Actually, David was the favourite

As I see another cultural reference to David vs. Goliath, I am reminded to post up what I was telling my children as we looked at 1 Samuel last week.

David was the favourite. That's the point of the story. Not just the favourite; the certainty.

Yes, Goliath was huge. His armour was awesome. He had been a man of war since his youth. Everyone in the Israelite camp was really scared.

But David went out faithfully in the name of Jehovah of hosts, the God of Israel, whom he had defied.

That meant that David had more on his side. He couldn't lose.

As I say, that's the point. In the cultural memory, "David vs. Goliath" means a really small guy against a really big one, with a surprising result. But in the Bible, it means a really small guy against a really big one, with the precisely expected result once you've worked out how to properly identify who the big one is.

And that's got major implications for our confidence in the preaching of the gospel. Right now your church might be dealing with the giants of apathy, atheistic secularism, humanistic intolerance, etc. The first step is to identify which side has Jehovah of hosts on it, and after the revised odds calculation to go out from there.