The Jonathan Factor (Part 2)

So this morning, we did the first part of this message.

It's got two parts.

If you wanna catch up on that, the first six verses, you can see that online.

The Israelites are under King Saul's leadership, and they've had...

Saul's had one military victory, if you look at the couple of chapters before chapter 14.

And here he is with his son.

And Saul is lying underneath the shade of a tree, while the Philistine armies are gathering.

And only Jonathan, we're told, has the faith to stand up to them and do what is right.

So I'd like to suggest, and I always find it awkward to know how you're meant to actually deal with these passages of scripture.

What is an appropriate way to sort of preach and also learn from an ancient story like this?

And where I come to is, it's a story.

And so you let the story speak and what the story tells you, you say, Lord, okay, I'm going to receive that from you.

So I think the first thing we find, there's a couple of things.

Belief, courage, perseverance and the result is inspiration.

That's what I get from these 17 verses, finishing off the chapter.

So belief, let me read just a few verses from chapter 14, verse 6.

Jonathan says to his young armour bearer, come, let's go over to the outpost of those uncircumcised fellows.

Perhaps the Lord will act in our behalf.

Nothing can hinder the Lord from saving, whether by many or by few.

Do all that you have in mind, his armour bearer said.

Go ahead, I'm with you, heart and soul.

What's your immediate reaction to that part of the story, if you remember?

What just stands out?

Yeah, the perhaps, isn't it?

Like, armour bearer, one younger guy, he's his helper.

Come with me.

Perhaps the Lord will act.

And I mentioned this morning, you know, you sort of, if you're the armour bearer, you're looking for something more than perhaps.

You're looking for the Lord has spoken, young man.

Let's go.

We know for certain that the Philistines will be handed in to our, in to our, in for our victory.

What else stands out?

It's a great, it's a great little picture, isn't it, of, of a nobody, per se.

I'm with you, heart and soul, the armour bearer says.

So, the back story is there is 600 Philistines, 600 Israelites.

There's, I think there was 6,000 charioteers or 3,000.

I had the numbers this morning.

It's thousands upon thousands of different chariots.

The Philistines have got iron technology, so they've all got swords.

Did you pick up?

Israel's got one sword between them.

Or two swords.

Sword's got one, Jonathan's got one.

So, it's just a horribly outnumbered situation.

And yet, he makes this suggestion, let's go and take them on, because I would put it to you, he is marinated in the story of Israel.

That's Jonathan.

He knows the story of the patriarchs.

He knows what Israel's God has done for them throughout the book of Joshua.

He knows he has this story that he believes, and it causes him to act.

Because who would agree?

Belief without action is not really belief.

It's sort of like a trophy on a shelf.

But belief drives us, because we believe a story, a metanarrative, the grand overarching story of truth about what is going on in this planet, and it drives us to action.

So many of us in the room are Christians.

We have a belief that there is a God who loves us, and He paid for our sin in Jesus, and He's caused us to live a certain way.

Again, can I ask you, who has an example of action that you have done in your life caused by your belief?

Belief causes us to act.

If there are no actions, then we would question belief.

I have an older brother, his name is Murray, and over the years, he has given me interesting illustrative material from his life.

I haven't used anything from Murray for quite a while, but he years ago, living at Tukli, came out of his front door, and there was a 22-year-old man on the neighbor's lawn, he was on ice, and he was having this psychotic episode, and he was trying to kill his mother.

And Murray's wife got involved to try to stop this happening, and it was all pretty ugly.

He had big stone trying to hurt his mother, he was trying to strangle his mother, he had very much evil intent.

So what do you do?

What do you do?

So my brother is the local pastor.

He believes in doing right.

He believes also that it's good to reject passivity and accept responsibility and live the way that God is calling you to live, no matter what the cost.

And he's also 6'4, so he's a bit of a big dude.

But so he gets involved, he often does this, he gets involved in this situation.

And then he sort of finds out that this guy, he actually said to me, I thought it was more like a wrestle with my little brother.

And then I realised, oh no, he wants to kill me.

This is a horrible situation I've found myself in.

And he, the story is a long one which I won't go into, but he sort of gets his eye nearly gouged out and injures his back very badly.

But he's able to subdue this guy that is in a very bad state and wait for the police to turn up, and they finally, they do.

And then what was hard was he lived across the road.

So he got let out of temporary time in prison or with the police, and then he was giving death threats to Murray.

And it's a mess, right?

It's a messy situation.

Have you found in your life that following Jesus and living out your belief is not always sanitized?

