Good evening everyone. My name is Jonathan, and it’s a great joy to be with you again this evening. I serve as Mission to the World’s international director for Asia-Pacific, and we’re just so grateful for your church’s support and love for our family and for our work in Asia. What a joy it’s been to be with you this week, to hear all these stories from your supported missionaries, to have meals with you, to share stories with you, to have you pray for us and to know us more. So I just want to again thank you so much for just a blessed week for me, and I’m sure our other missionaries would convey the same thing to you.
As we go to God’s Word this evening, I’d invite you to pray, and let’s ask the Holy Spirit to help us as we look at this passage.
Father, we do thank You for a time again this evening to reflect on Your grace to us in the Lord Jesus Christ. You are a good and gracious Father. You have bestowed upon us all the riches of Your kingdom. You’ve blessed us with Your Spirit. You’ve equipped us, and You’ve sent us out into the world as You have sent Your Son into the world. Lord, would You further strengthen our courage this evening, strengthen our faith. Help us to trust in You who fights for us and look to You for hope and strength. We commit this time to You. Give our hearts eyes to see the beauty of Jesus in this text. In Christ’s name we pray, amen.
Well if you had a wonderful pastor serving in your midst, and you loved him and you cared for him and one day he came to you and said he was called to the mission field, to leave your congregation, what would you say? Would you try to convince him not to go? Well that’s a familiar story actually. In the 1850s, there was a famous Scottish Presbyterian minister named John Paton. He felt the Lord calling him to missionary service in the New Hebrides, which is modern-day Vanuatu, and his friends and his coworkers came to convince him and discourage him from going to the field. Now take note if you need to use these lines of reasoning that they used!
The first thing they said to him, their first line of reasoning, was this – “You are simply too gifted! You are such a wonderful preacher!” The ministry in Glasgow was booming. He was doing well. People were converting. People loved his ministry. They were receiving it with gladness. But even after that, he said, “No, the Lord is calling me to the mission field.” When that didn’t work and that didn’t convince him, they argued with him that, “Well, listen, John, there’s so much work to be done here in Scotland. We need more churches!” In fact, their general assembly a few years earlier had actually passed a resolution to say, “Let’s not focus on international missions anymore. Let’s focus on the work at home.” That seemed to make sense. “Please stay! We need you to help plant more churches domestically.”
Well that also didn’t work. These two arguments did not convince him or dissuade him. So finally, they went to the last and most daring approach. Just a few years earlier, the famous missionary, John Williams, had gone as a missionary to the same place, to the New Hebrides, and he was killed and eaten. And so they said, warning him of the certainty of danger and death that would come upon him if he were to go. And to this, John Paton famously replied to one such warning from a guy named Mr. Dixon, he said this, “Mr. Dixon, you are advanced in years now and your own prospect is soon to be laid in the grave, there to be eaten by worms. I confess to you that if I can but live and die serving and honoring the Lord Jesus, it will make no difference to me whether I am eaten by cannibals or by worms. And in the great day, my resurrection body will arise as fair as yours in the likeness of our risen Savior.”
Paton landed on the island of Tanna on November 5, 1858. The minute he landed there was a tribal battle going on in which at least six men were killed and eaten close to his house. He confessed that he began thinking that Jonah’s journey to Tarshish was not such a bad choice after all! But he stuck it out. Within about seven months of landing, Paton lost his nineteen-year-old bride, Mary Anne, to malaria. Their first child joined her in glory soon thereafter, about three weeks later. And despite the overwhelming – I mean, can you imagine – the overwhelming sorrow, and despite the many difficulties that he continued to face, and even the guidance from his mission agency was to pull back and quit. But he continued to press on courageously with the work, translating the Scriptures, teaching the Tannese to read the Bible, planting churches.
The opposition continued even after some time there. One night while he was staying in his house with another missionary family and they were sleeping, a bloodthirsty mob surrounded his house shouting, “Kill him! Kill him!” They set fire to the church building that was immediately next to his house, and the fire was spreading and threatened to engulf their whole house and burn them alive in there. And he and his friends, realizing that they were trapped, they had no escape, got on their knees and prayed to the Lord for deliverance. And immediately, a cyclone from the South Seas hit the island from off the sea – wind, rain, thunder, lightning, the wind and the rain extinguished the flames and the wind blew away the bloodthirsty mob from the perimeter of the house. And as they scattered, as they ran, the story goes it was heard them saying, “Truly their God is fighting for them!”
