This Sunday's Sermon

The Discovery of Faith through Jonathan’s Example

Tonight I want to share a message with all of you that God has laid on my heart. The message tonight is called The Discovery of Faith through Jonathan’s Example. We will be looking mostly at the first six verses in Hebrews Chapter 11 and the story of Jonathan found in the 14th chapter of 1 Samuel.

Pray
Father, please help us to hear your voice tonight. Challenge us and convict us to live lives of faith. True faith as your word demands. Lord, may these examples we are about to look at open the eyes of our hearts and awaken a life of faith in each of us.
Mostly Father, please find that my attempts to speak on your behalf have already failed. So please grant me your wisdom. Allow me to speak humbly but passionately the truth that you have asked me to speak.
Amen.
Hebrews 11:1 – 6
“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the men of old gained approval. By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible. By faith Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained the testimony that he was righteous, God testifying about his gifts, and through faith, though he is dead, he still speaks. By faith Enoch was taken up so that he would not see death; and he was not found because God took him up; for he obtained the witness that before his being taken up he was pleasing to God. And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.”

I. Faith is being confident of God’s ability to come through for you.

Let’s look now at the story in 1 Samuel 14. To bring everyone up to speed on this story; Saul is the King of Israel at the time and Samuel the prophet had given Saul pre-battle instructions which Saul ended up ignoring and thus sinning against the Lord. Samuel finds out and rebukes Saul and Saul falls apart. He freezes and refuses to act out the mission God had initially given him. Catching up with the story in verse 6:
“Then Jonathan said to the young man who was carrying his armor, ‘Come and let us cross over to the garrison of these uncircumcised; perhaps the Lord will work for us, for the Lord is not restrained to save by many or by few.’”

Did you catch that? Perhaps? Jonathan is advancing on perhaps the Lord will work for him! That’s crazy! No one does that. And therein lays the problem with Christians today. No one does that!

We have meetings and committees and procedures and policies that bind and confine those “perhaps” moments in life. We strangle the spontaneity out of our relationships with God and reduce his activity to what we can predict.

Let me tell you all tonight this very important truth about God. You can not predict how God will come through for you, but you can prevent Him from being able to.
If you read the rest of the 11th chapter of Hebrews you see story after story of people who stepped into mystery and danger by faith and saw God come through. No two outcomes were the same in detail but all were identical in overall results. God was glorified. If God is going to be glorified in your life and in this church you must allow Him to be as original as He pleases. What ever caused the notion to enter our minds that the way we’ve always done it is the way it must be done? Sometimes I wonder if we’ve become apathetic to what pleases God most in the attempt to preserve predictability in our spiritual lives. I suggest to you tonight that it is impossible to maintain a fire for God’s pleasure while dousing it with the extinguishing effects of human control. We control everything we possibly can. Think about it. We control the temperature in our house, the channel on T.V. the clothes we wear, the jobs we have, the foods we eat. We control who our friends are. We control our checking accounts and our savings. We are driven to control because we take rest in routine. We fear being inconvenienced. When in fact if you will be truly used by God to the fullest degree you must embrace inconvenience. Jonathan was willing to inconvenience himself to the greatest measure by engaging in battle with the Philistines. The remarkable thing is he did it without knowing if God was going to come through. But he was willing to be used for the Glory of God. Nothing else. He looks at his armor bearer and says, “Let’s go pick a fight.” He doesn’t evaluate the situation and cast votes and tally the pros and cons. He sees an opportunity to be used by God and he says, “Let’s Go!” Well what about this or what about that? “No! Let’s Go.” Perhaps the Lord will work for us. Not because He has to, but because He is able.
Perhaps.

II. Faith is the ability to trust in God’s power and His trustworthiness to bring about the results that will reflect His glory best.

Next on Jonathan’s story something absolutely amazing happens. What is so amazing is that Jonathan was a commander over a portion of his father’s army and this plan is the best he can come up with.
Verse 8: “Then Jonathan said, ‘behold, we will cross over to the men and reveal ourselves to them.’”
Verse 9: “If they say to us, ‘Wait until we come to you’; then we will stand in our place and not go up to them.”
Verse 10: “But if they say, ‘Come up to us.’ Then we will go up, for the Lord has given them into our hands; and this shall be the sign to us.”

