Reading:
Judges 7:1-7. 1 Samuel 13:2-7, 19-23. Ephesians 6:17-18.
As
we come to the end of our meditations on prayer there are
just one or two further things that need to be said, and
these are largely connected with the passages of
Scripture given above.
Gathering
up the content of chapters 13 and 14 of the First Book of
Samuel, the situation is just this: Saul, who officially
represents the people, is in a state where faith in God
is almost a minus quantity. The result is the domination
of fear, and everywhere there is trembling and a tragic
absence of cohesion and oneness. The enemy is in the
ascendant. The people are unable to do anything because,
by a strategic move of the enemy, all the weapons of war
have been removed and the forges have been destroyed. In
the midst of such a situation there is one man at least
who has faith in God, and whose faith sets him in
positive opposition to the prevailing conditions.
Jonathan still believes profoundly in God, and,
therefore, not only denounces the existing state of
things, but repudiates it by setting himself positively
and actively against it. Thus he becomes God's small
instrument for the overthrow of the enemy's power in a
day of almost universal declension. He raises a testimony
in the midst of very general spiritual weakness and
apprehension. Such instances are found scattered through
the Scriptures, and through the history of the Church
since Bible times. There are two things which are
significant and especially to be noted in this story. One
is:
The Strategy of the Enemy
This
strategy meant that the Lord's people were virtually
defeated before there was any battle. Their weapons had
been confiscated and the means for producing more had
been removed and destroyed.
That
was a wily move, and truly one of the master-wiles of the
enemy. Can we not see that in this incident in the
literal history of God's people there is an indication of
how the enemy of God's testimony is always trying to
work? And is not this the very thing which obtains very
largely today? We have seen in our earlier meditation
that the weapons of the people of God are primarily
prayer and the Word. Bringing that back to this special
connection, it at once becomes clear that a master-stroke
of the enemy is to forestall us in that twofold
direction. It is of no small importance to us to remember
that our adversary does not wait until the hour of battle
to set his forces in motion, but is always at work well
ahead in anticipation of that hour. For him to do
otherwise would be fatal to him. The same applies to us.
We have found so often that when we have actually come to
deal with a situation we are unequipped, for the
essential equipment has been taken from us in advance. In
that hour of emergency there is no facility for getting
equipment, and we learn a bitter lesson by helplessness
in a moment of great need or opportunity. The demand is
that we should maintain a steady and strong life of
prayer and in the Word when there is no particular call
or need, and only thus shall we be on the spot and
spiritually equipped when special need arises.
This
unequipped condition represents spiritual dishonour and
loss of position before God. Have you been struck with
the change of title given to the Lord's people in these
chapters? Sometimes they are called 'the Hebrews';
sometimes 'Israel.' If you look closely you will find
that the Spirit of the Lord calls them 'Hebrews' when
they are on the side of the Philistines, and 'Israel'
when they are not. They lose the dignity of that name
'Israel' - a prince with God - when they are on the side
of the Philistines. When they are not on that side the
Lord, in grace, still calls them 'Israel,' even though
they may be in a state of weakness, and far short of what
He would have them be. But the Philistines always called
them 'Hebrews,' and the Lord allows that title to stand
when they are in Philistine hands. Their dignity as 'a
prince with God' has gone. What is it that makes us
princes with God? It is that prayer-life and that life in
the Word. We lose our dignity, our position and our
ascendancy if the enemy robs us of our prayer-life and
our life in the Word. Is that not true to experience? Of
course it is! We were probably taught this when we were
first saved, but there is a special and particular
activity and determination of the enemy that we shall not
pray nor get to God's Word in that larger realm of
spiritual conflict and warfare where the whole testimony
of the Lord is involved, in that 'advance position' of
the people of God where they get away from the earthlies
as Christians and into the heavenlies as members of
Christ's Body. By forestalling, preventing, frustrating
and destroying that prayer-life and that life in the
Word, he will very soon demoralize the Church and its
members spiritually and rob them of their ascendancy.
May
the Lord again bring to our hearts the stress and
emphasis of the necessity for standing against the wiles
of the devil! For they are directed, not only to oppose
the prayer-life that we have, but to prevent us from
having more of a prayer-life and a life in God's Word. Do
suffer this repetition, for I am certain that it is
needed. You realize that if the enemy can have his way
you will not have a prayer-life. He will put anything and
everything conceivable, natural and supernatural, in the
way of prayer to prevent it, and in the way of your life
in God's Word. These are the two mighty weapons of our
warfare. There needs to be that aliveness and awakeness
to the enemy's devices which put us also in the place of
being able to forestall. The Apostle said: "We are
not ignorant of his devices," and to be aware of
what the enemy is out to do is half the battle. Oh!
things come along so often to hinder prayer and our life
in the Word! They come along in such a natural way, in
such an unassuming and unpretentious way that they seem
to be just the sort of things that would naturally happen
and we expect them as the natural and, perhaps, to be
expected things of our lives, but when we have gone on a
few weeks we have found that our prayer-life has gone.
