Hello and welcome to the Middletown Baptist Church Podcast,
where we are proclaiming the truth to the world.
My name is Pastor Josh, and I want to thank you for listening to
this podcast.
I hope that this podcast can be a blessing to you and strengthen
you in the word of God.
Now come along, let's look into the Bible and see what God has
for us here today.
Let's go ahead and continue our study here in First Samuel.
So if you have your Bibles, turn with me to 1st Samuel, chapter
14, 1 Samuel, chapter 14.
Last week we looked at 1st Samuel, chapter 13, and that was
all about Saul's decline into a life of destruction through pride,
through fear.
And that fear brought anxiety.
And he.
He acted not in patience as the Lord had called him to act in,
but he acted in, in haste and made a decision in his own wisdom
and his own strength.
And we know how that always turns out.
And as that turned out, Samuel shows up to see Saul and obviously
tells him that he did wrong.
And then through that, he told him that he had lost the blessing
of having the kingdom in his family.
And that seems somewhat harsh to, to see Saul make that decision.
Then immediately God punishes Saul and his family.
But as we well know, that there's certain parts of Scripture
that we can see and that we can read, but ultimately, we don't
know what's going on in the heart of Saul.
What and, and what we see is that leading up to this point, Saul,
his heart has been turning away from the Lord.
And then in first Samuel, chapter 14, we're going to see that
it continues to turn away, but we're going to see a contrast between
the heart of saul in chapter 13 and the heart of his son Jonathan.
And so if, if Saul was a man of fear and insecurity, Jonathan
was a man of faith.
And finding that faith in the Lord brought him strength and brought
him courage and brought him victory and fruitfulness.
And that's what we really see in our Christian life.
We want fruitfulness, but to have fruitfulness, there must be
faith that's sown into our life.
And that faith is seen and demonstrated through obedience.
And so in First Samuel, chapter 14, we see that there is
the Philistine camp that's set up away from the camp of the Israelites.
And Saul is waiting there with all these people.
And Jonathan really sees an opportunity to gain a victory for
the Lord.
And so that's what we're going to study here this evening.
So first Samuel, chapter 14, verse one.
It says, now it came to pass upon a Day that Jonathan, the son
of Saul, said unto the young man that bear his armor, come and
let us go over to the Philistines garrison that is on the
other side.
But he told not his father.
So we stop there and we see a couple things.
One, we see Jonathan having the initiative to make a decision
to go against the enemy.
And we know through the rest of the story that God leads Jonathan
to do this.
And the victory comes through the Lord.
He does not tell his father.
And it doesn't really tell us why he left that away from his father,
other than the fact that maybe he thought that his father wouldn't
come with him, or maybe he just trusted in the Lord to do it
on his own.
But he tells his armor bearer, come with me.
And who is the armor bearer?
Well, we know that every officer in the Israelite army would
have had someone there carrying the armor.
And so this would have been like his assistant.
This would have been someone that he was very familiar with.
And so he encourages the armor bearer to come with him.
And we're going to see that the armor bearer does agree to do
that.
And so they go over to the Philistine camp.
We're going to see that story play out here now.
And what we're going to see is that Jonathan is moving and he's
trusting in the Lord to do a work.
And oftentimes in our life, we could.
We could wrestle with those two things that we talked about last
week, passiveness and patience.
A lot of times we look at inactivity as patience, and sometimes
we do need to stay inactive.
We.
We do need to be waiting, and we do need to wait upon the Lord.
But oftentimes we need to move as the Lord moves us.
And so in this case, we see Jonathan making a move, verse 2,
and Saul terried in the uttermost part of Gibeah under a
pomegranate tree, which is in Migron.
And the people that were with him were about 600 men.
So we see a contrast between Jonathan and his dad, Saul.
Jonathan's ready to go.
He's looking at the enemy.
He sees God working, and he says, I'm going to go and I'm going
to fight against the Philistines, even if it's just me
and my armor bearer.
And then we see Saul, he's got 600 men and he's sitting under the
pomegranate tree, just having a good time, relaxing when he should
be moving, when he should be acting upon what God has called them
to do.
And so he's sitting under a pomegranate tree, and he's leading
600 men just to hold there with him.
And.
And we see how a decision that Jonathan makes impacts the armor
bearer and how ultimately will impact a bunch of people.
And we see how the inactive nature of Saul and his passiveness
affects other men around him.
And, and we see a description of some of the men that are with
him.
And verse three sounds somewhat strange to be in this passage,
but.
And random.
It lists a few different people here.
But I do believe that there's a point to the list of the people
that are here, verse three.
And Ahayah, the son of Ahitub, Iabad's brother, the son of Phineas,
the son of Eli, the Lord's priest in Shiloh, wearing an ephed.
And the people knew not that Jonathan was gone.
Now, I read through verse three and I. I read through it quite
a few times and I thought about why, why were these specific
people picked out and why was and in any way Ichabod, the Ichabod's
brother mentioned?
And Ichabod's mentioned and the son of Phineas.
And if you guys remember the story in First Samuel, you had a
guy that was the priest named Eli, and he had two sons that were
not obedient to God, one of them being Phineas.
And then he has a son named Ichabod.
