The following are the views expressed by Olufemi Oguntokun in the October 23, 2026 episode of the On the Lord’s Side Podcast — Christian perspectives on news and current events.
And it’s good morning to you once again. It’s Friday, the 23rd of October 2026, and this is On the Lord’s Side, Christian perspectives on news and current events. My name is Olufemi Oguntokun. You can follow me on X at @OlufemiOG, and you can follow GospelBells Radio on X at @GospelBelsRadio.
ON “DAVID KILLED GOLIATH FOR MONEY”
Why did David kill Goliath? One preacher in Nigeria — a man who styles himself Apostle Harrison, of a ministry called The Goodness Nation — says David killed Goliath for money. He posted a video captioned: “David killed Goliath for MONEY!! There was money to be made in that fight. Don’t be too spiritual that you forget to get the money. Get my message on YouTube — Big Heart, Big Money.” And in the clip: “David did not just kill Goliath for God. David killed Goliath for money… the king had promised great riches… there was a bounty on Goliath’s head, and David was going to get that money. This guy was about the money. Glory to God!”
Now, there was indeed talk of a reward. 1 Samuel 17 records the men saying that the king would enrich whoever killed Goliath, give him his daughter, and exempt his father’s house from taxes; and in verse 26 David asks about it: “What shall be done for the man that killeth this Philistine, and taketh away the reproach from Israel?” But look closely, because this is what problematic preachers always do — they take half a verse and call it a motive. In a chapter of fifty-seven verses, this man has built his whole sermon on verse 26a. Because verse 26 has two parts, and the second part is the one that fits every other detail of the account: “for who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God?”
This is what happens when a preacher has a predetermined end and simply walks to the answer. Someone who wants to eulogise money, who wants his congregation fixed on money — and, let’s be honest, helping him get money — will find something in the Bible to get him there. It’s called walking to the answer: you have the destination in mind, and you see only what confirms it. No one is saying money is unimportant; but money is not the point of the gospel. Jesus called it the unrighteous mammon — a necessary thing in a fallen world, but not the point.
And the text itself refutes him. Four separate times in that chapter David states his real motive. Verse 29, to his brother who accused him of pride: “Is there not a cause?” Verse 36: this Philistine “hath defied the armies of the living God.” Verse 37: “The LORD that delivered me out of the paw of the lion… he will deliver me.” And verses 45–47, the decisive speech: “Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a javelin: but I come to thee in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied… that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel. And all this assembly shall know that the LORD saveth not with sword and spear: for the battle is the LORD’S.” That is the motive, and that is the lesson. This reminds us why we must read Scripture in context: if someone builds a doctrine on a verse — or half a verse — you must ask whether it aligns with the whole chapter, the whole book, the whole Bible. That is the point of systematic theology: every doctrine must tie into one coherent whole; you cannot take any verse and build whatever you like on it.
And to drive it home: David never got the money. Verse 54 — he took Goliath’s head to Jerusalem and the armour to his tent; a trophy, not a fortune. The daughter Merab he was promised (chapter 18) Saul gave to another man. When they spoke of marrying the king’s daughter, David said, “Seemeth it to you a light thing to be a king’s son in law, seeing that I am a poor man, and lightly esteemed?” He was poor; when it came to the bride-price for Michal, he had no money, and Saul set the price at two hundred Philistines instead. In chapter 21 he is a fugitive begging bread from a priest; in chapter 22 his whole camp is “every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented” — poor men — and he is reduced to begging the king of Moab to shelter his parents. Does that look like a father’s house exempted from taxes? So the claim that David “was all about the money” is not only false; it is disingenuous.