How did it go? The enemy did not make a demonstration,
nor come in some obvious way and announce that he was
going to destroy our prayer-life with this or that, but
it just happened.
Watching unto Prayer
Watch
unto prayer! Watching and praying in this sense is
watching that you may pray, and watching against things
that would stop you praying. And there must be a 'lest'
in us: "lest Satan should get an advantage."
You see, there is forestalling, prevention on our part, a
standing against the wiles of the devil. We must have a
fresh question about very ordinary, natural occurrences
to see if there is not some weapon in them, some subtle
device of the enemy to rob us of prayer. What is it that
prevents the necessary, the essential prayer-life? Let us
ask whether, after all, this is a thing about which we
have to take a stand. Let us interrogate the thing. There
has to be a greater watchfulness on our part against the
strategic movements of the enemy in this direction lest
we have our weapons stolen, or unsharpened. Well, I am
sure that that is a note that needs to be rung out more
and more. Do watch against the wiles of the enemy which
are directed to take away your weapons of warfare, your
prayer-life, and your life in the Word!
The Place of the Word in
Prayer
These
two things are joined together by the Holy Spirit:
"the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God;
praying..." The Holy Spirit has linked these two
things closely. He might have put the sword in the
beginning, or He might have put it somewhere else. You
would have thought that the Apostle, taking in the Roman
soldier as he stood there, seeing the girdle and the
sword attached to the girdle, would have put the sword
next to the girdle and said: 'Having on the girdle of
truth and the sword of the Spirit.' But no, he has taken
the girdle apart from the sword, and he gets on with the
other parts of the panoply which are protective and
defensive, and then he brings the two offensive things
together at the end: the Word and prayer. They are both
basic to a life, not only of being able to resist and
have the defensive, but of actual victory, of overcoming,
a life which is progressively aggressive. That is what
comes out in 1 Samuel 14. There was a sword with
Jonathan, and there was a going up on his hands and feet.
There was the activity of faith with the weapons of
warfare on his part, and he overcame. We have said that
it is a tremendous thing to be able to come with the Word
of God backing up your prayer and to be able to say to
the Lord: "...according to Thy Word." It is a
great strength to be able to give the Lord His Word.
Let
us take Psalm 119 by way of illustration and point out
how frequently the Psalmist used that very phrase:
"Quicken Thou me according to Thy word" ...
"Strengthen Thou me according unto Thy word"
(verses 25, 28). Then let us go on to fill in the word
that corresponds with the petition: "But if the
Spirit of Him That raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in
you, He That raised up Christ from the dead shall also
quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit That dwelleth in
you" (Rom. 8:11). That is God's Word. It is a great
thing to have the Word of God with you in prayer so that
you may take it before the Lord. It gives you a place of
strength. And it is also a great thing to be able to meet
the enemy with the Word of God. The Lord Himself went
into the wilderness and was tempted of the devil forty
days. How did He meet the devil? Just with the Word of
God! The Word of God was His weapon, and in the end He
went through and overcame with that weapon. It is not
that we meet the enemy objectively and begin to quote
Scripture audibly to him. That may be necessary
sometimes, and it may sometimes be good exercise to meet
the enemy with an audible declaration of what God said,
but, dear friends, it is necessary to have God's Word in
our hearts so that we stand on the promises at all times
of temptation and pressure and inward spiritual assault.
We cannot stand on them if we do not know them. There is
a great strengthening of position when you have the Word
of God under your feet. A life in the Word is a very
necessary thing for effectual prayer, and these two
things go together in a positive, aggressive overcoming
of the enemy.
Prayer and the Overcomers
Then
this further thing comes out in this portion: That it is
a small company which is there in that position. Jonathan
says: "There is no restraint to the Lord to save by
many or by few" (1 Samuel 14:6). It is a
comparatively small company, but they represent the key
to the whole situation for the Lord. They stand for the
others in a relative position, and the Lord knows that
the others would be hard put to it were it not for this
small company. The Lord must have them for the sake of
the rest. In the final issue the others come into the
good which this small company has secured for them. It is
what we have so often called 'the overcomer company,' a
little group - comparatively speaking - who are standing
their ground and maintaining their prayer-life and their
life in the Word. These are the hope of the Lord's
people, and the Lord's people have no hope apart from
them. They are the Lord's key to the larger situation,
and He must have them there for the sake of the rest. It
is Benjamin, the link between the alienated and distant
brethren and the one who is by the throne. It is the
little one who is the occasion of their being brought
into the full blessing. It is a privileged position,
although it is difficult, costly and fraught with much
travail and suffering. I must say more to myself, and you
must say more to yourself, about the privilege of being
an overcomer. I am afraid we are very much impressed with
the suffering, the cost and the strenuousness of it, but
it is the privilege of standing in a position which is
going to mean much to the Lord in a great number of
others who may not be in that position at present which
ought to impress us.
