David's Mighty Men
Tom Shrader walks through 2 Samuel 21–23, highlighting David's psalm of deliverance and the stories of his mighty men, with particular focus on Benaiah's three great feats. Drawing on Chuck Swindoll's four themes from chapter 22—God as security, light, strength, and hope—Shrader shows how David's experiences apply directly to the believer's ongoing battles with the flesh, the world system, and Satan. The stories of Benaiah and his father Jehoiada become a final pastoral word: God knows and God builds, even when we face the worst enemy in the worst place under the worst conditions.
“When you're fighting the worst possible enemy in the worst possible place under the worst possible conditions, God knows it. God will build in you.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: So You Really Want a King?
Recorded: 2009 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 51 min
Themes: courage, spiritual warfare, hope, strength, deliverance, perseverance, faithful service, God's protection, feeling exhausted, facing spiritual battles, struggling with sin, feeling overlooked, warrior, mentor, middle aged believer, seasoned christian
Scripture: 2 Samuel 21, 2 Samuel 22, 2 Samuel 22:2-3, 2 Samuel 22:7, 2 Samuel 22:19-20, 2 Samuel 22:29, 2 Samuel 22:31, 2 Samuel 22:32, 2 Samuel 22:35, 2 Samuel 22:50, 2 Samuel 23:1-7, 2 Samuel 23:8-23, 2 Samuel 23:13, 2 Samuel 23:17, 2 Samuel 23:20-21, 1 Samuel 21-22, 1 Corinthians 2, 2 Corinthians 12, Psalm 119, Romans 8:28, 1 Peter 5:8, John 17
Theological Themes: sanctification, spiritual warfare, divine sovereignty, biblical narrative, hamartiology, means of grace, victory in christ, pneumatology
Full Transcript
Introduction and Context
Let me invite you to open your Bibles to 2 Samuel chapter 21. If you don't have a Bible, just raise your hand real high because there are guys coming right down the aisles. They would love to give you a copy, Old and New Testament. It is around page 202, so that will get you pretty close to 2 Samuel.
We are winding down our study of 1 and 2 Samuel. We will finish next week, and then we have Anniversary Sunday, some time leading up to Christmas, and our annual year in review preview coming out of the holidays. Then on January 10th, we will start our new book study, looking at the book of Ephesians in the New Testament.
A Flashback: Famine, the Gibeonites, and Goliath's Sons
As we have worked our way through the book, we have been able to stay pretty much sequential. Here in the last few weeks, we have taken some larger chunks, and one reason for that is clear when you look at chapter 21. David has a flashback recorded to an earlier time, and we are given an incident. There is a famine in the land, and David entreats the Lord, seeking His presence to understand why this has happened. God tells him it is because of Saul, who had violated a covenant he had made with the Gibeonites.
David says to the Gibeonites, "What can I do for you? Is there money I can give you, silver, gold, whatever it might be?" They replied that they wanted seven sons from Saul's family so they could hang them. David obliges, though Mephibosheth is spared.
Then in verse 15, there is another flashback. David is fighting the Philistines, who have invaded the land. He goes down with his servants to fight them, and we learn from the last part of verse 15 that David is weary — exhausted, out of energy. If you have been with us through this study, you have seen that pattern. We have witnessed the highs and lows of David, not just emotionally but physically as well, these moments where he is in utter exhaustion and can barely move.
In the midst of this, they encounter what verse 22 describes as four sons of the giant born in Gath, who fell at the hands of David's servants. The giant born in Gath, of course, is Goliath. So we are told of four of Goliath's sons: Ishbenob, and then Saph, who is killed by one of David's men named Sibbecai, and then Goliath Jr. And then there is one whose name we are not given, but who would certainly stand out in a crowd. In verse 20, during a war in Gath, this man is described as a great man of stature who had six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot — 24 in total, as the text helpfully notes.
David's Five Stones and God's Providence
So we have the story of four sons of Goliath, and four of David's men who kill them. Remember when David went out to face Goliath, he grabbed his sling and took how many stones? Five. We speculated at the time — and you cannot know for sure — that he did not take five because he thought Goliath would be a tough shot. Rather, we suggested he took five because he was confident in his aim: one for Goliath, and one for each of the sons if they decided to stick around. We cannot know that for certain, but it reflects how God works in an amazing way in David's life.
