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‘CHRIST’ Has Crushed The Giant Pt 2
No comments · Posted by Peter Wilson in Christ Has Crushed The Giant
1 Sam 17:45-46 David said to the Philistine, “You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the Lord will hand you over to me, and I’ll strike you down and cut off your head. (NIV)
Types and shadows are prophetic pictures in the Old Covenant pointing forward to what will actually take place in the New Covenant. Most Christians know that Abraham offering his son on the altar for a sacrifice is a type looking forward to the day when God the Father offered up God the Son on the cross as a sacrifice for sin.
Types are good to use because they display word pictures of an event rather than just words by themselves; that is why I am using the story of David and Goliath because it is a type of what took place at the cross when Jesus (David’s greater son) defeated the devil.
So let’s look at the cluster of truths that are found in this story:
1) David and the army of Israel symbolise Christ and His Church – opposing him are Goliath and the army of the Philistines who symbolise satan and his demonic spirits.
2) David is a shepherd boy who’s only armour and weapons are a shepherds clothing, a staff and a sling with 5 stones. Whereas Goliath is clothed from head to foot with armour of bronze, a sword, a javelin and a shield. Bronze in Scripture speaks of judgement. Goliath was already under the judgement of God and would soon receive the penalty of that judgement – death.
Similarly, satan was already judged by God when He threw him out of heaven. Then on the cross he received the defeat that would ultimately cast him into the lake of fire (Rev 20:10).
3) Goliath was a giant who was approx 9 1/2 tall. He was relying on himself and his height to frighten anyone who would face him in battle, which was why the army of Israel ran away in fear (1 Sam 17:24). Whereas David was a man of average height. But David wasn’t trusting in himself or his sling, he was trusting in the name of the Lord. He had God on His side, and if God be for us, who can be against us! (1 Sam 17:47)
4) David has 5 stones in his shepherd’s abg. The No 5 in Scripture speaks of ‘grace’. David’s trust in God released God’s grace (unmerited favour) to do what David couldn’t do – defeat Goliath. David, taking one of his stones, put it in his sling and hurled it at Goliath and hit him in the only place which wasn’t covered by his armour, between the eyes and killed him.
David approached Goliath, took Goliath’s sword and cut off his head. He then stripped Goliath of all his armour.
5) When the Philistines saw that Goliath was defeated they ran away, closely followed by the army of Israel who were now emboldened to pursue the Philistine army and kill them and plunder all their goods. (1 Sam 17:52,53)
6) Jesus was the ‘stone’ the builders rejected, but God used him to defeat satan on the cross. He crushed satan’s headship once and for all. And let’s remember, Jesus defeated satan on the cross as the Son of Man, not the Son of God. He did it by trusting in the name of the Lord.
And how did Jesus defeat satan. He defeated him by fulfilling the law perfectly. The broken law was satan’s power and authority over mankind, and he would use man’s inability to keep the law as a means of accusing him before God and thus keep him in defeat. But when Jesus was accepted before God as a man who fulfilled the law in every jot and title, He took away satan’s power to accuse.
Col 2:13-15 You were dead in sins, and your sinful desires were not yet cut away. Then He gave you a share in the very life of Christ, for He forgave all your sins, and blotted out the charges proved against you, the list of His commandments which you had not obeyed. He took this list of sins and destroyed it by nailing it to Christ’s cross. In this way God took away Satan’s power to accuse you of sin, and God openly displayed to the whole world Christ’s triumph at the cross where your sins were all taken away. (TLB)
7) Therefore, like David stripped Goliath of his armour, Jesus now stripped satan of all his power and authority and left him naked. Nakedness in scripture speaks of shame. Jesus displayed satan as a captured slave (slaves were stripped naked and bound in chains to show they were under another king’s power and will) and put him to an open shame. All the angels of heaven now knew that satan has suffered his final defeat. (Col 2:13-15)
Now satan is defeated, the holy angels of Christ will always be able to defeat the fallen angels of satan. This is the role they play on behalf of every Christian, and this is what we will be looking at in the next Blog.
Meditation Point: In fulfilling the law, Jesus took away satan’s power and authority to accuse man of sin, and thus cosnsigned him to an eternal defeat.
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