That's the truth.

That it's not always just neat to do the right thing, to act on our beliefs.

And so I think that's the situation we're finding here.

Jonathan knows that his father Saul should be doing something here.

He knows that God has given the land to the people of Israel, the Philistines are stopping that.

They are fighting back.

They're in the way.

They are stopping God's plan unfolding.

And he feels like, no, I've got to do something about this.

I'm going to act out of my belief.

And so he has a sphere of influence that he can have a say over.

And that sphere of influence is quite small.

His young armor bearer.

And he just asks him.

And again, as we said before, there's this wonderful response, I'm with you heart and soul.

And in that step, they move towards a very significant shift in both these men, in their history.

We're talking about them 3,000 years later, because they sort of grabbed hold of a divine moment that was there as a potential thing to take hold of.

So they do that.

Their belief moves them to action.

And it involves courage.

Jonathan said, Come then, we will cross over toward the men and let them see us.

Again, an odd thing to say.

Out of their belief, there's this immense courage.

If they say to us, wait there until we come to you, we will stay where we are and not go up to them.

But if they say, come up to us, we will climb up because that will be our sign that the Lord has given them into our hands.

Just to open again.

Anyone notice anything strange here?

So, well, I'll come to what I thought about that as well.

So both of them showed themselves to the Philistine Outpost.

Look, said the Philistines, the Hebrews are crawling out of the holes they were hiding in.

The men of the outpost shouted to Jonathan and his armor bearer, come up to us and we'll teach you a lesson.

So Jonathan said to his armor bearer, climb up after me.

The Lord has given them into the hands of Israel.

What I find interesting is it's like, you just would wish that if you're the armor bearer, Jonathan would say, come on, let's sneak up or we'll just sneak in and find out whether there's any chinks in the armor.

Maybe we could have a shot at the leader or something.

But he says, we're going to let them see us, and the sign we will see as a good sign is, come on up.

Can you see the difference between Jonathan and many of us?

We lean in to the weight.

Maybe I'm meant to do something in this situation, but Lord, give me your guidance and I hope it's weight.

I hope it's no.

Do you know what I mean?

There's this sort of pressing in, there's this moving towards.

What's that bell curve?

Who knows?

50% lean forwards, 50% are leaning backwards in the bell curve of change.

So you have 2% innovators who are early adopters, 13% are early adopters, 2% innovators.

Then the early majority and then the late majority and the late adopters and the laggards.

When it comes to responding to God's voice, which side are you on if it was just the 50%?

What I'm saying is, are you leaning in to, God, I want to be part of it.

I want to get in the game.

I want to be used by you.

Or are you sort of on the back going, I don't really, I think it's a wonderful, simple picture of two men, Jonathan and his armor bearer, who are like, we want to be used by you, Lord God.

We want to be part of this.

And there's a cost.

And so, they get involved.

Seizing your divine moment will involve this belief in a grand story that you're part of, that God is moving things towards his end, a courage.

And I think there's a clear component of perseverance, verse 13.

Jonathan climbed up using his hands and feet.

What's that symbol, what's that telling you about the picture?

Why would you climb using your hands and feet?

It's really steep.

It's really steep.

It's like over 45 degrees, like it's your hands and feet.

Isn't that amazing?

Like, what a nutter.

Who would say that?

Like, oh, they have the high ground.

They have such an advantage.

If you tell us to come up, that will be our sign.

So they're climbing up.

And the armour bearer is where?

Right behind him.

Okay, they're going up together.

The Philistines fell before Jonathan and his armour bearer, followed and killed behind him.

In that first attack, Jonathan and his armour bearer killed some 20 men in an area about half an acre.

So half an acre.

So your quarter acre block is a thousand square metres.

So you think of someone with a pretty big suburban block of ground.

It's twice that.

And there's this fight.

So they got the right sign, obviously, and they went up the hill.

But knowing that God is a God, the Yahweh is a God who opens up the Red Sea.

He's done crazy miraculous things in the past.

When I've read this story in the past, I've always thought, surely Jonathan is thinking, Lord, my armor bearer and I, we're going to start climbing up, and we're just waiting.

The armor bearer is behind going, has the lightning bolt come down yet, Jonathan?

Has he sent the angels yet?

Not yet, mate.

Not yet, mate.

What are you doing?

I'm fighting.

You get the ones that I miss.

Like, do you see the picture?

Like, I'm thinking, I'm stepping out in faith, Lord, bring in the miraculous.

Just bring it in.

