepherd when God chose him, for He chooses not the great men of the world. The most solitary, the most unlearned, God visits, God blesses, God brings to glory, if he be but rich in faith. All Christians are kings in God's sight, they are kings in His unseen kingdom, in His spiritual world, in the communion of saints.

III. Next, observe, God chose David by the prophet Samuel. He did not think it enough to call him silently, but He called him by a voice. And so in like manner God sends His ministers to those whom He hath from eternity chosen. Samuel chose only one; but now God gives His ministers leave to apply Christ's saving death to all whom they can find.

IV. When Samuel had anointed David, the Spirit of God came upon him from that day forward. God's Spirit vouchsafes to dwell within the Christian, and to make his heart and body His temple.

V. Though David received the gift of God's Holy Spirit, yet nothing came of it all at once. So it is with Baptism. Nothing shows, for some time, that the Spirit of God has come into the child baptised; but the Lord who seeth the heart, sees in the child the presence of the Spirit.

VI. Lastly, let us enquire who is our Goliath. The answer is plain: the devil is our Goliath; we have to fight Satan, and the warfare against him lasts all through life. We come against him in Christ's all powerful, all conquering name.

Plain Sermons by Contributors to "Tracts for the Times,"vol. v., p. 198 (sec also J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons,vol. viii., p. 48.

References: 1 Samuel 17:50. J. Van Oosterzee, Year of Salvation,vol. ii., p. 430; E. Blencowe, Plain Sermons,1st series, p. 306.