And remember, the mom named the son Ichabod because of the fact
that that word means that the glory of God has left.
And so authors, different people that write commentaries, believe
that possibly Ichabod's name was mentioned in this verse because
of the fact that it's symbolizing the fact that the glory
of God has left Saul at this point, and it's indicating his disobedience.
And so that possibly could be the case.
But nonetheless, those people are mentioned there.
And then we see verse four, and between the passages by which
Jonathan sought to go over into the Philistines garrison, there
was a sharp rock on one side and a sharp rock on the other side.
And the name of the one was Boz, and the name of the other was
Sena.
And so he goes, he takes action, and as he's moving this way,
he finds this place that would have been advantageous for a battle.
It would have been advantageous for a few people fighting
a bunch of people because it would have narrowed down the battle
to basically hand to hand combat, one on one, right there in
this narrow gap.
And that's what we're going to see Jonathan do here in, in this
scenario.
And so he doesn't tell his father.
Saul was sitting under a pond McGrana tree.
He was indicated there as being one who was living in passiveness
and living in disobedience.
And Jonathan, Jonathan finds this strategic position and he's
going to make a move.
So let's look at verse number five.
It says the forefront of the one was situated northward against
McMash and the other southward over against Gibeah.
So the setting for the battle takes place.
But Jonathan's also going to use some discernment, and he's actually
going to make a plan.
And the plan is essentially this.
We're going to see how the Philistines react to us.
We're going to make ourselves known to the Philistines.
And depending on how the Philistines respond is how we'll
respond.
And so we see Jonathan making a decision here, a strategic decision
to kind of see a test, give them a test.
And so verse six, and Jonathan said to the young man that bears
armor, come and let us go over into the garrison of these uncircumcised.
It may be that the Lord will work for us.
And I love that phrase there.
He says, we're going to go and God's going to work for us.
We're going to go and God's going to work ahead.
He's taking action by faith that God is going to give him the
victory.
He doesn't know how that victory is essentially going to play
out.
He doesn't know all the details.
He doesn't know how the end will look.
But he believes in faith that God will do his work, that God will
give them the victory.
And that's really what faith is.
You know, oftentimes we think about that word faith, and we think
about, well, faith is trusting in something that we can see or trusting
in something that makes sense.
But really what we see in this case and what we see throughout all
of Scripture is that faith is taking a step of.
Of.
Of trust in something that we don't evidently see yet.
We're trusting that God's going to keep his word.
We're trusting that God is going to come to pass.
Everything that he has said that will come to pass.
And so he says in that verse, verse six, it may be that the Lord
will work for us, and there is no restraint to the Lord to save
by many or by few.
I love how he says that, because basically what he says is
this.
God will give us a victory over a few.
God can give us a victory over great numbers.
Don't mean anything to God.
And you think about all the stories in Scripture where God's
people were under matched, they were under numbered, they were
under equipped when it came to the swords and chariots and horses.
But God gives them the victory not because of their strength, not
because of their numbers, not because of their technology, but
because that they are his people and that he is more powerful
than any enemy that we might face.
And that's a lesson that we can all take with us.
At the end of verse six, Jonathan says this.
We're going to go.
God's going to work.
God can give us the victory above anybody that we fight because
he trusts that God will keep his word.
And that's what we should do in our own lives.
When we're coming to a situation that might not make sense,
or when we're coming to a situation that doesn't align with
our way of thinking, or it doesn't align with the numbers, or
it doesn't align with what ultimately people think is a good
idea, we can come to that and say, if God's called us to do it,
he's going to get us through it.
And that's what we see exactly happening in this passage.
In verse seven, it says this, that his arm rear said unto him,
do all that is in thine heart turn thee.
Behold, I am with thee according to thy heart.
So we see that Jonathan's boldness for the Lord, Jonathan's
faith is contagious to his armor bearer.
I mean, his armor bearer had every right and every choice to leave
at that point, saying, jonathan, you can go to the Philistines.
It's two verse hundreds, maybe even thousands.
We don't want to do this.
I don't want to do this.
I think we should leave.
But no, Jonathan's faith and his boldness for the Lord is contagious.
And so in contrast, we see Saul holding back there with 600
men under a pomegranate tree, thinking that something else is going
to happen in, in his timing, in his way.
And then we see Jonathan leading one.
And we're going to see what two people that are faithful to the
Lord can do.
And a lot of times what we can see is that it's not always about
numbers.
And a lot of times today what we see is that people gauge God working
through numbers.
And sometimes God does work with a mass amount of people.
Sometimes where we find God working is where we see a bunch of
people congregated.
But sometimes we see in scripture that it's not always about
the crowd.
It's not always about the masses.
Sometimes it's about the ones that are not the majority.
And for example, in the Book of Judges, we saw the, the story
of Gideon, right?
Gideon had all these men, and eventually God paired it down to
just 300 and they went in and had that great victory.
And we see other instances where God would allow a smaller group
to have victory over a larger group.
And so that's exactly what is happening here with Jonathan and
the armor bearer.
So let's look at what happens here in verse number eight and nine,
because I think this is so amazing how God just works this out
with, with Jonathan's faith and, and with his bold proposal.
He comes into the situation and he says, God's going to work
for us.
I'm going to trust in him.
