Read Time: 9 minutes1 Samuel 17
David and Goliath is the great type of the kingdom’s whole conflict, and every detail witnesses the seed of the woman against the seed of the serpent. Goliath of Gath — a giant of the Philistines, the uncircumcised champion — stands twice a day for forty days defying the armies of the living God, and all Israel, Saul included, is “dismayed, and greatly afraid.” His very measurements mark him as the flesh: he stands “six cubits and a span,” and his armor is reckoned in sixes — six is the number of man, of the flesh fallen short of the seventh-day rest, and the giant is the man-number embodied, the champion of human strength towering over the people, brother in number to the beast whose count is six hundred threescore and six. Natural Israel and its chosen king, armed at last, are paralysed before the champion of the flesh. The number forty is the span of probation, and for forty days the challenge stands unanswered, because there is no man in the camp of natural Israel who can meet it. The deliverer must come from outside the army’s reckoning — the shepherd, the youngest, the one sent merely to carry bread to his brothers.
David comes not as a soldier but as a shepherd bringing bread, and that is the figure. His own eldest brother meets him with contempt — “with whom hast thou left those few sheep in the wilderness?” — the deliverer scorned by his own before ever he reaches the field, as the Lord’s own brethren did not believe in him. He has already killed the lion and the bear that took the lamb from his flock — “thy servant slew both the lion and the bear” — the shepherd who lays down his safety for the sheep, and Yahweh who delivered him from lion and bear will deliver him from the giant. He refuses Saul’s armor, the king’s own equipment, “for he had not proved it,” and goes down to the brook to take five smooth stones. He will not fight the battle of faith in the borrowed armor of natural Israel; he meets the champion with a shepherd’s sling and the name of Yahweh. The five stones are not fear that one will fail — five is the number of grace, and the shepherd goes armed with grace against the giant; and there were yet other giants in Gath, sons of the same stock (2 Sam 21:22), so the five were enough for Goliath and all his kin should they come. “Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a shield: but I come to thee in the name of Yahweh of hosts… that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel.”
The single stone to the forehead and the giant’s fall are the picture of the serpent’s head crushed by the seed of the woman. “He smote the Philistine in his forehead… and he fell upon his face to the earth” — the head-wound of Genesis 3:15, the bruising of the serpent’s head, delivered by the despised shepherd while the armies watch. And David takes the giant’s own sword and cuts off his head with it — the enemy destroyed by his own weapon, as death itself will be undone by the death of the One who entered it. The champion who defied the living God is brought down by a stone from a shepherd’s hand, and the whole host that could not move is suddenly loosed to pursue. One man’s victory is the victory of all; the deliverer fights alone, and the people enter into what he wins.
The pattern is the gospel in miniature, and it stands deliberately against Saul. Saul, the king the people chose, could not face the giant; David, the king Yahweh chose, faces him alone in the name of Yahweh and wins the field for a people who did nothing but watch and then follow. The shepherd-king goes down ahead of his people against the champion of death, and his single victory becomes their deliverance — the head of the serpent crushed, the host set free, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel. This is the work the greater Son of David comes to do, alone, against the last enemy.
The champion of the flesh defies the living God, and natural Israel is paralysed for forty days — but the despised shepherd comes in the name of Yahweh and crushes the serpent’s head with a single stone. The deliverer fights alone, and the people enter the victory he wins.
Isaiah 61
This is the chapter the Lord Jesus opened in the synagogue at Nazareth and read as fulfilled in himself — the Spirit-anointed Servant’s own commission. “The Spirit of the Lord Yahweh is upon me; because Yahweh hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound.” The anointing of David, the Spirit coming on the beloved, is here the anointing of the Servant for a work of release — good news to the meek, healing to the broken, liberty to the captive. When the Lord read this in Luke 4 he closed the book at “the acceptable year of Yahweh,” stopping short of “the day of vengeance,” because the first coming was the year of favor and the vengeance waits for the second. The acceptable year is the jubilee — liberty proclaimed throughout the land, every captive released, every debt cancelled, the great release the Servant brings.
The released and comforted are then given the threefold exchange that names the whole work of grace: “to appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.” Ashes turned to beauty, mourning to the oil of joy, heaviness to a garment of praise — every sign of grief exchanged for its opposite. The beauty given for ashes is a garland — the victor’s wreath set against the crown of thorns the world pressed on him, the incorruptible crown his own are promised (1 Cor 9:25). And the comforted become “trees of righteousness, the planting of Yahweh, that he might be glorified.” The mourners of Zion are made into oaks of righteousness, the planting of Yahweh — the same image as Isaiah 60’s risen city and 58’s watered garden, the broken made into something rooted and glorious for the Planter’s praise.
The middle of the chapter sets the redeemed to the work of rebuilding and lifts them to a priesthood. “They shall build the old wastes, they shall raise up the former desolations… But ye shall be named the Priests of Yahweh: men shall call you the Ministers of our God.” The released captives become builders of ruins and priests of Yahweh — the repairers of the breach again, now made a royal priesthood, the kings and priests of the kingdom drawn from the once-broken. And for their shame they receive double, and everlasting joy: “for your shame ye shall have double; and for confusion they shall rejoice in their portion… everlasting joy shall be unto them.”
The chapter ends in the language of marriage and a watered garden bursting into bloom. “I will greatly rejoice in Yahweh… for he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, he hath covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decketh himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth herself with her jewels.” The garments of salvation and the robe of righteousness — the bride adorned, the same fine linen the bride of Revelation will wear, the righteousness of saints. “For as the earth bringeth forth her bud… so the Lord Yahweh will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations.” The Servant’s work of release ends in a wedding and a garden, the broken clothed as a bride, righteousness springing up before all the nations.
