Context No. 3016 of 4322 · 1 Samuel

1 Samuel 17:33-37: in context

33Saul said to David, “You are not able to go against this Philistine to fight with him; for you are but a youth, and he a man of war from his youth.” 34David said to Saul, “Your servant was keeping his father’s sheep; and when a lion or a bear came and took a lamb out of the flock, 35I went out after him, struck him, and rescued it out of his mouth. When he arose against me, I caught him by his beard, struck him, and killed him. 36Your servant struck both the lion and the bear. This uncircumcised Philistine shall be as one of them, since he has defied the armies of the living God.” 37David said, “The LORD, who delivered me out of the paw of the lion and out of the paw of the bear, will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine.” Saul said to David, “Go! The LORD will be with you.”

Saul tells David he cannot possibly fight Goliath, a boy against a seasoned warrior. But David answers by recounting his years alone in the fields, keeping his father's sheep. When a lion or a bear carried off a lamb, he went after it, struck it, and rescued the lamb from its mouth, and killed the beast. The LORD who delivered me from the lion and the bear, David says, will deliver me from this Philistine.

David's confidence is not in himself but in what he has already seen God do. He reasons from the past, God rescued me from the lion and the bear, to the future, God will rescue me from Goliath. And notice where those deliverances happened: alone, unseen, guarding sheep in the wilderness. The private faithfulness and hidden rescues of the shepherd's field were exactly what prepared him for the public battle. God builds our faith for the great tests through the small, unwitnessed ones no one else ever saw.

Am I letting God's past deliverances, even the small and private ones, build my confidence for the larger battles ahead?

Sources

1 Samuel 17:37: "The LORD, who delivered me out of the paw of the lion and out of the paw of the bear, will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine."
Psalm 18:34: "He teaches my hands to war, so that my arms bend a bow of bronze."
2 Corinthians 1:10: "He delivered us... on whom we have set our hope that he will also still deliver us."