I'm going to believe that he is going to work ahead of us.
And we're going to see that his faith is, is, is, is rewarded.
God rewards his faith.
And the Bible says that in Hebrews, chapter 11.
Impossible to please God.
It's impossible to please God without faith.
He's a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.
And I truly believe that God is a rewarder of those that diligently
seek Him.
Now, he doesn't reward us necessarily in the way that we always
expect or that we want, but God always rewards those that have
faith.
And so he rewards Jonathan for his faith.
And so verse 8 then said Jonathan, behold, we will pass over
unto these men and we will discover ourselves unto them.
So Jonathan is not only working in a unique way in the fact
that he doesn't have the numbers, but he's also going to act
in a very unique way in the fact that he does something that
most people would say is not a wise decision.
We would, we would say maybe if they're going in with underutilized
amount of numbers, maybe they should come in and surprise them.
Maybe they should come in in the middle of the night like maybe
we've seen other people do in the past.
Come in in the middle of the night and shock them, surprise them.
But no, Jonathan says, we're going to not be what, what maybe
think people think we should be.
We're going to come in and just boldly proclaim that we're here.
And, and so this is a really, really unique way to come into the
battle.
But he says, we're going to go and we're going to make ourselves
known unto them.
Verse 9.
If they say thus unto us, Terry, until we come to you, meaning,
wait, we're coming to you, then we will stand still in our place,
and we will not go up unto them mean, meaning we'll let them
come to us.
But verse 10.
But if they say thus, come up unto us, meaning come up to us, come
to us, then we will go up, for the Lord hath delivered them into
our hand, and this shall be a sign unto us, meaning if they say,
come to us, that's our ticket to go in and work for the Lord and
get a victory.
And so Jonathan proposes this test.
And so Jonathan believes that God would take his.
His.
His strength and that he's putting forward and then multiply
it with strength.
And we know that God's strength is infinite.
Our strength runs out, but God's strength is infinite.
And he said, this will be assigned to us.
And so Jonathan, the way that you can think about it this way is
that Jonathan was prompted by faith.
He moves by faith.
And we know that he's not demanding God to do this.
We know that he's acting in faith and he's willing to take one
step at a time.
And he's allowing God to make the.
The ultimate plans here.
He's just taking it one step at a time.
And really that's what faith is.
Faith is willing to let God do the work, and we just follow along
and we take one step of faith at a time.
We don't know the end.
We don't know how it's all going to come to pass, but we're
trusting in this victory that God has promised us.
And so we're going to see what happens here in verse number 11.
Because verse number 11 tells us really the response of the Philistines,
and ultimately what dictates what Jonathan and his armor bear
are going to do next.
Verse number 11.
And both of them discover themselves unto the garrison of the
Philistines.
So they come in and say, hey, we're here.
And the Philistines said, behold, the Hebrews come forth out
of their holes where they have hid themselves.
So this shows you the way that the Israelites or the Hebrews have
been living up to this point in fear, hiding in holes.
I mean, they weren't living boldly for the Lord.
They're not living boldly with God's plan.
They're not living boldly with their King Saul, who was supposed
to be their leader.
No, they're living in holes.
And it shows that they're.
They're living in that fear, they're living in that anxiety, always
thinking that they're going to be defeated by the Philistines.
And so the Philistines indicate, hey, this is strange.
They're coming out of their hiding place against us.
And this just shows how far Saul had allowed the Israelite people
to spiral into this place of fear and anxiety.
And what we really see is that a group of people will follow a leader,
whether it be good or bad.
You know, when we, when we have someone like Saul who is plagued
by anxiety and fear and insecurity, what's going to eventually
happen is that the people that he leads are going to follow in that
suit and be in fear and anxiety.
And, and ultimately that's what we see happening here.
And then when it's when Jonathan steps up in faith and eventually
David stepping up in faith, that the people will have boldness.
I mean, you guys even remember of the story which we're going to
talk about in, in a few weeks is going to be the story of, of David,
right?
David goes out into the battlefield against Goliath, and
nobody in the army was willing to go out against Goliath except
for David.
Why?
Because he was a man of faith.
And so we see in this case the difference between faith and fear.
Faith drives people to hide and to run away from the problems.
And that's what fear does.
And then faith draws people out into boldness and to confront
the issue at hand.
And that's exactly what we're going to see here.
So verse 12 tells us what the, what the Philistines did.
And the men of the garrison answered Jonathan and his armor bearer
and said, come up to us, all right?
There's their invitation.
All right.
Remember, Jonathan said, if they said we'll come to you.
We'll just wait and see what happens.
If they say, you come to us, that's our, that's our ticket.
That's our welcome.
We're going to go in.
And that's exactly what they do and say, come up unto us and we
will show you a thing.
Basically, this is, you know, the Philistine way of what we would
say is talking trash.
They said, hey, come down here and we're going to show you something.
We're going to show you what it means to really fight.
We're the Philistines.
We've got the, we've got the true power.
We've got the true victory.
And, and this is really follow suit to the way the Philistines act.
I mean, even Goliath mocked the, the Israelites and mocked their
God.
And so Jonathan said to his armor bearer, come up after me.
Here we go.
Come up after me.
For the Lord hath delivered them into the hand of Israel.
