1 Samuel Lesson 15
Saul’s second failure: Spiritual Passivity –
Turn to 1 Samuel 14. You never can tell when you sit down to the Word of
God and you may learn some doctrinal principle and for the life of you you
can’t think of any application that is immediately; don’t tune out because
there may be something next month, next year, where that very doctrine is going
to make the difference. And if you have
the attitude that unless you can see an application staring you right in the
eyeball you’re going to tune out, you’ll tune out all right, you’ll tune out
when the crisis comes and when some great need comes into your life. Jut because you don’t have an immediate need
for a particular doctrine that you now hear from the Word that doesn’t mean
that you are not to pay attention. You
just take that doctrine in and keep taking it in and take it in some more and
store it because there will come a time when you will need that doctrine. You can well imagine that at the point of
death doctrine will become very important.
In 1 Samuel 14 we continue with our study of Saul’s failures. We’ll start at
Now after he became the king Saul began to reveal some fatal flaws in
his soul. When God designed the first
two incumbents of the office, Saul and David, to give us a historical monument
to grace because Saul was a man of human good.
He was a man that from all outward appearances was qualified for the
office, he had leadership ability, he had a tremendous physique, he was a
military man, he had a good education, he had a good family upbringing. He had the qualifications of the office from
a human point of view. And so outwardly
speaking the man had it made. But Saul
is going to fall flat on his face, at least three times, he is going to become
demon possessed because of his rebellion and certain mental attitudes that have
been built into his character, and he is going to be replaced by David, and
David is going to be a man that operates on grace all the way. He’s a man that makes what would be moral
disastrous decisions in his life and yet he recovers because of grace. He doesn’t hide the fact, he’s not
self-righteous, he recognized he failed, but David has something that Saul
never had and that was he trusted the Lord to cleanse him from his sins and
move on. That’s what made David great.
Now Saul’s character starts to unfold in a very clear way by his first
failure when, you remember last week, Samuel had told him to wait seven days
until Samuel could get to him to tell him what to do. Saul could not wait, the army was deserting
around him, he was watching the soldiers walk down the road, drop their arms,
that was it, didn’t want anything more to do with it. And so here was the commander in chief of the
army watching his army desert and obviously any man would be in a panic from
that situation. But Saul is judged quite
severely for what he did. He faced a
panic situation and instead of listening to the words of Samuel and since
Samuel is a prophet his words are equal to what we call the Word, the Bible, he
rebelled against the admonition to sit there and if his whole army deserted you
still stay there until you are certain of what you are doing. And Saul panic and rejected it and as a
result Samuel pronounced the sentence that his sons would never sit on the
throne, there would be no Saulite dynasty, there would be a Davidic dynasty but
not a Saulite dynasty; the dynasty of Saul would end with Saul. Just one man, no sons on the throne. And this man, at this point, rejected his
son, he caused his son, Jonathan, to be rejected from the throne.
Now the second failure of Saul is going to be a dramatic follow up to
the first one. And the second failure is
going to introduce us to a new man that we haven’t met before, and that is the
son, the son that was rejected by the first failure; Jonathan. And we’re going to watch how Jonathan works
and how he is spiritually the aggressor and his father is spiritually passive.
And we’re going to study the difference; we’re going to look at Jonathan and
then next week we’ll look at Saul and his response, so that we will spend two
weeks on the second failure. We haven’t
got enough time to go through this verse by verse and show you the details, so
I’ve divided Saul’s second failure in half.
The failure extends from
Again, so that you are perfectly clear as to what is happening let’s go
over human good. Human good on the
outside counterfeits spirituality. In
other words, if you look at things from the outside human good is almost like
spirituality, almost like
spirituality, not quite. There are some
areas where you’ll see the difference.
But it is a good counterfeit and you have to have your eyes opened so
that you can be sensitive spiritually to the difference between human good and
spiritually. Now we have both floating
around in Christian circles, mixed together.
All of us to some degree have human good in our life. We are all fallen creatures, though we are in
the process of redemption, and all of us have areas of human good in our life,
and it’s imperative that you as a believer learn to spot human good. Learn to spot what is phony and what is
genuine. Saul and David are good
practicing sessions for you to develop a feel and a sensitivity to this
difference.
Human good serves a vital function.
Here’s your mind, here’s your conscience. Your conscience is saying no, no, no to
certain –R learned behavior patterns.
Your conscience sends up a no-signal; you’re getting feed back from your
conscience that says it’s wrong, but you are negative volition in this
particular area of your life, every time
the issue comes up you’re out of it and so therefore what you begin to do is
develop something that shields your mind from this “no” message. It may be in the area of finances, and when
you hit this area you have some hang-ups as far as spiritual use of your funds,
etc. or it may be in the area of prayer, but the finances and prayer are two
areas that you have in your life and it may be that in some of these areas you
don’t really want to do the Lord’s will, and so in order to decrease the volume
of your conscience that says no, no, no, no, what you begin to do is try to
fool your conscience by taking learned behavior patterns that look like +R
learned behavior patterns, but are not, they’re pseudo, and you stick them up
here and say see, see, I’m doing it. So
human good actually forms a function in your mind and in your soul; it’s job is
to anesthetize your conscience, to make your mind relax in the face of the “no”
signals. It is to lull you to sleep so
that you do not recognize that you do not have spirituality but that you have
something other than spirituality, which is just human good.
