Marks of Supreme Greatness
1. The Perception of God's Full Thought
You will ask, Well, what are the marks of this kind of preeminence? I do not know that it was altogether what these men did that made them excel, although what they did was certainly outstanding. There were others who did very remarkable things. One other went down into a pit and there slew a lion, in time of snow. Well, get into a pit with a lion! A lion at bay is quite a proposition; it presents a challenge and needs a good deal of courage. Others engaged in battle with mighty giants and slew them. These were exploits. These three, perhaps, did something even more outstanding than that. But I do not think it was altogether in what they did that their superiority lay. Of course, Adino slew three hundred men single-handed. (1 Corinthians 11:11 gives number as three hundred, and 2 Samuel 23:8 as eight hundred; the discrepancy we will not discuss at the moment.) Single-handed he tackled this overwhelming situation, and did not stop until the task was accomplished and the last man lay dead. Then of Eleazar we read that there was a band of Philistines threatening to attack a plot of ground full of barley. The rest of Israel fled before them, but Eleazar stood in the midst of the plot and defended it, and slew the Philistines until his hand was weary and clave to his sword (1 Chron. 11:12-14). And what of Shammah? In similar manner he defended a plot of lentils from the marauding Philisitines when all others had fled, and slew the enemy, and thus preserved the food of the people of God.
The above exploits may have their own symbolic significance, but that is not the point. The point is this: these mighty men lived in a day when things were in transition. Something not according to God's full thought for His people was holding the ground. Saul was on the throne, and that was not God's thought. The people had been brought under the domination of this other order of things, and were therefore all the time in peril of spiritual starvation, of defeat, in weakness, bondage and uncertainty. They did not know where they they were nor which way to go. Everything was indefinite and in a most unsatisfactory state, because another thought than God's thought was prevailing among the Lord's people. God's full thought in fullness was centered in David; and the first characteristic of the mighty men, all of them, was that they perceived the state of things. They saw that the word of the Lord revealed as God's mind something more and other than what was prevailing, and that "seeing" was the beginning of the movement, the transition, the secession, to David. That is the first thing - to see what is not generally seen by the Lord's people: the thing which the Lord really would have: that which, if only it were established, would mean such a big change for the people of God. In what greater fullness and on what a higher level they would be living! That is the beginning of the greatness that in principle is here before us. They perceived the thought of God, the direction in which that thought lay, and they said, "We have done with this other! We have been a part of it, but we have finished with it. From now on, we are out for God's full thought, and we are not going to take anything less." They committed themselves to it. That was the beginning of the greatness.
~T. Austin-Sparks~
(continued with # 4 - "2. A Sense of Responsibility")
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