Scripture is a lens through which we learn to view the stories of our lives. In this service, we learn from the songs that surround the story of David, his giant, and his God. This service juxtaposes the narrative or “scene” of David and Goliath with the “unseen,” the acts of God and the language from the psalms that bear on David’s spiritual journey. This worship service is in a lessons and psalms format. Psalms may be either spoken or sung.
Gathered in the Name of the Lord
While the bell rings, prepare your hearts in quiet to meet God together.
Prelude
Welcome
The Lord be with you.
And also with you.
Call to Worship: Psalm 147
Congregational Song: “Great and Mighty” Bigley
God’s Greeting
Passing the Peace
The peace of Christ be with you.
And also with you.
Psalm 27: “O Lord, You Are My Light” Anon
Prayer of Illumination
Congregational Song: “Ancient Words” DeShazo
God’s Story and Ours
The Setting of the Scene
Lesson: 1 Samuel 17:1–11
Psalm—Lament: Psalm 10:1–6
The Setting of the Unseen
Psalm—God Speaks: Psalm 2:1–6
Lesson—God’s Laughable Plans Unfold: 1 Samuel 17:12–27
The People Fear
Congregational Song: “O Lord, Hear My Prayer”
The People’s Psalm of Fear
Lord, how many are my foes!
How many rise up against me!
Many are saying of me,
“God will not deliver him.” . . .
. . . Arise, Lord!
Deliver me, my God!
Strike all my enemies on the jaw;
break the teeth of the wicked.
From the Lord comes deliverance.
May your blessing be on your people.
—Psalm 3:1–2,7–8
Congregational Song: “O Lord, Hear My Prayer”
Psalm—David’s Call to Trust: Psalm 115:2–10
Lesson—The People Fear: 1 Samuel 17:28–37
Psalm—David’s Prayer of Assurance: Psalm 27:1–2
Instrumental Music: “The Lord Is My Light” Berthier
Lesson: 1 Samuel 17:38–47
Psalm—David’s Prayer on the Run: Psalm 35
God Vindicates God’s Name
Lesson—God Vindicates God’s Name: 1 Samuel 17:48–51
Psalm of Thanksgiving
The Lord lives! Praise be to my Rock!
Exalted be God my Savior!
He is the God who avenges me,
who subdues nations under me,
who saves me from my enemies.
You exalted me above my foes;
from a violent man you rescued me.
Therefore I will praise you, Lord, among the nations;
I will sing the praises of your name.
He gives his king great victories;
he shows unfailing love to his anointed,
to David and to his descendants forever.
—Psalm 18:46–50
Congregational Song: “I Will Call Upon the Lord” (2x) O’Shields
Meditation: “The Scene and the Unseen” (Psalm 2) [See below.]
That the Whole World May Know There Is a God
Response
Morning Prayers
Offering
Sending
Congregational Song: “Lift High the Cross” Newbolt and Kitchin
Parting Blessing
Postlude
Meditation: The Scene and the Unseen
We hope that this service has provided a fresh hearing of a familiar part of God’s word. We struggle to listen well. We are like cows who always follow the same narrow path back to the barn. When I turn to this Scripture, I struggle with a mental image from my days at summer camp, where the pastor described a huge Goliath walking up with his spear slung between his shoulders. Goliath was a big man, a mighty man. Goliath caught my imagination. If I am not careful I will spend all my time impressed with Goliath.
Maybe you struggle as well. You’ve heard sermons calling you to be ready to fight for God. You’ve been told, “Plan ahead and gather up five stones, not just one, in case you fail the first time.” Or perhaps you fixate on how Goliath may not have bothered to put on his helmet to battle this young shepherd.
Forget all that. Listen closely. This story is about God. Not David. Not Goliath. Not you. It is about God. David shouts the central premise of the entire story: “This day the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel!”
How easily we forget. Even when the line is shouted by the main actor—“The whole world will know that God is God. The Lord saves!”—somehow we become so fixated upon the stuff in front of our faces that we lose sight of the God who made it all. The irony is staggering: this most famous of all Bible stories is intended to remind us that it isn’t really about the big guy versus the little guy—but it has come to represent just that. Just consider a few notable battles: Erin Brockovich goes after Pacific Gas & Electric. Ukraine defends itself against Russia. A no. 16 seed team upsets the no. 1 team in the NCAA basketball tournament. In headlines and news articles, all are referred to as modern David versus Goliath stories.
The trouble is, the original story we’ve just heard pits the little guy against the big guy only so that we’ll fix our eyes on the much bigger God. It isn’t about giants, or David, or fighting. It is about God—the God who is present. Guarding. Guiding. Managing history in the direction God wants it to go for the benefit of God’s people. All of Scripture gives us a lens through which to see:
The kings of the earth rise up
and the rulers band together
against the Lord and against his anointed, saying,
“Let us break their chains
and throw off their shackles.”
