These days when we are not up to it (Sandy Roger) Friday 17th January 2025

AN UNPREACHED SERMON (212)

After heavy snowfalls many will have been out with their shovels trying to clear their drives to get the car out. It is good exercise, but once the thaw comes many wonder if they could have used the time more wisely and just waited for the rain to do the job. What usually takes a good hour can happen overnight with a rise in temperature. This made me think about any mention of snow in the Bible. We don’t normally associate the warmer climes of the Holy Land with snow, but it is there about 23 times. Some references are well known and associated with forgiveness (Psalm 51:7; Isaiah 1:18), God’s control of nature (Job 37:6), and one outstanding quality of a good wife (Proverbs 31:20, 21). Snow is also used to speak of the purity and glory of the risen and exalted Christ (Matthew 28:3; Revelation 1:14).

A lion in the snow - created by Artificial Intelligence. I don't think Benaiah dressed like this!

One of the more obscure mentions has to do with a military man by the name of “Benaiah who went down into a pit on a snowy day and killed a lion” (2 Samuel 23:20, 21). He was well known in Hebrew history for other exploits, but this incredible deed done on a memorable day earned him a sure place in this part of the Bible.

NOTICE WHEN HE SLEW THE LION.

It was not at the height of summer, but in the middle of winter. The deed was done on a day when he would have been at his least able and the lion at its most ravenous. The day enhanced the quality of his action. If ever a man had a good excuse for not going out to face the lion that day it was Benaiah. But he had already fought two lion-hearted Moabite warriors (23:20-22), so what was a real lion to a man of this calibre? What a contrast to the “lazy man who stays at home in case a lion gets him when he is outside” (Proverbs 22:13; 26:13).

Benaiah was a man of great courage, and often this is the quality we need in difficult circumstances. Faith to believe and courage to act belong together whatever we have to face.

NOTICE HOW HE SLEW THE LION.

Many things must have crowded into Benaiah’s mind. Had the snow driven the lion closer to people’s homes? Was it sleeping off its last meal and would wake up starving? Did Benaiah notice its paw prints in the snow and think to himself soon there will have to be either a dead man or a dead lion? Presumably he used the snow to track the lion to its den. In other words, he used what was an obstacle (the snow) to gain his victory over the enemy.

How often in both the Bible and in Christian work God has made use of this principle to achieve His purposes. Is it too much for us to hope that God will use any obstacles and dangers we have been going through recently to bring us into victory over all our enemies? As the American Bible teacher Warren Wiersbe wrote, sometimes “The bumps are what you climb on”. Obstacles are opportunities for great exploits.

NOTICE WHY HE SLEW THE LION.

In short, he got it before it got him. He tracked the trouble back to its source and slew it without quarter, and God wants us to do the same with all the obstacles, enemies, sins and failures we encounter in ourselves or our surroundings.

None of us has the right to feel safe until we have copied Benaiah’s deed in relation to all we have to face in our own nature or our circumstances.

“There is a foe whose hidden power the Christian well might fear,

More subtle far than inbred sin and to the heart more dear;

It is the power of selfishness, it is the wilful I,

And since the Christ now lives in me my very self must die”.

There is an excellent example of this Benaiah attitude in the life of the intrepid Indian evangelist, Sadhu Sundar Singh( 1889-1929). He and his Tibetan companion were crossing through the Himalaya pass in blizzard conditions when they stumbled across a mound of snow containing a half dead man. Thinking only of his own survival the Tibetan refused to help and insisted on pressing on without the Sadhu who with great compassion lifted the man on to his back and carried him through the unrelenting, falling snow. As he carried him the unconscious man warmed up and revived. The struggling through the snow kept them both alive. But before they reached their village destination, they came across the frozen corpse of the Tibetan. In seeking to save his own life, he had lost it. But the brave sacrifice of Sundar Singh led to the saving of his own life and the life of another.

Benaiah’s action in slaying the lion can be placed in the same category of all those who have taken up Christ’s challenge to a life of self-denial for the good of others.  This is the determination showed in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress – “No lion can him fright, he’ll with a giant fight”.  Benaiah’s many exploits may not have earned him a place among King David’s top three mighty men, but he was renowned among the thirty (2 Sam 23:23). Benaiah never dreamed that over 3000 years later somebody would think it worthwhile to talk of what had happened that snowy day, record it in the Bible and use it on a snowy day in Edinburgh to give inspiration in these wintry days.

The whole incident is a powerfully, pertinent parable about those days when we are just not up to it, but can’t get out of the task in hand. There will be many such days ahead, and not all of them limited to the winter months; days in which we will not only have to face snow but kill lions. Benaiah teaches us that it is possible to win on days like that. Thank God for snowy days!