David's Song of Deliverance
That awareness of God's deliverance causes David in chapter 22 to reflect on the deliverance God has given him from the hand of his enemies. If you opened randomly to the book of Psalms and compared the typeset there with chapter 22 of 2 Samuel, you would notice they look the same. What we have in chapter 22 is essentially a song, a psalm. David is reflecting back and acknowledging God as the rock, the fortress, the shield, the protector, the deliverer.
The point we made, and it is a gigantic one, is not just that God was the rock, the shield, the protector, and the deliverer for David — He will be those things for you and me as well. Though these stories are thousands of years old, we study them not simply because they are historically accurate, though they are. We study them so we understand what happened, so we see the interaction between the participants, and so we recognize that the main character in all of it is God. And then we come back to this application: the same God who was the rock, shield, protector, and deliverer for David is the same God who is the rock, shield, protector, and deliverer for you.
Chuck Swindoll's Biographies
Now, a couple of times through this study I have mentioned a biography. Chuck Swindoll has written, I believe, six or seven biographies of different people — one on Paul, one on Jesus, one on Moses, one on Esther, and it seems to me there was one on Jeremiah, possibly one on Isaiah. I know there was one —
When Tough Times Come, God Is Our Only Security
When Swindoll begins to deal with chapter 22 of 2 Samuel, he pulls four points out of it. I thought it would be helpful to look at those four themes today. Here is the first one: when tough times come, God is our only security.
When we use words like rock, shield, protector, deliverer, the one who brings salvation, what is implied in that? If I need a rock, a shield, a protector, and deliverance, the implication is that I am in trouble. I do not need a shield, a protector, or deliverance if I am okay. I need deliverance and salvation if I am in jeopardy.
When times are tough in your life, God ultimately is your only security. We have places where we put false security. We think, well, if I just make this amount of money and put it away, I will be safe. Or if I can complete this class, get this certificate, get this degree, get into this industry, now I am off and running. If I could just open this business — whatever it is.
There are those times, inevitably in life — and I do not care if you are eight years old, you have experienced them at some level — where I need deliverance. And humanly I think, if I do the right things, if I move this over here, if I play by the rules, everything will be okay. It bothers me to watch ads where someone sitting in a big city house says, "I owed the IRS $275,000 and I settled for $12." That really burns me up, because that difference was made up by you and me. There are ads that say you have to have debt, but if it is more than $10,000 worth of credit card debt, come to us and we will get the bank to reduce it. The tone of those ads has actually changed — now it is, "Well, everybody has been bailed out, so now you deserve your bailout."
We see the same pattern in other areas. The vast majority of people are making house payments, making car payments, playing by the rules, doing all the right things, and you look around at the end of the day and think — what? You feel sometimes like it is only a sucker who pays his bills anymore. Everything humanly will ultimately fail you. Swindoll's point is that when times are tough, ultimately your only security is in Christ.
Verse 2: "The Lord is my rock, my fortress, my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom do I take refuge? My shield, the horn of my salvation, my stronghold, my refuge, my Savior, you save me." Verse 7: "In my distress I called upon the Lord. Yes, I cried to my God." We used to sing a song right here that I loved — "I waited on the Lord, I waited, and He heard my cry" — that cry of desperation. "My cry for help came into your ears. You heard it."
Verses 19 and 20: "You delivered me from the calamity that confronted me on that day. The Lord supported me." You were all around David in the midst of his discouragement. You were his support. You brought him to that place. David certainly understood what it meant for everything to fail — he had lost children, he had lost his nation, he had physical issues, his army was in disarray, the land was gone, the people were fighting against him. You have some version of that, do you not? Just at different levels. Who do you trust? Where do you put your faith? What can you rely on? You can rely on Him. Just as He protected David and was his rock and fortress, He will protect you.
When the Days Are Dark, the Lord Is Our Only Light
Here is the second theme Swindoll identifies: when the days are dark, the Lord is our only light. Verse 29: "For you are my lamp, O Lord, and the Lord illumines my darkness." You are the one I can count on. You are the one I can turn to.
Verse 31: "As for God, His way is blameless. The Word of the Lord is tested." What that means is it has been tried. It has been put in the fire. It passes. It is genuine. It is the real thing. Just as a metal is purified by being put in a fire again and again to remove all the impurities, the Word of the Lord has been tested in the same way.