We have human good operating in fundamentalist circles. Human good is rampant in certain circles;
wherever you see gimmicks operating in Christian circles, there is human
good. God does not use gimmicks, whether
it’s bring 40 people to Sunday so you can watch your pastor eat a lot of toad
in front of the congregation or something else that the gimmick boys have come
up with. This is nothing but sheer
gimmicks and the gimmicks are cranked out by the ton to make up for the lack of
spirituality. And so we have all this
stuff that parades around and that’s human good.
Now we’re going to watch how effective human good is by going to its
opposite, spirituality, and divine good through Saul’s son. So we begin in 13:15. By the way, this section we’re dealing with
has one of the most fantastic verses in it that I have seen, it’s a verse that
is very much like the famous battle cry that David gave before Solomon, “the
battle is the Lord’s and He will fight for us.”
It’s one of those tremendous times in the Old Testament where a believer
who is aggressive spiritually comes out with just a jewel of a statement; we’ll
see that tonight.
Verse 15, “And Samuel arose,” remember he had just chewed out Saul for
his problem, “and Samuel arose, and departed from Gilgal unto Gibeah of
Benjamin. And Saul numbered the people
who were present with him, about six hundred men.” Now we have a map to give you an idea of the
terrain; Gilgal was the central headquarters of the Hebrew government at this
time. You have the Jordan valley and
Gilgal is here and that’s the center of their government. And that was where Samuel was and he left
there and went to somewhere in this area, he’s going to be nearby the
battle. Remember, by the way, last week
what had happened. Remember we had
Jonathan at one strong point at Gibeah and Saul at another strong point called
Michmash, and the Philistines had been able to control this territory. This was all under Philistine
domination. And Saul decided he was
going to break up the Philistine stranglehold on the land and he occupied this
point with 2,000 men; Jonathan occupied this point with 1,000 men.
Who was the man who started the war?
Jonathan. He had half the men
that Saul had and he blasted this placed called Geba, wiped it out, annihilated
the Philistine garrison, which sort of irritated the Philistines and they
responded by coming up with a fantastic chariot force, verse 5, where they had
3,000, it should be 3,000, not 30,000; 3,000 chariots and 6,000 horsemen. And the objective was to scare the Jews
because the chariots were useless at Michmash and useless at Gibeah. Both of
these are points of land there’s no way you can get a chariot up there. But it was just psychological warfare to
bring terror into the hearts and minds of the Jews. They came up here and Saul did a retreat;
Saul retreated from Michmash back to Gilgal, and tonight as we look the
Philistines now have captured Michmash.
It now is their strong fortification.
So Saul actually has lost ground, he has had to retreat, pull back to
Gilgal, and the only strong point the Jews have is the one point that Jonathan
himself got when he attacked that point
first. So that’s the situation.
Verse 16, “And Saul, and Jonathan, his son, and the people who were
present with them, abode in Gibeah of Benjamin; but the Philistines encamped in
Michmash.” Now the Hebrew construction
of verse 16 is such that the word “abode” is a participle which means they were
abiding continually and the word “encamped” at the end of verse 16 is a perfect
tense which means because the Philistines had captured Michmash Saul had only
one point left. Now it’s significant
that the ground he has is the ground that Jonathan fought for when the war
started. And the ground that Saul has is now in enemy hands. So we’ve had an exchange is all we’ve
had.
All right, Jonathan is going to settle this and the background for this
is verses 17-18. Verses 17-18 start the
story and then the story stops for a moment at the end of verse 18. Verses 19-22 are a parenthesis. Now here is where you have to follow the
parentheses. The Hebrew text is written parenthetically. When you study Hebrew
you can usually tell, the sentences begin with a verb; and it’s a verb then the
sentence, verb then the sentence, verb then the sentence. And when they got to a point where they
wanted a parenthesis, what we would call a footnote to explain, they’d start
with a noun, and the sentence would begin noun, verb, rest of sentence. And so we have that construction begin in
verse 19. So from verse 19 down through the end of verse 22 is a parenthesis,
and you can actually sense that as you read it in the English, you don’t have
to know Hebrew to see that, it’s just an explanation. So verse 17, 18 and 23 describe the
action. Verses 19-22 you skip if you
want to follow this chronologically.
Let’s look at 17-18. “And the spoilers came out of the camp of the
Philistines in three companies,” the spoilers, the nearest thing to this word
in military parlance would be the commandos, these would be the people that hit
and run, they are not a permanent occupying force, their job is simply to
spread terror into the hearts of the opposition. Their job is one thing, shock and
sabotage. Their job is to move into an
area, burn the grain, destroy the people, burn down their buildings and retreat
before they can do anything, to spread terror.
You might also translate the word “spoilers” by the word “terrorizers,”
for these three companies have a job to do and it’s simply to spread
terror. Notice again the Philistines are
experts at psychological warfare. This
is going to become important when you see what God does with Jonathan. He is going to turn this thing around in an
utterly fantastic way. But to capture
the whole thing, what God is going to do, you’ve first got to get clear in your
own mind what is happening. And what is happening is that the Philistines are
one of the world’s best psychological warfare types. First they run their chariot force up
there. That was sheer psychology. Now it’s the same thing here, these spoilers
are not going to occupy any of the land, their job isn’t to occupy the land,
they’re interested in just terrorizing the population, hitting and running,
hit, run, burn, run, kill, run, move, all up in this area. And they move out in three areas.
“The spoilers came out of the camp of the Philistines in three
companies; one company turned unto the way that leads to Ophrah,” now the
Hebrew verb “turned” is in the imperfect tense which means they began to
turn. And that tells us something about
verse 17, this little verb tells us that whoever is accounting to us, verse 17
is an eyewitness, I personally think Jonathan was the man who related this, for
reasons which I’ll develop in a minute.
