The Faith of Two Opposite Men

People assume that power lies wherever the numbers are, but God upholds a sincere and honest faith, whatever human judgment may say. This becomes all the clearer when we listen to two prayers: one from a Pharisee, who held the world’s power, and one from a tax collector, whom people looked down on. The Pharisee stood apart from the others and prayed with full confidence. He thanked God that he was not like extortioners, the unrighteous, and adulterers, nor like that tax collector, and he declared that he fasted twice a week and gave a precise tithe of all his income. We already know that the Pharisee was rebuked, so we would naturally assume his prayer was wrong.

Then before you fault the Pharisee for his pride, could you tell God that you, like him, have honestly kept his law? If we have kept the law less faithfully than the Pharisee did, we would have no right to judge him. He was rebuked because he made all those deeds his own righteousness; even so, he had labored with all his might to keep the law. Had Jesus not named him ‘one who could not let go of his own righteousness,’ perhaps we would have envied the Pharisee’s faith.

Some distance from this Pharisee, a tax collector was praying. He would not so much as lift his eyes toward God; beating his breast, he cried out that God would be merciful to him, a sinner. Jesus heard both prayers and said that the tax collector was more righteous than the Pharisee. In that light, it was certainly not because he lacked the Pharisee’s devotion that the tax collector repented. He was as wealthy a man as the Pharisee, yet whatever his standing in the world, he confessed that before God he was always a sinner. When someone counts nothing they have received in this life as their own righteousness and lives as one in debt to God, God exalts that person and draws them to himself.

God looked on Saul and David as he looked on the Pharisee and the tax collector, and he lifted up David, whose faith was a faith of obedience, rather than Saul, who put human righteousness on display. David was only a young shepherd, yet when a wild beast came to carry off a lamb, he risked his own life to rescue it, and he gave himself wholly to the task entrusted to him. God had been watching this faithful young man all along. His efforts were never aimed at winning anyone’s approval; they were spent on saving lives, and they trained his hand to throw a stone with precision — a skill God would one day put to use.

Only when you are faithful with the work and the time you have been given will you acquire, often without realizing it, the strength and skill God gives, because God never gives us a circumstance, a person, or a season that serves no purpose. After you have been through the training of hardship and then meet another hard trial, you will understand why God once brought those circumstances and those people into your life. The reason becomes plain when, like David before Goliath, you find you can confidently use the sling you practiced with in ordinary days.

1 Samuel 14:6

6Jonathan said to the young man who bore his armor, “Come, let us go over to the garrison of these uncircumcised. It may be that Yahweh will work for us; for there is no restraint on Yahweh to save by many or by few.”

Jonathan crossed over to the Philistine garrison to save his nation and his people. Saul, meanwhile, stayed at Migron with six hundred soldiers, and with him was Ahijah, serving as high priest and wearing the ephod. Ahijah was the great-grandson of Eli the priest and the grandson of Phinehas. Why does Scripture take the trouble to record that six hundred soldiers stood beside Saul and that Ahijah was there in the ephod? It is telling us how detestable Saul’s conduct was: a man who had defied the word and even cast off Samuel was trying to look as though he had faith. Far too many churchgoers today share Saul’s kind of faith. Though their hearts leave no room for God, they keep going through the outward forms of religion. Someone who will not work unless praised, who takes offense when a pastor admonishes them, who wants to hear only what pleases the ear, is no different from Saul and the Pharisee. God looks at the heart; you must therefore always be sincere before him.

Jonathan spoke boldly of going over to the uncircumcised Philistines because he was sure that God would work for him. The very word uncircumcised carries, hidden within it, Jonathan’s absolute trust in God. Before going to the Philistine camp, he earnestly asked God to show him a sign, since every battle belongs to God. God told Jonathan that if the Philistines saw him and said they would come down to him, he should hold back; but if they told him to come up, he should go, for he would win. And the Philistines who caught sight of Jonathan did call to him to come up — as if they themselves had heard God promise him the victory.

The trouble was that Jonathan had only a single weapon. Even with God’s answer in hand, climbing up to the Philistine camp all but unarmed, as Jonathan did, is never easy, since it takes absolute faith and courage to walk into the enemy’s lines. Yet Jonathan went up, trusting in the word, and his faith carried the day.

In verse 15 the camp in the field and all the people trembled in terror, so great was the shaking, and in that we see that the power of God was with Jonathan. The miracle everyone longed for came about through his faith. If you too want God to answer you, you must first hold a true faith that says, if I perish, I perish, and then have the courage to go all the way to the Philistine camp. God cannot help those who will not put their faith into action.

From Gibeah of Benjamin, the watchmen looked toward the enemy camp and saw the Philistines scattering, running this way and that in confusion. When Saul learned that Jonathan was missing, he told Ahijah to bring the ark of the covenant and pray for Jonathan. While Ahijah was praying, Saul looked again at the Philistine camp, and the tumult had grown so much worse that he became convinced Jonathan was winning. What Saul saw was Jonathan carrying the day with great help from God.

But once Jonathan seemed to be winning, Saul told Ahijah to stop praying, because he decided that he no longer needed God’s help. The moment victory looked possible without God, Saul cast God aside. Church members today do the same. When life is hard, they pray, serve, and give themselves to God’s work; once the problem is solved and life grows comfortable, they drift away from the church and stop serving altogether. But we must never forget that when Saul grew greedy and forgot to give thanks, he lost every blessing of the grace God had given him. Blind to the fact that Jonathan had placed his life in God’s hands and was pouring himself out for God, Saul turned Jonathan’s loyalty into an occasion for his own pride. When he reached the battlefield where Jonathan was fighting, he came upon an absurd sight: the Philistines were killing one another. Seeing this, Saul joined forces with the men of Israel and won a great victory.

