The Faith of Two Opposite Men

People think that power lies where the numbers are, but God helps true and honest faith, with no regard at all for human judgment. This becomes even clearer when we listen to the prayers of the Pharisee, who had power in the world, and of the tax collector, who was looked down on in the world. The Pharisee stood apart from the others and prayed, thanking God that he was not like extortionists, the unrighteous and adulterers, or even like the tax collector, and he said confidently in his prayer that he fasted twice a week and gave an exact tithe of his income. Because we now know that the Pharisee was rebuked, we will probably think that his prayer was wrong.

Then, before you blame the Pharisee for his pride, could you tell God that you, like him, have kept God’s law honestly? If you have kept the law less well than the Pharisee, you would have no right to judge him. The Pharisee was rebuked because he made all those deeds his own righteousness, but even so, he did try his best to keep the law. If Jesus had not called the Pharisee “one who could not let go of his own righteousness,” perhaps we would have envied the Pharisee’s faith.

Standing far from this Pharisee, a tax collector was praying. The tax collector did not dare even to lift up his eyes toward God, but beat his breast and cried out to God to be merciful to him, a sinner. Jesus heard the prayers of the two men and said that the tax collector was more righteous than the Pharisee. From that we can see that it was surely not because he had been less devoted than the Pharisee that the tax collector repented. The tax collector was a man of great wealth, like the Pharisee, but whatever his life in the world, he spoke of himself as always a sinner before God. When believers do not count everything they have received in the world as their own righteousness, but live as people in debt to God, God lifts them up and holds them close.

Just as with the Pharisee and the tax collector, God looked at Saul and David and lifted up David, who had the faith of obedience, rather than Saul, who displayed human righteousness. Though David was a young shepherd boy, when a fierce beast tried to carry off a sheep, he risked his life to rescue it, and he was faithful in doing his best at the work entrusted to him. God was watching David, who was this faithful. His efforts, made not to win anyone’s recognition but to save life, trained him to throw stones well, and that skill was later used by God.

Only when you are faithful in the work and the time you are given can you acquire, without even realizing it, the power and skill God gives. For God does not give us any circumstance, person or time that is unnecessary. After you have been trained through suffering and then meet a hard problem again, you can see why God had you meet those circumstances and those people before. That is because, like David, when you meet a Goliath 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 camp to save his nation and his people. At that time Saul was staying in Migron with six hundred soldiers, and Ahijah, as high priest, was with Saul, wearing an ephod. Ahijah was the great-grandson of Eli the priest and the grandson of Phinehas. The Bible goes out of its way to record that Saul had six hundred soldiers beside him and that Ahijah was wearing an ephod. It is telling us that Saul, who had defied the Word and even cast Samuel aside, was doing something detestable: acting as though he had faith. Far too many churchgoers today have a faith like Saul’s. Though there is no room in their hearts for God, they always go through the motions of the Christian life. If they will not work unless people praise them, get upset when a pastor counsels them, and want to hear only what pleases their ears, they are no different at all from Saul and the Pharisee. God looks at the heart. So you must always be true.

Jonathan was sure that God would work for him. That is why he could say so confidently that they should go over to the uncircumcised Philistines. In the words “the uncircumcised” lies hidden Jonathan’s absolute trust in God. Before going to the Philistine camp, Jonathan earnestly prayed for God to show him a sign, and he did so because every battle belongs to God. God told Jonathan that if the Philistines saw him and said they would come down, he should keep away, but if they told him to come up, he should go, for he would win. And the Philistine who saw Jonathan told him to come up, as though he had heard God’s word promising victory.

But the problem was that Jonathan had only one weapon. Having received God’s answer does not make it easy to go up into the Philistine camp without weapons, as Jonathan did. For going into the enemy’s camp takes absolute faith and courage. But Jonathan went up relying on the Word, and that faith brought about victory.

Look at verse 15: there was a trembling so great that the camp in the field and all the people shook with terror. That tells us God’s power was with him. The miracle everyone wanted came about through Jonathan’s faith. You too, to receive an answer, must first have the true faith that is ready to say, if I perish, I perish, and the courage to go all the way to the Philistine camp. For God cannot help those who do not put their faith into action.

At Gibeah of Benjamin, when the watchmen looked toward the enemy camp, they saw the Philistines scattering this way and that in confusion. Saul learned that Jonathan was gone and told Ahijah to bring God’s ark and pray for Jonathan. While Ahijah was praying, Saul looked at the Philistine camp and saw the tumult growing even greater, and he became sure that Jonathan was winning. What Saul was seeing was Jonathan winning with God’s great help.

But once it looked as though Jonathan was winning, Saul told Ahijah to stop praying, because he judged that he no longer needed God’s help. As soon as it seemed he could win without God, Saul abandoned God. Believers today, too, pray, serve and devote themselves to God in hard times, but once their problems are solved and life is comfortable, they stay away from the church and stop serving. But we must keep firmly in mind that when Saul became greedy and forgot to be thankful, he lost every blessing of grace God had given him. Saul did not recognize that Jonathan had entrusted his life to God and was devoting himself to him, and so he turned Jonathan’s faithfulness into his own pride instead. When he went to the battlefield where Jonathan was fighting, he saw the absurd sight of the Philistines killing one another. Seeing this, Saul joined the Israelites and won a great victory.

