1 Samuel Lesson 16
Saul’s Second failure (continued) 14:16-45
We’ll continue the chapter we began last week, which is the second
failure of Saul. In 1 Samuel 13:14-45 we
have a section that deals with Saul’s second failure. These passages of Samuel are designed by the
Holy Spirit to teach us many lessons.
One of these lessons is that Saul is a man of human good and by these
passages God is demonstrating that human good is insufficient to fulfill His
will. Saul, we have seen has been by all
evidences available, confirmed as God’s choice for the office of messiah-king,
and therefore He is to fill that office.
But to fill that office he must have the working of the Holy Spirit in
his life, which results in divine good.
Saul is in negative volition against the Holy Spirit and he is
demonstrating that what he substitutes for the work of the Holy Spirit, that is
human good, is insufficient to fill the shoes of this office.
Human good is put up by people who wish to salve their conscience. We have a mind, we have a conscience and when
we are on negative volition the conscience sending out signals and as the
conscience does this the mind has got to react one way or the other. It is going to say all right, I’ll go
positive, use 1 John 1:9 and be restored to fellowship or the mind can choose
to reject the message from the conscience and begin a defensive war against the
conscience, and it can utilize the various defense mechanisms, fantasy,
rationalization, isolation, suppression, projection and son on, and the result
of this is that scar tissue builds up over the conscience and spiritual
sensitivity decreases, and you have the rise of chaos in the human heart. Where you
have negative volition you have darkness, you have the Holy Spirit’s
ministry of enlightenment cut off, so that as chaos begins to build the first
result is dullness spiritually. That is,
as the darkness comes into the heart, perception is cut off, the conscience
becomes less sensitive, and people become less perceptive in seeing how the
Word of God applies to various situations.
This chaos of the heart can start at any point in Christian growth. You can’t fool yourself by saying I’ve been
a Christian 25 years and therefore I’m immune to this kind of thing. The woods are full of believers who thought
they were immune to this kind of thing.
And fundamentalism is filled up by believers who have gone on with the
Lord for some time in their life, who have matured spiritually and then who
have entered a streak of rebellion and they are in chaos, and their heart is
darkened and they are fooling themselves if you think the number of years you
have logged in the Christian life prevents this from happening to you. This is not a malady that applies just to new
believers. And then after darkness sets
in for some time all that divine viewpoint is replaced by human viewpoint. And the person starts running to gimmicks and
all the rest of the things; the faith technique is not used, it declines and
decays, the person becomes less skillful in using this and more skillful in
using substitutes; the prayer life goes, confession goes, and all
manifestations of the divine viewpoint framework go.
After this, the next step is that they begin to hate. The inner hatred that began down here toward
the things of God now works its way out toward people who represent God’s
authority. The first place where this is
manifest is toward the pastor. Whenever the pastor’s authority is violated this
is a manifestation of the chaos of the human heart. People who are on negative volition
inevitably try to undermine the pastor’s authority, and the reason they do this
is because the pastor represent God’s authority in the local church and they
can’t stand God’s authority and the nearest thing to God’s authority is the
pastor’s authority. And that’s the first
thing that begins to be attacked. It can
be attacked through gossip, maligning, through all sorts of things but in the
end the people who do it are always the losers.
The people are losers because, #1 they cut the pastor down in front of
their children and their children will never listen to him again and therefore
it destroys the ministry of the Word toward their children. And parents who do
this ought to move on to another church where there’s a fresh person, where the
children don’t have a bad-mouthed image of the pastor and maybe the minister
there can have a ministry in their children.
But where the pastor has been maligned it cuts out any kind of a
ministry he can have with children. So
that’s one area where you will see negative volition crop out in the maligning,
criticizing of the pastor.
Then beyond that you have people continue to not only malign the pastor,
but the next group are mature believers with whom they associate; these
represent the Holy Spirit and they represent the presence of the Holy Spirit
and so fellow believers begin to receive the brunt of this kind of activity and
this is nothing but a manifestation of chaos of the heart again, and it will go
on and on until the person gets right with the Lord and confesses and is
restored to fellowship. And if it
continues, finally it goes with anybody, just everybody in general, all men,
and finally their social relationships go, they are miserable people, and they
can’t get along with anybody. This is
the ultimate result of this which finally results in frustration, where nothing
they do ever gives them happiness, they are believers all the time but nothing
they do ever gives them happiness, and they possibly wind up (quote) “mentally
ill” which is not illness at all, it is just an accumulation of scar tissue
over the conscience, but diagnosed in our day in such a way as to absolve the
conscience and absolve personal responsibility, so we call it mental illness,
but don’t kid yourself, there’s really no such thing as mental illness, there’s
only one kind of illness, that’s physical illness. You may have low blood sugar or something
else that makes your brain malfunction but that’s the only kind of illness that
you have and any competent physician can take care of your problem. And if it’s not then it’s a spiritual problem
and it’s not illness, it’s rebellion against the word, and this is the cause of
much frustration. So all the time this
process of chaos in the heart sets in.
Now we are viewing a man in whom this process is well under way. During
the second failure of Saul the chaos in his heart is going to manifest itself
in very interesting ways. You are slowly
watching a man’s character deteriorate; you are watching him change in his
responses to life. I have noted before
in chapters 9, 10, 11, 12, certain flaws in Saul’s character. But these were just flaws, they were just
things in this man’s character which could be taken care of had Saul gone on
and received grace, had Saul compensated for these things by trusting the Word
of God, by bowing His knee to God’s gracious offer he could have resolved his
problem. But we are going to see that
Saul never did this and that Saul failed in many areas.
The first failure was found in chapter 13 when as a result of his
foolishness he lost his army. In verse 7
he didn’t seize upon the initiative that Jonathan had given him. Jonathan had started to fight, he set up the
situation in verse 3 with his first raid.
