Speak, Lord, We’re Listening
November 1, 2026
Scripture: 1 Samuel 17
A chapter-style transcription of the sermon, beginning where the pastor returns to the church’s annual theme, “Speak, Lord, We’re Listening.” The original spoken words have been arranged into paragraphs and sections for readability.
Contents
- Returning to the Year’s Theme
- God Is Bigger Than Any Giant
- Two Kings: Saul and David
- The First Voice: Goliath
- David Heard the Same Voice Differently
- The Second Voice: Eliab
- The Third Voice: King Saul
- David Remembered God’s Faithfulness
- David Did Not Need a New Word from God
- Making Room for God’s Voice
- David’s Greatest Strength Was Knowing God
- Your Circumstances Don’t Have the Final Say
- What Happens While We’re Waiting?
- God Spoke First
- David’s Declaration Before Goliath
- The Holy Spirit Dwells Within Believers
- The Battle Is the Lord’s
- Nothing Can Separate Us from God’s Love
- The Closing Prayer
1. Returning to the Year’s Theme
Okay. Take a deep breath. All right, First Samuel 17. Here we go.
It’s November, and before we get to the Christmas messages starting in December, I want us as a church to go back to what we started with this year.
All right, our theme for the year for this church has been: Speak, Lord, we’re listening. Speak, Lord, we’re listening.
And this year we’ve been intentional about hearing the voice of God. And so we started with it, and before we get to Christmas, I want to end with it.
So for a few weeks, we’re going to talk about this: hearing the voice of God, hearing the voice of God.
And we’re going to look at the story of David and Goliath today. And we all know the story of David and Goliath. You can’t say David without thinking about Goliath, right?
It’s like if I say Jonah, what do you think? Jonah and the whale. Jonah and the fish. Daniel and the lions. Okay, you got it. You got it. Israel crossing the Jordan—the Red Sea!
All right, these things just go hand in hand.
And so today we’re going to talk about the life of David, and if we first think of Goliath, I’m going to talk about Goliath.
So if you thought this morning that you only heard about David and Goliath in Sunday school class or in kids’ books, we’re going to look at it today again, because I believe that God is speaking to us.
And there’s a moment in the story of David and Goliath in First Samuel 17 that we sometimes can overlook, but there’s three different voices that were speaking in that story, and that’s what we’re going to look at today.
And so, it’s David and Goliath, the giant.
2. God Is Bigger Than Any Giant
All right. Now I love this.
We have a Bible storybook that we read to Leo sometimes at night, and the other day we did the story of David and Goliath. And Leo loved this term giant, because it describes Goliath as this giant.
And then putting Leo to bed, he goes, “Papa, how big is a giant?”
I’m like, “Okay, they’re pretty big. They’re pretty big. Like, they’re big.”
He’s like, “Okay, so is God a giant?”
And I’m like, “Okay, yes and no. Okay, okay. There’s a lot to unpack here.”
But he’s like, “Is God bigger than Goliath?”
And I’m like, “One hundred percent. He’s bigger than Goliath, all right. God is giant. He’s not a giant, but He is giant in terms of size, and He’s like so big.”
And he goes like, “Is God bigger than all the giants?”
And I’m like, “Yes, way bigger, way bigger. Think bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger.”
And he says, “Okay, how big is God?”
And I’m like, “Okay, dude, we don’t have time for all this theological stuff right now. Let’s go. You gotta go to bed. School tomorrow!”
And I’m trying to explain to him that God is just so big. He’s just so vast. He’s bigger than anything you think. He’s greater than anything that you can think of. He’s like bigger than the world that we’re in right now.
And it’s like trying to explain that God’s outside of time and outside of space, and it’s like, I want to go there, but I also want to go to bed!
And so at the end of all of this, he goes, “Whoa. So God is the biggest giant!”
I’m like, “Okay, all right. Didn’t get through it all. We got some work to do, but it’s good. It’s good.”
So God is greater than any giant that there is. God is bigger than it all, and that’s the point of it.
And I just want to preface this message today here: that if there’s any giant in your life, may you be reminded today: God is bigger than that giant in your life.
God is bigger than that circumstance, that situation. You have to know that God is bigger. Doesn’t matter how big it seems before you. God is bigger than that, and that’s the truth that we’re going to hold on to.
And so I’m going to pray right now. And even if there’s something that you’re facing right now, maybe there’s something in your mind right now, in your heart that is stirring, that is a giant in your life.