Now, the end of verse 12, we see Jonathan exercising faith, right?
Because they haven't had the victory yet.
I mean, literally, they haven't had the victory.
They're about to go into the battle.
But because of Jonathan's belief in the Lord, he already says,
hey, we've got the battle.
And what, what, what kind of faith is that?
That's.
That's amazing faith.
I think for me, sometimes I struggle.
I. I look at a situation and I say, okay, Lord, I'm gonna do this,
but I don't know how it's going to turn out.
And if I, if I would be transparent with you here this evening,
which I try to be transparent as much as I can be, there's a lot
of times in my life that I'm going through the motions.
I know God calls me to do this, but the whole time I'm going,
lord, I don't know.
I'm not sure if this is going to work.
I'm pretty sure I'm going to fall on my face and it's not going
to be a success.
I know that this is going to be a failure because I'm looking
at it from my perspective.
I'm looking at it from my human perspective.
It doesn't add up for me.
And so willingly I'm doing it.
But I'm kind of like the fellow in the New Testament that
says, lord, I believe, but help my unbelief.
And, and I'm not saying that's a bad thing.
I mean, better than just turning away from what God tells
us.
But it would be better if we had the type of faith that Jonathan
has that says, okay, Lord, you're going to give us the victory.
We're going in and we're going to trust in you before we even go
into the battle.
And I think that's.
That's an indication of a testimony of prayer.
That's an indication of someone who is walking with the Lord.
If I'm walking with the Lord and I'm prayed up and I'm going into
a situation, I'm going to be ready to say, you know what?
I've done everything that I possibly can to trust in the Lord.
Now the Lord takes over, and as the Lord takes over, he gives
us the victory.
And so that's what's going to happen in, in this case.
So verse 13.
And Jonathan climbed up onto his hands and upon his feet and his
armor bearer after him.
And they fell before Jonathan and his armor bearer slew after him.
And so at this point in time, Jonathan, he climbs up on his hands
and his knees with his armor bearer after him and a difficult
climb up on one of these rocks.
But they do that.
And ultimately what we see is that the battle comes in.
They're.
They're going to be fighting.
And he knew that God was going to use him to fight, but ultimately
God was going to extend his power upon the situation.
And so I think this is interesting too, because when we're
in a situation that we're exercising faith, we don't just lay
down our sword.
You know, a lot of times we think that there's a phrase, and
I know what we mean by it, and I don't think it's necessarily wrong
when we say it, but there's some, probably some negative implications
with it.
But we say let go and let God, and we say, okay, I'm going to trust
God and I'm just going to put everything down and I'm just going
to wait for it all to transpire.
But that's not always what we see when we see actions of faith.
We see people trusting in the Lord and then acting in that faith.
So Jonathan could have thrown his sword aside and said, okay, Lord,
where's the victory?
But no, Jonathan had the sword.
And Jonathan went into battle trusting that as he was acting, God
was acting for him.
And, and I think that's something too, in our life that there
might be times where we come to the end of our rope and we can't
do anything.
And that's, of course, when God steps in.
But in many cases, God wants us to do the work, and he will then
intercede for us in the midst of the battle.
And so Jonathan knew that the battle was the Lord's, but he acted
in it.
And we see in verse number 14, and in the first slaughter which
Jonathan and his armor bearer made was about 20 men within, as
it were, a half acre of land which a yoke of oxen might plow.
And so we see that as he is fighting there, he.
He and his armor bearers slay 20 men, which doesn't seem like a
lot, but we're going to see that that has a huge impact to those
that are the Philistines.
And they see this happening, verse 15, and there was a trembling
in the host.
And so what's happening here is that as Jonathan and the armor
bearer are fighting, it seems that the Philistines had some sort
of confusion, they had some sort of a fear.
And many commentators believe that this was the work of God in
the midst.
As Jonathan's fighting and as the armor bearers fighting, that
God is working in there, and he's allowing them to feel this fear
and trembling in the field.
And among all the people, the garrisons and the spoilers, they
also trembled in the earthquake.
So obviously that's an indication that God is at work.
And so as Jonathan is fighting, so God is fighting.
So it was a very great trembling.
And so it didn't matter.
The Philistines had more people.
It didn't matter that they had better weapons.
Obviously, God was more powerful than the Philistines, weapons
and their numbers.
And that's the same thing for us today.
I mean, God is more powerful than the enemies that we face.
God is more powerful than any addiction that we might face, any
fear that we might face, any enemy from the outside or within.
God is more powerful.
And so we don't look at it like, well, you know what?
I don't have the strength to overcome this.
Well, the reality is, is that in many cases, and probably most
cases, we don't have the strength to overcome these things
in our life.
But what we do know is that God's strength is more powerful than
any, any enemy that we might face in our life.
And that's exactly what we see happening in this passage.
So verse 16, and the watchmen of Saul.
So remember, Saul and his people are kind of sitting up in
a camp, and they can see the Philistines, they can see those enemies
across the way.
And it says that verse 16.
And the watchmen of Saul and Gibeah Benjamin looked, and behold,
the multitude melted away.
So he's looking, and all of a sudden he sees the Philistines begin
to scatter.
He sees the Philistines begin to tremble, and he sees the Philistines,
actually some of them dying.