If anyone asks the big lesson of David and Goliath, it is verse 47: “the LORD saveth not with sword and spear; the battle is the LORD’S.” Psalm 147:10 — “He delighteth not in the strength of the horse: he taketh not pleasure in the legs of a man.” At Bible study we were in Daniel 2, that stone “cut out without hands” that shattered the kingdoms of the earth — God’s own zeal accomplishing it. To Gideon, God said, “The people are yet too many” — the only army in history whose problem was too many men — because God does not save by numbers. And the whole point is sealed in verse 50: “there was no sword in the hand of David.” Underline it. He triumphed with a sling and a stone, no sword in his hand. So notice the inversion: in the very chapter where God teaches us not to trust in sword and spear, a preacher has read a lesson on how to acquire them — for money is what you use to acquire swords and spears. He has taken the one text about relying on God, not on weapons, and turned it into an appeal for weapons. When a man makes money the focus of his ministry, you have to wonder whether he is the vicar of Christ at all — for Christ Himself said you cannot serve two masters. We are only ever hoodwinked by such teaching when we stop reading the Word for ourselves; my people perish for lack of knowledge. Satan is at work — and not only outside the church, but, sadly, even in the pulpit.
ON BOBRISKY AND “LOVE YOUR BODY”
A lighter story, but not so light. If you were told that a Nigerian celebrity had urged the culture, “Know when to stop chasing trends and love your body,” who would you guess said it? It was Bobrisky — the internet personality born male, as Idris Okuneye, who identifies and lives as a woman and has, by his own account, undergone several cosmetic surgical procedures to change his body to look female. So the advice — “stop chasing trends and love your body” — is thick with irony, and my first instinct was the old line that even a broken clock is right twice a day. One commenter wrote, “Rich, coming from someone who doesn’t love how he was created.” And that may well be fair.
But the more I thought about it, the more I suspect Bobrisky may be the single best-placed person in Nigeria to issue that warning. Someone who has spent years and a fortune altering his appearance, and has said publicly he left the country for his health and safety, telling us to love our bodies is not guessing — that is a report from inside the experiment, and we should hear it as such. So this is not merely to be scoffed at. And here is the principle: the first question is never “Is the speaker worthy?” but “Is it true?” — and truth is judged by what God accepts. God used a donkey; He used Balaam, a prophet for hire, to speak truth; He used Caiaphas, who said “it is expedient that one man should die for the people,” to serve His purpose; Paul quoted a pagan poet — “one of themselves, even a prophet of their own, said, The Cretians are alway liars.” And Jesus gave us the rule: “The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat: all therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not.” Separate the message from the messenger. You will never find a perfect messenger — which is no excuse for Christ’s messengers to be careless of themselves — but a known fault in a preacher is not a reason to refuse all he says.
Yet “love your body” is a half-truth, and Scripture supplies the fuller one. Psalm 139, which we are studying at the Readers’ Club — the very verse from last week — “I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” And 1 Corinthians 6: “know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you… and ye are not your own?” So when we say “love your body,” understand it rightly: from a Christian view the body is not even yours — it is the Lord’s, made for His own dwelling, and you should love what He created and give Him the glory. This is Solomon all over again, who indulged his flesh in everything it desired and came out saying, “Vanity of vanities.” Those who pour out enormous resources to change their bodies do so from a certain disgust with how God made them — and it has proved a dangerous venture; there are records of people who died undergoing these procedures. I speak not of those with diseased parts or genuine medical need, but of the purely cosmetic — changing the colour of the eyes, the shape of this or that, or the body’s very sex — out of dissatisfaction with God’s handiwork. And the man who went through all of it is telling you: love your body, don’t do it. I pray many will hear, and apply their hearts unto wisdom.
ON DRAMATISING A TRUTH
If you follow Nigerian politics you know Omoyele Sowore, the presidential candidate of the African Action Congress, who has contested several times. Note two dates. On the 14th of October 2026, President Tinubu, the incumbent of the APC, inaugurated the APC Presidential Campaign Council at the Banquet Hall of the Presidential Villa in Abuja — the official residence of the President, not the property of any party. Then, on the 21st, Sowore’s African Action Congress wrote formally to the President asking to inaugurate its own campaign council at that same venue on the 11th of November, and requesting food, drinks, and logistics for 5,000 participants — arguing that if the Villa can host the APC’s political activities, the same must be extended to other parties: “Democracy cannot thrive on double standards. Public resources belong to the Nigerian people, not to the ruling party.”