Bring in the angels.

But this is an incredibly insightful image.

It's primitive warfare.

They've got one sword.

They're crawling up.

The armor bearer's just got his hands.

And they fight.

And I wonder if Jonathan and the armor bearer thought what my brother Murray thought at one time.

I don't know if we're going to win this.

They're really mean.

They're actually trying to kill us.

This is not a game.

We're not having a wrestle.

Jonathan fights really hard with his armor bearer, who was with him, heart and soul.

Acted on their belief, took courage, needed perseverance, which of course is the picture of Christianity, Romans 5.

Suffering produces perseverance, which produces character, which produces hope.

That's Christianity.

There is suffering.

You've got to suffer for a while.

It's not just like, oh, is that enough?

Just a little bit?

No, no, that could be quite a bit of suffering.

But in the persevering through suffering by the grace of God, it produces character.

And character in that passage in Romans 5 means proof.

Proof of who you are in Christ.

Proof.

And it produces a hope that's enduring.

Belief, courage, perseverance.

I wonder if you have a challenge in your life.

Maybe we talk about it.

The giant hasn't turned up yet, has he?

That's later, the Philistine giant.

But some of us have giants.

We have struggles.

We have different sin that's hard to deal with.

We have a bunch of sins.

We have this root of bitterness, a root of pride, a root of self-rejection.

And you may have been told by well-meaning Christians, you just have to ask in the name of Jesus, He'll just break that and take that away.

It's all going to go away.

And that may happen.

And it may has, maybe has already happened.

But it's probably far more likely, there's a bit of a fight.

And there's a grace that's available to us.

As Eugene Peterson famously said, following Jesus is a long obedience in the same direction.

A long obedience in the same direction.

Perseverance is required for the slow work of God in our lives to be completed.

Amen?

Can I say that again?

Perseverance is required because the work of God in your life and mine is almost definitely going to be slow.

That's what he does.

He does slow work.

He does quick transformation sometimes.

But is that fair to say?

On the whole, on the whole, the image is a seed in the ground and it moves slowly.

And I mentioned that last week, but it's the truth.

Belief that leads to courageous action with perseverance inspires others.

And this is, I think, the core of the whole passage for me.

I love this part.

Let me read verse 15.

Panic struck the whole army, those in the camp and field, and those in the outposts and raiding parties.

And the ground shook.

So something supernatural happening now.

It was a panic sent by God.

Saul's lookouts at Gibeah in Benjamin and saw the army melting away in all directions.

Saul says to his men who were with him, muster the forces.

You know, now he's the hero.

He's keen to get involved.

Muster the forces and see who has left us.

When they did it, Jonathan, his arm bearer, were not there.

So Saul said to Ahijar, bring the ark of God.

At that time, it was with the Israelites.

While Saul was talking to the priest, the tumult and the Philistine camp increased more and more.

Saul says to the priest, withdraw your hands.

What he's trying to do is be very spiritual.

He's like, okay, we don't know whether to get involved.

Something's going on up there.

Let's get spiritual about it.

And then it's like, the tumult is too much.

So much for seeking God.

Let's go.

And they just, you know, go for it.

And then verse 20, Saul and all his men assembled and went to battle.

They found the Philistines in total confusion striking each other with their swords.

Those Hebrews, and this is a key part, those Hebrews who had previously been with the Philistines and had gone up with them to their camp.

So the traitors, they went over to the Israelites who were with Saul and Jonathan.

When all the Israelites who had hidden in the hill country of Ephraim heard that the Philistines were on the run, they rejoined the battle in hot pursuit.

So the Lord rescued Israel that day and the battle moved on beyond Beth-Avin.

So, you know, I think we know that hate doesn't surrender easily to love.

Evil doesn't submit easily to good.

Part of every journey of faith, and that means all the people here in this room, is a journey of spiritual collisions.

There are challenges in the life that we've been called to live for Jesus.

And sometimes you may need to bear the initial impact alone of doing what's right.

So, it's my brother, he was by himself, his wife had already stepped in, but step up and do what's right, and trust God to do what he does and provide what you need.

But the result in this story, this incredible story in the back of our Bibles, is that when Jonathan and the Armour Bearer step out in faith, the result is an enormous level of inspiration for so many others, isn't it?

Just incredible inspiration.

Jonathan acts out of obedience to a core belief.

He's like, I've already been called to live for the glory of Yahweh.

I'm already part of what God is doing.

I'm going to be part of defeating the enemy for God's glory.