Saul not only did not follow up, but in verse 8 “he tarried seven days
according to the set time that Samuel had appointed; but Samuel did not come to
Gilgal,” and so Saul took over. In other
words, Saul is a religious person who has gone on negative volition; as a result
he has already experienced darkness in his soul because remember previous to
this the Holy Spirit had filled him and he had had a tremendous experience with
God the Holy Spirit and that was deliberately put in there, where it says
Saul’s heart was changed; that was put in there to warn us about something,
that he had the opportunity of grace, that God had done this in his soul, but
Saul has rejected the work of the Holy Spirit and as a result he is darkening
up in his spiritual perception. It’s
shown in verses 8-10 by the fact that Samuel, speaking the Word of God, he said
you wait until you find out what God’s will is for you, and I don’t want you to
move until you find out God’s will. But
Saul takes matters into his own hands and he becomes impatient and moves on,
and he promptly gets chewed out by Samuel for so doing and as a result he has a
sentence of judgment pronounced upon him in verses 13-14 where, unfortunately
his son is the recipient because this sentence is dooming Jonathan from the throne. Jonathan, his son, who by all rights merits
the rights to sit on that throne will never sit on the throne of
Saul did not fail in some moral area; this is where Christians have got
to wake up. The average Christian does
not know a thing about human good. The
average Christian is so dumb when it comes to human good that he will
immediately accept it as a work of the Holy Spirit. Any person cranking out human good is
perfectly acceptable in most Christian circles.
Any time someone is moral, any time someone leads an epical life, any
time someone has all the etiquette and all the courtesies and so on, they are
immediately accepted as some great spiritual work of God. And this passes on and this is a beautiful
illustration that should jar some of you to your heels, because some of you
know nothing about human good, you would walk right out of here and accept it
and a bona fide work of the Holy
Spirit because you’re suckers for this kind of thing. This is tragic because this is one of the
areas that God gets very angry about and here you see Saul going on negative
volition and he doesn’t commit one (quote) “moral” (end quote) sin. He simply fails to use the faith technique in
the area of his calling, which is the messiah-king.
The messiah-king is to deliver the nation Israel and messiah-king, no
matter what else he does, is to use the faith technique in resting on God’s
grace to help him accomplish his office.
David is going to commit moral sins and God doesn’t discipline him the
half that he disciplines Saul and it should be a lesson to some of you that you
have your standards so far out Scripturally.
David is going to commit many moral sins, David is going to violate all
the Christian taboos and yet David is accepted of the Lord. David does it
because at least in one area of his calling as messiah-king he trusts the Lord
over and over and over. The Psalms are a
testimony to David’s use of the faith technique in the area of his calling and
God blesses David because David uses the faith technique in the main high
priority area, which is the calling of God in his life.
Saul, contrary wise, has a calling as messiah-king and he fails to use
the faith technique and nothing moral or immoral is meant here. This failure results in severe discipline
upon him as a believer because God has called him to do a job and he has failed
to use the faith technique in doing that job, with the result that he loses the
army. Now imagine the psychological
witness that this must have had to the nation.
Here the reason for Saul’s acceptance in the first place by the nation
Israel was his battle victory on the east side of Jordan. Remember, what was the empirical evidence
that God truly had anointed Saul? It was
his ability to secure military victory over the enemy, and here, when we come
to this passage Saul cannot even hold his troops together. Now don’t you see his testimony as
messiah-king is shot because he will not use the faith technique at the point
of his calling, just like some of your testimonies are shot or are going to be
shot if you do not use the faith technique in your areas of calling, in the
central areas, the prime areas of God’s movement in your life, and you rely on
human gimmicks and something else to replace the grace of God with the result
that your testimony is going to be equally as influential as Saul’s. Here’s the great deliverer, the great
general, the great commander in chief with 600 men left. And that’s how he starts out with the second
failure.
Last week we showed how there was a tremendous valley located just to
the north of his position. Gibeah was on
the south side and Michmash was on the north.
The Philistines sent three columns out, sort of commando raids, just
shock raids, to sabotage and destroy the people psychologically. The Philistines were masters at psychological
warfare. This is how they psyched out
Saul’s army: they brought 3,000 chariots up.
Now the Philistines knew they couldn’t use chariots in high rough
terrain; the purpose of the chariots were sheerly psychological and Saul’s army
fell for it; no way you can run a chariot up to Gibeah; it was an utterly
useless weapon except the Philistines knew it wasn’t utterly useless, it
performed a psychological function. So
they massed these chariots around there and it completely scared the whole
army. It accomplished something; a whole
army ran from weapons that could never have been used against them. Amazing; this is what happens when a group of
men are terrified, they don’t think, they turn into a mob, and this is the kind
of reaction that you have.
Now in the second type of failure we have Jonathan with his armor-bearer
going down, crawling down in full sight of the garrison left at Michmash and
remember they had a southern perimeter defense because their camp was weakened
because they had supplied these three raids and so there weren’t many men left
but they left a token guarding force up on top of this cliff. And so Jonathan and his armor-bearer call up
there, and the Philistines, with their tremendous confidence, they see Jonathan
and his armor-bearer walking out and they say oh, the Hebrew mice are crawling
out of their holes and they invite them to come on up. So Jonathan says well that’s the sing of the
Lord that he has weakened them, they aren’t expecting us so we’ll go up. And there was apparently a small path, which
we must deduce from the tactics used, a small path and these men had to file
single file, and these men came down from Michmash and as they walked down
Jonathan just went plunk, and his armor-bearer plunk, and that was the end of
that man and this went on for 20 men, and it was quite a shock, but it wasn’t
the kind of shock that was needed.
It was an initial shock but not big enough. So what does the Lord do? And here’s where you see the fantastic grace
of God. You have Jonathan operating on
positive volition, he had to use the faith technique, and please remember the
faith technique has two parts, it has a doing side and it has a resting side
and you should see these two sides very clearly in this illustration. Because it took the faith technique for
Jonathan even to get the guts to do what he had to do, and then to move up and
to secure some surprise over the enemy, that was his doing. But Jonathan used the resting, he knew that
he could not shock the Philistines enough to jar them, so therefore Jonathan
conducts an initial foray and he rests on the Lord to amplify it. It’s like electronics, you take a small
signal, put an amplifier on it and it becomes a large signal. An amplifier increases the intensity of the
signal. And so what Jonathan is waiting
for is to take the initial panic created by his small scale shock and he says
Lord, I’m going to trust You to turn the volume up, and the Lord does. And we left in 14:15 last time with the
entire Philistine garrison completely shook up, the Philistine army was shook
up, and not only that, the earth itself was quaking. That’s how wonderfully God responded to two
believers.