Every once in a while someone will say they are looking for a study — something they can really get into and tear apart. Go to Psalm 119. Get into Psalm 119 and begin to tear it apart — here is what the Word of the Lord does, here is how the Lord comforts me, here is how the Lord spoke to me through His Word. In a dark world, and that is a picture of the world we live in — a world that has lost its true north, a world that is very confused, a world so open-minded that things are going in one ear and not hanging on — He speaks through His Word.
God as Objective Truth
How do we find direction in the middle of a world where there is no right and no wrong, where everything is open-minded and whatever works for you is acceptable? We begin to understand that God is an objective truth, not a subjective truth.
Here is the test I use. If my daughter Sarah were in this room, she would say it is very cold. She has had hives since she was a little girl, and whenever she gets cold she gets very itchy. If I asked whether anyone was warm, there would be voices saying yes, and every once in a while someone would say it is just right. We understand that temperature is a subjective thing — you determine it for yourself, and we are fine with that.
When we come to God, we want to bring that same kind of judgment. You might say God is one thing, someone else says another, and we conclude it does not really matter, that it is like the temperature. But God is not subjective. God is more like two plus two.
Two plus two is four. If you put down three, we are going to say that is wrong. If you sincerely believe the answer is five, it does not matter — it is still wrong. If you think it is 3.9999999, it is still wrong. It is the same with God.
God demonstrates Himself, and He is. While we can know Him from creation and understand order in the universe, we can only really know certain things about Him from His Word. In a world that is dark and confused, He becomes our true north.
God Is Our Strength in Weakness
Here is the third theme: when we are weak, God is our strength. Verse 32 says, "For who is God beside the Lord? Who is the rock beside God? God is my fortress. God is my strength." Verse 35 adds, "He trains me for battle."
The moment I begin to hear about the strength of the Lord, I almost reflexively turn back to my own weakness — to what Paul writes about in 2 Corinthians 12, where he says he has a thorn in the flesh. I have a very good friend who is absolutely convinced that Paul's thorn in the flesh was chronic depression. Others say it was some sort of physical ailment, and it seems as though the majority of people land on the idea that it was some kind of eye condition. I am not dying on that hill — it does not matter to me.
What does matter is that Paul understood through this thorn in the flesh that he was weak. He prayed for its removal three times, and God did not take it away. That seemed to drive in him a mentality that I think is genuinely healthy.
In 1 Corinthians chapter 2, Paul says that when he came to speak, he did not come with really persuasive words. He was not the articulate, wise debater who could outmaneuver every argument. He simply taught, and he did that so God would be glorified — he got out of the way. He accepted his weakness so that when people walked away, they did not walk away talking about Paul. They walked away saying God is really something.
When we are at our weakest — physically, emotionally, relationally, spiritually — we are actually at our strongest, provided we do not turn that weakness inward but let it be focused outward.
Turning Weakness Outward
Here is what I have learned about chronic pain, not because I have experienced it myself, but because I have been around people who have. I will use Susan as an example. It has already happened to me five times today, and I am not complaining — it just happens. People instinctively ask me, "How's Susan?" I am completely fine with that. I understand it, and I will answer one way or the other.
People are good and genuine, and I get it — this is not a criticism. But when people see her, they naturally ask, "How are you doing? How are you feeling?" If the person on the receiving end actually engages fully in that conversation, it takes them further and further inward.
So Susan will say, "You know what, I have good days and bad days. I'm doing all right. How are you doing? What are you going to do for the weekend? How are the kids?" She immediately turns it outward. That is what has to happen to us.
In our pain and suffering, these things come upon us. If we simply let them come around us, they will engulf us like a fog. But in that weakness, if we say, "I really am weak, but there is a reason for it," something changes.
Swindoll writes this sentence: God's great power is perfected in your utter weakness. My power is best displayed when you are weak. When I am asking those why questions — searching for purpose — I do not always get an answer right away, and sometimes I never get one. But the answer is always this: for my good and His glory.
For Your Good and His Glory
Why would God allow this to happen? You fill in the blank. The job is lost. The relationship is over. The physical ailment is there. We believe He is God, and we believe that everything happens — He either causes it or allows it. He is not an absentee landlord. He is in absolute control, and everything happens for a reason and a purpose.