You might know the story of David and Goliath. You know how it ends, but yet you still face this giant.
I just want to pray right now, and then we’re going to keep on going.
Lord, would You just speak to us today as we read Your Word and dive into the story of David and Goliath?
And Lord, as David stood before this giant, and we know the end to the story—and just spoiler alert, he defeated the giant—how much more, how much bigger are You, God?
And so right now, for any situation that anyone is carrying, God, sometimes we kind of put it off and we put it on the shelf and think maybe God will deal with it later.
I ask that You would deal with it right now, God. That we would walk out of this place completely set free by our God, who’s greater and bigger than all.
And so Lord, any giant that we face right now, any mountain, any situation that looks so massive, God, we just declare Your majesty over it, Your grace, Your love that covers it all, because You are greater and bigger than anything that we can ever think or dream of.
And so Lord, we look to You today, our great God. Would You come and help us through all the situations that we face right now?
We believe Your Word is true, and that it’s speaking to us. And so we know that You are speaking to us right now, and we pray all of this in the mighty name of Jesus.
We all say, “Amen, amen, and amen.”
3. Two Kings: Saul and David
Okay, First Samuel 17.
This is where David and Goliath are stepping onto the scene in the Valley of Elah, and just before 17, in chapter 16, is a very important part where God spoke to Samuel about David being anointed and appointed as king.
All right, now this is important to know because there was still a king at this point, King Saul. And God spoke to Samuel saying that David is going to be king.
And so this is before he was facing the giant.
And there’s just so much in all of these passages as we read it. And God anoints and appoints David as king before he steps onto the battlefield.
All right, Saul was king. Samuel spoke—God spoke to Samuel—and there’s a part of this where the Spirit of the Lord had left Saul in the previous chapters.
Okay, need you to do your Bible reading if you haven’t done it!
Part of SOAP, what we do here at church. SOAP reading on your seat. You’ll find the SOAP cards as well. It’s the Scripture reading, and we’ve been in Samuel for those who are following along, to kind of go with this message, and you’ll know all the things that have kind of happened until then.
But it’s kind of like something that I just don’t want happening in my life, because there’s a verse that says that the Spirit of the Lord left Saul, all right, and then God was appointing another king.
And those are things that we got to think about when we now look at the story of David and Goliath.
But there’s a contrast between these two kings.
All right, you might know David as this shepherd boy, this little dude facing this mountain of a man in front of him, but he was already appointed as king.
And who here knows that when God calls you, He’s gonna equip you? Hallelujah!
When God says, there’s weight behind it. There’s power behind it. And so this is why David was able to do the things that he could do.
But there’s this contrast between these two kings: the current one, King Saul, and then the king to come, David, in this time period.
But one of the kings was falling, and the other one was rising.
One was without the Spirit of God, and David carried the Spirit of God.
One didn’t care really about hearing the voice of God, and he was thinking a lot about what he can do and his own voice.
And the other one was certain about the voice of God in his life.
4. The First Voice: Goliath
And at this time, when we get to chapter 17, the Philistines were gearing up to step into battle with them in the Valley of Elah.
All of this happened there, and there’s this main soldier that they sent forward that we know now as Goliath, this giant.
And he would step up at this point and yell at the people of Israel for forty days and forty nights, to torment them day in and day out.
And this is the scene that we have when David is going to step up.
That there’s this giant coming every day, morning and night, the Word says, yelling at God’s people and tormenting them.
So let’s start reading here. I’m just going to start to read verse 8 to 11.
It said, “He stood and shouted to the ranks of Israel, ‘Why have you come out to draw up for battle? Am I not a Philistine, and are you not servants of Saul? Choose a man for yourselves and let him come down to me.
“‘And if he is able to fight with me and kill me, then we will be your servants. But if I prevail against him and kill him, then you shall be our servants and serve us.’
“And the Philistine said, ‘I defy the ranks of Israel this day. Give me a man that we may fight together.’
“When Saul and all of Israel heard these words of the Philistine, they were dismayed and greatly afraid.”
We just came out of a series where we talked about fear, and when the enemy speaks, it’s just too many people get afraid when he speaks.
And I just want to say, you do not have to be afraid of the voice of the enemy.
All right, the voice of that giant in front of you.
And Goliath here came forth to speak the same thing over David later on. And he came forth day and night for forty days, morning and evening.
It says he came forth to challenge Israel every single day.