In our text this evening, I haven’t read it yet, so let me read that, we are going to see something similar. Would you turn with me in your Bibles to 1 Samuel 13, verses 22 through 14:14, and then finally verse 23. First Samuel chapter 13:22 through 14:15, sorry, and then 23. This is the Word of the Lord:
“So on the day of the battle there was neither sword nor spear found in the hand of any of the people with Saul and Jonathan, but Saul and Jonathan his son had them. And the garrison of the Philistines went out to the pass of Michmash.”
Chapter 14:
“One day Jonathan the son of Saul said to the young man who carried his armor, ‘Come, let us go over to the Philistine garrison on the other side.’ But he did not tell his father. Saul was staying in the outskirts of Gibeah in the pomegranate cave at Migron. The people who were with him were about six hundred men, including Ahijah the son of Ahitub, Ichabod’s brother, son of Phinehas, son of Eli, the priest of the Lord in Shiloh, wearing an ephod. And the people did not know that Jonathan had gone. Within the passes, by which Jonathan sought to go over to the Philistine garrison, there was a rocky crag on the one side and a rocky crag on the other side. The name of the one was Bozez, and the name of the other Seneh. The one crag rose on the north in front of Michmash, and the other on the south in front of Geba.
Jonathan said to the young man who carried his armor, ‘Come, let us go over to the garrison of these uncircumcised. It may be that the Lord will work for us, for nothing can hinder the Lord from saving by many or by few.’ And his armor-bearer said to him, ‘Do all that is in your heart. Do as you wish. Behold, I am with you heart and soul.’ Then Jonathan said, ‘Behold, we will cross over to the men, and we will show ourselves to them. If they say to us, ‘Wait until we come to you,’ then we will stand still in our place, and we will not go up to them. But if they say, ‘Come up to us,’ then we will go up, for the Lord has given them into our hand. And this shall be the sign to us.’ So both of them showed themselves to the garrison of the Philistines. And the Philistines said, ‘Look, Hebrews are coming out of the holes where they have hidden themselves.’ And the men of the garrison hailed Jonathan and his armor-bearer and said, ‘Come up to us, and we will show you a thing.’ And Jonathan said to his armor-bearer, ‘Come up after me, for the Lord has given them into the hand of Israel.’ Then Jonathan climbed up on his hands and feet, and his armor-bearer after him. And they fell before Jonathan, and his armor-bearer killed them after him. And that first strike, which Jonathan and his armor-bearer made, killed about twenty men within as it were half a furrow’s length in an acre of land. And there was a panic in the camp, in the field, and among all the people. The garrison and even the raiders trembled, the earth quaked, and it became a very great panic.”
And down to verse 23:
“So the Lord saved Israel that day. And the battle passed beyond Beth-aven.”
The grass withers, the flowers fade, and the Word of God stands forever and this is His Word, friends.
So just similarly to our friend, John Paton, Jonathan here finds himself and the people of Israel in a similar bind. They’re living in a land promised to them by their covenant-keeping God, but they are surrounded by their enemies. They are disarmed, they are outnumbered, and they are pressed down hard on every side. And at this point in the story, King Saul’s reign, his leadership is in tatters. You will remember earlier in chapter 13 the episode at Gilgal. It shows us just the extent to which Saul had abandoned God. And so God has abandoned Saul’s kingship and removed the kingdom from him because of his disobedience. And Israel was now facing these very real consequences of Saul’s failure. And 1 Samuel 13 ends with this analysis. It says, “Now there was no blacksmith to be found throughout all the land of Israel, so on the day of the battle” – that’s the day of Jonathan’s battle here – “there was neither sword nor spear found in the hand of any of the people with Saul and Jonathan, but Saul and Jonathan his son had them.” Two swords in all of Israel. God’s chosen people, once a mighty army, were now hiding in caves filled with fear, outmatched, with only two swords.
As the reader, we are meant to feel the magnitude of this tension. If you were a beating man, you’d be a fool to put any money behind Israel at this point. But it’s precisely in this type of impossible situation that we begin to see a demonstration of incredible faith, courage, and ultimately the power of God. Now Jonathan first appears in the story at the beginning of chapter 13. He’d already attacked the Philistine garrison at Geba. Again, an act of bold faith and courage, it stirs the hornet’s nest. It provokes the Philistines to assemble for war, so it’s not so surprising in chapter 14. It begins with Jonathan going to attack this garrison and it says he did not tell his father. I wonder why? Jonathan knew that his father would hesitate, that he would command him to retreat, perhaps a lot like John Paton’s friends. So while Jonathan is hatching this daring plan, it says, Saul and his six hundred men are hiding in the outskirts of Gibeah. A scared, impotent king, cowering under a pomegranate tree, contrasted to this courageous son standing with his armor-bearer at the precipice of battle. That’s where this story is beginning.