God is orchestrating all things for your good and His glory. Why would He allow this to happen to someone you love so much? For your good and His glory. Why would He let you experience this — which usually means, why would He let this thing happen that is way beyond your control? It is a great reminder that it is for your good and ultimately for His glory. We know God causes all things to work together for good — that is your good and His glory. "Let the people around you see your good works," Jesus said, "and glorify your Father in heaven" — for your good and His glory.
Swindoll makes one final point: when the future is foggy or fuzzy, the Lord is our only hope. That was his concluding comment, drawn from verse 50: "Therefore, I will give thanks to You, O Lord, among the nations. I will sing praises in Your name. He is the tower of the deliverance to the king and shows loving-kindness to His anointed, to David, to his descendants."
When the Future Is Uncertain
It is not just that the past is a problem — though some of you are living in that. Something happened, and it could be catastrophic. It could be that you were dealt dirty in a business deal. It could be that you had a parent who abused you, lied to you, or sexually abused you. It could be some terrible thing.
And it is not just that the past is foggy, or that the present is confusing. It is when you look into the future that the uncertainty sets in. My suspicion is that virtually every person here — and you may be the exception — has thought, "If I could just get that one thing, everything would be okay." And whatever that thing is, you never got it. You look into the future feeling uncertain and unsure, and the only thing you know for certain is that one day you will die.
I officiated at the greatest memorial service I have done in a long time last Monday. In the middle of it, as people were eulogizing their father, their husband, their friend, I thought, "I really wish I were that man." Not because he was a particularly notable person — I just wished I were done. I do not know what the future holds. I do not know what is going to happen. But He does. And ultimately I know this: whatever happens, it happens for my good and His glory.
I may not prescribe it myself. If you asked me what would be good for me, I have a whole list of things I think would be really good. It would be very interesting to send that list to God and see if anything on my list and anything on His list is even remotely similar. But I know this — whatever happens will be for my good and His glory.
David's Mighty Men
When we get to chapter 23, my Bible gives the first seven verses the heading "David's Last Song." Those are some of David's last words, and we will save those for the very end. I want to focus on the next section. Beginning in verse 8, the heading reads: "David's Mighty Men." So here we meet some of David's mighty men.
We meet a man with a very long name who is also known as Adino — and I am grateful for that shorter name. After him is Eleazar, one of the three mighty men with David when they defied the Philistines who were gathered for battle. Look at what happened in verse 9: Israel had withdrawn, and he rose and attacked the Philistines until his hand was so weary that he clung to his sword. He had fought so hard and gripped so tightly that they literally had to pry the sword out of his hand.
Then there is Shammah. When the Philistines had gathered in troops and there was a plot of ground full of lentils, and the people had deserted, he took a stand in the midst of the plot, defended it, struck the Philistines, and the Lord gave him victory.
Four Things We See in These Men
Let me pull four things out of these accounts that we can compare to our own lives. Remember, we are studying these men to see how they relate to our own experience. You can spot all four fairly quickly as you read through.
Number one, these men frequently stood against overwhelming odds — 800 to one in one case. Number two, they fought to utter exhaustion, as we saw in Eleazar's life — clinging to his sword because his hand had given out. Number three, they often fought virtually alone. Did you notice that as we read through? The others had deserted them. And it is worth observing that when Eleazar had slain the enemy, the others came back to take the plunder. God gave the victory, but the lone man did the fighting.
The same dynamic is true in your life and mine. We live a life that is counterculture. We have values, convictions — not just theories, but core beliefs derived from Scripture — and they are not always, but oftentimes, in direct conflict with the surrounding culture.
Feeling Overwhelmed, Exhausted, and Alone
There will be times when you will feel overwhelmed. It is going to feel like it is 800 to 1. In the same way, you will sometimes find yourself exhausted. To deny yourself and to take up your cross and to follow Him is an exhausting battle. Paul tells us, do not grow weary of doing well. Why? Because it is a very difficult fight. You have relentless enemies in the flesh, in the world system, and in Satan, who are relentless in their intent to destroy you.
Sometimes you are going to feel all alone. You ever get that way? You think, I am the only one. Maybe you are sitting at work and you are thinking, I am the only one here. Sometimes you are at school and you are thinking, I am the only one in this whole class — the only one in this whole English literature class who believes Jesus is Lord. I am the only one in the neighborhood. We are the only family on the block.