And there's a question here.
He says, they see them melting away, and they went on beating down
one another.
And so they're actually fighting against each other.
And so the reality is, is that God has confounded the enemy beyond
what they could expect.
Verse 17.
Then Saul Then said Saul into the people that were with him.
Number now and see who was gone from us, Meaning who left?
Who's doing this?
It's not us.
It's not me, son.
I, I who who left.
And when they had numbered, behold Jonathan and his armor bearer
were not there.
And so and Saul said unto Ahaya, bring hither the ark of God.
And for the ark of God was at that time with the children of Israel.
And so this is an interesting thing that Saul does here.
As.
As the watchmen of Israel are watching this huge army of the Philistines
begin to melt away, they start figuring out who's actually doing
this.
And obviously, Saul is going to make a decision here.
And the decision that he has is to bring the ark of God to their
midst.
And Saul is.
I believe that Saul was trying to do some kind of spiritual.
Like he was jumping, trying to jump on the bandwagon.
He.
He sees the Philistines being defeated.
He goes, oh, let's bring the ark in.
Let's.
Let's make this a spiritual experience.
Let's.
Let's jump on this and let's have the victory.
And there is a time and a place to.
To have that moment of religious experience.
But at the same time, what Saul should have done is said, hey,
they're on the move.
Let's go get them.
Let's go.
But.
But he doesn't in this case.
And so he brings this ark here.
And what.
What happens next is.
Is also very interesting.
Verse 19.
And it came to pass while Saul talked unto the priest that the noise
that was in the host of the Philistines went on and increased.
And Saul said unto the priest, withdraw thine hand.
So what's happening here basically, is that Saul goes to the
priest and there would have been these.
Basically there would have been like, this pouch on the front
of the priest garments, and there would have been two stones
inside of the pouch.
And it would have been.
They basically would reach down in the pouch and they would
ask God to say yes or no, basically, should we go into battle?
Should we not go into battle?
And then there would be.
Most commentators believe that there would have been a dark stone
and a light stone.
And like, let's say the dark stone was yes, the light stone was
no.
And so there's like reaching in the pouch and trying to see what
God would say.
And ultimately what we see here is that it kept saying, no,
don't go, don't go.
And Saul said unto Ahaya, bring hither the ark of God.
For the ark was at that time in the children of Israel.
And then eventually he says, withdraw thine hand.
And Saul and all the people that were with him assembled themselves
and they came to battle.
And behold, every man's sword was against his fellow.
So they're fighting against each other.
And there was a very great discomfiture.
Moreover, the Hebrews that were with the Philistines before
that time.
So what we see here actually is very interesting.
In verse 21 that there were actually Hebrews that were joining
in with the Philistines prior to this.
So these would be like the compromisers.
These would be the one that had sold themselves out and were
basically slaves or servants to the Philistines.
And they see all this happening and they actually turn
and start fighting with the Hebrews.
They start fighting for the.
The quote, unquote, right side.
So moreover, the Hebrews that were with the Philistines before
that time, which went up with them into the camp from the country,
round about even, they also turned to be with the Israelites
that were with Saul and Jonathan.
So we see Saul and Jonathan in two different ways.
We see Jonathan stirring the hearts of the people in the battle.
And then we see what happens is that Saul, he.
He does not stir the heart of the people into battle.
I mean, eventually he gets to the battle, but he should have been
the one that was fighting like Jonathan.
And this shows how we as believers can miss the boat if we're
sitting back and feeling comfortable about what we have and
we don't want to make a move for the Lord.
And so we see verse 22, it says, likewise, all the men of Israel
which had hid themselves in Mount Ephraim when they heard that
the Philistines fled, even they also followed hard after them
in battle.
So the Lord saved Israel that day, and the battle passed over into
Beth Haven.
So what we can see here, long story short, is this.
Saul was the leader of Israel, but it took him a long time to start
leading.
It was Jonathan who took the initiative, and eventually he follows
God into battle.
But it took for his son to be the leader.
It took for his son to take the initiative.
And really, it was not that.
It should not have been that way.
Saul should have been the one leading Jonathan, but instead, Jonathan
led his father into battle, for in a good way.
And.
And we see that at this point in time, there were many people that
were either living with the Philistines or they were in hiding.
And it seems that many of the people had the same insecure heart
that Saul had, that maybe God's not winning, maybe we need
to join the other side.
And that would speak to those that have compromised themselves
and have turned to the ways of the world to say, well, you know
what?
It seems like the world is winning.
It seems like the Philistines are winning.
It seems like my better route is just to go that way.
But it took for the power of God to be working through Jonathan
for them to see this and to turn away from those wicked ways
and turn ultimately to the power of God.
And they only came out when Israel was winning and the victory
was assured.
So these people are moving late on the.
On the game here.
And so God, I believe, really uses Jonathan here.
It wasn't Jonathan's victory.
It was God's victory.
Because we see that at the.
At the end of this passage, verse 23.
So the Lord saved Israel that day, and the battle passed over unto
Beth Haven.
And so it doesn't say Jonathan saved Israel, even though it.
In our perspective, it could have been.
It says, no, the Lord saved Israel.
And so God uses Jonathan to do his work.