The defeat of the Philistines could never have been achieved by human strength. Look at chapter 13. It says that the Philistines, preparing for war, had encamped at Michmash, east of Beth Aven, with thirty thousand chariots, six thousand horsemen, and people as many as the sand on the seashore; yet they retreated all the way to Aijalon, on the Philistine border, 20 km from Michmash. Poorly equipped Israel, where only Saul and Jonathan had weapons, drove off a Philistine army that possessed enormous weaponry. So God’s war is not a battle of numbers, and it is not a war that can be won by calculating with the human mind and laying out strategies. Only when you know that the war you are fighting in the world right now is not a battle of numbers either can you entrust your life wholly to God, as Jonathan did. When you entrust it in faith, God will answer in ways you cannot imagine.

Saul, who had done nothing, grew greedy once the Philistines were driven off. Only those who fight at the risk of their lives, as Jonathan did, can stay humble before God; those who gain things easily by grace, as Saul did, take all the credit for themselves. Look at verse 24. The people were exhausted from fighting without weapons, yet Saul said that anyone who ate food until he had defeated all his enemies would be cursed by God. Why is this war Saul’s war?

God was waging his war on the foundation of Jonathan’s faith, but Saul was stealing that glory. This too is a mistake believers often make. After God has solved a hard problem for them, they say that from here on they can take over and handle it well, and they shut God out of their lives. But there is something people do not know: the worldly power given to them for the moment can slip through their fingers as easily as sand. If they rely on their health and then lose their health, they will lose everything, and if they trust a person and that person betrays them, they will lose everything. That is why we must rely on the God who does not change. For everything in the world changes, but God does not change, forever.

For the sake of his own war, Saul proclaimed a fast, forbidding anyone to eat even though honey was flowing in the forest. It was an order given only to satisfy his greed, with no thought for the people’s suffering. Anyone who stays beside a person like this cannot help but live a weary life. For the devotion was Jonathan’s, but because of the greed that wanted to take the glory, it was the people beside Saul who suffered the harm in the end. Because the king of the world had decreed that anyone who ate food before evening would be cursed, the people could not eat even when they saw the honey flowing. Every one of Saul’s greedy decisions had nothing to do with God. If you truly love God, live your life of faith by first learning with what purpose God is leading you and what he wants from you. Then he will answer all of it, even what you have not 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 conceives sin, and sin brings death. The ordinance said that when eating meat one must not eat the blood as well, but the people were so hungry that they killed sheep, cattle and calves and ate them with the blood. Saul’s greed led to the people’s sin. God made it law that they must not eat blood. He did so to show that the source of life is in God and, further, that the blood of Jesus Christ is the source of life for every soul that is saved.

Jonathan was in the middle of the battle and had not heard his father’s command, so to ease his weariness he dipped into some honey and ate it, and his eyes brightened. Later, when Jonathan heard Saul’s command, he said that his father’s command was wrong, since he himself had eaten a little honey and gained strength. Believers who do not eat the honey of the Word, which is always flowing in the world, their spiritual battlefield, may grow spiritually weary and commit great sins. Only by eating the honey of the Word whenever we grow tired in the war with Satan can we overcome, and then our spiritual eyes brighten and we are not defeated.

In verse 44, when Saul learned that Jonathan had broken the command and eaten honey, he was furious and said that under the law he himself had made, even Jonathan had to die. He said that otherwise God would punish him, and more also, speaking of all this as though it were God’s command.

But all of this was something Saul had decided out of human feeling. God knew Saul’s evil, and in verse 37, when Saul asked whether Israel would win if he pursued the Philistines, God did not answer. Until then Saul had turned God’s answers into his own ability, and now God did not answer his prayer; had God answered, Saul would have been proud of even that, as though it were his own ability. When God did not answer, Saul blamed the unanswered prayer on Jonathan for eating the honey and shifted the sin onto him. Saul did not admit his own wrong and always looked for excuses in other people, and so he grew further and further from God. I hope you will look at yourself and see whether you, too, look for excuses to cover your wrongs. Admitting sin at once and repenting of wrong is the way to receive God’s love and the way to be trusted by people.

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

Because Satan holds the power of the air in this world, every human being born into it becomes a child of Satan. A believer is someone who, under that power of darkness, has through faith in Jesus become dead to the world and been born again, alive through the precious blood of Christ. Believers are no longer sinners who served Satan as father or as husband; they have become righteous people who serve Christ as their husband. That is why believers must not make all kinds of excuses to cover their sin, as Saul did, but must live honest lives by the Word.

When you confess, as Jonathan did, that there is no restraint on Yahweh to save by many or by few, then even if what you have received from God is a single sword, you can win a great victory in the world and be content. Even without six hundred soldiers, even without being with a priest in an ephod, even though he had eaten honey without hearing the command of the king of the world, God was with Jonathan, and wherever he was, God took his side. For every victory was Jonathan’s, and it was God’s. Whose war is the war you are fighting now? If it is a war fought out of greed, you will lose in the end; if it is God’s war, one that matches God’s will, you will surely win.

As you look at the opposite faiths of Saul and Jonathan, I hope you will judge for yourselves where your faith belongs and stand on Jonathan’s side. Only when you are approved by God will he show you how to win; he will work directly in that way himself, and he will let you taste the joy of victory. May you always be approved by God, with a faith that is honest and faithful. I bless you in the name of Jesus Christ.