And it’s interesting when I read this. There’s some ancient interpretations that say that Goliath’s timing in shouting all these things at God’s people was because they would spend time in prayer in morning and evening.
Now this is before the Shema was set in place for God’s people to happen, but they would still enter into prayer and they would still confess the presence of God.
And even today, we see this. Like, morning and evening times is usually when we talk about spending time with the Lord.
And I just think it’s interesting.
Now the text doesn’t exactly state that this was Goliath’s intention, but I just know that when I go to the Word, when I go to spend time with God, when I try and pray, there’s a voice that always comes up and says, “You don’t have to do this right now. You don’t have time for this.”
Whether it’s in the morning or the evening, maybe you take some time, read your Bible, you do your SOAP, your Scripture reading, Observation, Application, and Prayer.
You do those things, and there’s this voice that says, “Not right now. You don’t have time for this.”
And I’m like, I can’t help but think that this must have been his intention, to interrupt the voice of God with this mountain of a man yelling at them.
And it’s just like, has this ever happened to you?
Where you go and spend time with God, and it’s like the enemy speaks to you too.
It’s like, why do I have all these voices in my head? You know, why do I have all these voices speaking to me?
But it’s like we spend time in prayer and reading. We’re like, we’re gonna read at this time, and then all of a sudden your situation starts speaking louder at you, starts yelling at you.
The mountain in front of you, the giant in your life, starts yelling at you.
And you have a choice: whose voice are you gonna listen to? Whose voice are you gonna yield to?
The enemy’s voice or God’s voice in your life?
And I know this because you can open the Bible app and then you see that little notification at the top come in, or the ding.
It happens, and then you’re like, “Oh well, I’ll just read this later and I’ll quickly check the notification.”
Enemy’s got you, all right!
But then you’re like, okay, I can combat this. I can get rid of that by reading my paper Bible. Hallelujah! Praise God for these things!
And you’re like, okay, I’m not gonna be on my phone. I’m gonna read this.
And then you go sit down to read, and you go like first verse in, second verse in, and then you hear—and it’s like the enemy’s back again!
And then you check your pockets, and it’s like you don’t even have your phone on you, and you’ve been so conditioned!
And there’s these phantom vibrations in you, where it’s just like there’s so much in you of being distracted already.
And I just want to say that it’s real. That’s what happens.
We spend time with God, and the enemy tries to take us away from all of it.
And when we try and spend intentional time with the Lord to hear His voice, there’s so many things racing through our minds.
Right? Am I alone in this? I don’t think I am.
So many things that we think about all the time, when we gotta make that intentional time to hear God’s voice.
And sometimes even we want to bring the things that—like, let’s say you’re anxious about something, and you’re like, “I’m gonna bring this to the foot of the cross. I’m gonna bring this to God. I’m gonna bring this to Jesus and ask Him to help me deal with it.”
And in that moment of prayer, you come to God about these things that are making you anxious, and then you actually start thinking about those things, and you become more anxious about the thing that you’re bringing to God instead of letting Him deal with it right away.
And it’s just this reality that we have to know that it’s because sometimes we just make room for the voice of the enemy more than what we know.
And we have to choose every single day whose voice we are going to listen to.
Because the enemy knows your schedule. He knows everything about you in that way. He knows when you’re going to try and read. He’s going to try and distract you.
For forty days and forty nights, Goliath stepped up and he started yelling, and that’s still true today.
The enemy, he knows your schedule, and he’s going to step up and yell at you.
And you have a choice in whose voice you are going to listen to.
5. David Heard the Same Voice Differently
All right. So at this point, this is what’s happening, and the people of God are kind of—they’re afraid of it.
It says that they were dismayed and afraid. Even King Saul!
I’m like, how can you be a king and be so afraid? And it’s like, maybe that’s why God anointed David, right?
And so David comes into the scene, and if you read on a little bit—I’m not going to read it now. You can go read First Samuel 17.
During this time, Jesse, the father of David, sent him to the battlefield there to take some Subway sandwiches and aged cheddar to his brothers and everyone there!
And he had to go deliver sandwiches and these things.
And I think that’s the start of DoorDash and Uber Eats. It was David’s idea first, or Jesse’s idea, I guess!
But David comes onto the scene because his father sent him.
All right, and then when he gets there, after he hands out his sandwiches, he hears the voice of this mountain of a man named Goliath for the first time.
And he hears the same voice that everyone else has been hearing, the same voice that all of the men of Israel are afraid of, that King Saul is afraid of.
