David goes off to meet the Philistine with his sling in his hand and five smooth stones from a brook placed in his shepherd’s pouch.

This is a story we all know so well – a story perhaps from our childhood – a story we may have drawn or acted, read or been told many times. It is a vivid dramatic story with some really nasty parts to it, which tells of good triumphing over evil.

But for all our immersion in the story, have we taken it to heart and applied it to our own lives? Or has it remained just a story, out there … rather than a dramatic picture of what needs to take place within us as we seek to grow spiritually? Take a look at the story piece by piece with this thought in mind.

What does Goliath represent? When we let all sorts of bad thoughts and feelings get the better of us then they can grow and grow and dominate our lives just as the Philistine Goliath was dominating everyone around. Goliath is not out there! He is in me and you when we fail to control the growth of our selfishness.

But the teachings in Swedenborg's works point to a more specific meaning for Goliath: As we grow in a religion, we are encouraged at every age to learn and understand more and more about the things that the Lord teaches us in his Word. We can build up a vast, even gigantic, store of knowledge of what is true and how we should live our lives. If we apply the truth we have learned then our lives and the lives of those around us will be transformed.

But, if we fail to do this, if we simply delight in the building up of a store of spiritual knowledge for its own sake and not for the sake of the good we can do with it, then we will have allowed Goliath to dominate our lives. And Goliath, the idea that knowing what is true is all important, will rampage through our spiritual lives destroying any genuine good there may be. Goliath needs to be destroyed.

What about David? The shepherd boy David now comes into the picture. But remember this scene is taking place within each one of us. We may have a Goliath within us dominating our spiritual lives but the Lord will provide a David to come along and rescue us.

Perhaps the most important thing about David is that he is a young shepherd boy. At this point you may have started to think about the Psalm of David, Psalm 23 that starts – The Lord is my shepherd…

David may be young but he has already learnt to care for and protect his sheep, to look out for those that might have gone astray, to help those in difficulty. David does not just know the facts about looking after sheep; he has used his knowledge in action to protect them.

A battle takes place between Goliath and David – just as an inner battle takes place within us between our Goliath and our David.

On the one hand we have our big, well developed and dominating approach to life, where knowing what is true is all-important. On the other hand we have our smaller, less mature, but active and growing affection for putting what we know to be true into caring action for others. How is David going to win this seemingly impossible battle?

The brook is important. First of all David goes to a nearby brook or stream. The Hebrew word involved can mean a brook, a stream, a river, a flood of water or even the valley where water may be found. You can picture it; water gently flowing over rocks and hard ground, bright and bubbly in the sunshine, full of air as it washes over all sorts of pebbles and stones. It is a delightful picture of the Word of God full of all the truth we need to live a good life.

In another place in the Word, the prophet Isaiah uses the following words to describe how the Word is given for our use:

When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue is parched with thirst, I the Lord will answer them; I the God of Israel will not forsake them. I will open rivers on the bare heights, and fountains in the midst of the valleys. I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water.

Now, we can decide to approach the Word of God in two ways.

We can approach it in a ‘Goliath’ state – just to absorb as much knowledge of the truth as we can without any thought as to its use in our lives. In reality any ‘truth’ we store away with this attitude will not be truth at all, because it will have no heart in it.

Or, we can approach the Word of God in a ‘David’ state – with a desire to use to use the truth we find to transform our lives and fight against our bad desires and ambitions. Such truth will be alive in us because it will be linked to what we love. It will have our heart in it.

In Doctrine of the Sacred Scripture 57, Emanuel Swedenborg makes the following statement:

The genuine truth which must be of doctrine appears in the sense of the letter to none but those who are in enlightenment from the Lord. Enlightenment is from the Lord alone, and exists with those who love truths because they are truths and make them of use for life. With others there is no enlightenment in the Word.

It is this sort of enlightenment that our inner David seeks in the nearby brook. And what he finds in the brook are five smooth stones. What do they mean?

Stones come in all shapes and sizes, and represent truths in all their forms. Often stones can be rough with hard edges and sometimes broken into pieces. But David seeks out stones that are smooth – stones where any rough edges have been slowly washed away by the flow of water.

The Writings inform us that generally truth is pictured by what is hard and angular-shaped whereas good is pictured by what is round or smooth. The 10 Commandments given to Moses were on two tablets of stone – hard and angular-shaped truth. That contrasts with the manna that the Children of Israel were fed with in the wilderness - which was a ‘tiny round thing’ - goodness direct from the Lord.

The stones that David picks are smooth because they describe truth that has been made smooth by the flow of the water of life – they have been used in living, to bring love and goodness to others.

The number 5 in the Word, such as in the story of the feeding of the 5000 with 5 loaves of bread, represents what is little or few, and at the same time what is enough.

We don’t need to have taken a great number of truths to heart to defeat our inner Goliath. We just need a few, and they will be enough.

The number 5 also refers to remnants. From our earliest childhood onwards the Lord builds up within us remnants of goodness and truth from our experience of being loved and loving others.

So I think two things are being shown to us by the use of 5 smooth stones:

1) If we approach the Word of God with the aim of using the truth we find there to do good for others then just a little will be enough for us to overcome even gigantic self-obsessions.

2) There is the possibility that in the conflicts that need to take place within us the Lord will bring to the surface of our minds just the right truths and ideas from the remains deep within us that are needed to tackle even the biggest problem we face.

Or is it perhaps a combination of both these things that actually takes place within us. Perhaps in seeking in the Word for the truth that will lead to the good of life we actually allow and enable the Lord to bring our remains to the surface and so transform us.

With five smooth stones in his shepherd’s bag, David set out and defeated Goliath.

Finally, consider the shepherd’s bag or pouch that David used to hold the stones. We carry the truth around with us in the way we apply it in daily living. In a sense we all have a personal shepherd’s bag or pouch, our way of loving and caring and doing good for others – how we put truth into action in life. When we apply truth from the Word in our daily life of love for others, we will defeat the Goliath within us and destroy the idea that knowing what is true is all important.