But verse 17 is not a historic account in the dry sense of the
word. Verse 17 is an account as an
eyewitness would say it, look, there they go, they’re beginning to turn up the
road. That’s the force of the original
language, so it’s movement here, this is not just a dry rehash or a rerun of
what happened; this is an eyewitness moment by moment account of the
action. And so the spoilers are coming
out, “one company begins to turn in the way that leads to Ophrah, unto the land
of Shual.” So the first column moves
north.
Verse 18, “And another company is now turning the way to Beth-horon;”
company number two moves to the west, “and another company is turning to the
way of the border that looks to the valley of Zeboim toward the wilderness,”
and that is to the east. Now look at the
tactical situation of what we’ve got. We’ve got Saul holed up here at Gibeah,
we’ve got a Philistines having a fortress at Michmash, and they are not coming south. The reason is two-fold, one thing there is a
tremendous valley that is going to play a very critical role in what’s going to
happen in a few verses. There’s a
tremendous valley that separates Gibeah and Michmash, a very deep valley and it
is almost impossible for soldiers to cross that valley. So when this garrison deploys its commandos
they are going to move to the east, they are going to move to the west and the
north, but they will not move to the south.
The second reason they’re not going to move to the south, not only is it
difficult to cross this valley but obviously you have Jews on the other side
and if you deploy your force in the middle of the valley they become
susceptible to all sorts of assault; it would be suicide militarily to deploy a
force to the south.
So the Philistines are smart and they know that Saul can’t do anything,
they’ve got him bottled up at Gibeah and what they’re going to do is begin to
spread terror over this area and it’s so close that Saul and his men are going
to be able to see it; they are going to be able to watch the Philistines burn
their fields; they are going to be able to watch the Philistines tear up their
homes, and just over the hill they’re going to watch the smoke rise. So the Philistines have a tremendous strategy
set up here. Everything looks good, from a human point of view the Philistines
are in control of the situation militarily.
They have the upper hand now; the initiative does not lie with Saul, the
initiative lies with them. And one of
the first things in military warfare of any sort is that you cannot win if you
don’t seize the initiative. If you’re
constantly put in a situation where your forces respond to the enemy’s
initiative you never win. No battle has
ever been won this way. So the word
initiative is an important word in military parlance, and that is the military
rule of war that’s being seen here in this narrative.
Now what’s going to happen is that Jonathan is going to shift the
initiative from the Philistines to the Jews and he is going to do it by a
tremendous act of faith. Verse 19-22
describe the situation so that you understand what’s going to follow. This is a parenthesis, if you were writing
this in English this would be in a footnote.
“Now there was no blacksmith found throughout all the land of Israel; for
the Philistines had said, Lest the Hebrews make themselves swords or spears,
[20] But all the Israelites went down to the Philistines, to sharpen every man
his plowshare, and his mattock, and his axe, and his sickle,” these are farm
implements. [21] Yet they had a file for
the sickles,” now “yet they had a file,” by the way, this whole section is one
of the most difficult sections in the Hebrew text. This is a hard book, after I got through
translating chapter 14 I got cross-eyed, spent two days on this thing,
ridiculous to spend two days going through one chapter. And I got to thinking there’s something wrong
with me until finally I read a commentary on the situation and they said this
happens to be one of the toughest chapters in one of the toughest books. Now this is a very difficult chapter, and
this phrase, verse 21, has now been clarified by modern findings. It’s not “they had a file,” the phrase is and
I believe in the New Scofield they have a note on this phrase, it means they
paid a price and the price was two-thirds of a shekel for these jobs that are
listed in verse 21. The price was two
thirds of a shekel for the mattocks, for the coulters, for the forks, for the
axes and to sharpen the goads.
So the Philistines had a very smart system. By the way, you take careful notice of this,
anybody that is interested in disarmament always is asking for trouble and
always is against freedom. Why do you
disarm a group of people? Only one
reason and that reason is to deprive them of their ability to gain their
freedom. Today we have men in the
National Council of Churches, we have clergymen all over that want gun
legislation and want to register all firearms.
That’s the most ridiculous thing when you think of it, all the crooks
are going to register their firearms, we all know that, we have great
confidence, so therefore all we have to do is just pass a law and all the bad
guys will register their firearms like good little children. We’re only going to take the guns out of the
hands of the law abiding citizens so the crooks can have a better time.
1 Samuel 13 gives you the divine viewpoint of disarmament. There are two passages on disarmament in the
Bible every Christian should know and memorize; one is 1 Samuel 13:19-21 and the other is Isaiah
2:1-4, which says when true disarmament occurs it will be in the millennium,
not before. And we do not now live in
the millennium, therefore no disarmament.
Therefore the Bible-believing Christian will always be against
disarmament. He will stick up for the
right to bear firearms.
So in 1 Samuel 13 we have the disarmament of the Philistines. Verse 22, “And it came to pass in the day of
battle, that there was neither sword nor spear found in the hand of any of the
people who were with Saul and Jonathan; but with Saul and with Jonathan, his
son, were they found.” That means that
the Philistines managed to exercise a little discretion and said well, since
Saul is your, what do you call him, your Mashach, we’ll let him have a sword
and for good luck we’ll let his son have one.
So the Philistines allowed Saul and Jonathan to have a sword. But as we’re going to see, that was the
Philistines undoing because God is going to take that sword, like Jesus Christ
took the bread, and He’s going to make thousands out of it. So we’ll see the disaster, this was a
Philistine disaster, they had incomplete disarmament.