And then what's really interesting in this story is, God allows Jonathan and his Armour Bearer to fight, and to fight hard, you've got to imagine they've got some cuts, before he joins them.

Isn't that just interesting?

It's like God is happy to sit back and go, go for it, use what I've given you, step out, give it your best.

And then while Jonathan is in the battle with his Armour Bearer, it's like God goes, angels, come on, shake that ground, let's go.

Are you with me?

It's just interesting.

Give me some insights.

What do you take from that?

What does the Spirit of God tell you?

Like, is that normal?

I see, I like what Oscar, I like what everyone said, but I like what Oscar said in that, I think God enjoys the relationship.

What if he took joy out of the heart and soul attitude of the Armour Bearer?

It's like, I know it's weird because it's like people are dying here, it's so hard to get your head around, but I don't know, because it takes me to the whole thing of like the sovereignty of God.

When we say to God, Lord, what do I do in this situation?

What do I do?

I honestly believe that Jesus says to us what he says to people in the Bible often.

What would you like me to do for you?

Like, what if God says, Jonathan and Armour Bearer, what do you want to do?

Have a crack.

Show me your heart.

Is that heresy, what I'm just saying?

Because I know what you're saying, Abigail, that it's Abby.

Just when you're looking at me with a sort of stern look, it was like Abigail.

We can get it wrong, we can do it in our own strength.

But I just like that idea that maybe God isn't so wrapped up in being too tricky.

He's like, show me your heart.

Have a crack.

Get in there.

Yeah, well, you've done as well as you can, and I'll show you.

You could never do this in your own strength.

And he comes in.

I just, to me, that's a good God.

That's just a good God.

He's like, yeah, get in there.

Get your hands dirty.

And I'll back you.

And I'll pull in reinforcements from around.

I'll inspire.

Just your heart is going to do so much to the rest of the team.

So you might say that people respond to the situation in four ways.

You've got faithful Jonathan and his armor bearer.

I think I've got this on the screen.

And then there's the paralyzed Saul and some of his men.

You know, they're just, they're paralyzed in fear.

But when someone steps out, they're like, whoa, God's with them.

I want to be part of that.

And then verse 21, like I mentioned before, says that some of the traitors and the prodigals come back and join up with Israel to fight.

And then finally, the dysfunctional, the Israelites who are hiding in caves join the battle.

They reckon that's a nice picture.

It's just a picture of our lives, I think.

Have a crack.

Do something that's worthy of the glory of Jesus.

Not for your own pride, not for your own glory, but because of your belief.

Step out and do what you believe to be right, and trust that God loves his people doing things like that.

Belief, courage, obedience, with perseverance has the result of inspiring the rest of the army, but I think it inspires the church.

It inspires the church.

Who's got a gift of exhortation?

Anyone?

Faith in exhortation?

Help me, somebody.

Oscar, well done.

Good stuff.

Anyone else?

Just like over the years, they have recognized exhortation.

What do you think exhortation means?

I think it's Jonathan has a really cool role here in this story, doesn't he?

Clearly, he acts with faith and it starts with those he can influence, and then God takes that and breathes on it, and it does more.

Yeah, I just want to encourage you, if you feel like that, that you naturally feel you lean towards vision, you lean towards belief, you lean towards a positive expectation that God would act.

We need those people in the church.

For me, if there's one gifting I've had over all my life, it's exhortation.

If you look back at my 30 years in ministry, I preached this message in essence 20 years ago.

I found it and I would have preached it five times ever since.

It's one of my most favourite passages in the whole Bible.

I say that a lot, I know, but...

But yeah, like for me, if I look back on my time on earth, I think that's one of the things that God has used me to do, to speak in such a way that I'm hoping to point people towards God and say, He's worth it.

He's worth it.

That's not a pride thing at all.

I just say it because...

Let me ask you again, does anyone feel like...

I mean, Michael Richardson, I think you have...

Does anyone else agree that Mike Richardson, there's a few nodding heads, is a person who encourages others to step out in faith?

Yeah, can I encourage you to grab hold of that gifting if it's there?

And be yourself, because the church needs the exorter, the encourager, the person that will run.

And often others come a bit later, and they get on board, and amazing things can happen.

Lord God, thank you for this story of Jonathan and his armor-bearer, and that it speaks to us still just as powerfully today.

And I thank you for my brothers and sisters and their spirit-led insights tonight.

Would you lead us on?

Give us the courage we need tonight and tomorrow, and the day after to take those steps of faith in Jesus' name.

Amen.

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