Now what were the rest of the believers doing? Saul was having snacks in the pomegranate
orchard while all this was going on; he had 600 people sitting in the orchard
eating pomegranates. Pomegranates were a
very nice fruit and Saul figured he couldn’t do anything else so he’d just sit
there looking at the Philistines and eat pomegranates. And while he was sitting eating and relaxing
with 600 men, worrying probably about what he was going to do next, Jonathan
was out doing. Jonathan in many ways
reminds you of some of the tactics that Patton used; when he couldn’t get his
commanders, the superior officers to give him the okay to do something he went
out and engaged the enemy and then the Germans would come at him and then he’d
say I need help because they’re attacking me.
This is how Patton maneuvered his superiors into many battles. He would deliberately set up situations like
this and Jonathan is doing the same thing.
Some of you caught that and one person asked a very interesting question
last week which is the question that must be answered as we go through the rest
of chapter 14. The question was this:
were Jonathan’s actions the actions of initiating the battle, without telling
his father, were Jonathan’s actions a violation of his father’s authority. You have a very clear instance, Jonathan did
not tell his father what he was going to do, he goes over there, clobbers the
garrison, and everything is in an uproar and his father has no idea what’s
happening. There was no communication between father and son. I would like to answer this first in an
outline form an then as we go through chapter 14 you watch how these elements
rise to the surface in the text. You’re
going to watch the deteriorating relationship between a father and his son.
Now we would have to say first were Jonathan’s actions a violation of
his father’s authority? The answer is
negative, there are no orders given I the text that would prohibit an
engagement. Evidently Saul was just hoping for an engagement, there were no
orders contrary to it and God never holds Jonathan responsible for this action;
Jonathan is not judged for this action, God blesses the action, and so we
deduce that God, as far as God is concerned, did not consider this a breech of
Saul’s authority. However, the person
who raised this question obviously saw something in the text which I hope you
all saw, and that is there is some funny business going on in the relationship
between Saul and Jonathan. And that does
come out royally in the text and the narrator of the text wants us to see this
deterioration of the father/son relationship.
The reasons for it will become evident as we go through chapter 14 but
in summary form here’s what happened.
Saul, evidently in his earlier days, was a man who had some spiritual
perception. He was a believer, he was a
man who had a hesitancy to grow. He was
one of those kind that showed up in church at 11:00 and that was the last
contact he had with the Word of God from that point till the next place when he
could come in and impress everybody that he had attended church and made his
five points for the week. Saul was this
kind of person, if you go back in chapter 19, we’ll take just a few verses in a
chain reference to show you the character of Saul and why there’s this rupture
between the father and his son.
1 Samuel 9:6, remember they are looking for the asses, and as they’re
looking around for Saul’s father’s possessions, not finding them, the servant
with Saul raises the question in verse 6, “he said unto him,” unto Saul,”
Behold now, there is in this city a man of God, and he is an honorable man; all
that he says comes to pass; now, let us go there; perhaps he can show us our
way that we should go.” So in verse 6 we
have this servant of Saul taking the spiritual initiative. Notice that, this is where the first cracks
in Saul’s character begin to appear.
He’s a man, apparently a believer on negative volition, or had been on
negative volition with the result that he had already progressed to the second
step of chaos in the heart. The first result of darkness is a spiritual
lethargy, a spiritual dullness, a spiritual imperception that doesn’t perceive
things quickly, and it takes this little kid that’s going along with him to say
hey, you know, we’re right near a prophet, how about going over there. And Saul thinks it’s a good idea and
does. But the point is, who thought of
the idea first? Saul or this kid that was trotting along.
1 Samuel 10:11, another reference.
Remember after Saul had received the anointing and the Holy Spirit had
done a work in his life, in verse 11 it says, “And it came to pass, when all
that knew him previously saw that, behold, he prophesied among the prophets,
then the people said one to another, What is this that is come unto the son of
Kish? Is Saul also among the prophets?”
That became a proverb and to this day you will sometimes among
biblically literate people hear this phrase, and you use this idiom when you’re
referring to something that’s out of place, when you’re referring to something
that doesn’t fit, you say “is Saul among the prophets?” In other words, this man had a reputation in
the community that would cause a person to disassociate him completely from
spiritual activity. And therefore there
was this utter amazement, Saul, that guy, the son of Kish, he’s among the
prophet? No, you’re kidding me, you’re
putting me on, not him. So to have this
kind of reaction shows the kind of life that Saul must have lived, and in face
the whole Kish family must have lived, a high moral ethical life, respected in
the business community but a big fat spiritual zero.
1 Samuel 13:8, where he comes to the point where he is to submit to the
Word of God and when he goes to submit he rejects; his army is going away and
instead of handling the situation he just moves on. We’ll see two more instances of this tonight
and I want you to watch the text as we go through the rest of chapter 14; two
other incidents come boldly to our attention, and this again shows the
increasing chaos in this man’s heart.
Notice also that Saul is a man who is spiritually deteriorating; this
man is collapsing in front of our eyes and that should be a warning that not
one of us ever stays the same spiritually.
You’re not going to be the same tomorrow that you are today spiritually;
you’re going to go up or you’re going to go down but you’re not going to stay
in the same place. There is no such
thing as spiritual status quo. You are
either growing or you are fading out and the story of our lives as believers is
one of this thing; I’ll grow a little, fall back, grow a little, fall back,
grow a little, fall back, etc. That’s
how every Christian’s growth curve is and don’t kid yourself, there’s no
insurance policy that you can take out that will automatically guarantee that
tomorrow you’re going to be equal or better than you are today spiritually.
So we have this man deteriorating and we turn now to 1 Samuel
14:16. While Jonathan and his
armor-bearer are over raising Cain with the Philistines, on the other side of
this great valley Saul has a northern perimeter. Here’s Michmash and there’s the Philistine
garrison; here’s Saul’s garrison, at Gibeah.