Verse 23, this is the final deployment of forces in this chapter. “And the garrison of the Philistines went out
to the pass of Michmash.” Now this is
the fourth step the commander takes. He
sends three commando units out, one to the north, one to the east, one to the
west, and then as a final act, since his garrison is obviously understaffed at
this point, so now he’s weak and he knows he’s weak so he sends the fourth
point, everybody else he can muster, out to the edge of the hill on the
southern parameter and sets up a southern parameter defense because this is
going to be opposite the Hebrews. Now on
the bottom of this chart I’ve drawn a cross section of what this looks
like. Here is Geba, and here is
Michmash; Michmash is on a tremendous bluff and they’ve got a tremendous
defense position and their men are sitting right here; that’s their southern
defense, and the Jews are over here.
Saul is sitting right here and he’s looking across that valley and
watching what’s happening. And he has
noticed, because verse 17-18 have told us, he has noticed that the garrison
force has been depleted and that all their men are now spread along a thin line
in the southern perimeter.
This gives Jonathan an idea and we begin to see it unfold in 14:1. “Now it came to pass upon a day, that
Jonathan, the son of Saul, said unto the young man that bore his armor,” they
had a lot of different weapons and they would have a young lad follow them
behind with different swords, so if you wanted one, hey, would you give me that
spear or something, and this kid was his packrat that carried various baggage
and so on with him. And he said, “Come,
and let us go over to the Philistines’ garrison, that is on the other
side.” Now the “other side” is the other
side of this valley; watch the valley because this plays a tremendous role in
this whole thing that’s going to happen.
Now the last part of verse 1, “But he told not his father,” is the
beginning of a parenthesis again, which drops all the way down to the end of
verse 5. So we have another parenthesis
in the text that begins at the end of verse 1 and goes all the way down to the end
of verse 5, and this describes, meanwhile back at the ranch what is Saul
doing. This is just to give you a clear
contrast between these two men.
Verse 2, “And Saul tarried in the farthest part of Gibeah under a
pomegranate tree which is in Migron: and the people who were with him were about
six hundred men.” Notice the fantastic
army he had by this time, 600 men, remember he started out with 2,000; as a
result of his human good policies he wound up with 600, real inspiring
leadership we might add. And the
pomegranate tree by itself is something noteworthy. This apparently could refer to a whole
orchard, a pomegranate was a fruit that was very well liked in the ancient
world, it was something like an orange and it was something that was very
pleasing for sight and many people enjoyed having pomegranate orchards in their
backyard. And they would grow these
pomegranate trees for their beauty and also to provide them with tremendous
luscious fruit. And so here Saul is
sitting under the pomegranate tree; he can’t do anything else, he’s lost his
whole army, and he has 600 people and he’s eating pomegranates, worrying all
the time what God is going to do with his problem. Now he’s got a real disastrous problem, so
he’s sitting there, Lord I wonder what I can do, mm-mm, as he sits eating his
pomegranates.
But his son takes a more aggressive attitude. What is his doing? His son is doing what his father should be
doing; his son is out on the north edge of Gibeah and he’s conducting a little
reconnaissance, and he’s finding out, what are they doing over there. His son could care less for the
pomegranates. You keep this in mind
about the pomegranates because next week we’re going to get into a honey
episode and we’re going to watch how Saul is so inconsistent and unstable in
his leadership. But here he and his 600
men are basking with the pomegranates.
Verse 3, these are some of the staff that he has with him, “And Ahijah,
the son of Ahitub, Ichabod’s brother, the son of Phinehas, the son of Eli, the
LORD’s priest in Shiloh, wearing an ephod. And the people knew not that
Jonathan was gone.” And verse 4
describes the terrain of the situation, “And between the passes, by which
Jonathan sought to go over unto the Philistines’ garrison, there was a sharp rock
on the one side, and a sharp rock on the other side: and the name of the one
was Bozez, and the name of the other, Seneh. [5] The forefront of the one [one
crag] was situated northward over toward Michmash, and the other southward over
toward Gibeah.” In other words, what
he’s saying is that they have this high elevation. The narrator is setting you up for what’s
coming. This is something characteristic
of Hebrew narrative. Again the English
text is not as picturesque as the Hebrew.
If somebody wanted to draw art pictures of the Old Testament, if they
would simply take a year or two to master Hebrew they would get fantastic data
for some real good art because the Hebrew is so picturesque in this. Verse 4 is one of these great picturesque
phrases in the original language that describes these tremendously high
bluffs. And it’s to set you with the
situation so that you’ll know exactly what’s happening as verse 6 occurs. Now here is one of those great rare verses of
the Old Testament, but one of the tremendous battle phrases, one of those great
phrases of high motivation and aggressive spirituality.
Verse 6, “And Jonathan said to the young man who bore his armor, Come,
and let us go over unto the garrison of these uncircumcised: it may be that the
LORD will work for us; for there is no restraint to the LORD to save by many or
by few.” Now to see this situation
you’ve got to understand what the problem is.
Look what his problem is just on the basis of terrain alone; just look
at this. Jonathan is going to have to
cross this valley; all the time he crosses the valley he’s going to be subject
to these people up here, all the time!
He will be under constant surveillance.
There is no way he can sneak across this valley undetected. So the first strike against him is the
terrain. The terrain is utterly against
a move of this sort.
The second thing that Jonathan has against him is that he’s only got
himself and his armor bearer, against probably a couple hundred men; they
probably have at least 200 men over here, so the odds are about 1 to 100; the
garrison has been depleted by the three columns that went to the north, east
and west, still they left a guard force back to guard the southern perimeter
and that’s what Jonathan faces. He faces
an impossible terrain and he faces an impossible number of enemy. That’s the
situation and look at this man’s faith, look what he says here; “Come, and let
us go over unto the garrison of these uncircumcised,” now the word
“uncircumcised” alerts us to something else that we are going to have to refer
to again next week, and it means that this phrase, “uncircumcised,” means that
Jonathan recognizes whose war is this; his personal war or the Lord’s; he
recognizes the principle of holy war.
