Why was David a young shepherd boy willing to face a challenge that left

battle hardened soldiers paralyzed with fear? What did he know that they didn't know?

We'll find out today on Truth for Life. Alistair Begg is teaching from 1 Samuel

chapter 17. We're looking today at verses 31 through 40.

Well, we left at this morning with David having turned away from the encounter with his elder brother

Alaya and found another small group of people to engage in the same conversation with which we

have already become familiar. And since he had made these inquiries about why it was that nobody

apparently was prepared to step forward and take up the challenge of this giant Goliath the

Philistine it was inevitable that the word would eventually reach Saul the King himself.

Now we know that Saul is in poor repair but extensively he is still the King. There is no reason

for us to think that he knows anything about what had happened in that private incident recorded

in the earliest part of chapter 16 and certainly the word reaching him of a possible volunteer

to deal with this great marauding rascal would be very very quickly responded to and he would have

regarded it certainly with great appeal. Someone that would finally step up or if you like step out

and do what actually he as Saul in a position of leadership should himself have been doing.

And so we read in 31 that when the words that David spoke had been heard and had reached Saul

he then sent for him. Actually the verb is even stronger than that it is he took him.

You get the picture of saying hey come here I hear that you are a volunteer. It's hard to imagine

actually in the initial encounter just in terms of first blush somebody said we have a volunteer

and eventually in incomes young David I can't imagine that it did anything immediately to

in live in in Saul any sense of impending victory as he had a proper look at him.

And if as we've been saying all along the events in the second half of chapter 16 follow the

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