I had breakfast with a guy the other day who took a stand on a really high-profile issue over the last couple of years, and he has gotten just killed for it. He has gotten killed on all the talk shows, killed by the news media, the newspapers — a combination of all of these. A bunch of Christians came to him saying, "You are doing the right thing," and he said, "Boy, I am glad I can count on you for your support." The response was, "Well, I do not know that there is support — I just think you are doing the right thing." Sometimes you are going to feel exactly that way.
God's Ultimate Purpose Will Be Achieved
Ultimately — and I always have to guard this — God gave them victory, and He will give you victory too. Now, that makes me nervous, because we start to extrapolate that as saying, if I do everything well, then it will go the way I want. That is not what I am saying. Right now I am teaching the book of Daniel, the first six chapters, and one of the things that concerns me is that they do not get eaten by the lions, they do not get consumed by the fire — they get out of all of this. My fear is that we then think, if I do everything right, I will get out of all the lions' dens in my life.
What we are saying is that God's ultimate purpose will be achieved in your life. By that we mean everything will work for your good and His glory.
The Three Mighty Men and David at Adullam
These mighty men are there, and David reflects on them. Then three of the thirty chief men, verse 13, went and came to David at harvest time, and they came to Adullam. If you go back to 1 Samuel chapters 21 and 22 — I do not know if you remember when we were there — David is at a low point. He is drooling on his beard, pretending to be insane, and he finds himself in a cave. He could not be at a lower point when all of a sudden these men come and say, "You are our leader." He is thinking, how messed up must you be if I am your leader?
They come, and David is in the stronghold while the Philistines' garrison is in Bethlehem. David says he is craving just a drink of water from the well at Bethlehem. These mighty men go and they get him this drink. Then David does something that, I have to tell you, seems a little strange to me. He pours it out and says in verse 17, "Be it far from me, O Lord, that I should do this. Shall I drink the blood of the men who went and jeopardized their lives?" Therefore he would not drink it. He is saying, how could I do this to these men who risked their lives? My first thought is, they got the water — drink it. But David understands the weight of what they did.
Abishai and the Thirty
Then they mention Abishai, the brother of Joab, who was the chief among the thirty. He had killed 300 men and was named among the three. So there are these mighty men, there are the three who stand out, and then there is this supporting cast of extraordinary men. He was the most honored of the thirty and therefore the chief commander, but he did not attain to the three. A distinction is made. He had more accomplishments, more medals than the three, but there was one thing that set the three apart, and that was their desire to please the king — to meet David's wish.
We can apply that to our lives pretty easily. Why am I here? Trust and obey. "If you love Me, you will keep My commandments."
Benaiah, Son of Jehoiada
In the midst of all of this, we meet two men — a father and a son. We are told in verse 20 that we meet a man by the name of Benaiah. Benaiah is the son of Jehoiada. Jehoiada means "no God," and Benaiah means "God builds." Benaiah has a biographical sketch in which three things are recorded that he did. Three things. He killed two sons of Ariel of Moab, as recorded in the last part of verse 20. He went down and killed a lion in the middle of a pit on a snowy day. And in verse 21, he killed an Egyptian — a massive man — taking his spear and killing him with it.
We have said that when we read the Old Testament, we frequently see pictures that are explained to us either in other parts of the Old Testament or in the New Testament. There is a level of symbolism here, and the author of 2 Samuel focuses on these three achievements of Benaiah. Let us look at each one of them and see if we can draw out the symbolism — at least what I believe is present.
The Sons of Moab: A Picture of the Flesh
Benaiah killed two sons of Moab. Now whenever we see Moab, the Moabites, Ammon, the Ammonites, the Amalekites, Esau — whenever we see them — they are a picture of the flesh. Remember the story: Lot is running from Sodom and Gomorrah. He has his wife with him, she looks back, and what happens? She becomes a pillar of salt. She is done. Right after that is one of those incidents where you look at it and think, I am not sure I need this in the text. Lot gets drunk with his two daughters —
The Battle with the Flesh
We are looking at Benaiah now and saying he is a picture of a mighty man. If we want to be a mighty man of God, a mighty woman of God, a mighty student that God uses, we need to achieve the same three things that are present in his story. Not to go kill the sons of Moab — I am not saying that — but to kill the flesh. All through Scripture, Moab and Ammon and their descendants are pictured as the flesh, and you and I are in a constant battle with it.