Jonathan recognizes the uncircumcised nature of the Philistines and by
this we know that he fights on the basis of the Abrahamic Covenant. What is the sign of circumcision? It is the sign of the Abrahamic Covenant. What is the Abrahamic Covenant? The Abrahamic Covenant is the election of the
Jews. Point 1 of the Abrahamic Covenant
is that the Jews are destined to be the source of worldwide blessing
spiritually speaking throughout all time. Every Christian blessing has come
because of a Jew called Jesus Christ. The
second point is that the Jews will have their land forever; that land is
theirs, God has given it to them.
By the way, there’s an exciting paper where a man has done a computer
study, and he has set up a mathematical problem, which is this: if you stand at
any given point on any land surface of this planet, and you draw a line to any
other point of land surface, far or near, what is the point that you can stand
on at any point where you will be closest to all other points? In other words, what is the center of the
surface of the globe, not the center of the sphere, the center of the global
surface by this method. And working it
by computer on a totally objective map, the answer is Jerusalem. Jerusalem came out to be the actual
geographical center of the earth. And
this is interesting because Ezekiel told us, there’s a phrase that occurs in
the Hebrew prophets, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou art the navel of the
earth.” Now do you suppose that the
rabbi’s who wrote that had a computer to figure it out! Of course not.
The third point of the Abrahamic Covenant was the fact that the Jews
would survive historically and no one would ever crush the Jew; the Jew cannot
be erased from history. He will go on
and on and on. So these are the three points and the sign of it all was
circumcision. Why circumcision?
Circumcision was a sign of separation.
And it carried a tremendous potent force as far as inter-marriage was
concerned; no Jewish man could ever intermarry without being conscious of the
fact that he was separated and without being conscious of the fact that he bore
on his body the sign of his covenant which he was violating by that
intermarriage. So circumcision bore a
tremendous role in the Abrahamic Covenant.
So when we see this word in verse 6 it’s not just a little random word,
it’s not a word of derision as we usually think of derision. This word is a word of derision but as the
Lord sees derision. What Jonathan is
saying by this one word, circumcision, he was saying now look, these
uncircum-cised Philistines don’t own this land, they don’t belong on this
property, let’s go over and see if the Lord will kick them out; that’s what
he’s saying. The word “circumcised” has
to do with ownership of the land and Jonathan recognizes it and this is what
motivates him. So I want you to see before you get to the end of this verse,
which is tremendous in itself, I want you to see that as you work carefully
through verse 6 that at the very beginning Jonathan has a tremendous
theological framework for what he’s going to do. I can imagine in my own mind, I can see
Jonathan probably sitting on that cliff, here we have the cliff of Michmash and
over here Gibeah, and I can see Jonathan sitting there, probably for several
days, while his father is back eating pomegranates, and he’s out there looking,
constantly looking, all day long, constantly pondering.
[tape turns] … they don’t belong on this land, it’s not theirs, it’s
ours, and He is our God. Is He bigger or
greater than Dagon, their god? Of course
He’s bigger, and by the point that Jonathan says what he says here, you have
got to understand he has through it through. And this is what’s got to
happen. Don’t come across verse 6 and
suddenly say that’s a good memory verse, I’m going to remember that and use it
some day. Memorize it, fine, but before
you can use this verse by faith you’ve got to through mentally the same thing
that Jonathan went through. How do you
go through the same thing mentally.
When you become a Christian God the Father has done certain things for
you, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.
Here are some of the things that God the Father has done for you. You know, for example, that God the Father
disciplines you because He loves you; He is severe with you because He loves
you and He wants to see you through, because He has predestinated you to be
conformed to the image of His Son. You
know that Jesus Christ lives and makes intercession for you, Romans 8:34. You know that right now Jesus Christ is
making intercession constantly for you.
You know that the Holy Spirit is an advocate before the Father, Romans
8:26, and you know that He makes groanings for you that cannot be uttered, you
can never understand the nature of the petition that the Holy Spirit is making
for you. You know all these things;
those are your possessions.
Now there are several obstacles to those possessions. There’s obstacles to both the possessions and
the enjoyment. The first obstacle is
that you do not understand; if you cannot understand your position as a
Christian and you have studied this thing, you’ve got some sort of distraction
factors working or something. And you
have an opposition mentally and you’ve got to recognize… don’t you ever be
content with poor understanding of God’s Word.
You make a personal resolve that you’re going to understand the Word if
it takes you ten years, but you will understand all major basic areas of the
Word. And you can, you don’t need a
college degree to understand Scripture.
In fact, in most cases it will help you not to have one because you
won’t get fogged up with all the human viewpoint. But the point is that everyone here can know
what God’s Word says, and if you don’t you’d better covet before God that you
will understand by God’s grace, you will make it a point of understanding. You will not tolerate sloppy thinking on your
own part and you will not tolerate fuzzy understanding of basic Christian
truths. It is your privilege as a
believer and don’t you ever let Satan sell you some line, oh you’re too stupid,
or you don’t have the education or some other excuse that is cranked into your
mind to keep you. That’s the first thing
that is your right as a believer,
The second thing, you have the right to maturity, you have the right to
get rid of those –R learned behavior patterns no matter what they are. You have the right to godly patterns of
behavior; if it takes you five years to get them, that’s your right. Wherever you look at yourself and you see –R
learned behavior learned behavior patterns you’re seeing uncircumcised
Philistines on your property, so get them off, get them out, take Jonathan’s
attitude, what are those uncircumcised things doing here, this is sanctified
ground, they don’t belong here. So
there’s the Christian’s attitude toward his own personal behavior
patterns. And then we have other areas
where you can apply the same truth; it can be in the area of your family, in
the area of your loved ones, in the area over which you have responsibility
where you see obstructions spiritually.