David steps onto the scene, and listen.
Remember, David is the anointed and appointed by God. At this time, he carries the Spirit of God.
He steps onto the scene, and he hears the same voice.
It says, “As he talked to them, behold, the champion, the Philistine of Gath, Goliath by name, came out of the ranks of the Philistines and spoke the same thing as before.”
He just recited the same thing over and over and over again, trying to get them to shake in their boots.
And it kind of happened until David stepped up, and it says, “And David heard him too.”
David heard the exact same thing.
And he’s listening to the same thing that everyone else is hearing, but he hears it differently.
Why is this?
Well, because David was a man that was close to God’s own heart. David was a man who knew the Father’s voice.
David could hear the voice of the enemy and not bow to it.
Why? Because he’d seen God move in his life.
He was a man that was intentional about God. He knew what God had spoken already over him. He knew who God called him to be.
And he wasn’t afraid of this giant in front of him because he chose to listen to the voice of God instead of the voice of the giant.
It’s because David was so close with God that he could step up in this courage that we all know and read about in this passage.
He was a man after God’s own heart. That’s First Samuel 13, verse 14.
And I just want to say this: that just like David, close to God, the enemy was still there.
Just because you live a life with Jesus, just because you’ve given your life to Jesus here on a Sunday at an altar-call moment, or you’ve decided to live for Him, it doesn’t mean the enemy is just going to disappear.
All right, the enemy’s still going to show up and yell at you. He’s still going to do it.
But now you do have a choice in whose voice you’re going to listen to.
Why? Because you do have another voice in your life right now.
You have the voice of God.
The enemy wasn’t just all of a sudden quiet when David stepped onto the scene.
No, he still spoke, but David chose to listen to the voice of God, and that is what was going to dictate the outcome to this battle.
Everyone else there was a little bit afraid of him.
6. The Second Voice: Eliab
I just want to say this as we’re going to read on. We’re going to carry on. I’m going to try and get through this.
Not every bad voice in our lives comes from giants.
We give too much credit to the enemy sometimes, all right?
But a lot of the times it’s just things that are speaking into our lives that’s not aligned with what God is speaking over us.
All right, I’m gonna jump here to verse 26 because David heard the voice of Goliath, but then he also heard the voice of the men of Israel and also his brothers and King Saul.
And this is important to know because the number one voice that we hear is the voice of the enemy, and we shouldn’t bow to it. We should rather listen to the voice of God.
But then it says, “And David said to the men who stood by him, ‘What shall be done to the man who kills the Philistine and takes away the reproach from Israel? For who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God?’”
There’s this righteous anger in David stepping up.
Like, who are you to speak against my God?
All right, and so he’s speaking to the men there.
And then verse 28. This is where it gets interesting, because now it’s not the enemy’s voice, the giant’s voice in front of him.
This is Eliab’s voice.
All right, do you know who Eliab is?
It’s David’s brother!
David’s brother in battle, on his side.
He goes, “Eliab, his oldest brother, heard when he spoke to them, and Eliab’s anger was kindled against David, and he said, ‘Why have you come down here? And with whom have you left those few sheep in the wilderness? I know the presumption and the evil of your heart, for you have come down here to see the battle.’”
You see, sometimes it’s also the closest people in your lives that are speaking against what God is speaking over you, unintentionally.
All right, and what Eliab, David’s brother, was saying here is that he was accusing David of just assuming that he can actually step up and battle this big man.
And the soldiers that were trained and that were appointed there couldn’t do it, and so he got angry.
He’s like envy, envious, right? It’s that thing that rises up in him and is speaking against his very own brother.
Instead of encouraging, he’s also looking at the giant there and seeing, my brother is so small, and he’s not a soldier. He tends the sheep.
He’s like, he’s gonna eat you alive!
All right. Sometimes those voices come from the closest people to us, and you have to choose to also reject that sometimes.
If it does not align with the Word of God and what He speaks over you, you have to rather listen to the voice of God.
You have to. You have to.
Yesterday we were at the mall for a birthday party, and we’re in the food court, and we’re ordering Mexican food at this place, a Mexican bowl.
And I go up in the line and get the bowl and everything. They ask, “Do you want guacamole?”
I said, “How much is it?” Because I assume it’s extra.
And she goes, “Three dollars.”
I’m like, “Not a chance I’m paying three dollars extra!”
