I Am With You In The Wilderness Series

It seemed like just another day in the sleepy little town of Gath. Merchants selling their wares in the little local market. People standing in front of the shops, discussing the latest news and gossip. Small town folks just going about another typical day … when “they” appeared. Now … any strangers showing up in Gath was a cause for excitement but these guys … there was something frightening and intense about them. They looked like soldiers … warriors … dragging into town after fighting a mighty battle or being out in the field for a long, long time. They were dirty, disheveled. They looked hungry … tired … beaten down … their eyes nervously scanning the people as they walked past.

The villagers stopped what they were doing and stared at this bedraggled and somewhat menacing group of men as they walked down the main street of Gath. The villagers of Gath had never seen anyone who looked like them before … wild, dirty, cautious, tough-looking men. One thing was sure … wherever they came from they were clearly not Philistines. As tired and dirty as these men looked, they also had a bearing of strength and pride about them … the kind that you find in seasoned warriors … which was odd because none of them were carrying any of the accoutrements of soldiers or warriors … no shields … no weapons … except for one man who had a sword … but no ordinary sword.

The sword was huge … taller than the man who wore it in his belt. In fact, the sword was so long that the tip of it dragged on the ground behind him. The sound of it dragging in the dust drew everyone’s attention away from the soldiers to the sword itself. There was something oddly familiar about this unusual sword … and then a murmur began to sweep through the villagers as they watched this weird spectacle. The sword! It began to dawn on the villagers where they had seen that sword before. It was unmistakable! It once belonged to their hometown hero and legendary champion of Philistia … Goliath of Gath!

How did this tired, dirty soldier come to possess it? As far as anybody in Gath knew, Goliath’s sword had been entrusted to a priest by the name of Ahimelech in the City of Nob.

And then it hits them ...

Is this …? Could this be …? Naw … not here in Gath! Not here in Goliath’s hometown! David was known for his bravery but this was nothing short of insane … to march into Gath wearing the very sword that David used to cut off the head of Goliath. No way! There was just no way! But who else could it be? This guy was clearly no priest, so it couldn’t be Ahimelech. It couldn’t be anyone else but David.

Needless to say, word of David and his men’s arrival spread through Gath like wildfire. As David and his men looked around they noticed that all the villagers’ stares had turned from that of curiosity to recognition … and then to growing hostility. What seemed like a good idea last night … well … now … surrounded by an increasingly hostile crowd … they realize that this was actually a pretty stupid and very dangerous idea.

Sitting around the campfire in a cave, coming to Gath seemed like a perfectly sensible idea … brilliant even. The last place that King Saul would go looking for David would be in Philistia … let alone the very hometown of Goliath … it had a kind of poetic flair to it … and they figured that they would get away with it because no one in Gath had ever seen David and it would never cross anyone’s mind that David would do such a brazen and insane thing as attempt to hide from King Saul in Gath. Even if King Saul found out that David and his men were laying low in Gath, what could he do about it? If King Saul tried to enter Philistia it would be seen as an act of war and the tribal kings along the border of Philistia would gather their troops and ride out to stop King Saul’s “invasion.” So … on paper … it made pretty good sense.

Most of you probably know the story of David’s rise to fame. It started with … [pause] … David’s defeat of Goliath … the giant of Gath. Armed with nothing more than a slingshot, five smooth stones, and his faith in the God of Israel, David killed Goliath and then … as we just heard … he cut Goliath’s head off with the giant’s own sword … the one he so foolishly wore into Goliath’s hometown.