That is why you find yourself, after you have done whatever it is, saying, "I will never do it again." But you do it. When is the easiest time to go on a diet? Right after a big meal. That is the best, easiest time. You are the most committed, the most convinced — full, happy — and you think you can do it. Then the flesh comes.
How many times have you said, "I will never go to that place again. I will never call that girl. I will never email that guy. I will never go on that website." And then you end up right back there. What is that? That is the flesh. The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life. It is the skin that we are in.
Engaging the World System
There is a second thing here, and I am going to take these a little out of order. Benaiah kills an Egyptian, and Egypt is often pictured as the world system. We are in battle — counterculture — with the world system. Our challenge is to be in this world and to not be of the world.
I feel strongly about this, even if it sounds almost too simple to say. The more time I spend with Bible-believing Christians, the more I see the tendency to turn the word "Christian" into an adjective instead of a noun. By that I mean the tendency to only read Christian books, only listen to Christian music — it becomes an adjective rather than a noun.
Now I am all for that. If you get into my car — which is only by invitation — there are six buttons, and the first two are Christian music stations, then an oldies station, then K-Jazz, then a couple of classical rock stations. So I listen to Christian music, I laugh at Christian comics, and I read Christian books. But I also understand what Jesus prayed.
The night before He died, Jesus prayed for His disciples: "Father, as you sent me into the world, I send them into the world." And right before that He prayed, "Father, I do not ask you to take them out of the world; I do ask you to protect them from the evil one." Is there tension in that? There is enormous tension in it. How am I in the world but not of the world? But I am supposed to understand and engage the culture I live in.
So often my fear is that those of us who believe — and we have the best doctrine, the right doctrine, I would argue — we hide behind the doctrine. We keep reading the same books and passing them around, by the same authors who say the same things we already agree with, and we never get out of this cocoon. What value is that to the world? We do not become an illustration of what it means to be different and unique; we become an illustration of what it means to be odd.
Christians in the Marketplace
We ought to be engaging the world — the culture, the political system, the economic system, the business system. The best and brightest of our young Christian men and women ought to be engaged in journalism, in filmmaking, in business — not running from it.
There is something that keeps coming to my mind, and it has to do with business people. If you have a business executive who is doing well at a company — making a good living, doing his thing — and he leaves that to go work at a church or a non-profit, we all somehow think that is intuitively, instinctively, inherently better. It is not.
We need Christian businessmen and women who are in the marketplace advocating Christian values, arguing those values journalistically and politically. That is our call — to be in that world, engaged in that world. Jesus prayed, "Father, I do not want you to take him out of the world; I do want you to protect him, and just as you sent me."
How did God send Jesus? He did not send a caricature. He came incarnationally. That is the model for how we encounter our world. When Benaiah goes and kills the Egyptian, it represents that constant battle with the world system that we are in.
Fighting the Lion in the Pit
Tucked in the middle of Benaiah's story is something really interesting. I will admit that on a first reading, all I could think was, "That is kind of strange — he went down and killed a lion in a pit on a snowy day. What is the point of that? Move on." But Ray Stedman does an entire message on that one phrase, and let me give you some of the picture he draws out of it.
As Stedman looks at Scripture and at the image of the lion, he points to what Peter tells us: who is like a roaring lion? The devil. Benaiah goes and kills a lion — the king of the beasts, the mightiest of all animals, virtually undefeatable except in old age. Just as the lion roars and devours and rules in the animal world, Satan comes as an angel of light and a roaring lion who wants to destroy you.
Benaiah fights the worst possible enemy in the worst possible place — a pit. If you were going to fight a lion, you would want to do it in a wide open space with plenty of room to run, and presumably against a lion with a bad paw. But in a pit you are in a small, closed area. There is nowhere to hide and no way to get away. He is fighting the worst enemy in the worst conditions.