He has a northern perimeter; they have a southern perimeter and in
between there’s this big valley, a deep valley and Saul’s watchmen are along
his northern perimeter look across this valley and they begin to notice what’s
going on, there’s complete confusion over in the Philistine camp. And remember this confusion is another
tremendous aspect of the grace of God because it shows that God hits the
Philistines at their strong point. What
was the strong point of the Philistine military machine? It’s their ability to wage psychological
warfare and where do you think God topples them? He wages a superior psychological warfare. Only twenty people have died, that’s nothing,
that’s just a small scale scrimmage. But
out of this the entire Philistine garrison comes unglued. So now who is waging psychological
warfare? Jehovah is waging His
psychological warfare and there’s a tremendous
opportunity here for Saul and we’re going to watch how this man blows
it.
Actually at this point in Saul’s career he had the opportunity to
completely annihilate all of the Philistines.
Why do I say that? Turn to 13:5,
do you remember who it was that the Philistines brought up here; just look at
it, “And the Philistines gathered themselves together to fight with Israel
three thousand chariots, six thousand horsemen, and people as the sand which is
on the seashore,” they did it because they wanted to put the fear of the
Philistines into the Hebrews, but God, in His sovereignty, is setting a trap
for the Philistines. He’s bringing all
the entire Philistine military establishment and He’s putting them right in one
spot. Right in one spot, so Saul has it
open, right here, Saul can completely deliver the nation Israel; right here
Saul can in one full swoop destroy the entire Philistine military machine and
completely deliver his nation. And where
we left it last week Jonathan has opened the door, everything’s going, now all
that’s required is a man who is going to use the faith technique at the point
of his calling, which is the office of messiah-king and he can deliver the
nation. Now watch how it works.
This is a lesson on how not to do it.
“And the watchmen of Saul in Gibeah of Benjamin looked; and, behold, the
multitude melted away, and they went on beating one another down.” This means that whatever it was, the
psychological effect of God’s work was such to turn these men against each
other, and they were fighting each other actually; it got to be a knock-down
drag out brawl inside the Philistine garrison while all this was going on, it
was a beautiful time.
Verse 17, “Then said Saul unto the people who were with him, Number
now,” that means muster to find out who is present and accounted for and who
isn’t, he wants to find out who it was that went over there and he found out,
“and see who is gone from us. And when they had numbered, behold, Jonathan and
his armor-bearer were not there.” He
said I’ve six hundred men, now everybody report. And so his officers reported
sir, we only have 598; all right, who’s missing? And they went down and found out it was
Jonathan and the armor-bearer missing, so simply logic tells us that Saul at
this point knows what the story is. Keep
this in mind because later this fact comes out in a statement Saul is going to
make. So he knows who it was.
Then in verse 18 Saul begins to respond as any believer should. “And
Saul said unto Ahijah, Bring here the ark of God. For the ark of God was at that time with the
children of Israel.” There is some
textual problem whether this was the ephod or the ark, the texts differ; we
needn’t go into that, the point of verse 18 is that he’s faced with a
tremendous opportunity, and like we should, he seeks the Lord’s will. So verse 18 he starts off right, Lord, I seek
Your will. He’s got 600 men but you see
Saul, right now, is in a problem. He’s
got a fantastic opportunity but he can’t follow up on it. Why? Because he’s got 598 men and one set of good
weapons because Jonathan’s taken the other one.
So this isn’t such a favorable situation and he’s got to look to the
Lord to provide him with weapons to take advantage of this situation. So far so good.
Now watch what happens in verse 19, “And it came to pass, while Saul
talked unto the priest, that the noise that was I the host of the Philistines
went on and increased;” in other words, the psychological warfare of Jehovah
against the Philistines was so fantastically successful that their garrison was
just falling apart by the minute. And it
was getting a juicer and juicer target militarily speaking. “…and Saul said unto the priest, stop
[withdraw] thine hand.” In other words,
what Saul does here is exactly reverse to what he did before. He cannot wait for the Word of God; he’s got
to jump at an opportunity. So what happens.
First of all he goes to seek the Word; he’s got to go to the Word to
find out the order, therefore whose battle is he fighting? Keep this in mind because this comes out very
powerfully in this passage. If he is
fighting the battle of Jehovah, the brilliant thing to do as far as a commander
of soldiers is to find out what your superior officer wants you to do. Get him on the phone, call him up, find out
what’s going on. And that’s what he’s
supposed to do, and that’s what he starts to do.
And so he gets to the priest and the priest starts to use this ephod,
which again we don’t know how it works but it was a yes/no type thing. And he
began to use it. Meanwhile Saul, you
can just see him, here’s the priest saying now look guy, I’ve got to find out
what the Lord wants me to do, and all the time the priest is doing this he’s
looking over there and watching what’s happening in the Philistine camp, and
finally it looks so great that he says oh, never mind that, let’s go. And this is again the same kind of behavior
pattern we saw in chapter 13. See what
he’s saying, “stop your hand” he says in verse 19, in other words, cut it out,
never mind what God wants, I’m going to take advantage of this situation.
He’s like many of us as believers, we start out using the faith
technique, I’m going to trust God with this problem, and then the problem looks
so simple now that I can handle it; all right God, forget it, I’ll move
on. See, this is the classic rejection
of the faith technique, and you’ve all had the experience, no matter how poker
faced you look, as believers you’ve had this experience where you have trusted
the Lord with the problem and it looked very bad, and during the time that it
looked bad you were going to trust the Lord with it, you were going to trust
Him, and if every thing broke lose you’d still trust the Lord. Then tomorrow you wake up and it looks good,
and so you say well, I’ll forget that jazz about trusting the Lord and try it on
my own. And of course, you are like Saul
and here’s what happens.
Verse 20, And Saul and all the people who were with him assembled
themselves, and they came to the battle; and behold, every man’s sword against
his fellow,” this is a Philistine sword, “and there was a very great
discomfiture [confusion].” There was a
tremendous riot, the word discomfiture means a riot. It’s actually a wholesale riot going on over
inside the Philistine camp. Now this is
amazing, can you imagine these Jews standing here. The Philistines had the reputation for being
the best, most awesome powerful military machine in the ancient world, and
there’s a riot going on over there. This
looks too good, you just don’t pass up opportunities like this every day. So it looks so inviting to Saul that he moved
his attention away from the Word and was going to do it himself. So here’s operation human good and here’s how
a person who is a believer, he’s not an unbeliever, he is a believer who is
rejecting the faith technique and is going to go it on his own because it looks
like he can get away with it.