Part of your position as a believer, one of the things, you share the
ascendancy of the Son. Do you know what
that means? Do you really know what it
means to share the ascendancy of Jesus Christ?
It means that Jesus Christ sits at the Father’s right hand, above all
principalities and powers; it means that Satan himself has lower rank than
Christ, Christ outranks Satan and you, in your personal relationship to Jesus
Christ, you are related to the One who outranks Satan. And you can give orders, spiritually, to demonic
forces and they must yield. You share
the ascendancy of Christ. That’s your
right and it takes you time to learn it.
You’re not going to get automatic results but a you learn how to
exercise your authority as a believer you will see things change. It takes time to gain the skills, but don’t
accept, like Saul some other thing, you don’t want to be eating pomegranates
worrying about when the problem is going to go away.
Let’s look at what Jonathan said, let’s go back through this verse,
“Come, let us go over unto the garrison of these uncircumcised:” in other
words, they don’t belong here, “it may be that the LORD will work for us,” now
here’s a most beautiful illustration of divine guidance and one of the most
beautiful ones I’ve ever seen in Scripture.
Jonathan at this point doesn’t really know whether the Lord is going to
grant deliverance at this point but I want you to see a principle. Jonathan is not content with a lack of
freedom. Jonathan wants his freedom and
it may be that the Lord isn’t going to give it to him now but Jonathan is going
to try. He is not going to be content
for a moment to be bound in, to be hedged in, that there’s something here that
doesn’t belong and Jonathan wants that freedom.
That’s the aggressive spiritual attitude of this man and God is going to
bless him for it.
But notice in the middle of verse 6 that it’s all potential; Jonathan at
this point does not know for sure whether God is going to grant freedom but
Jonathan knows enough of the mind of the Lord that he’s going to try. “It may be that the LORD will work for us,”
and then he gives that fantastic reason, “for there is no hindrance [restraint]
to the LORD to save by many or by few.”
He says you see that over there?
How many are there; there’s two?
How many are there on the other side?
Two hundred… two hundred. What
does two plus infinity equal? Infinity,
with God’s on our side it doesn’t matter whether we have two or two hundred or
two thousand, that’s the point of the last part of verse 6. The Lord is not going to be hindered when we
have too few. The Church of Jesus Christ
has never had enough personnel on any front, ever. There’s no mission field today where we have
enough competent help. There’s no local
church today where we have enough believers exercising their gifts in various
areas. There’s not enough university
campuses where we have Christians that will stand up for the Word of God. We don’t have enough believers; we are in the
same position and it’s discouraging at times.
But look at this verse, “there is no restraint to the LORD to save by
many or by few.” He’s not going to be
bound, if there’s two men fine, He can use two men. And He’s going to. Watch what happens.
Verse 7, “And his armor-bearer said unto him, Do all that is in thine
heart: turn thee; behold, I am with thee according to thy heart.” Now look back at 13:7, what do you notice
about the difference; notice a difference in the leadership of these two
men? Do you notice that the man who was
aggressive spiritually has an aurora about him that others will follow and
somehow the human good never hacks it.
Here’s the human good over here; the human good can get everybody’s
feelings whipped up, oh we’ve got to have a dedication service and everybody
comes down and dedicates their life to go out to Timbuktu, and then the next
Tuesday they’re worrying about who they’re going to marry so they can do
something else. And this is [can’t
understand word/s] of human good stuff and it doesn’t cut it, and here you have
Saul trying the human good approach and everybody saw him trembling. Now if there was a sight to tremble at it
seems to me it would have been the armor-bearer. Can you imagine being the armor-bearer, you
don’t even know how to use the arms, you’re just a young boy that’s training in
the military, he doesn’t even hold the spear, let alone using it, and you’re
his packrat and you’ve got all these bags, canteens and everything else, and
you go trotting along, jangle, jingle, jangle behind this guy who is a
soldier. Now that really looks like a
party to invade. Wouldn’t that be a
normal situation where it’d strike terror.
But look at the response of this armor-bearer. He’s spiritually alert too and he senses that
the man he’s following, God’s there with him, and so he says okay Jonathan, I’m
going to trust you.
Verse 8, “Then said Jonathan, Behold, we will pass over unto these men,
and we will reveal ourselves unto them.”
Now verses 9-10 is a way that a believer has of discerning the Lord’s
will in certain situations. Here’s what
Jonathan does, he’s not sure of what’s happening and here’s where he uses his
head. [9] “If they say to us, Tarry
until we come to you; then we will stand still in our place, and will not go up
unto them. [10] But if they say thus,
Come up unto us; then we will go up; for the LORD has delivered them into our
hand, and this shall be a sign unto us.”
Now let’s recreate what’s going on.
Let’s go back to the terrain factor first. He’s got a garrison up here on the southern
end to that perimeter. Jonathan starts
down in the valley; this is what he means when he says in verse 8, “we will
reveal ourselves to them,” Jonathan knows he is going to be seen. He deliberately plans it so he is going to be
seen. So he says now armor-bearer, I’m
going to walk down here and you’re going to come behind me and we’re going to
walk right across there in full view of them all. Now that really sounds like it’s going to be
something interesting. He’s going to
walk down there and let them see him.