—Psalm 2:2–3
This violent rebellion against God is always in front of our faces; that is the scene. Your eyes take it in. It is raw and real. Scripture never asks us to pretend we don’t live here.
But Scripture offers us a lens to understand another reality:
The One enthroned in heaven laughs;
the Lord scoffs at them.
He rebukes them in his anger
and terrifies them in his wrath, saying,
“I have installed my king
on Zion, my holy mountain.”
—Psalm 2:4–6
Do you see? The scene and the unseen.
In the story of David and Goliath, we see everything that makes us fallen humans. There is the political tension: An enemy power has ruined peaceful times and is threatening war. There is familial tension: Dad is pacing at night, longing for news about his boys off at war. (Mom isn’t mentioned, did you notice?) The baby brother is stuck doing the family chores. There is the economic tension: The working-age kids are gone, the aging Dad is at home with a struggling sheep station. Emotional tension is everywhere: Dad is worried and afraid, David is curious, then incredulous before he shows his mettle; older brothers are angry, then jealous. Goliath is proud and defiant, and Israel’s army is quaking in their boots. It is a vividly physical scene. Stinking sweat is dripping off men who haven’t showered in a month. Boy soldiers who have been yanked into military service are probably crying into their pillows every night. Every morning and every night they would pound fists in the locker room and make a great shout before they went out. Then they saw Goliath. And they would melt.
They were humans—people with real stories and real emotions.
And this is the kind of soil out of which the psalms spring. These 150 songs and prayers inspired by the Holy Spirit don’t drop out of heaven in verse. They are earthy, worldly. They are not brewed up by hyperspiritual monks on a forty-day silent mountain retreat. Psalms are emotional in the same way you are emotional. You get angry when things don’t go right. Stuff scares you. Gossip wounds you and digs under your skin. You squirm when you wish you could turn the world around. Disease eats at your stomach lining. Corruption pushes at us from outside. Sin boils up inside. You’re impatient. We wonder the whole time, “God, where are you? What are you doing? Have you forgotten me? Did you lose me? Are you against me?”
The psalms give us words to use—words to pray, to weep with, to skip and dance over, to quiet us, to corner us, to help us fall in step with God.
But they also pull back and remind us of another reality: the unseen. They slow us down long enough to see that there is something unseen going on, right here. What the psalms do so well is help us reorient our compass to line up with God’s North Star. The psalms do in poetry and song what the author of 1 Samuel does: remind us that there is another story unwinding.
The psalms help us live in the uncertainty of the unseen. Until we hear God speaking over and under and through this scene, we can imagine God is absent or not in control or careless or asleep—that is, until the poet lifts up his hands and starts the choir singing and we hear, “Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain . . . against the Lord and against his anointed?” (Psalm 2:1–2). The psalmist then clues us in to another reality that is bigger, stronger, and more certain—in this case, that despite this earthly turmoil, “the One enthroned in heaven laughs.”
The Israelites were on a mountain on one side of a valley.
The Philistines were on a mountain on the other side of the valley.
It was a valley with a shadow of death.
But the Lord is my shepherd. And God was doing what shepherds do. They protect. They chase away foes. They even kill. The Lord is my shepherd.
The Lord is right here. The risen Jesus Christ owns this world. He is ruling all things and renewing all things. This is the invisible skeletal structure underneath history upon which our good God is orchestrating all things. Jesus is the infrastructure upon which we live and move and have our being. The battle is not yours or mine. All things are God’s.
And sometimes God does laughable things to get our attention. David was an afterthought. Just prior to this story, the prophet Samuel obeyed God’s voice and took a trip out to Bethlehem to put his mark on God’s choice to be the new king. Samuel shows up and sees David’s oldest brother Eliab and thinks, “Surely that is the Lord’s anointed!” (Eliab must have been truly impressive, because King Saul was no slouch.) But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7).
The scene. The unseen.
Samuel is surprised. OK, the Lord does not want this one. Abinadab? Nope. Not Abinadab. The Lord has not chosen this one. Next? Nope, not Shammah. Next? Nope. Next?. Nope. . . .
“Is that it? Are these all your boys?”
“Well,” says Jesse, “There’s still the youngest.” Jesse doesn’t even name him!
“Go get him,” Samuel says. “We won’t sit down until you do.”
David had not been invited to the battle against the Philistines. David had not even been invited to this anointing ceremony or to the feast that had been prepared. David was not even a name on his father’s lips. Too little. Too young. Too insignificant. Too small.
But God’s ways are not our ways. As high as the heavens are above the earth, so God’s thoughts are above our thoughts.
But when we read Scripture with an eye to what God is doing, we notice both the scene and the unseen. “The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7).