Verse 21-22 are a parenthesis.
Remember as I said as you read this watch out for the parentheses, the
text follows a chronological sequence with the exception of the parentheses.
Verses 21-22 describe an event that was going on during verses 19-20. While Saul is sitting there and he’s
obviously got something on his mind, and the something is how do I take 598 men
with one good set of weapons, and take advantage of this thing militarily. Well while he’s worrying about that, God’s
supplying it, and verse 21-22 is how God is graciously supplying weapons to
Saul’s men.
Verse 21, “Moreover, the Hebrews who were with the Philistines before
that time, who went up with them into the camp from the country round about,”
these were captives and other people, turncoats and so on, “even they also
turned to be with the Israelites that were with Saul and Jonathan.” In other words, this is the wishy-washy
crowd, they’ll go with the winner, and they saw that Saul wasn’t winning and so
they went over to the Philistine side.
These were the weak Jews who went down because of the strong Philistines
and the destruction of Saul’s reputation.
Verse 22, “Likewise, all the men of Israel who had hidden themselves in
Mount Ephraim,” remember when they scattered, and they went up into the hills,
“when they heard that the Philistines fled, even they also followed hard after
them in battle.” So verses 21-22 are put
in apparently by the narrator to tell us where the weapons come from because
beginning in verse 23 the Jews had weapons.
Apparently when these Jews that were in the Philistine garrison saw what
was happening they chose the opportunity to escape and they brought with them
adequate weapons. So all during the process while Saul is worrying where his
weapons are coming from God’s supplying them.
And so in verse 23, which picks up the chronology from verse 20, “So the
LORD saved Israel that day; and the battle passed over unto Beth-aven.” Now on a map Gibeah is located here, to the
north you have the Philistine garrison at Michmash and over here you have a
place called Beth-aven, it’s about 5 miles to the west, and what’s happening is
that Saul is at last in active pursuit.
And he’s chasing the remnants of the Philistine garrison to a place
called Beth-aven. Now we are interrupted
with another parenthesis in verse 24, and this is one of the worst military
decisions that Saul ever made, and is an example of what happens when you have
a believer with chaos in the heart, he’s negative volition, he has darkness of
the soul and darkness of the soul ultimately results in human viewpoint and the
inability to make decisions in line with wisdom, make stupid decisions,
vindictive decisions, divisions full of resentment and anger. And so here we see one of those
decisions.
Verse 24, “And the men of Israel were distressed that day,” or hindered
that day. One of the great principles of
war is a principle called the principle of pursuit which says when your enemy
is running, you chase after him as fast as you can. When you have him running that’s the time to
clobber him. Illustration: When the Hungarians in 1956 overthrew their
government and had the Russians running, that was the time to apply the
principle of pursuit, and if you hesitate and you’re trying to apply the
principle of pursuit, that’s it. The
military principle of pursuit can never be applied with hesitation. It has always got to be applied with
aggressiveness, quickness. Watch what happens.
“And the men of Israel were hindered,” in other words, the person
reading this who knows his geography is going to say wait a minute, there’re
the Philistine garrison at Michmash, you mean to tell me they only got five
miles to Beth-aven, what’s wrong with this army, this army was in complete
flight and they only shoved them west five miles, why didn’t they pursue them
further. And this answers the question,
the men of Israel were hampered, the word “distressed” means they were
hindered, cramped. And this is going to
tell us why, “For Saul had adjured [solemnly charged] the people, saying,
Cursed be the man who eats any food until evening, that I may be avenged on
mine enemies. So none of the people
tasted any food,” at all.
Now in ancient war there’s a tremendous emphasis on physical
activity. You didn’t sit around shooting
rifles at somebody or firing artillery pieces, most of the battle was active
physical combat involving hand to hand combat, which required tremendous
amounts of physical energy on the part of the soldiers. Any kind of military engagement, therefore,
demanded high energy output on the part of the participants. Saul, here, as it were, he cuts the gasoline
off. The “gasoline” here is the food
that these people were supposed to have; they should have taken pomegranates
and every thing else they could get, put in their pockets and move, anything
they could get with energy in it, so they could use this energy to pursue.
Remember, there’s no tanks, there’s no jeeps and there’s no airplanes, there
aren’t even bicycles they’re having to run after these people. So in this case Saul makes a disastrous
decision.
The premise of his disastrous decision is given in the last part of
verse 24, what does he say: “that I may
be avenged on my enemies,” he takes
it as a personal affront, and what is Saul steaming about? He’s steaming about his first failure; what
was his first failure? His first
failure, he lost his army, isn’t it, so he said that Philistine commander over
there, he knocked out my army, now I’ve got him and we’re going to go get
him. There is Saul’s personal
vengeance. Now there’s several things
wrong with that, first of all he lost his army not because of the Philistines. He lost it because of his own failure to use
the faith technique, to trust the Lord to bring Samuel to tell him the Lord’s
will. That was the failure, the Philistines had nothing to do with Saul’s
losing his army. But nevertheless, he’s
vengeful and very vindictive. And at
this point he considers it a personal dual between him and the Philistine
commander.
Now that is wrong because if you turn back to 14:4 that was the proper
mental attitude in battle. Jonathan had
the proper mental attitude, “Jonathan said … 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 you see Jonathan’s attitude, what is
it? Whose battle is it? It’s the Lord’s battle. Those Philistines over there, I don’t care
whether they’re Philistines, Moabites, Ammonites or anything else, they’re
uncircumcised, they don’t belong here, they’re in violation of the Abrahamic
Covenant, and they’re in the way of God, let’s sweep them out like we sweep out
the rest of the dirt. That’s Jonathan’s
attitude, get them out of here, they don’t belong. They don’t belong in God’s plan, wipe them
out. Now who is Jonathan concerned
with? He’s concerned with the Lord. Jonathan’s whole mental attitude is hinged on
the fact that this battle is the Lord’s, it’s not Jonathan’s, it’s Gods.