And then they’re going to call down from the bluff because obviously
they’re going to go to the area of the perimeter and the guards will challenge
him. And he’s going to listen to how the
guards give the challenge. This is a
normal situation when you have guards and there’s code word flashed or there’s
flashed or there’s a noise made, barring certain conditions of combat, and
there is a challenge made and you answer the challenge. Jonathan is going to go there, he’s going to
let himself be known, they’re going to yell down something. Now here’s the choice that he makes.
Verse 9, “If they say wait until we come to you,” then Jonathan says
we’re going to call it off. But if they
say oh, come on up, then we’ll come up.
Now what is the thinking behind this?
Here’s where the believer is using his head. Jonathan knows enough about military to know
that if they say you just stay there until we come out and investigate, that
means that the perimeter is hardened; that means that these guards are sharp
and they’re functioning because that’s what a guard is supposed to; they will
not permit an enemy to come intruding through their perimeter, a defense
perimeter, all the way into the camp before they find out their ID; they’re
going to find out the ID on the perimeter, not inside the camp. And so Jonathan says if those guards yell
“you stay there” then we know that God has not opened the way for us. But if we walk up there they say oh come on
up, then we know that that’s the beginning of the sign that God has given them
to us.
You see how see how good this holds together; Jonathan is not using some
sort of a fleece. Now if we see three
spears come out that’s God’s will, if we see two come out that’s not God’s
will. It’s not a spooky thing like
that. It’s something that’s common
sense. This is a legitimate petition for
a believer to do in this kind of a situation, using your common sense to set up
some kind of a situation where you see God’s leading. What this ultimately is, Jonathan is saying
if we see evidence of God already working in that situation we’re going to go
in; if I don’t see evidence of God working in the situation, I’m not going to
go in. The response of the guards will
indicate whether the Holy Spirit is working already. That’s what Jonathan’s looking at because in
verse 10 he uses the past tense, “then we will go up, for the LORD has
already,” past tense, “delivered them into our hands.” In other words, the work of Jehovah has begun
and that will be the empirical evidence of Jehovah’s working.
You have to catch the sarcasm of verse 11, we can’t let this go by. This is really one of these neat verses. “And both of them disclosed themselves” in
other words they were both spotted by the guards, “unto the garrison of the
Philistines; and the Philistines said, Behold, the Hebrews come forth out of
the holes where they have hidden themselves.”
Now this is an expression that’s really funny because it’s used
elsewhere in the Old Testament to refer to mice coming out of their little
holes and the word “come out” is a participle meaning they are in the process
of coming out. And you can just see
these Philistines, oh, look at these little mice, they’re coming out of their
holes, it’s sarcasm. In other words,
what’s already happened is the Philistines have got a little over-confident and
they are heading for a royal bruise.
Verse 12, “And the men of the garrison answered Jonathan and his
armor-bearer, and said, Come up to us, and we will show you something.” What they meant was the end of a spear, you see. We’ll show you something, so come on up
little mice. “And Jonathan said to his
armor-bearer, Come up after me; for the LORD has delivered them into the hand
of Israel.” Can you imagine the guts of this guy, two men against two hundred
and this is the cliff they’ve got to climb, and we’ll see how they get to it.
Verse 13, “And Jonathan climbed up upon his hands and upon his feet, and
his armor-bearer after him,” he crawled up this cliff, you see what’s happened
here is that this move is so audacious that the Philistines can’t even
comprehend anybody being so stupid as to try something like this. Two men [can’t understand words]. Now it turns out, we don’t have the exact geography
but apparently what had happened was that Jonathan came out and there was an
overhang here, and then it went up to the camp, and he and his armor-bearer
were temporarily out of sight of these people, they lost the sight as they
started coming up underneath this overhang, and the garrison started to file
down, and the land was rough and they had to come down single-file to see what
was going on. So as the garrison, the
southern perimeter, the defense force, starts coming down single file Jonathan
and his armor-bearer are coming around under this overhang and they suddenly become
visible.
And so this is why verse 13 reads, “And Jonathan climbed up upon his
hands and upon his feet, and his armor-bearer after him; and they fell,” that’s
the enemy, that’s the Philistines, “they fell before Jonathan, and his
armor-bearer slew them after him.”
Except the verb tenses are really something. The word “fell” is the imperfect, and it
means these guys fell one at a time, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. In other words, Jonathan would come up and
he’d pierce them, it’s not saying he’d finally killed them but he’d stab them
and that would dispatch a few and they’d just go boom, boom, boom, boom, boom,
one right after another; apparently the terrain was such that they could only
get one man in there. And they were
coming to him, boom; next, boom; next, boom; next, boom. And this went on and the guy would fall down
by his feet and the word for “slain” here is a participle which means
continually. This armor-bearer is back
there having a ball, Jonathan is over there and he’d knock the guy down, the
guy would fall, and it’s on a hill, and so obviously the guy’s body is going to
start going down the hill so the armor-bearer would go thomb, thomb, thomb,
thomb, thomb as they go by, and it’s a tremendous picture here, this is
continuous action, continually going on.
