Jonathan's Cave 2 Of 2 Series

Title: How To Behave In A Cave – 7

“Jonathan’s Cave – 2”

Text: I Samuel 13:4-7

This morning I started preaching on Jonathan’s cave. We are going to get all those that were not here this morning caught up in what is happening in this story before we move on to tonight’s message.

In our text we find that during the second year of Jonathan’s father’s reign as king, Saul chose an army of 3,000 men. Two thousand were with him in Michmash and one thousand were with Jonathan in Gibeah.

Remember, Israel only had 3,000 men. The Philistines had 30,000 chariots and 6,000 horsemen AND the single men they had were innumerable. They couldn’t even count how many men were in the Philistine army. The Bible says it seemed like they had so many men they likened it to all sand on the seashore. To sum it up, the Philistines had a big army and Jonathan and Saul had a little army.

With those kinds of odds, what would you do? After hearing of the kind of army that the Philistines had, the next thing the Israelites do is run to the hills, to caves, anywhere they could find to hide from this huge, gigantic army.

Can you sense the fear in the children of Israel? These men, including Jonathan and Saul were running for their lives and they hid from their enemy because they were terrified. The Bible says that they were trembling. They were not only afraid, they were shaking! Have you ever been so scared that you could not stop shaking and trembling? This is the way that the children of Israel were when they received this report. They hid in caves for fear of their very lives. But there came a time when in the midst of Jonathan’s cave that he learned some behaviours and started to put them into practice. This morning we learned that the first thing he learned was:

I. THERE IS NO REASON TO FEAR

Jonathan started out in the cave scared of what the enemy was going to do to him. He and his army hid in their caves for a short time out of fear, but there came a day for Jonathan that he was tired of hiding in the cave and he came to realize I don’t need to fear what man shall do to me. Listen to what Jonathan does:

I Samuel 14:1; ¶ “Now it came to pass upon a day, that Jonathan the son of Saul said unto the young man that bare his armour, Come, and let us go over to the Philistines' garrison, that is on the other side. But he told not his father.”

Jonathan had one of those moments. “It came to pass upon a day,” that Jonathan said, “Enough is enough. We can’t hide from these enemies forever. Have we forgotten the kind of covenant God that we serve? We don’t need to fear, God is on our side.” Jonathan came to his senses and determined that no enemy is going to cause him to fear. While in the midst of his cave he realized that there was no reason to be afraid. Tonight we are going to pick up where we left off:

II. GOD IS NOT RESTRAINED

I Samuel 14:6; “And Jonathan said to the young man that bare his armour, Come, and let us go over unto the garrison of these uncircumcised: it may be that the LORD will work for us: for there is no restraint to the LORD to save by many or by few.”

Can you see the heart of Jonathan that day? There are a couple of things that Jonathan says in this Scripture that stands out to me. Jonathan says, “Let us go over unto the garrison of these uncircumcised.” Why does that have such significance? It is important to note that anyone that was uncircumcised was out of covenant with God. Back then you could not be in covenant with God and not be circumcised. Jonathan was actually saying, “We don’t have to worry because the Lord Jehovah is not on their side, He is on our side.” We are in covenant with God and they are not. Why shall we be afraid? It was like Jonathan just had a memory lapse for the moment that he went into the cave and then he remembered, “Wait a minute, God is on our side. We are in covenant with the great God Jehovah.”

Then he goes on to say, “There is no restraint to the Lord, to the one that we are in covenant with.” When he said there is no restraint to the Lord, He was saying nothing is impossible with our God. Jonathan was in this cave and determined to come out because he was reminded of how powerful his God is. Let’s look at just how powerful God is. There are some of you that need to come out of your cave and tonight you need to determine just how powerful He is. The only way you can determine how powerful God is is through the Word: