Wrestling With Lions Series

Chase the Lion - Benaiah

2 Samuel 23:20-23

1 Chronicles 11:22-25

1 John 4:4

June 5, 2022

Some of you may know this, most of you don’t know this . . . last year I was asked to be the volunteer police chaplain for Alexandria. I didn’t have to think too long before I said, ‘sure, I’d love to, but I really didn’t know much about being a police chaplain.’ Long story - short, I went to a conference, have a mentor who I can talk to and have learned a lot along the way, most especially on the job.

The reason I say this, is that I’ve had the opportunity to ride along, to be involved in some crime scenes, usually they’re death scenes, so they’re not pleasant. But one of the things I want to talk about to start this message, and please understand this is not a political statement.

One of the things I was told early on when doing a ride along, is I am always to follow the instructions of the officer. They have no clue what they are walking into, but they go. In one of the books I read, the author, Dave Grossman, compares police officers to sheep dogs. They are the protectors, they are the ones who fight off the wolves in order to protect the sheep, sometimes at their own peril.

There’s a lot of bad press about police officers, but most of them, and I would say the majority are really, really good and they care. I’ve been involved in bloody scenes, and it was the officers who cleaned up as much as the could. They are the first responders.

We can remember 9/11 and we know of many fire fighters and police officers who went back into the burning buildings in order to save as many people as possible, even knowing they might be killed and many were in the process.

This leads me to the topic for the next 3 weeks. We’re going to talk about a theme from a book with a really interesting topic. As part of it, we’re going to look at 3 guys who really stepped out in what some may call blind ignorance, but what I would call the certainty of faith. The book’s by Mark Batterson,

And it’s called In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day

How’s that for a title. And it’s biblical. It’s a story about one of the men in King David’s bodyguard. It’s about one of his soldiers who was more like a sheepdog. It’s the story about a man named Benaiah. We’re going to look at his story and the story of a couple of other men from this section of scripture. I’m going to read a passage from 1 Chronicles 11:22-25 - - -

22 And Benaiah the son of Jehoiada was a valiant man of Kabzeel, a doer of great deeds.

He struck down two heroes of Moab. He also went down and struck down a lion in a pit on a snowy day.

23 And he struck down an Egyptian, a man of great stature, 7 ½ feet tall.

The Egyptian had in his hand a spear like a weaver's beam, but Benaiah went down to him with a staff and snatched the spear out of the Egyptian's hand and killed him with his own spear.

24 These things did Benaiah the son of Jehoiada and won a name beside the three mighty men.

25 He was renowned among the thirty, but he did not attain to the three. And David set him over his bodyguard. - 1 Chronicles 11:22-25

So, that’s Benaiah! He doesn’t sound like a guy you want to mess with. We’re going to look at some of these warriors and what their stories can teach us. Even though most of them are short and brief, I think we can learn from them.

The challenge in stories like this are that we know the outcome. We know Benaiah wins the battle. It’s like when we read the NT, we read with modern eyes, and we know and believe in the resurrection. So we look at the disciples and think they are knuckleheads for not believing, but we think that way because we know the end of the story and they didn’t.

Normally at moments like this one for Benaiah, when we see a lion, we tend to either stand still or run. Of course running isn’t going to help, since the lion is going to pass you in a matter of seconds. But our instinct at those moments is to run! But, as Mark Batterson explained in his book, ‘lion chasers aren’t wired that way. They don’t run away from what they’re afraid of. They run to the roar.’