The Spirit-anointed Servant proclaims the acceptable year — liberty to the captives, beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning. The mourners of Zion are made oaks of righteousness and priests of Yahweh, clothed in the garments of salvation like a bride adorned.
Matthew 6
The discourse turns to the secret life of the kingdom-people, and the governing principle is the Father who sees in secret against the religion done to be seen. Three times — in giving, in prayer, in fasting — the King warns against doing righteousness “to be seen of men,” and three times he sets against it the Father “which seeth in secret.” This is Yahweh seeth the heart carried into the daily practice of devotion. The hypocrites sound the trumpet before their alms, pray standing in the streets, disfigure their faces in fasting — all for the reward of being seen, and “they have their reward” in full, the applause of men and nothing more. The kingdom of the heart gives, prays, and fasts in secret, to the Father who sees there. This is the exact answer to Isaiah 58’s fast for show: the true fast, the true alms, the true prayer are unseen.
At the centre stands the pattern prayer, the model for the kingdom-people. It begins not with need but with the Father’s name, kingdom, and will — “Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven” — the longing of all the prophets gathered into three petitions, the kingdom Isaiah saw coming, the will of the Father done on a renewed earth as Revelation ends. Only then come the daily bread, the forgiveness measured by our forgiving, and the deliverance from temptation and from the evil one. It is the whole life of the saint in a few lines: the Father’s glory first, then the day’s needs, then mercy given and received, then keeping from the testing the Lord himself met in the wilderness.
The chapter then sets two treasuries and two masters before the heart. “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth… but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven… for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” The heart follows the treasure; what a man stores is what he loves. And no man can serve two masters — “ye cannot serve God and mammon.” This is the choice that ran through Saul, who served his own standing, and David, who served Yahweh while he waited: the single eye, the undivided heart, the treasure laid up where it cannot be lost. The flesh lays up where moth and rust corrupt; the kingdom-people lay up where the treasure is safe and the heart is drawn upward after it.
The discourse’s close on anxiety is the rest of the trusting heart. “Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat… Behold the fowls of the air… Consider the lilies of the field.” The Father who feeds the birds and clothes the grass will feed and clothe his children; anxiety is the mark of little faith, the failure to trust the Father’s care. And the remedy is the kingdom set first: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow.” The whole anxious striving of the flesh is answered by the single aim — seek first the kingdom — and the promise that the Father knows our needs and will supply them. The heart that seeks the kingdom first is freed from the fear that drives the world.
Give, pray, and fast in secret, to the Father who sees in secret — not the religion done to be seen. Lay up treasure where the heart should be, serve God and not mammon, and seek first the kingdom; the Father who feeds the birds will care for you.
Synthesis and Exhortation
The day gathers around a single great theme: the deliverance that one anointed man wins for a people who could not win it themselves, and the secret-hearted life that flows from it. David goes down alone against Goliath while all Israel watches, crushes the serpent’s head with a stone, and his single victory becomes the whole army’s deliverance — the seed of the woman bruising the serpent, the shepherd-king fighting the battle his people could not fight. Isaiah 61 names the work that David’s victory pictures: the Spirit-anointed Servant proclaiming liberty to the captives, beauty for ashes, the acceptable year of release. And Matthew gives the inward life of those the Servant has freed — giving, praying, fasting in secret to the Father who sees the heart, treasure laid up in heaven, the kingdom sought first. One deliverer, one victory, and a freed people living from the heart toward the Father.
The thread of the heart and the secret runs through all three. David is the man Yahweh chose for his heart, and he fights not in Saul’s armor but in the name of Yahweh; Isaiah’s Servant is anointed by the Spirit to heal the brokenhearted; Matthew’s kingdom-people do their righteousness unseen, to the Father who sees in secret, with the single eye and the undivided heart. Against all of it stands the religion of the eye — Saul paralyzed and concerned for his standing, the hypocrites trumpeting their alms, the heart divided between God and mammon. The kingdom is the kingdom of the heart from beginning to end: chosen by the heart, freed in the heart, lived from the heart toward the Father who sees there.
And the hope holds its shape. David’s victory is won, but the kingdom is not yet his; the Servant proclaims the acceptable year, but stops short of the day of vengeance that waits for the second coming; the kingdom-people pray thy kingdom come, still asking, still seeking it first as a thing not yet arrived. The captives are freed and the mourners comforted and made oaks of righteousness — yet the everlasting joy and the bride’s adorning are promised, springing up before the nations in a day still ahead. The saint lives in the acceptable year, freed and anointed and waiting, seeking first a kingdom that is at hand but not yet come.
So the exhortation draws the day to a point: take your stand where David stood — not in the armor of the flesh but in the name of Yahweh, trusting the One who delivered from lion and bear to deliver from the giant. Receive the Servant’s release: beauty for your ashes, the oil of joy for your mourning, the garment of praise for your heaviness, and be made an oak of righteousness, a priest of Yahweh. Then live the secret life of the freed heart — give and pray and fast unseen, lay up your treasure where your heart should be, serve God and not mammon, and seek first the kingdom, leaving the morrow to the Father who feeds the birds. The serpent’s head is crushed; the acceptable year is proclaimed; seek the kingdom first, and all these things shall be added.
Stand where David stood, in the name of Yahweh against the giant; receive beauty for ashes from the anointed Servant; and live from the secret heart — treasure in heaven, the single eye, the kingdom sought first, the morrow left to the Father.