And so God was waiting on someone to take the step of boldness,
to take a step of faith, because the victory had already been
promised to them.
And so we're going to see next week, when we come back to this passage
of Scripture, that Saul, he takes credit for this and he makes
this, and he jumps ahead and he basically says, we gotta keep
fighting and no one can eat till we get done.
You know, killing these Philistines.
Like what?
And he tries to make it like a spiritual thing.
He says, we're all gonna fast as we're battle.
And.
And he makes an unwise decision to refrain.
To have his.
His army refrain from eating, making it like a spiritual experience.
But what ends up happening is all of his people end up getting
super weak because they don't have any nourishment.
And we see that he just makes a decision outside of the realm of
God.
And it just.
He's trying to do a physical, external, religious show that has
no internal meaning.
And eventually what we see happening in that regard is that
it actually causes it to be more devastating for the people.
And they're led into sin because they get to a place where
they're starving so much that he finally tells them that they can
eat, and they go eat a bunch of food that's not clean.
You know, they don't.
They don't bleed the meat.
They don't do the sacrifices, right?
And he actually leads his whole people into sin.
And we're going to see how that transpires next week.
But what I want us to do is I want to kind of summarize these thoughts
that we've been looking at here in this first 23 verses.
And essentially what we see is that Jonathan moves in faith.
And because of Jonathan's faith, he made decisions that were
not what we would say.
What.
What many people would say if they're looking at from a human perspective,
is that they would not be Decisions that were wise from the
human perspective.
He went against the numbers.
He went against normal tactics of the day by telling them that he
was there.
And he went ahead outside of what many people would think was
a wise decision.
But we know that when we're walking in the will of God, we know
that when we're following him in faith, that's the wisest decision
that we can ever make.
And so we in many cases might be making decisions that people are
confused with or maybe even come against and maybe even question.
But ultimately, if we're following God and, and we're trusting
in His Word, it's the right decision.
And, and we have to believe that what God says He will do.
And we talk about having confident expectation.
We talk about having hope.
And biblical hope is that confident expectation.
So what Jonathan says is, I don't care if the Philistines are
outnumbering us.
I don't care if they have more weapons.
I don't care if they have more horses.
I don't care if what we're doing here doesn't seem right.
God's leading me to do this, and so I'm going to believe that
he's going to give me the victory.
And some of the key verses that I think will give us the picture
of that type of faith is verse 12.
He says, Come up after me, for the Lord hath delivered them into
the hand of Israel.
He.
He had confidence that God had given him the victory.
I mean, we could even go back to the verse that, that he mentioned.
He basically says, this, God's gonna do his work.
God's going.
He says, God may.
He says that the.
May the Lord will work it out for us.
For there is no restraint to the Lord.
This is verse six.
There is no restraint to the Lord to save by many or by few, meaning
this.
I don't care what we're against.
God is more powerful than the numbers.
I've.
I've often sat down at a table looking at the numbers, either for
the church or for my own family and looking at things and
going, I don't know how this is going to add up.
I remember those days when we started out in Christian ministry
in Florida, and I would look at my salary and I would look at
what we needed to have, and I would say, I don't know how this
is going to work.
And it really shouldn't have worked when you look at the numbers.
But God worked it out in such a way that he would provide for us
in creative ways.
Same thing goes for the Church.
I mean, there's been times, frankly that we've looked at the
numbers and through the year and we're going, I don't know how
we're going to make it.
Giving's been down.
I don't know how we're going to provide.
I don't do this.
And every time God comes through and provides, because if
he is working, it doesn't matter what the numbers are.
He's going to do what he needs to do.
And even if he doesn't give us the numbers that we expect, he'll
always provide for us in the ways that he provides for us in.
Because the Bible says that he will supply all of our needs, not
all of our wants, but all of our needs.
And so Jonathan goes into battle saying this, I know God's
going to deliver me.
I know he's going to give me the victory.
I know that he's given Israel the victory.
And we see that in verse 23.
So the Lord saved Israel that day.
And it's that faith that saves.
It always is faith that saves.
It's never works.
It was never Jonathan's works that saved the people of Israel.
It was not, it was not Jonathan's works that saved himself.
It was not Jonathan's works that gave him the victory.
It started all with the faith.
Even prior to the battle, it was his belief that God would do
what he said he would do.
And we, and we look at Hebrews chapter 11 and we see story after
story of individuals that didn't know what the outcome would
be, but they trusted that God would handle it.
They trusted that God would do it.
And so again, it's impossible to please God without faith.
And so you see really two men that are contrasted against each
other.
It's Saul, man with really little faith.
I mean, there's a few glimpses of Saul with his faith throughout
his life, but very few times in which he exercises faith.
It's usually he exercises out of fear and anxiety and he just makes
a rash decision or he makes a decision that doesn't align up with
what God's word does.
We saw that last chapter with the fact that he made that sacrifice
when he shouldn't have made the sacrifice.
Now we saw here in this chapter by him just holding back
from going to battle, which he, he was just wasting time sitting
under the pomegranate tree.
And then we're going to see in a few passages ahead, well, even
next week, he makes this, this oath that basically he condemns his
son.
He says the next person who eats is going to die.