Now we compare, here’s Jonathan and here’s Saul. I said watch the father/son. Right here you’re seeing why these two men
did not communicate. Saul and Jonathan
failed to communicate for reasons that many people fail to communicate; some of
you fail to communicate in your marriage for the same reason, you’re on
different spiritual frequencies. And
here you have Saul operating with negative volition and as a result of his
negative volition, he’s interested in #1, Saul.
Over here you have Jonathan, he’s on positive volition, and he’s
concerned with things of the Lord and it frustrates him to have such a dope for
a father. Now we’re not going to excuse
everything in Jonathan’s behavior, the Holy Spirit has not seen fit to give us
a total analysis of Jonathan’s character; we can only speculate on the
character here. I am not going to
perfectly say that Jonathan is 100% right in his response, but he manifests a
complete distaste for his father later on here, my father is the biggest jerk
in this nation, and he’s going to say that shortly. My father has ruined this nation. And so Jonathan and Saul do not communicate
for very important reason. It’s no
accident this whole thing started off with Jonathan taking off with Jonathan
not telling his father. Jonathan took
off because if he had sat there and said, Dad, how about me taking an
armor-bearer and going over there, Jonathan knew what his father would say; no,
I don’t want you to do it, we’re going to sit here and eat pomegranates. And
Jonathan couldn’t stand to be that way so he decided I’ll do it myself, and
then father doesn’t like it, well then he can chew me out, but we’re going to
do something. He hasn’t given me an
order not to do it so I’ll go ahead and do it.
So Jonathan moves out. And this
is why there’s a rupture between the father and his son; they are on different
spiritual frequencies.
With that in mind turn back to verse 24 and you’ll see Saul’s emphasis
on the battle is his. Now watch how a
believer who is on negative volition, who’s developing a chaos of the heart
situation, becomes clouded in his judgment.
Here’s human viewpoint, remember that’s the third step in chaos of the
heart, and this results in a misuse of the faith technique, kills off prayer,
and one of the other things that this step does, it clouds a believer’s
judgment so instead of making wise decisions he makes foolish decisions. Now here you’re going to see a decision that
from Saul’s point of view was perfectly all right. He said now look, we’ve got that army,
they’re running, so what’s the logical thing to do. Let’s go as fast as we can, and so Saul’s
reason for forbidding the eating of the food is so the men wouldn’t stop to
eat. Of course, who had stopped in the
pomegranate orchard earlier. But he
realized that the soldiers had to move fast, we haven’t time to eat. And so very foolishly he combined a real
situation with a false fact. First of
all, he saw his objective, which was to get down that road as fast as you can;
he recognized the military principle of pursuit, that once you have the enemy
dislodged, move fast. So the next order
came down which was a stupid order to insure the objective. The objective was pursuit, that’s the
objective. The means was don’t eat, don’t
take time to eat is what he meant. But
he was totally ignorant of a physical result of eating, at least at this
point. He forgot, he made a disastrous
order. And this order would doom his
army and it allows the enemy to get completely out of the situation.
Verse 25, “And all they of the land came to a wood [forest] and there
was honey upon the ground.” This sets
you up for the incident. [26] “And when
the people were come into the forest, behold, the honey dropped, but no man put
his hand to his mouth; for the people feared the oath.” Now this is the nature of an oath, this is
not just an order, this is a holy war, and Saul is going to learn something
very disastrous; he has also forgotten something else. He is not a judge, he is not like Samson, he’s
not like any of the judges of the book of Judges, he is an office and that
office he has momentarily forgotten when he made this oath. Saul is in the
office of messiah-king. And when
messiah-king gives an oath the oath must be upheld by God, even if it’s a
stupid one like this, and Saul is going to discover something else, he forgot
that when he gave an order of this profundity, when he said I demand an oath
before God, then as messiah-king God recognized it, you have given this order,
I will enforce it, foolish as it was.
Saul now horribly realizes what he has done, or he will shortly.
Verse 27, “But Jonathan,” again lack of communication, “heart not when
his father charged the people with the oath; therefore, he put forth the end of
the rod that was in his hand, and dipped it in an honeycomb, and put his hand
to his mouth; and his eyes were brightened.”
It’s a Hebrew idiom meaning he was revived physically. Remember this time Jonathan is in worse shape
than 598 men because what has he been doing before the battle started? He climbed on his hands and knees up to the
garrison, he slaughtered 20 men, he came back down from that garrison, he went
across the valley, all the way up to Gibeah, and he’s been working for hours
and hours and hours. So he’s a lot
hungrier than anyone else, so he eats it.
Verse 28, “Then answered one of the people, and said, Thy father
straightly [strictly] charged the people with an oath, saying, Cursed be the
man who eats any food this day. And the
people were faint.” In other words,
Saul’s military objective, which was rapid pursuit, is frustrated by Saul’s
stupid order, which was to go without eating. So he frustrates himself, and
this is always the case with a believer who is out of fellowship. This is one of the reasons why we’re so
miserable when we’re out of fellowship, because one of the ways God makes us
miserable is He makes us trip over our own feet, and this is what is so awful
about being out of and carnal, is that we are our own worst enemy. And when we turn around, you have to say when
it’s all over, I am responsible for it, and God still works out the carnality
even, so that you have to turn around and say well I can’t blame it on anybody
else, that was me all the way. And that
is what is the horrifying and humiliating thing about carnality. Well, Saul
sees it, and Jonathan is about to see it.