I found it dramatic — some call it comical — but I love it, because it conveys an important point we too easily miss: that incumbents must not use the resources of the state to advance their own partisan interests. In mature presidential systems that is simply not allowed. The AAC does not expect to be handed the keys to Aso Rock; it wrote a letter that cannot be answered harmlessly — and in doing so, it dramatised the truth so that everyone who hears of it begins to see the incongruity of what was done. And Scripture is full of such dramatised truth. Deuteronomy records the blessing set on Mount Gerizim and the curse on Mount Ebal — Moses could have said it in a sermon from a tent, but the geography became the doctrine: two mountains, a valley, a nation split in half facing itself, every man hearing his own voice say “Amen” to a curse. You cannot forget a thing you stood inside of. The Lord had Jeremiah smash a potter’s vessel — “Even so will I break this people and this city, as one breaketh a potter’s vessel, that cannot be made whole again” — and carry a yoke on his neck. Isaiah walked naked and barefoot three years as a sign against Egypt and Ethiopia. Hosea’s whole marriage was a sermon — marry a prostitute, to dramatise how we, straying from God, play the harlot. Dramatic gestures work because they get past our defences — a bare proposition can be denied, but “give me the key, I want my event there too” exposes the incongruity no defence can cover — and because they are unforgettable; people will remember the AAC’s request, and know why it was refused. We should ask, too, whether some of what God lets us pass through is His way of dramatising a truth to us — and be discerning enough to learn it.
ON VOTE-BUYING, AND COUNTING THE COST
Finally, a post by Babatunde Badamosi — a lawyer, and I understand the ADC’s deputy-governorship candidate in Lagos, running with Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour for 2027. Nigeria has a well-documented problem of vote-buying — unlawful under the Electoral Act, yet persistent: candidates pay the electorate, often around ₦2,000 a vote, get into office, access vast public resources, enrich themselves, set some aside to buy more votes next time, and leave the voters impoverished — and feel no accountability to them, reasoning, “Why do I owe you anything? I paid you.” Badamosi did an analysis that, again, dramatises the truth and makes it unforgettable. He wrote: “At ₦2,000 per meal, it will cost you ₦8.7 million to eat for four years. If you sell your vote for less than that, you are a fool.” And it’s true — ₦2,000 is a conservative figure; no decent caterer charges that per meal today (decent parties pay ₦9,500 and more a guest; lavish ones, ₦23,000). So if every voter demanded ₦8.7 million, that market would vanish overnight.
This ties straight to our Lord’s teaching: count the cost. “Which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it?… Or what king, going to make war against another king, sitteth not down first, and consulteth whether he be able…?” (Luke 14). The voter who takes ₦5,000 has not counted the cost — that buys perhaps two cheap meals, against four years of being ignored. And it is the same for every one of us on the Lord’s side: whatever the world offers to entice you away, have you counted the cost? The cost is eternity. Can the one enticing you also give you eternity? “What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” — the question that must haunt everyone who has not come to the Lord’s side, and everyone tempted to leave it. Mr. Badamosi suggests you name no less than ₦8.7 million for your vote — and even that won’t cut it, for you need more than food: shelter, electricity, and much else he hasn’t reckoned in. But I love the approach, and for us it is the reminder that, as Jesus taught, it is wise to count the cost before every decision. I pray the Lord will teach us to apply our hearts unto wisdom.
I want to thank you so very much for staying with us this morning on GospelBells Radio — On the Lord’s Side, Christian perspectives on news and current events. I hope to be with you again on Monday, by the grace of God. Whatever you do today, please remain firmly on the Lord’s side.
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