And then his son didn't hear the oath, and his son eats some honey.
And now he's got himself in a situation that he's going to curse
his own son to death.
That's a terrible decision.
Then we're going to see that he makes a decision not to kill all
the people that God calls him to kill and take out all the leaders.
He thinks that he can figure out his own way with the Amalekites,
and that comes back to haunt him.
And so we know over and over again, Saul is just not a man of
faith.
He's a man of the flesh.
And really, that's the.
That's the contrast.
At the end of the day.
Are we going to work in faith and follow the spirit?
Are we going to work in the flesh and follow what we feel is
the right way to go?
And we'll study more about that as we continue on with Saul.
I know Saul is.
Is considered to be.
He's considered to be a king who was.
Who is not leading his.
His people.
Well, David's going to come along, and David certainly is known
to be a better king, even though David is not perfect.
And I was having a discussion with.
Actually, I think it was Micah recently.
The.
We watched the movie David.
So the cartoon one that just came out, and he was asking questions
about Saul and David.
He's like, david was a better king, wasn't he?
I was like, yeah, he was a better king.
And he goes, yeah, he didn't do as much bad as Saul.
And I'm like, well, actually, no, David did a lot of bad things.
It wasn't that David was better than Saul in the fact that
he just did less bad things.
The difference was that David was a man after God's own heart.
As we saw a few chapters ago, where Saul was not a man after God's
own heart.
Saul was a man after his own heart or the people's heart.
And so again, we look at this, and it's not a matter of performance.
It's not a matter of that David was just a better person.
It was the fact that David had a real relationship with God.
And we see Saul, his relationship with God is very shallow.
And in many cases, it's disobedient.
And we see that's what Saul's issue was.
And so we always think about that even in our own life.
You know, I don't look at someone in the church and say, well,
you're a good Christian because you're a good person.
Or.
Or you're seeing blessings in your life because you're just so
talented.
The Bible very clearly tells us that every good thing that we
receive from God.
This is the book of James.
James, chapter one.
Every good gift and every perfect gift comes down from God.
And so everything that we have in our life that is good is not because
of me.
It's not because of you.
It's not because of our, our skills.
It's not because of our experience.
It's not because every blessing that we have in our life
comes from God.
And that's what we have to understand is that our growth doesn't
come from just being a good person.
Our blessings that we have with our family and our friends and
our church is not just because we deserve it.
It's everything that we get is a gift of grace.
And we have to thank the Lord.
And every blessing that we have is because of our relationship
with Him.
He is the vine.
We are the branches.
You can't have the branches without the vine, okay?
Because they would die.
So it's the vine that brings life to the branches.
And so we, as the branches, have to tap into the vine so that
we can understand the blessings and the fruit that we hopefully
desire.
And so we see Saul fruitless, we see Jonathan fruitful.
Really, the test of the fruitfulness was not their action
as much as it was the faith that drove the action for Jonathan.
So if we want fruit in our life, and I hope that we do.
You say fruit.
What are you talking about?
Like, I, you got an apple tree or.
No, I'm not talking about, like, literal fruit.
I'm talking about biblical fruit.
Fruit meaning the blessings that we see working through us.
But if we want to be fruitful Christians, we can't be Christians
that are all about ourselves, because then the, then the, the fruit
would be man made fruit, and it'd be fruit that's rotten.
It'd be fruit that isn't lasting.
So the fruit that we want to see from God, the Bible speaks of
that fruitfulness.
And First Corinthians, chapter three, it doesn't say that the fruit
comes from man.
It says, there are some that water, there's some that plant, but
it's God who gives the increase.
It's God who gives the fruit.
And so we can sow the seed, we can water the seed, but ultimately,
it's the power of God that gives us that fruit.
And so for Jonathan, it was the power of God that gave him that
victory.
And really, as we saw in that passage, it wasn't his victory.
It Was the Lord saving Israel?
And I love the fact that when we take a step in faith, God works
ahead of us, God works around us.
I know that there's been times in my ministry and in my life that
I have felt so inadequate and I have felt so concerned that I'm
not enough.
And I was talking to somebody one time, I was actually talking
to a pastor friend of mine, and he says, what.
What are you struggling with?
I said, you know, I'm just.
I'm struggling.
I'm going to fail.
And he was like, okay.
And I said, you know, I. I'm struggling.
I. I feel like I'm going to let the Lord down.
And, and, you know, he looked at me and he said, I didn't know
you were holding him up.
And I was like, oh, that's a good point.
Because I was like, you know what?
I.
We.
We put that burden upon ourselves to kind of be the one that's
way, like, holding all the weight on us.
But what does the Bible say?
Cast our care upon him.
He cares for you.
So we don't have to.
We don't have to hold all that weight thinking that we're performative.
All we have to say is just, lord, I'm giving it all over to you.
That's all I can do.
I'm broken.
I am.
That's the most.
I don't know about you guys, but the most.
I, I would say this.
I'm gonna get a little emotional here, but probably the
most freeing comfort that I've ever experienced in my life was when
I looked at the Lord and I said, I can't do it any.
I can't do this.
I can't.
I can't control this.
It's out of my.
It's out of my hands.
I'm lost.
I'm at the end of my rope.
That's really when I felt the presence of God come in and start
to guide.