And finally in verse 14 it describes this. “And that first slaughter, which Jonathan and
his armor-bearer made, was about twenty men, within as it were an half acre of
land,” that’s the length of this path they were on. Now that verse was put in there for several
reasons. It is put in there to verify
the fact that Jonathan and his armor-bearer genuinely made an assault. Now Jonathan and his armor-bearer apparently
at this point take off. And they begin
to go back to Gibeah, but the “twenty” is put in there for another reason; it
is to set you up for something that is about to happen. By putting “twenty” and relating that twenty,
it’s fantastic the two men did slay twenty, that’s one to ten, that’s a pretty
good kill ration. But it’s put in there
for another reason, that you may understand that only twenty were killed, of
the garrison of hundreds of men. It is
to show you that Jonathan’s assault, bold as it was, was not in itself
sufficient to dislodge this garrison. So
you remember the twenty; the twenty means that Jonathan’s effort in itself is
not sufficient to carry the day; it was a bold effort, it was done in faith,
but this by itself was not sufficient to dislodge the enemy.
This is why Christian efforts, nothing that we do, it gets back to the
faith technique actually, remember I keep saying the faith technique has two
parts, it has a doing and it has a resting, and the doing means that we are
held responsible in the faith technique to do some real activity; it may be
breathing, you may find situations you are in where you can’t do anything
except maintain your poise and relax. In
other words, 5% of your problem is going to be doing. Now here say 40% of Jonathan’s problem was
doing; he went over there and he did what he could under the situation. He indicated his positive volition in
responsible activity. This is not
sanctification by works. Follow me
carefully and you won’t make that error.
Jonathan killed twenty men; that’s his activity. He aggressively trusted the Lord to kill
twenty men; but twenty men by itself is insufficient. So the rest of his faith is resting that God
is going to do what Jonathan can’t do.
Jonathan has exercised his choice, he has exercised obedience to do what
he could in the situation, trusting God for the rest.
Another illustration, perhaps more mundane but for many of you just as
critical, a man looks for a job, and if he uses the faith technique it doesn’t
mean he lies on his back waiting for the job to drop in; it means that he has a
resume, it means that he looks into situations, you may be running a business,
you use the faith technique there, you do things, you look for customers, you
exercise in all these things but the difference between using the faith
technique and not using it is the attitude you have about doing it. Are you frantic, does everything depend upon
you doing the doing. You may have your
business and this business is just going to fold if I can’t 150 customers by
tomorrow afternoon and I’ve got to hustle, hustle, hustle until you destroy
your family by doing it, and you destroy the second and third divine
institution’s and everything else. Do
you really honestly think that’s God’s will for man; do you really think that
God is so helpless that He’s going to let a believer destroy his family because
of this kind of thing. No we have a
situation in business that’s analogous to this.
Jonathan does something, but whatever he does is insufficient to deal
with the problem. It’s a drop in the
bucket but at least it’s a drop.
Jonathan did what he could; he did something fantastic with what he
could but it in itself wasn’t sufficient.
Now the Lord is going to take over and bless this man. Now you watch the blessing that God pours out
on the nation because one man believed in the middle of a crisis.
Verse 15, “And there was trembling in the host,” that’s the Philistine
host, “in the field, and among all the people; the garrison,” and then in the
Hebrew, “and the spoilers,” the commandos that were out on that raid, that came
out to the north, to the west, to the south, they’re coming back to base camp
now and the word gets back what has happened, these two mice crawled out of
their hole and they bit. The Hebrews
have funny mice. And these are like mice
they’ve never seen before. Two of these
guys came up this cliff and zapped twenty of our southern perimeter
guards. They did what? They did what! And this starts these commandos wondering
what is going on. So this starts, as
they come back, they also trembled. And
now the second thing, at the end of verse 15, “and the earth quaked,” here’s
where the mighty God of Israel is going to use nature forces and He’s going to
transform this thing into a fantastic panic.
He starts out using the natural terror of a surprise attack by two men,
and now He’s going to, as it were, turn the amplifier up. And He is going to start using nature forces,
and the earth is literally beginning to shake under these guys.
And then the last phrase, the King James says “so it was a very great
trembling,” that’s not what the Hebrew reads.
The Hebrew reads this: “so it became a shaking of Elohim.” In other words, this is the expression that
there’s something supernatural occurring here.
“It became a shaking of Elohim,” that means God is in it. So the shaking of verse 15 is all out of
proportion to the twenty. In other
words, look it, remember when I said the Philistines were tremendous experts in
the use of psychological warfare. Now
where are they being defeated; exactly in their area of strength. Their strength was the fact that they could
psych out their opponents, and what are they getting? They’re getting psyched out. The very strength, God is going to show His
fantastic power, He’s not going to just zap the Philistines, He’s going to
clobber them right in the area where no army has ever clobbered the
Philistines. He’s going to hit them in
the area that they are respected for most, the area of psychological stability
and insight of this military machine.
And He’s going to ruin it.
And so here we have the effect, we have one man on positive volition
plus the faith technique; that equals what we would call doing, but it’s an
insufficient doing, it’s a sufficient doing that only twenty are killed; that
by itself nothing, but you add God, God’s blessing to that effort and like the
bread, and the fishes loaves that Jesus Christ, remember the story, he took two
fishes and some bread and out of it He fed five thousand. He had to start with positive volition on
somebody’s part and God starts with Jonathan’s positive volition and He just
amplified that thing so the terror goes all over the place. Now the Philistine army wouldn’t have fallen
apart losing twenty, a squad or two, but something supernatural happens right
at this point and next week we’re going to find out how Saul mocks the whole
thing.
Right at this point we have a fantastic opportunity to utterly destroy
the Philistine army. Why? Because we had one man who was spiritually
the aggressor, Jonathan. He saw the
issues, trusted the Lord, moved out.
“Maybe the Lord will work for us,” he said, but I’m going to find out,
I’m not going to sit here on my duff eating pomegranates, I am going to go out
and find out whether God’s going to liberate us now or not. Shall we bow for prayer.