Verse 29, “Then said Jonathan, My father has troubled the land;” now the
verb to “trouble” is a technical word which you’ll never get if you just look
at the English. In the Hebrew it’s hakar and hakar is a technical word used at least three other times in the
Word of God; this verb occurs in Joshua 7:25 for the sin of Achan, when Achan
sins, they say your hakar-ed the
people, you were the one that messed up Israel, Achan, and you’re going to die
for it. So the context of Joshua 7:25 is the context of the sin of Achan. Next use: Judges 11:25, it there refers to
the opposition of unbelievers toward the nation Israel, the Gentile kings, Og,
Sihon and so on. And there it obviously
refers to holy war and it refers to the agents of Satan. Joshua is referring to an agent of Satan;
judges is used as an agent of Satan. The
third place it is used is 1 Kings 18:17 when Elijah comes trotting up the way
and Ahab sees him and says oh, here’s the guy that’s hakar-ed Israel. In other
words, you’re the one that’s destroyed this nation. And Elijah looks at him and he says no, I’m
not the one that’s hakar-ed it, you
have. Elijah looks the king straight in
the eye, you are the king, the malak,
who has hakar-ed this nation. You’re the one that destroyed it, you’re the
one that’s the cause of this situation.
So in all three cases of this verb hakar
we have a pronouncement made upon a spiritual enemy of the nation. When Jonathan, therefore in this verse, when
he says, “My father has hakar-ed the
land, he is saying my father is an agent of Satan, that’s what he’s
saying. That is the strong language
Jonathan is using for his father, my own father is an agent of Satan, he has
troubled this land. “…see, I pray you,
how mine eyes have become bright, because I tasted a little of this
honey.” And now he’s going to give the
people a lesson on military warfare from the wise point of view. Verse 30, “How much better, if haply the
people had eaten freely today of the spoil of their enemies which they
found! For had there not been now a much
greater slaughter among the Philistines?”
In other words, Jonathan says look, if my father had stuck with his
stupid order and allowed us to eat we could have completely wiped out the
entire Philistine army today, but no, my father is a goofball, my father is a
clod, my father is an agent of Satan who has destroyed this country and has
allowed the enemy to get out.
Verse 31, “And so they smote the Philistines that day from Michmash to
Aijalon; and the people were faint.” And
it’s very significant that they end at a place called Aijalon. Here’s Michmash and Aijalon is west,
southwest about fifteen miles. So the
battle went on for ten more miles and everything petered out. So they only were able to pursue the entire
Philistines… God gave them the Philistines, He moved the Philistines all up in
one place; he had the Philistines all ready to get clobbered, He provided Saul
with the opportunity, He provided Saul with the weapons, and then Saul blows it
because of a stupid order and they pursue them 15 miles to a place called
Aijalon, they break contact at Aijalon, and Aijalon [can’t understand word] the
place called the Valley of Aijalon. The
valley of Aijalon is an escape way to the plains to the southwest. Israel has mountains here, and there’s a
valley here that has always traditionally been used by armies to escape from
the highlands, and it is the Valley of Aijalon.
And once an army gets through the pass they’re safe, because once the
Philistines move down to the plains they’ve got the chariot force to protect
them and the Jews aren’t going to do anything with that. So the valley of Aijalon is actually place
they can make significant contact.
The Valley of Aijalon just 300 years before was used for what great
event of the Bible? The Valley of
Aijalon was the valley that the Amorite kings were fleeing from and God held
the sun up. Why did God hold the sun up
and why did God make a long day? Because
God knew as well as Joshua, who was the commander at the time, that they had to
have light to kill the enemy before they got through the pass of Aijalon. Once they were through the Valley of Aijalon
it was all over. And so God gave
illumination long enough for Joshua to wipe them out, before they got through
Aijalon. And so the contact is broken at
Aijalon and Saul actually, right here, blows the opportunity, it’s all over
from this point forward.
Verse 32, “And the people flew upon the spoil, and took sheep, and oxen,
and calves, and slew them on the ground’ and the people did eat them with the
blood.” This means they violate the
terms of the Noahic Covenant and certain provisions of the Mosaic Law. They are in violation of this simply because
the people are so ravenously hungry, they’ve been fighting and running and
fighting and running and fighting and running and they have not been allowed to
eat, except the spoil, and now the battle is over and they just all of a sudden
go hog-wild; and the violate the Law left and right.
So now look at this sweet little phrase in verse 33, “Then they told
Saul, saying, Behold, the people sin against the LORD, in that they eat with
the blood. And he said, You have transgressed;
[roll a great stone unto me this day.”
In other words, it wasn’t Saul’s fault, it was the people’s fault, why
you dear sinners out there, you have transgressed. They transgressed because of his stupid
orders is what the trouble was and here we have him, obviously, as he always is
pictured in Scripture, never realizing that he’s responsible for it… see that’s
another thing that goes along with human good.
Human good, one of the first places human good operates to destroy God’s
order is at the first divine institution.
The first divine institution is responsibility and you watch, modern
programs of human good always destroy human responsibility. The human good of the bleeding hearts in our
society violate the volition of the criminal, oh, the criminal isn’t to blame,
his mother dropped him on his head when he was a baby, or the Navy turned him
into a criminal, or the Army did this to him.
Always something else, never his fault, always somebody else’s. That’s characteristic of human good, destruction
of the first divine institution. And
Saul’s first divine institution is about ready to go.
Verse 34, “And Saul said, disperse yourselves among the people,” and
then he does initiate something that’s half-way Biblical, he says all right,
bring the food here and we’ll eat it according to Scripture. [“…and say unto them, Bring me here every man
his ox, and every man his sheep, and slay them here, and ear; and sin not
against the LORD in eating with the blood.
And all the p people brought every man his ox with him that night and
slew them there.”]
Verse 35, “And Saul built an altar unto the LORD;” and the commentator
very humorously adds a little note here, he says “the same was the first altar
that he built unto the LORD.” That
notice is put in there to tell you something.
He says now notice, the situation in which Saul builds his first
altar. He builds it in a rush, he builds
it under pressure, like Saul always does, he never planned out the altar, he
just built it on the spur of the moment while he was involved in
something. He had to be pushed to make
the first altar even. So here’s the
spiritual decrepitness of chaos in the heart, that darkness causing spiritual
lethargy, he always has to be shoved, pushed, rammed, crammed, and jammed to do
anything spiritually. And so this is
that notice, just notice where he made his first altar.
And then verse 36, “And Saul said, Let us go down after the Philistines
by night, and spoil them until the morning light, and let us not leave a man of
them.” Now that is some sense, he wants
to conduct the military principle of pursuit.
“And they said, Do whatsoever seemeth good unto thee. Then said the priest,” how about asking the
Lord, “Let us draw near here unto God.”
