What does it mean that the battle is the Lord's (1 Samuel 17:47)?

The flesh likes to see sword opposed to sword, helmet against helmet; the flesh loves its own. But David said, "Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a shield: but I come to thee in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied." Thus David puts the question on its true basis. It is now simply a question between the Lord of hosts and the Philistine. David puts David quite out of the question, and brings God Himself in as the antagonist of Goliath.

"And the Philistine came on, and drew near unto David" (1 Sam. 17:41). And, disdaining David and his army, Goliath says, "Am I a dog that thou comest to me with staves? "Remember this, beloved, that the flesh always thinks itself insulted, because our weapons are not such as itself uses. The flesh likes to see sword opposed to sword, helmet against helmet; the flesh loves its own. But David said, "Thou comest to me with a sword and with a spear, and with a shield; but I come to thee in the name of the Lord of Hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied." Thus David puts the question on its true basis. It is now a question simply between the Lord of Hosts and the Philistine. David puts David quite out of question, and brings God Himself in, as the antagonist of Goliath. Thus should it always be with us. What are we? What is the foe? It matters not what. we are, or what is the power of the foe; it signifies not however mighty the one, or weak the other: will not God vindicate His own name? David came in the name of the Lord of Hosts; and will not God be jealous of His own name? Will He allow the Philistine to triumph over that? Never! Here then is the might of faith. Faith always brings in Omnipotence. "If God be for us, who can be against us?" is ever the word of faith.

Now David could never have stood thus at this hour, if he had not learnt God as his God in secret: therefore could he say, "Let no man's heart fail him: and therefore could he thus meet Goliath. The name of the Lord must be our strength against every evil, whether without or within. Suppose the worst kind of evil, sin by a saint (and I trust that we all know that sin in a saint is far worse than sin in another), and what is our refuge? "For thy name's sake, O Lord, pardon mine iniquity, for it is great." You have only to put God in remembrance of His own name, and He will be jealous for that name. Thus faith can always use the name of the Lord as its strength against every foe. So that, instead of there being pride in David's heart here, he was shrinking himself into nothing, and making God everything. His most confident words are his most humble ones. And is it not the name of Jesus that we have to set against everything? Against every trial, every anxiety, every enemy? Is it not this which God is teaching many souls in secret now? Leading them into a sense of pollution and weakness they never knew before; into trial they never knew before; in order that they may know the value of what they have in the cross? Not as though they had not got every thing, but to prove this in them and unite them. Thus many are proving experimentally what redemption is, by being made to feel the necessity of such an Almighty friend as God. God is thus in secret now instructing many souls in the value of the cross. And why? In order that they may be strong in the conflict.

And living before God in secret will ever make us act, if I may so speak, on the aggressive. This is remarkable in David. He says (1 Sam. 17:46-49), "This day will the Lord deliver thee into my hand; and I will smite thee and take thy head from thee, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel! And David hasted and ran toward the army, to meet the Philistine." David tarried not, faltered not: but instantly used his simple arms and smote his foe to the earth. "So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and with a stone and smote the Philistine and slew him; and there was no sword in the hand of David" (1 Sam. 17:50-51).

With David, then, it was not a question how things looked to man, but what the things were in God's sight. He viewed things in the light in which God viewed them, and all was clear and certain for him, the man of faith. "Let no man's heart fail because of him," David said to Saul; "thy servant will go and fight with this Philistine." This was the language of faith, not the bravado of a boaster. Goliath was only an uncircumcised Philistine, he had not the token of God's covenant on his person. (Gen. 17:11.) But all this was lost upon Saul, He looked at David, took note of his youthfulness, and attempted to discourage him. All right, if David had been going in his own strength; but if the contest really lay between God and the enemy, what mattered youth and inexperience in war? The living God must conquer him who terrified His people with the dread of death. So David knew, and in God's strength would he meet the giant. For God was his God. He had proved His delivering power at the sheepfold. There he had received that training which fitted him for the combat. The lion and the bear, which had robbed his father's fold, he had slain single-handed. What better than the fate of those unclean beasts could the uncircumcised Philistine have meted out to him, seeing he had defied the armies of the living God?