Fighting the Worst Possible Enemy
What happened to Benaiah is that he fought the worst possible enemy under the worst possible conditions in the worst possible place. When I was a kid doing a paper route, we would put newspaper around our shoes and then pull boots over them to insulate them. We didn't have any thermal anything. Well, my brother got me these things recently — you rip open the bag and it's shaped like a foot, it adheres to the bottom of your sock, you put your shoe on, and it sends heat off for six hours. Your feet are hot. You can also get ones that go inside a light glove with a mitten over them and you're just warm.
That's not what Benaiah had. He had none of that — just that numbing cold where you can't even feel your hands, snow blowing, slipping and sliding, the worst possible visibility. So when we look at what Benaiah faced, we have to ask: what do we learn from that?
What the Names Reveal
Let's go back to those names, starting with seniority. Jehoiada means "God knows." Benaiah means "God builds." When you're fighting the worst possible enemy in the worst possible place under the worst possible conditions, God knows it — and God will build in you. Everything that we're encountering is for your good and His glory.
Andrew Murray's Words on Suffering
Andrew Murray was asked by a woman, who was in the midst of enormous suffering, if he had any advice for her. He gave her a copy of something he had written not intending to publish — just for his own edification — at a similarly difficult point in his own life. Here is what he wrote:
"In time of trouble say first, He — God — brought me here. It is by His will that I am in this place, and in that I will rest. Next say, He will keep me here in His love and give me His grace in this trial to behave as His child. Then say, He will give me a blessing, teaching me the lessons He intends me to learn and distributing grace to me. And last say, His timing can bring me out again. How and when, only He knows. Therefore I am saying: I am here by God's appointment, in His teaching, under His training, for His glory."
Those are powerful words. Whatever it is you are in, you are there by His divine appointment. You are there under His teaching, under His training, for His glory. I find that to be extraordinarily comforting. As I look at circumstances I cannot explain, I say: I don't know why, but in this broad sense I understand — it is for my good and His glory. Here is what I need to get on my hard drive: God knows, and God builds. God has me under construction, in this place, at this time, for this reason.
Faith Beyond Full Understanding
I don't fully understand it, but I don't need to fully understand it. I really do mean this — I think I would have a hard time worshiping a God I fully understood. If He is not bigger than me, if He knows no more than me, if He is a God of my own creation rather than who He actually is, why would that God be of any value to me?
I am not talking about intellectual suicide — not at all. The most reasonable thing in the world is for us to understand that the Bible is the Word of God and that it applies to our lives. There are volumes and volumes written on that. Modern scholars have addressed it, and we can go back to the greatest mind America ever produced, Jonathan Edwards, who believed essentially all of the things we would teach here.
Ultimately, though, I have to acknowledge that faith is genuinely engaged in this. You are telling a story of a God who created everything from nothing, who created a man and then a woman, and they ate a piece of fruit and somehow it threw us all into sin. Then this God remained in heaven as one person, with another person of Spirit, and another who became flesh. And when He died 2,000 years ago, somehow — and I hope you have grasped this — when He died, He paid the price for my sin so that I don't have to do anything. He did everything. And then He rose from the dead.
I think that is a tough sell. I am not saying it is not intellectually understandable — I believe it is. I am simply saying there is no way you will ever purely reason your way there. You can reason toward it, but ultimately what must happen is that the Holy Spirit provides the understanding. So if you came in here wound tight, asking how to get the anxiety and tension out of your life — the answer is trust and faith. God knows. God builds. Everything that happens in your life is for your good and for His glory.
An Invitation to Pray
We love the opportunity to pray with you and to meet with you. It is not always the easiest thing to accomplish, but it is possible on a Sunday because we always have members of our pastoral team at the front of the conference center and here in the chapel. They are here to pray with you, meet with you, and answer questions you have. They are here to serve you. Please take advantage of that.
Father, thank You for this amazing truth. Thank You for these men — these mighty men of David, and Benaiah in particular. "God builds" — his father Jehoiada, "God knows." God, You know. Sometimes we really do feel that we are in the worst possible place, facing the worst possible enemy, under the worst possible conditions — but You build, and You know. God, help us in our battle with the flesh, in our battle with the world.
A Closing Prayer
In our battle with the world system, and in our battle with Satan and his demons, we ask for victory for Your glory, not ours. God, strengthen us in Your strength, not ours. When we are weak, we are strong. Help us understand that. We pray this to You in Christ's name, amen.
Have a great week. I will see you next week.