And the battlefield – let’s look at the battlefield. It was not a simple walk in the park. Between them and the Philistine garrison stood a rugged valley, outside of Michmash, and it’s flanked by sharp cliffs, Bozaz and Seneh, the text said. Like the jaws of a canyon rising. This battle really has all of the ingredients of an epic. You have the trembling Israelite soldiers, the echoing shouts of the Philistines across the ravine, and then you have two men standing on the nearside, Jonathan and his armor-bearer, ready to climb towards certain death.
Jonathan looks up at the outpost and he utters one of the most remarkable statements of faith, I think, in all of Scripture. Look at verse 6 with me. He says, “Come, let us go over to the garrison of these uncircumcised. It may be that the Lord will work for us, for nothing can hinder the Lord from saving by many or by few.” And so with this context in mind, with the battlescene in mind, I just want to talk about two things, or reflect on two things from this statement that Jonathan said.
And the first thing that I want us to notice here is Jonathan’s courage and faith. You see, he knows that God has infinite power, and yet Jonathan does not presume upon God. He is not acting out of bravado or reckless confidence. Rather, Jonathan acts out of a settled trust in the Lord’s character and covenant faithfulness. He sees the stark contrast between who God has revealed Himself to be, what He has promised His people Israel, and the desperate situation that Israel now faces.
And friends, isn’t that really where faith grows? When we’re in that gap between what we know to be true about God, what we know His promises for us are, and what our eyes show us, the circumstances of our life? And we live in that gap where faith grows, unsettled by the distance between those two realities. Humanly speaking, the circumstances that Jonathan faces make obedience and hope totally unreasonable. And yet Jonathan refuses to see the situation as hopeless. He does not claim to know what God must do. Instead, he entrusts himself to what God is able to do. So he steps out in courage, in faith, not because he is confident in his strategy, but because he knows that his God is not limited by numbers or by the weakness of His people. “It may be that the Lord will work for us.” God is not constrained by human limitations, by numbers, by strategies, by budgets, or by the stark reality that there were only two swords left in Israel.
And we look at this and we think this mission is hopeless, but friends, don’t you know this is precisely where God takes us to show us, to put our trust in Him and watch Him fight for His people. And again, I don’t want you to miss the contrast between Jonathan and his father, Saul. One is filled with courage and faith in the Lord, and the other paralysis and fear, sitting under a pomegranate tree.
When I was a young man serving on my first term as a missionary in a Muslim country, I had begun engaging in a number of discussions with Muslim friends on the university campus, and my roommate and I decided to start welcoming them over for dinner. We decided to host the dinner at our house, prepared a bunch of food, we had about six to eight of them that wanted to come, and it was to be a good faith dialogue of the differences between Islam and Christianity, Mohammad and Jesus. And so these six to eight guys come over for an evening of dinner and discussion, but I invited a secret weapon. I invited one of my friends who, we’ll call him, “Moe,” but a few years earlier he had converted from Islam. He was from the local community, but he had converted from Islam to Christianity. And as we sat there, had a wonderful dinner, we began discussing the question of the evening, going back and forth, kind of debating, dialoguing, very kind-spirited at first, the Muslim gentleman began to notice that Moe was defending Christianity, that he was making a case for the Gospel, first timidly, but then slowly with more courage.
Finally, one of the gentlemen stopped the meeting and he looks at Moe and he says, “Brother, have you turned your back on Islam?” And we all looked at my friend, Moe. Big beads of sweat started to form on his brow. And he waits a minute and he says, “Yes.” And then the man looks forward again at him and says, “Are you a Christian now?” And again he says, “Yes.” There was a pause, a pretty heavy pause in the room for a minute, and then the gentleman leans forward and very matter of factly he looks at all his friends around him and he says, “The Quran says that we are supposed to kill this man.” Now, if you want to ever make a dinner party awkward, just say something like that! There was no killing that evening. In fact, the Lord used that meeting and subsequent meetings, week after week, month after month, to really build a friendship between Moe and many of these students and really work in some of their lives in remarkable ways.