Armed with Saul's armour, David assayed to go, for he had not proved it; but the armour of man's devising, since the conflict really lay between God and the enemy, encumbered the man of faith. So, putting it off, and furnished only with offensive weapons provided by God, the five smooth stones out of the brook, he went forward to the encounter. The Philistine moved forward, preceded by his armour-bearer. David went to meet him, with God for his shield. Goliath disdained him, and cursed him by his gods, vaunting of his ability to give his flesh to the fowls of the air, and to the beasts of the field. Boasting in word, attempting, too, perhaps, to terrify David by cursing him, this was all that the enemy could do. David heard his boastful language, and replied with becoming spirit, "Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a shield; but I come to thee in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied. This day will the Lord deliver thee into mine hand; and I will smite thee, and take thine head from thee, and I will give the carcases of the host of the Philistines this day unto the fowls 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 all this assembly shall know that the Lord saveth not with sword and spear, for the battle is the Lord's, and he will give you into our hands." Confident was the Philistine, as confident was David. Yet how different was the spirit of the latter from that of the former! Goliath boasted of his strength, "I will give thy flesh," etc. David trusted in the Lord; "the Lord," he said, "will deliver thee into mine hand." To Goliath he speaks of Jehovah. To Israel and to Saul he made mention of the living God. Each term was in keeping with the circumstances in which David was placed. To rally Israel and Saul, he reminds them of the living God. Answering the boastful Philistine, he speaks of Jehovah of hosts as the God of the armies of Israel. The living God could not be overcome by the power of death. Jehovah of hosts, who has power in battle, could not be subdued by the champion of God's enemies. In His name, then, David, stripling though he was, would go forward, and felt sure of the victory.

With the sling and the stone Goliath was conquered. The weapon needed was not far off. In the brook which ran between the two armies the stone was found that laid low the champion of the uncircumcised, and silenced for ever his boasting. All his armour proved unavailing to ward off the death-blow: even the shield borne before him by his armour-bearer did not intercept the stone. God provided what was wanted, and it was found to be all-sufficient. A principle we have here of wide application. God does provide the weapons wherewith, if called upon, His people may meet those opposed to Him. The Lord promised to provide them. (Luke 21:15.) So Stephen proved the Lord's faithfulness to His word, when His enemies were not able to resist the wisdom and spirit by which he spake. (Acts 6:10.) In this he does not stand alone, for the Lord still cares for His people.

Here we have the true object of the man of faith, viz., that Israel and all the earth might have a glorious testimony to the power and presence of God in the midst of His people. If David had used Saul's armour it would not have been known that the Lord saved not by sword and spear — his warfare would just seem like any other; but the sling and the stone while giving little prominence to him that used it, gave the glory to Him from whom the victory came.

When cursed and threatened by Goliath, David manifested his unbounded confidence in God in replying that his triumph over the giant would enable all the earth to know "that there is a God in Israel," and all present would know that "the Lord saveth not with sword and spear: for the battle is the Lord's." In delivering His people from the power and dread of their foes, the power and glory of their God would be proclaimed throughout the world (1 Sam. 17:46).

(e) The combatants now approach to the encounter, and the spirit of each is manifest. With David there is confident assurance, but it is in Jehovah, in whose name he acts, and who is with him, meaning to show Himself as the living God to all the earth, and to make Israel know that He saves neither by sword nor spear, but the issue of the battle is in His hand alone. So, indeed, has God wrought, and for such a purpose, in those great crises of human history in which His hand has been stretched out to break the power of the enemy and deliver men out of his grasp. But above all, when the deliverance has been from spiritual oppression and darkness, and the result of it the bringing of souls into the joy and peace of the gospel, how has God declared His being and name, and how clearly has victory been the result not of human effort or carnal means, but His handiwork alone!