Again, don’t you see the principle, here we see it operating for the
second time. Here we see the principle,
Saul, in a situation, he can’t really pursue the enemy out beyond Aijalon;
apparently the Philistine remnants are camped just southwest of the valley and
he could launch a night attack and hit them one more time, he has about twelve
hours left, most of the army has exited through Aijalon so he doesn’t have too
much opportunity but he’s got twelve hours of darkness, and if his soldiers can
move down there during darkness they can kill the rest of them. But the priest is the one that says would you
mind consulting the Lord. Probably is
the same priest that he got his hand slapped earlier; remember the priest was
about ready to find out the thing about the Lord first…oh no, we don’t need
that right now, and so you can just see this little priest chasing Saul all
over the place and finally says hey Saul, how about continuing the conversation
with God that you were about to start.
So he comes running up and this time Saul asks counsel of God, verse 37.
“And Saul asked counsel of God, Shall I go down after the
Philistines? Will thou deliver them into
the hand of Israel? But God answered him
not that day.” No answer, absolutely no
answer. Now Saul says, [38] “And Saul
said, Draw ye near here, all the chief of the people; and know and see wherein
this sin has been this day?” [39] For,
as the LORD lives, who saves Israel, though it be in Jonathan, my son, he shall
surely die. But there was not a young
man among all the people that answered him.”
Now here you begin to see the third and the fourth stage of chaos in the
heart developed in this man’s life. The
third stage is human viewpoint, that led to foolish order; now he knew his son,
remember at the beginning of this thing he took a number and he knew his son
was the one who had gone across the valley and he’s beginning to resent… what
is the fourth step of chaos in the heart?
Hatred, and hatred toward what?
Hatred toward people who remind you of God’s authority, and you will
express, almost automatically your vindictiveness toward God will be directed
toward people who, in your mind, are close to God.
That’s why some children can’t stand their parents, because some of
their godly parents represent authority to them and their rebellion against
their parents is actually an expression, unconscious perhaps, but is an
expression of their hatred to the Lord who is seen in their parents, in their
minds. All right, what’s that hatred
towards? Hatred toward God, and hatred
now toward his son. Here’s Saul’s
attitude toward his son. Remember what his son’s attitude was toward him? My father is an agent of Satan, he’s
destroyed this country. And what is Saul’s attitude toward his son? If he’s going to die, I’ll kill him. Real nice father/son relationship isn’t
it? But it’s a magnificent study when
what happens when two people live in the same place on different
frequencies. So Saul vows that his son
will die. [40, “Then said he unto all
Israel, be ye on one side, and I and Jonathan, my son, will be on the other
side. And the people said unto Saul, do
what seems good unto thee.”
Verse 41, “Therefore, Saul said unto the LORD God of Israel, Give a
perfect lot. And Saul and Jonathan were taken, but the people escaped. [42] And
Saul said, cast lots between me and Jonathan, my son. And Jonathan was taken,” the lot came upon
Jonathan. In verse 43 Jonathan explains
to his father what he had done, “Then Saul said to Jonathan, Tell me what thou
hast done. And Jonathan told him, and
said, I did but taste a little honey with the end of the rod that was in mine
hand, and lo, I must die.” And then Saul
answers in verse 44, “And Saul answered, God do so and more also; for you shall
surely die, Jonathan.” And the way this
is expressed in the Hebrew is a very vindictive way of putting it. We know it’s vindictive because when you
compare it to Joshua’s handling of the Achan incident, when Joshua, 300 years
ago, came up to Achan, he knew Achan had to die but what did he say? Son, what did you do this for; there was a
gentleness about the way Joshua approached Achan. There’s no gentleness here with Saul, he says
all right Jonathan, you’re going to die.
Now there’s the father’s hatred for his son because his son stands for
the spiritual things.
And by the way, isn’t this interesting; Saul’s first failure resulted in
what? His son could not sit on the
throne. Saul’s second failure resulted
in what? His son was put under a
curse. Do you see how you can suffer by
being linked up in a divine institution with a person that’s out of it. Jonathan is suffering because he’s a member
of the third divine institution, and he’s linked with his father and his father
is a spiritual clod, and Jonathan suffers because of it. And some of you are in families like this, and
Jonathan should be an inspiration to you because you’re going to see how God
provides every point of the way of Jonathan’s life. Jonathan must die, incidentally, the people
rescue him here but it’s only temporary, the oath must be fulfilled and Jonathan
will die; he will die in battle as his father dies. So the oath and the curse that Saul has
pronounced on his son must come to pass, but fortunately at verse 45,
temporarily Jonathan is moved out from the curse, the curse has been
temporarily put forward.
And now verse 45, “And the people said unto Saul, Shall Jonathan die,
who has wrought this great salvation in Israel?” And then there’s this word “God forbid,”
which is a sick rendition of a Hebrew word.
It is the word that means to be ceremonially unclean and is a picture of
being damned. It’s the one used before
by Samuel, I’ll be damned if I’m going to stop praying for you people. It’s the strongest expression in the Hebrew
language by way of exclamatory statement.
It would correspond, “I’ll be damned if I’m going to do this” in a real
literal sense of the word “damned.” We use the word and don’t mean it, but this
literally means it. These people are
saying we’ll be damned if we’re going to let Jonathan die, now you give us
Jonathan. […God forbid: as the LORD
liveth, there shall not one hair of his head fall to the ground, for he hath
wrought with God this day. So the people
rescued Jonathan, that he died not.”
Now what is happening? We have
just see the father/son relationship start to go down the drain, what’s
happening between the commander in chief now and his army? Do you see what’s happened here in verse 45,
look at this; the people, the army that’s standing there, says oh no Saul,
no-no, you have the authority as the messiah-king to put him to death but
you’re not going to put him to death now.
And so Saul’s own army violates his authority at this point in saving
Jonathan, and you begin to have a whole series of ruptured personal
relationships all over the place. And
this always follows chaos in the heart.
And here we find that Saul will never be able to command the respect
that he could have as messiah-king from his army again. His army has seen his foolishness at two
points during the day. They have watched
his asinine order not to eat; they have watched the enemy escape through the