But that exchange reminds us of something that’s very real. In that moment, the Gospel was no longer an abstract discussion topic or a comparative religion exercise. For Moe, it was a line in the sand. These Muslim friends, they understood that I could be a Christian; I come from a different place. I’m not from that community. But for Moe, one of their own to be a Christian was a worldview shattering realization for them. For Moe, following Christ was not a preference, it was not about upbringing; it was a matter of allegiance. And everyone in the room knew that allegiance could cost him everything.
Many of us bear witness to Christ in places where the cost is comparatively low. Our reputation may take a hit, let’s say. A conversation may become uncomfortable. Opportunities might narrow. Others of us, we might live in a place where silence is safer than faithfulness, but we’re really not in danger. We might just be disadvantaged by sharing our faith or bearing witness to Christ. But there are some places in this world where confessing Christ risks not just embarrassment or exclusion, but livelihood, freedom, and even life itself. The history of mission is filled with men and women who looked at that cost and did not retreat because they believed Christ was worth it.
It reminds me of a C.T. Studd quote, the great English cricketer turned missionary who famously said, “Some want to live in the sound of church bells. I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of hell.” I can’t help look around our MTW fields, I can’t help but listen to the stories of the missionaries this week about the places they serve, surrounded by spiritual darkness – Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Catholicism, post-Christiandom, Mormonism, even Communism. So many of your supported missionaries are running a rescue shop within a yard of hell. And friends, it really feels like we only have two swords.
So I want you to notice this evening, friends, Jonathan was not alone in his courage and faith. He had a friend who bolstered his confidence in God’s mission. Look at verse 7 with me. His armor-bearer says this to him, “Do all that is in your heart, do as you wish. Behold, I am with you, heart and soul.” And later on in his life, Jonathan becomes the armor-bearer as it were, so to speak, to David. When David later was God’s chosen one, stuck in a seemingly impossible bind, Jonathan would say the exact same kind of words to him. “Whatever you say, David, I will do for you.” You see, this courage and solidarity that Jonathan learns from his armor-bearer then becomes the exact same courage and solidarity that he gives to God’s next chosen leader. Faith begets faith. Courage calls for courage. Dear brothers and sisters, your missionaries need armor-bearers like this. In a very real sense, this is why we are gathered together this week. We need people like you to say to us, “Behold, I am with you heart and soul.”
Last fall, your church sent a small team to spend about a week with us in Japan. Pastor Jamie, Harrison and Paul came and joined us in Japan for about a week or so. We had so much fun. Laughed a ton, ate great food, and as I told them at the end of their visit, as small as it may seem to you, as insignificant as it might seem to you, it wasn’t to us. It encouraged our hearts. In fact, when they left, my ten-year-old daughter, with tears in her eyes, said she would miss them. It might be small, friends, but it means a lot to your missionaries. So thank you. Thank you for bolstering our courage and our faith with your presence, with your love.
The next thing that I want to call your attention to is God’s power to do the impossible. So Jonathan’s faith and courage; now we’re going to look at God’s power to do the impossible. Now tension again, as I said earlier, is deliberate, because God is setting the stage so that no one can boast in anything but God. The rescue, if it were to come, has to come from Him. Again, “It may be that the Lord will work for us.” This statement echoes forward in Scripture, doesn’t it? You think of Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. “Our God is able to deliver us, but even if He doesn’t…” We even get the same theme from Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. “All things are possible for You, yet not what I will but what You will.” What all of these men share is a posture of absolute confidence in God’s power, but also absolute submission to God’s will. You see, faith is not presuming on God. It does not demand that God act in a particular way, but is utterly convinced that God is never limited.
And that conviction is what now comes to explicit expression in Jonathan’s word. He says, “Nothing can hinder the Lord from saving, by many or by few.” This is a radical, theological statement. The Hebrew construction literally says, “There is no restraint for Yahweh.” It means that God is absolutely unconstrained. He’s not dependent on numbers. He’s not dependent on strength or strategy. He’s not dependent on our budget, on MTW recruiting numbers or training. And this theme runs throughout Scripture, doesn’t it? Gideon defeats Midian with 300 men. Moses stood before Pharaoh with a staff. David fights Goliath with a sling. And ultimately at the cross, Christ triumphs over sin and death alone. You see, Jonathan’s theology of God’s power anticipates the Gospel itself. Salvation accomplished, not by an army, not by strength, but by somebody’s power. Only by the act of one man, and by his obedience to a God who is unhindered to save by many or by few. Think of Romans 5:18-19. “Therefore,” Paul says, “as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.” Jonathan’s theology anticipates the Gospel.