"Ah!" you exclaim, "here is my difficulty. How am I, a poor feeble creature, to do this thing?" It is thus that unbelief ever speaks. Look at David in the presence of Goliath. Does he feel the impossibility of coping with such a powerful adversary? Nothing of the kind. His one conviction was that "the battle was the Lord's"; that Goliath was the Lord's enemy, and hence that the Lord would that day deliver him into his hand (1 Sam. 17:45-47). He thus measured his foe by the strength of the Lord; and by that measurement Goliath dwindled down before him into a puny dwarf, yea, into utter impotence and nothingness. So should it be with us. Granted that indwelling sin is strong and active, yet He who tells us to reckon ourselves to be dead to it, has supplied the power to enable us to comply with the exhortation. He has given us the indwelling Spirit, and if we "through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, we shall live" (Rom. 8:13); if "we walk in the Spirit, we shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh" (Gal. 5:16). The Spirit of God is therefore our strength in this warfare, the all sufficient power given to enable us to keep sin from reigning in our mortal body.

As the giant presses forward, David says: "This day will the Lord deliver thee into mine hand; and I will smite thee, and take thine head from thee; and I will give the carcases of the host of the Philistines this day to the fowls 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 all this assembly shall know that THE LORD SAVETH not with sword and spear: for the battle is the Lord's, and he will give you into our hands" (vers. 46, 47). Mark that! the Lord saves. You cannot save yourself; I cannot save myself. It is the Lord who alone can save me. God alone can meet the need and ruin of man as a sinner, and I am shut up to accept God's Saviour. "And David put his hand in his bag, and took thence a stone, and slang it, and smote the Philistine in his forehead, that the stone sunk into his forehead; and he fell upon his face to the earth" (ver. 49). He did not think of such a weapon as a sling. He was looking for arrows, and had protected himself with a great big shield; but the stone slung by David went up with a curve, and just struck the giant on the forehead, — on the spot he least expected it. Satan little thought that the death of Jesus would annul death, and that by His being made sin, so sin would be put away, or he would not have plotted for His death. "So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and with a stone, and smote the Philistine, and slew him; but there was no sword in the hand of David. Therefore David ran, and stood upon the Philistine, and took his sword, and drew it out of the sheath thereof, and slew him, and cut off his head therewith" (vers. 50, 51). That was absolute victory. He cut off his head with his own sword. Christ too has, so to speak, cut off Satan's head with his own sword. Do you know what death is? It is the wages of sin consequent on man's sin and guilt, and Satan can wield it as a sword over man's conscience. Death is the judgment of God upon man as a sinner, and when it suits his purpose, the devil can hold over man the solemn truth that he is going to die. To the young he usually says: "You won't die for a long time yet. There is plenty of time, so you need not think about your soul yet." When man is middle-aged, he says: "You have to labour and work, and get on in the world, and you are really too busy to think about your soul." When men get old, and they must die, then the devil will tell them, "You have lived a good life, so you need not be afraid to die." And if then, or at any time, men get anxious about 'their souls, then he alters his tactics, and holds over them the sense of what death is, and presses the fear of death upon them.

When he presents himself before the Philistine, although David is “a valiant man and a man of war” (1 Sam. 16:18), he does not look like a warrior. Even his beauty, the reflection of the Lord's grace, is disdained by Goliath (v. 42). He is here the representative of God whom the Philistine had defied. To glorify this God whom Satan had dishonored: such was David's purpose, and such was Christ's purpose. Their strength consisted of fighting in His name: “I come to thee in the name of Jehovah of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied” (v. 45). In David's spirit there was not a doubt about the results of the contest. “This day will Jehovah deliver thee up into my hand” (v. 46). Often when engaged in conflict we doubt; even a Jonathan is not sure of the result and says: “It may be” (1 Sam. 14:6); here, there is nothing of the kind; rather, there is absolute faith which has the secret of the Lord and counts upon great things. Here David is the true type of Christ, for he represents God before the enemy.

David declares wherein his strength consists. "I come to thee in the name of Jehovah of hosts." He then identifies himself with the people of God. "All the earth shall know that there is a God in Israel." Remark how the simplicity of faith rises to the consciousness of power and its effects in the hands of God (1 Sam. 17:46). So ever when God leads the heart.

The stone which sinks into the forehead of Goliath deprives him of strength and of life. David cuts off the head of Goliath with his own sword, like Him who by death destroyed him that had the power of death.