Hi, I am Pastor Brent of Faith Alive Family Church in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. Welcome to God Today. I want to talk to you, today, about one of my most favorite Bible characters, Not too many verses spotlight him. He is in the background, but two verses say a lot. In 2 Samuel 23:11-12, “After him was Shammah, son of Agee, the Hararite. The Philistines had assembled in formation where there was a field full of lentils. The troops fled from the Philistines, but Shammah took his stand in the middle of the field, defended it, and struck down the Philistines. So the Lord brought about a great victory.”
Shammah was one of my favorite guys in the Bible because I can just picture him standing there. There was a field of lentils. They probably had been running from the Philistines off and on, hiding, hit and run. The Philistines are overrunning their territory, taking all their food. Here they come again. A troop comes, the Israelites see the troop. It was probably a larger troop than they had and they all fled. I can see Shammah. Maybe he turned, maybe he started to run too. Can you just picture it? He turns, he starts to run. All of a sudden inside he stops. He is like, “You know what? That’s it. I am not running anymore. I am not taking this.” I can just see him slowly turning around, grabbing his sword, pulling it out of his scabbard or maybe out of the ground and standing there and going, “Okay. I am not moving. Today I either die or I live. I am going to win this victory or I am not, but I am not moving off of this patch.” I really love that. It reminds me of when Neo, from the movie The Matrix, when he finally turns and fights the agents. It is very exciting for everybody like, “He is going to fight! He is going to stand his ground! Finally there is somebody who is going to win, somebody is going to fight these bad guys.”
Shammah is a real hero to me. The reason why he fought is because he had a cause. “These are my peas, this is my ground. I am not losing this ground.” So he stands there and he fights. When the troops came they said, “It’s just one guy there. What’s the big deal?” They probably sent a few down. Shammah took them down, and then more down, and eventually took the whole troop down and he won the battle. It says here that, “God brought about a great victory.” You know what? We are all called to defend our lives. We are all called to stand our ground. We are all called to defend our territories. We have to pick up the sword and fight. We have to pick up the sword of the Spirit, the word of God. We have to pray and we have to fight.
There is a misunderstanding today, I think, in the body of Christ, where some people believe that every victory is going to be the Lord’s and we are not going to have to do anything. Yes, there is a precedent for that. Yes, there are times when that may happen. But, I believe that most people fail to win because they fail to fight. So, I think we have to get full of courage, full of strength, and say, “You know what? Lord, I trust you. I know it’s tough right now. I might be facing an army. I don’t know how many foes are standing against me right now. I know that when I pick up the sword and start fighting, God is going to fight for me.”
One last thought is, how hard should you fight when it happens? I am going to read something I found on the internet one time. I think it is particularly funny. Can you picture a monkey holding a gun? The caption said, “If you are going to fight, then fight like the third monkey on the raft to Noah’s ark. And brother, it is starting to rain. Ha!” I think that is a unique statement and that’s’ how we need to fight. Like our very lives depend on it. Let’s pray. Father, in Jesus’ name, I pray for every person who is listening right now. Lord, I pray. Give them courage to stand, give them courage to fight, give them courage to fight like this monkey on the raft to Noah’s ark. Lord, I know that as you do you are going to give them a great victory in Jesus’ name. Amen.