Armored Division

His armor-bearer responded, “Do what is in your heart.  You choose.  I am right here with you whatever you decide.” -- 1 Samuel 14:7 (HCSB)

People like Jonathan’s armor-bearer show up in Scripture and in history and sometimes in our everyday lives.  It’s like Mary saying, “Let it be to me according to your word,” or Thomas saying with resignation, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”  I am greatly humbled by the Virgin’s willingness to bring the Anointed One to us.  I am moved by the willingness of individuals to move forward in the face of what they believe to be certain death.  On June 6, we were reminded that, seventy years ago, tens of thousands of such men scrambled out of landing craft onto the beaches of Normandy.

The armor-bearer was the man who watched the warrior’s back, who sought to keep him from being struck down by a flying arrow or flung javelin.  It wasn’t a particularly safe occupation, and, while he might not have been swinging the sword, an armor-bearer was certainly in the midst of the battle.  In the case of Jonathan’s armor-bearer, it would not have been unrealistic to think that he was following the prince on a suicide mission.  Jonathan proposed going up and challenging the Philistine garrison.  That the Bible records the two of them slaying twenty men on an area of about a half-acre indicates the odds were at least 10 to 1. 

I have heard that, in some of the more upscale congregations, there is a position of “armor-bearer” for the pastor.  I suppose it sounds more biblical and less eeewww-inducing than “body-man” or “butt-boy”.   By the way, having lived an unsophisticated life, the first time I heard “butt-boy” was when an evangelist friend said in regard to pastor who had acted duplicitously toward him, “What does he think I am?  His butt-boy?”  I had to ask for clarification. Personally, I don't want to have anything to do with a body-man unless it's one of my friends who is helping me bury the bodies.  Like the FBI agent who says to Swagger in "Shooter", "I'll get his legs." 

There is no friend like the friend who won't run away and leave you hanging when things get tight.  If you don't have a friend like that, you can still be that kind.  

 

As Christians we do need to bear armor for one another.  The church would be stronger, congregations more cohesive, and pastors and leaders a lot less apt to fall into sin and abuse their offices if we covered our brothers and sisters.  We do not need an official position to shout a warning, to defend, to challenge, or to pray for someone. 

Most of all I wish that I could be as willing as that armor-bearer to say to the Lord, “You choose.  I’m right here with You.” 

It is God’s will for man to have free will, to experience liberty.  It is man’s joy to surrender that liberated will freely to God, to follow Him in whatever He decides.   

We might think God doesn’t need an armor-bearer, but there is a familiar passage that suggests otherwise:  Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. When you think about it, that was the armor-bearer’s job, to stand firm, keeping the king was covered and holding the ground he had taken.  Jonathan was knocking the enemy down and his armor-bearer was making sure they did not get up again.  Christ has won the victory, but a lot of the enemy’s enterprises could use a right good coup de grâce. 

The New Has Come

In the eighteenth chapter of Jeremiah, as noted yesterday, the prophet was sent down to see the potter form clay into a vessel.  In the next chapter a clay pot is again involved:

Thus says the LORD, Go, buy a potter's earthenware flask, and take some of the elders of the people and some of the elders of the priests, and go out to the Valley of the Son of Hinnom at the entry of the Potsherd Gate, and proclaim there the words that I tell you.

…

Then you shall break the flask in the sight of the men who go with you, and shall say to them, Thus says the LORD of hosts: So will I break this people and this city, as one breaks a potter's vessel, so that it can never be mended. Men shall bury in Topheth because there will be no place else to bury.  

…

Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, behold, I am bringing upon this city and upon all its towns all the disaster that I have pronounced against it, because they have stiffened their neck, refusing to hear my words.  – Jeremiah 1:1-2, 10-11, 15

As long as we are not “set in our ways”, so long as we are pliable, we have hope.  It might be better to say that so long as we have hope, we are pliable. 

I think there is something else we can draw from these pictures.  God chose a man to bring forth a nation in order to bring a Man, the Last Adam, the progenitor, not of a new nation, but of a new race of men.  Israel was separated out from the nations.  Judah was separated out from Israel.  The line of David was separated out from Judah until God found one little girl named Mary. 

We look back at history and see that, but who saw it coming?  The people of Solomon’s day might have gloried in the magnificence of his reign, but some lived to see the end of it.  Did they think that the breaking away of the ten tribes would serve to bring the Messiah?  Did those who saw the northern kingdom fall ever deeper into apostasy until they were carried away and lost in exile think this was somehow God’s plan?  What did they think when the wicked kings of Judah reigned?  When the prophets spoke out and no one heeded?  When Jerusalem fell?  When the Jews were persecuted and slaughtered by Antiochus Epiphanes?  When the Romans became their rulers?

God took a nation and a people through trials and tests, through disasters and wars, defeat and exile, through brokenness to find one single individual.  The nation He had so lovingly shaped had to be shattered because they had become hardened against Him.  There among the shards, He found something He could take up and use.  He found goodness, righteousness, holiness, surrender.  There was someone who would say, ”Behold, I am the servant  of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.“ 

In my twisted mind, this all ties together with what I said yesterday, so if I repeat myself, that’s the reason.  The Lord was seeking to make that perfect Vessel – Jesus, yes, but, first, He needed Mary.  He needed those qualities found in David and refined through hundreds of years to be both strong enough and weak enough that it might contain the Divine, the Logos and the Light of the World. 

The Law of Moses is given that there might be containers fit and able to bear the truth, that the Receptacle might be found, set apart and formed.  To be filled, a cup must be empty, and no one wants to pour pure water into a filthy cup.  The Law’s job was to form, to empty, and to purify.  The Law could only create the space – the thirst and appetite for the Infilling and Indwelling. 

Ultimately, the Law reached its limits.  It had shaped a people; it has shaped us.  There is still the problem of purity.  Something was needed, and that was the Cross, the Blood of Christ, sufficient to cleanse each container.  

Christ has come.  He lives eternally in the resurrected, glorified body, that perfect vessel.   We are the individual, distinctive, inimitable receptacles making up the new creation.  Now we need worry no longer about the exterior of the jar, its size or shape.  It’s just a jar of clay, shaped for a unique purpose, designed for an exclusive destiny, formed with all the loving artistry of the Creator and made holy by the death, burial, and resurrection of our Lord. 

But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us  (2 Corinthians 4:7).