And anyways, I started complaining in the line, and then we sit down, and then Haley goes, “You know what? You’re really becoming that embarrassing old man.”
Oh wow!
You know what? I’m not gonna listen to your voice right now. I’m gonna choose to listen to the voice of God that said, “I’m wonderfully made!”
Okay. All right.
Sometimes those voices come from so close to you, and sometimes we just believe it because they’re close to us.
Eliab was David’s brother, but he wasn’t speaking the encouragement that David actually needed in that moment.
But regardless of that, David stepped up and he said, “I’m going to step in because I know my God. I know my God.”
7. The Third Voice: King Saul
And David faced so many voices in this whole story.
The first one was the giant. The second one was his brother, and the third one was King Saul’s voice.
And I’m going to try and blast through this because I want to get to the end here.
Verse 33, it says, “Now King Saul said to David, ‘You’re not able to go against this Philistine to fight with him, for you are but a youth.’”
And he’s been a man of war since he’s been a youth.
Have you ever had that voice?
Someone in authority saying like, “You’re not enough. You’re not actually good enough. Like, you’re not smart enough. You’re not qualified.”
Like, you know, we have those voices too.
And even in those times, we gotta choose: Are you gonna listen to the voice of the Lord and what He’s spoken over you, or are you gonna listen to those voices?
Because more than we know it, I speak to way too many people, and I have this in my life too, where there’s things that were said when you were young, when I was young, that stick with you.
And it shapes you, and you live through all of that, and you start taking that on, thinking you’re not good enough, you are not strong enough for that.
Where God says, “No, by My might and by My power, you are strong enough. I have called you for such a time like this. Like, go in My power, in the grace that I’ve given you. Go and do the thing that I’ve called you to do.”
But way too often do we bow to the giant, to those close to us, and to other authorities in our life.
8. David Remembered God’s Faithfulness
And David knew that it ain’t gonna work like this.
And David said to Saul, verse 34 to 36. He said, “You know what, King Saul? Your servant used to keep sheep for his father, and when there came a lion or a bear and took a lamb from the flock, I went after him and struck him and delivered it out of his mouth.
“And if he arose against me, I caught him by the beard and struck him and killed him.
“Your servant has struck down both lions and bears, and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be like one of them.”
He said, “For he’s defied the armies of the living God.”
You see, there’s this righteousness that rises in him, and it’s the Spirit of God saying, “He can’t speak about my God like that!”
And so David is speaking against King Saul. He’s speaking against his brother and against his giant, and saying, “Watch me, watch me!”
Why?
“Because I’ve seen what God has done in my life. When the lions came, when the bears came, God gave me the ability to deal with it. I could do it. I don’t just tend sheep; I protect them.”
And today we have the great Protector with us, Jesus, the Holy Spirit in us that protects you, that gives you that power to deal with it.
And he’s saying, “Listen to me, King Saul. I know because of the faithfulness of God, I will step up to that giant, and I will stand before him, and he will fall. He will be like that lion and like that bear.”
And he’s just telling you like it is.
All right.
9. David Did Not Need a New Word from God
Now, in that moment, here’s the thing: David didn’t hear the audible voice of God encouraging him.
I don’t read anything about that.
It’s not like God spoke to him so great in that moment.
No, the voice of God was already instilled in him.
And in that moment, being faced with the giant, those who are close to him, and King Saul’s voice saying, “You can’t do this. You’re not enough,” what did he do?
He went back to the faithfulness of God.
He remembered how good God is! How good God has been!
And maybe right now you have to remember how good God is and has been in your life.
For way too many times do we open up the door for the enemy to come in because we just forget what God did.
He has saved you. He is faithful.
The sun rose today. It’s going to set again today.
Why? Because He is good, and that’s what we need to hold on to.
10. Making Room for God’s Voice
And that’s how you make room for the voice of God instead of the voice of the enemy in your life.
David is a great example of this.
This is not the typical David and Goliath story, but there are three voices in this thing that we have to know about because it’s still relevant today.
We face these giants. We have these people close to us. We have these things in authority that speak to us and over us.
And if it’s not aligned with what God says, it’s not okay.
What God says is what matters.
And if you want to know what God says about you, it’s all in here.
If you’ve ever wondered if it’s enough, it is enough.
All right, I’m gonna bring it to an end here. Otherwise, I will keep you here till 3 p.m., because teaching is fun!
All right, I’m gonna get to an end here.
Are we doing okay?
Yes, I think so. Because God is here.