Are any of you hearing this and thinking to yourselves, WOW, what a great plan? I hope not because it is a terrible plan. First off in his masterpiece of military intelligence he proposes right off the bat that they expose themselves to the enemy. Think about this for a moment. They have two in their squad, and let me add, only one sword between them and they are facing about 20 armed and trained soldiers. It would most definitely be to their benefit to advance with the element of surprise. But not this man of faith. His plan starts out by eliminating any chance that people could hear the story and say, “well, Jonathan was clever and it worked out for him.” If victory was to be had on their behalf Jonathan is choosing to advance in a way that leaves no question as to by whom the victory came. So the first part of the plan is to show themselves to the enemy.
The second part of the plan gets even more disturbing when taking into consideration that Jonathan isn’t a complete idiot. Listen to what the rest of his plan consists of.
Verse 9: “If they say to us, ‘Wait until we come to you’; then we will stand in our place and not go up to them.”
Verse 10: “But if they say, ‘Come up to us.’ Then we will go up, for the Lord has given them into our hands; and this shall be the sign to us.”
The first part of the plan is to expose themselves to the enemy; the second part of the plan is to allow the enemy to set the terms for battle. Again, Jonathan must be crazy. It makes no sense as to why he would place his very own life and the life of his armor bearer on the line and have such a moronic plan. But that is the way we see this part of biblical history unfolding. Jonathan is standing, literally in the gap between two cliffs, nowhere to run and by his very own design, no place to hide. He is allowing the enemy the luxury of devising the terms on which the battle will take place and he seems all the while perfectly content and even confident. Why? Faith! Jonathan is perfectly satisfied in knowing that he is seeking the pleasure of a God who is big enough, strong enough, smart enough and loving enough to bring about the results that will reflect His own glory best. Jonathan has absolutely no regard for his own reputation or safety. Can you imagine if Jonathan had been interviewed on his tactics during this event? Then as his story becomes public knowledge, the ridicule and mocking he would have received. Let alone trying to get a job as a commander on future military missions. But he forsakes all that for the sole purpose of seeking God’s glory. Faith is the ability to trust in God’s power and His trustworthiness to bring about the results that will reflect His glory best. Do you want to know what happened?
Look at verse 23: “So the Lord delivered Israel that day and the battle spread beyond Beth-aven.”
Who gets the credit? The Lord! In the pages of history, God goes down as the one who came through for Israel. Jonathan takes his rightful place on the long list of faithful servant, but it is the Lord who receives the praise and the glory for evermore.

Jonathan steps into uncertainty and places all he has in “Perhaps the Lord will work for us, for the Lord is not restrained to save by many or by few.” Did God have to come through? No. Would God have still been just as and holy as He always had been? Yes. But does God invite us into these “perhaps” situations in life so that we can allow Him to display his power and glory through our lives? Absolutely. God loves to come through for his people. He’s been doing it all throughout history because he loves to bring about, through the most inconceivable circumstances, the results that will reflect His glory best.

I am assuming that some of you tonight have some criticisms towards what I’ve shared with you tonight. That’s ok. I understand that many of you have lived your entire lives safely and securely by minimizing the element of risk in your life. Some of you even bring that attitude towards living into the life of the church. We’ve all heard it said in business meetings before that faith is good and all but we’ve got to use our common sense. Oh how my heart breaks when those words are spoken. Because according to the Holy word of God that statement has no place in the dealings of the church. This type of statement is spoken be a person who serves a small God. A God who can’t possibly work through worldly conditions to bring about any type of result worthy of one true God in Heaven. When someone says, Faith is good and all but we’ve got to use our common sense what is being said here is that my God isn’t big enough. So we fit God into our own understanding and line him up with our way of thinking. Doesn’t Isaiah 55:8 say “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, declares the Lord”? Doesn’t Proverbs 3:5 teach is to Trust in the Lord with all our hearts and to not lean on our own understanding. Don’t we see over and over and over again example after example of mighty individuals of faith doing things that would completely shatter the bounds of common sense? Did Peter walking to Jesus on the water make sense? Did it make sense that Joseph would still marry a girl who was pregnant with a child not his own? Did Noah make any sense while building the ark? Listen to me! We may not know that results but one thing I will promise you with all the truth I have in me to offer is that God will stack the odds against logic and reason for the sake of proving Himself and His Glory to the world through our obedience.

One last thing. Turn back to Hebrews 11:6.
“And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.

You see, the ultimate end of every human being is to find God. How do we do that? Faith.

III. Faith is the key to receiving the greatest gift imaginable, God Himself.

Do you see in verse 6 how pleasing God and seeking God are indivisible? Look at it. In one statement we read that it is impossible to please God without faith. Then in the very next statement we read that God is the rewarder of those who seek him. How do you seek God? Have faith in God. How does God respond to our faith? He blesses us with Himself. Generally speaking of the state of Christianity as I have experienced it, we Christians don’t have God as God desires for us to have Him because we don’t seek God as God desires for us to seek Him.
We don’t seek God as God desires for us to seek Him because we have not the faith in God that is required to please Him.
Does anyone have a problem with that? Is anyone willing to do anything about it tonight?