If
the Lord is to bring them, He does not do it, nor can He
do it, directly. He does it through the ministration of
those who are in that close fellowship with Him which
represents a mighty victory over the strategy of the
devil. It is a position of privilege, and that is why
those who are going that way with the Lord become the
central object of the devil's hate and malice, and why it
is such a battle for them to maintain the position to
which the Lord has called them. So much hangs upon them
because of the responsibility which is theirs by reason
of the link, and the value of that link, between them and
- perhaps - multitudes of others. So Jonathan and his
armour bearer (and this is the part of the story that I
like so much) had a secret understanding. There were
those two massive, forbidding crags on either side, and
the Philistines were up there in the place of advantage.
Their secret understanding was this: 'If they say that
they will come down to us, all right, we will wait for
them. But if they say: "Come up to us," then we
shall know that the Lord has delivered them into our
hands.' You would have thought that they would have put
it the other way round, for then they would have had all
the advantage and it would have been comparatively easy.
But to believe that being called upon to scale those
difficult, forbidding crags was the Lord's sign of
victory, well, that makes the situation a very strong
one, does it not? And the Philistines said: 'Come up to
us!' So Jonathan said: "The Lord hath delivered them
into the hand of Israel," and as they advanced on
hands and feet, which was very difficult climbing, they
said: "The victory is ours." They were climbing
in a victory, not for
one. They had their weapons, they had faith in God, they
stood in a victory and went on in that victory. And
Jonathan hewed the Philistines down. They fell before him
and his armour bearer slew them. Then the Lord sent an
earthquake. When faith had gone as far as it could go, He
co-operated and sent consternation among the Philistines.
Then the poor, weak Hebrews saw their chance and turned
on the Philistines. That was not very noble, nor very
honourable, but Jonathan had been the instrument to bring
them out of their weakness into strength, out of their
indistinctiveness into a clear testimony, and out from
the place where the clearness of their testimony was lost
into a place where now they could take their stand. And a
lot of people just need a Jonathan activity to bring them
into a clear place. They will come in if the Lord has an
instrument strong enough to meet the enemy on their
behalf, but they will not come in until there is
something that begins to smite the Philistines for them.
Are you going to be one of these?
The Sifted Company
I
must close, but I do want to say just a word about the
Lord sifting down until He gets something like that,
about the necessity for reducing unto effectiveness.
Jonathan, his armour bearer and a little company
represented a sifted people. They were sifted down on
this matter of faith in the Lord, and they were sifted
right down to the ground where prayer and the Word were
their very life. Gideon's company represented that: a
sifted company brought down to a position of absolute
faith in God, for that was what God was after -
"Lest Israel vaunt themselves against Me saying,
'Mine own hand hath saved me"' (Judges 7:2). They
had to be right down to a place where God was their only
estate, and faith in Him was the ground upon which they
stood. Then every man had to put his sword on his side
and stand in his place. You have a very good picture in
Gideon's 'three hundred' of a sifted company standing in
prayer and the Word of God: "The Sword of the
Lord" - the Word of the Lord. The Lord saw to it
that all who had heart trouble went home, for a fearful
heart is useless. Faith is necessary here. A divided
heart is no use and disqualifies its owner. A fearful
heart was the first test, and a great host went home
because they were fearful-hearted. A divided heart was
the next test, and those who went down on their hands and
knees to drink the water showed that they were not wholly
ready for this business. Those who stood and lapped out
of their hands were eager, for they kept on their feet,
and this drinking was only done because it was necessary.
Those
who lapped were of undivided heart and were wholly in
this business. A divided heart disqualifies, and the Lord
sees to it that divided hearts are sifted out. At last He
gets His company, and they are all with Him in the faith
of the Son of God, having a life of deep fellowship with
Him in prayer and in the Word. That will always be a
sifted company, and we should not be discouraged or think
that a strange thing has happened when the Lord begins to
sift out and many go home. That is the Lord's way of
getting effectiveness. He must sift. He Himself, while
here on the earth, gave us very much in His personal
teaching in this very connection. He calls, and the
reactions to His call are: "Lord suffer me first to
go and bury my father." Then there are other
interests: "I have bought five yoke of oxen and I go
to prove them"; "I have married a wife";
"I have bought a piece of ground, and I must needs
go and see it." That is a divided heart! And then we
have His own word: "If any man cometh unto Me, and
hateth not his own father, and mother, and wife, and
children, and brethren, and sisters, yea and his own life
also, he cannot be My disciple"; "Whosoever
doth not bear his own cross, and come after Me, cannot be
My disciple." That is no faint heart! The Lord calls
for that, and by the three hundred He delivers the
Midianites into our hands, and He saves Israel. They are
the salvation of the rest.