No human strength could ever have brought about the Philistines’ defeat. We know this because chapter 13 tells us that the Philistines had gathered for war with thirty thousand chariots, six thousand horsemen, and people as many as the sand on the seashore, and had camped at Michmash, east of Beth Aven. Now they fell back all the way to Aijalon, on the Philistine border, twenty kilometers from Michmash. Poorly equipped Israel, in which only Saul and Jonathan carried weapons, had routed a Philistine army armed to the teeth. God’s battles, then, are not won by numbers, nor by calculating and scheming with human minds. Only when you understand that the battles you are fighting in this life are not a contest of numbers either can you entrust your life wholly to God, as Jonathan did. When you entrust it to him in faith, he will answer in ways you cannot imagine.

Saul, who had done nothing at all, grew greedy once the Philistines were beaten. Only those who risk their lives in the fight, as Jonathan did, can be humble before God; when people gain easily by grace, as Saul did, they take all the credit for themselves. In verse 24 the people were worn out from fighting without weapons, yet Saul declared that anyone who ate food before he had defeated all his enemies would be cursed by God. But why should this war be Saul’s?

God had fought his own battle on the ground of Jonathan’s faith, and Saul was stealing the glory. This, too, is a failing common in the church, because once God has solved a hard problem for us, we decide we can take it from here and handle things ourselves, and we shut God out of our lives. What we fail to see is that the worldly strength we hold today can slip through our fingers as easily as sand. If we rely on our health and lose it, we lose everything; if we trust a person and that person betrays us, we lose everything just the same. So we must lean on the God who does not change, for everything in the world changes, but God remains the same forever.

For the sake of what he called his own war, Saul proclaimed a fast: no one was to eat, even though honey was flowing in the woods. It was an order that took no account of the people’s suffering and served only his greed. Anyone who lives beside such a man is bound to have a weary life. Jonathan was the one who had given himself, yet Saul’s craving for the glory meant that in the end the people around him paid the price. An earthly king had ruled that anyone who ate before evening would be cursed, so the people could not touch the honey even as they watched it flow. Every one of Saul’s greedy decisions was made with no regard for God. If you truly love God, I hope you will first come to know what purpose he has in leading you and what he desires of you, and then walk with him in that light. Then he will answer you in everything, even in what you never thought of.

Leviticus 17:11

11For the life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that makes atonement by reason of the life.

Greed causes sin to be conceived, and sin brings death in its wake. The ordinances forbade eating meat with the blood still in it, yet the people were so famished that they slaughtered sheep, oxen, and calves and ate them, blood and all. Saul’s greed had led straight into the people’s sin. God made it law that blood was not to be eaten in order to show that the source of life is in God — and, beyond that, that the blood of Jesus Christ is the source of life for every soul that is saved.

Jonathan had been in the thick of the fighting and had not heard his father’s order, so to ease his weariness he dipped into some honey and ate, and his eyes brightened. Later, when he heard what Saul had commanded, he said that his father’s order was wrong, for he himself had tasted a little honey and found his strength restored. The world is a spiritual battlefield, and the honey of the word is always flowing there. If we do not eat it, we grow spiritually weary and can fall into grave sin. Only by feeding on that honey whenever the fight with Satan wears us down can we overcome; our spiritual eyes are opened, and we are not defeated.

In verse 44, when Saul learned that Jonathan had broken the order and eaten honey, he was furious. By the law he himself had made, he said, even Jonathan must die. Otherwise, he said, God would punish him and punish him again — speaking of it all as though it were God’s own command.

But Saul had decided all of this out of mere human feeling. God knew how evil Saul was, and so in verse 37, when Saul asked whether Israel would win if he pursued the Philistines, God gave no answer. Saul had always turned God’s answers into proof of his own ability, and now God left his prayer unanswered; had he replied, Saul would have grown proud over that as well, as though it too were his own achievement. When no answer came, Saul blamed Jonathan for eating the honey and laid the guilt on him. Saul would never admit his own faults and always looked to someone else for an excuse, and for that reason he drifted farther and farther from God. I hope each of you will look honestly at yourself and ask whether you, too, reach for excuses to cover your wrongs. To confess our sin at once and repent of our wrongs is how we receive God’s love, and it is the path by which we earn the trust of others.

1 Thessalonians 5:22-23 tells us to abstain from every form of evil, and it voices the hope that the God of peace himself will sanctify you completely, and that your whole spirit, soul, and body will be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Because Satan holds the power of the air over this world, every human being is born a child of Satan. A saint is someone who, under that power of darkness, has been born again through faith in Jesus — dead to the world, and alive through the precious blood of Christ. The saint is no longer a sinner who served Satan as father or as husband, but has become one of the righteous, serving Christ as their husband. This is why the saints must not, like Saul, make excuse after excuse to cover their sin, but must live honest lives by the word.

When you confess with Jonathan that Yahweh’s salvation does not depend on many or few, then even if all God has given you is a single sword, you can win great victories in life and be content. Without six hundred soldiers, without a priest in an ephod at his side, even after eating honey against an earthly king’s order, Jonathan had God with him, and God took his side wherever he was, because every victory belonged to Jonathan and belonged to God. Whose war are you fighting now? A war waged out of greed will end in defeat; but if it is God’s war, in keeping with his will, it will surely be won.

As you look at the opposite faiths of Saul and Jonathan, I hope you will discern for yourselves where your own faith belongs, and take your stand on Jonathan’s side. Only when God approves of you will he show you the way to victory; then he himself will work in that very way and make you taste the joy of victory. May you always be found approved by God, with an honest and faithful faith. I bless you in the name of Jesus Christ.