I recently had a meeting with the president of Tokyo Christian University, one of the premier seminaries for evangelicals in Japan. It’s sort of the RTS equivalent of theological training in Japan. Japan is a country where less than half of 1% are Christian, and that’s all all stripes of Christian – less than half of 1% are Christian. And the president of this university was sharing with me just the magnitude of the challenge that the church in Japan is up against. He said that the average, somewhat liberal estimate of how many congregations there are in Japan is about 7,000. A country of 125 million. That’s congregations of every stripe – Catholic, protestant, charismatic, you name it. That’s roughly one congregation for every 18,000 people. But due to demographic decline, the population of Japan is dropping off a cliff at about a million people per year. So we have 125 million people in Japan; we are losing a net of 1 million, almost 1 million people every single year. Low birth rates is a big problem in Japan, and we’re seeing this not just affect the overall population and the economy, but the church is no exception.
And so with that decline and with the resistance to the Gospel that we face in Japan, this man told me that we are seeing 100 churches close every single year, net. In other words, we would have to plant 100 churches a year just to maintain the number, let alone make any sort of advance in the number. Then he went on to say that means that within the next five to seven decades, if the trend holds, there won’t be any churches left in Japan – maybe two generations. Now that felt like a wet blanket to me because that’s incredibly disheartening. But I have to believe that that is exactly these types of binds or these types of situations where God’s power shines through. We are few. We are weak. We only have two swords, but nothing can hinder the Lord from saving by many or by few.
And friends, we have every reason to go forward with faith and courage, trusting in the same God who delivered Israel. We have a very clear command from our Lord and Savior, don’t we? “Go into all the world and make disciples of every nation.” And we have a very sure promise from Him as well, don’t we? We have Jesus on record promising us, “I will build My church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” And we know that when the Gospel is preached, He will, by His Spirit, call forth His elect from every nation, tribe and tongue. And even better than Jonathan’s armor-bearer, we also have Jesus saying to us, “Behold, I will be with you, heart and soul, until the very end.” My dear friends, this is probably the best promise you could hold to today – that your Lord and Savior has bound Himself so to you, heart and soul, until the very end as you go out and make disciples of all nations; that He will not leave you and He will be there with you to the end.
Look how our passage ends. I didn’t read the whole thing, but Jonathan and his armor-bearer attack, they kill twenty Philistines, the earth quakes, the garrison panics, and the Philistines start fighting each other. And then our passage concludes with this glorious truth – “So the Lord saved Israel that day.” Our great strength, dear friends, isn’t us. Your strength as a missionary-sending church isn’t your budget or the quality of your missionaries or even your wonderful missions pastor. Sure, God uses them. God uses these things, but make no mistake about it, dear friends, it is the Lord who fights for His bride, His elect from every nation. The Lord saves.
And hasn’t He done this before? A thousand years after this battle, a more epic battle took place. Another Son of a King would step forward into an impossible situation, an impossible battle, not against Philistines but against sin and death. He too would face the enemy alone while others hid in fear. He too would trust His Father completely saying, “Not My will but Yours be done.” And through that act of faith in obedience to His Father, God brings about the most glorious deliverance of His people by one man. For nothing can hinder the Lord from saving by many, or even by one.
John Paton left for the New Hebrides, his friends couldn’t convince him, holding onto that promise – that Jesus would build His Church, even facing impossible odds. He died at the ripe old age of 82, having served the cause of Christ in the South Pacific Islands until his dying breath. Don’t you know, friends, he lived long enough to see the day when thousands of islanders would call upon the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And to this very day – and I have had the privilege of meeting some of these saints – Vanuatu is home to the Presbyterian denomination that John Paton founded, a community of former cannibals bought with His precious blood, still singing the praises of their Savior, Jesus. “Certainly nothing can hinder the Lord.” Do you believe it?
Lord, we believe, but help our unbelief. We fear. Would You give us courage? Anchor us so in Your promises this evening and strengthen us to be obedient and faithful to Your call upon our lives that we would indeed be faithful servants in Your great mission to the world. Forgive us our sins, for they are many. Help us to trust in the finished work of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and proclaim His glorious name to all the nations. Strengthen this congregation to continue to do that and to pursue that to Your glory. It’s in Christ’s name that we pray, amen.