Because when we think we've got it under control, we in some
ways are trying to manipulate a situation to make it seem like
we've got it, but really we don't have it.
It's God who has it.
And when.
When.
Sometimes it takes a drastic situation.
Sometimes it takes what some people call rock bottom, or sometimes
we just need to be awake.
Something, maybe life threatening comes in our life and,
and.
And.
Or someone that we love and it really wakes us up to what really
matters in life.
And I can tell you there was.
There was one experience in my life that it's hard to explain other
than the fact that I realized in that moment what matters and what
doesn't matter.
And for many years of my life, there were things that I thought
mattered so much.
And when God woke me up in that moment, he illuminated my eyes
to the fact that all the things that I've been spending time
on stressing about really don't mean anything in the grand
scheme of eternity.
There's certain things that do, and there's certain things that
don't.
And we can't allow ourselves to get so burdened with the things
that don't matter for eternity and forget about all the things that
do matter for eternity.
And for Saul, he was so caught up on people's opinion of him.
Saul was caught up on whether or not the people would agree with
his decisions.
Saul was all about his own comfort.
And then we see Jonathan saying, we're just going to go.
Let's go see what happens.
This is what matters.
And so I hope that that's something that you can do, take a
step of faith in some capacity.
I don't know where that's at in your life.
For all of us, we have to exercise faith daily.
I don't know where your stretch of faith is right now.
For me, I know where it is.
I'm thinking of something right this very second that I'm thinking,
okay, Lord, give me the strength to have faith, to trust
in you in this.
But all of us have some degree of a leap of faith right now, a step
of faith.
There's a book out there called the Experiencing God.
And he.
He calls that decision the crisis of faith, which basically,
like, there is this pinch point that we really have to put
the rubber to the road, and we have to say, this is really me making
a decision, a crisis belief moment.
And sometimes that's a difficult thing because it's easy
for me to exercise faith when my whole freezer is full and my.
My refrigerator's full and I got my.
My third free.
My fridge and my garage is full.
And that's easy for me to think, oh, give us this day our daily
bread.
And I'm thinking, well, you know what?
It's just a real struggle.
It's really not a struggle.
We don't.
I don't struggle with that.
I know where my next meal is coming.
I know where my next 10 meals are coming from.
Probably.
That's not really exercising faith.
Well, with exercise, faith is.
I've got nothing in the fridge.
I got nothing in the freezer.
I don't know what's going to come my next meal that's exercising
faith.
Now, I'm not saying that that's what we all should do.
I'm not saying we should go throw away all of our food in our
fridges.
I'm saying we're greatly blessed in our country.
We're good.
And many times the.
The nature of all the abundant material blessings in our life make
us so numb to the fact that we should be tested in our face of.
And sometimes God has to allow us to be tested in other areas of
our life when we have so much material things.
And sometimes God takes those material things away.
Sometimes God takes the physical away.
Sometimes God gives us a spiritual struggle that we have to
really come down the line and say, lord, I have to really believe
in you for this, and I don't want you to go through a trial to
see that.
But nevertheless, it's not what I want, it's what happens.
And sometimes we do have to go through those trials, those tests,
so that we can see that true faith.
And so we don't want necessarily to go through pain in
our life, even though sometimes we see in the New Testament,
there's guys that say things that I wrestle with.
Count it all, joy when you fall into diverse temptations, you
know, and there's guys that say, I, I look forward.
Paul talks about I glory in my infirmities.
And I don't know if I'm completely there yet.
I want to be there, but I'm not there yet.
I certainly struggle with my infirmities.
But what the Bible says is that at some point in time, as we
mature, we see our weaknesses as God's strength in our life.
And that's when we can cling to him.
So we'll stop there and we'll come back next week looking at the
end of 1st Samuel, chapter 14, Saul and the decisions that he makes
that he leads other people into sin with.
And hopefully it could be a lesson for us in the life of Saul
not to do things right.
We know there's things in the Bible that are prescriptive, like
we should do those things, like, I think we should act like
Jonathan bold.
But also there's things that are, are, are descriptive or warnings,
you know, like I, I try to tell people, you know, the book,
the Book of Hosea.
You know anything about the Book of Hosea?
I don't.
I, I would not coach young men to follow the book of Isaiah or,
excuse me, Hosea when it comes to marriage.
Okay, that was a descriptive passage to talk about something else.
Okay.
If you know about Hosea God called Hosea to marry a prostitute
and go through a life of pain and struggles with that whole decision.
I'm not saying that that's something that we all should do.
Okay, so we have to understand when we're reading the Life of Saul,
it's not about following Saul's example.
It's actually warning ourselves against the description
of what Saul did in his life so that we can avoid those pitfalls
that he fell into.
And we're going to see him spiral worse and worse to the fact
that, like, he gets so deviant in the fact that he wants to kill
David that he's willing to chase him all over the known world
to get him.
And it becomes becomes an obsession, really, which we'll talk
about later.
Thank you again for listening to the Middletown Baptist Church
podcast.
I hope that this sermon has been a blessing for you.
You would like to find out more information about our church
or this sermon, you can find us at middletownbaptistchurch.org
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Com.
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Thank you so much.
God bless.
Have a wonderful day.