Generational Baggage

And he said unto him, Fear not: for the hand of Saul my father shall not find thee; and thou shalt be king over Israel, and I shall be next unto thee; and that also Saul my father knoweth. (1Samuel 23:17)

Have you, like me, wondered why Jonathan’s prophecy here excluded him?

Why did he die before his vision and revelation was actualised?

What we do with the revelations we receive is the purpose of this post.

Jonathan was positive that David would be king. He had even pledged his royalty to that reality.

Incidentally, apart from Jonathan, Saul himself confessed that he was positive that David would become king even as he was pleading for mercy once that happened, incidentally when he himself was seeking to kill the same David.

It goes to say that revelation is not enough motivation or drive for action. A confession, however inspired, is also not adequate to drive one to action.

Nobody will go to hell because of their ignorance. It will be because of their rebellion.

Allow me to look at Jonathan for a moment

Jonathan was Saul’s crown prince, meaning that he was the one waiting to take over the kingdom from his father, either through death, abdication or even wilful surrender.

But he knew that it was a gone kingdom anyway, because of his father’s rebellion.

But David’s was a future kingdom, however solid it looked. It was a vision, however clear it may have appeared.

Jonathan was therefore torn between an actual kingdom and a promised kingdom. He was torn between sight and faith.

He was torn between a bosom friend he could do everything for and a father who was counting on him to govern.

The fallacies and errors inherent in his father’s leadership may have surely required the steady hand of a supportive crown prince.

He knew that his father was rejected. However, this blundering father needed him as a faithful son. Meaning that however rejected he may have been, he still needed the support of his crown prince because he counted on him to perpetuate his rejected kingdom.

For as long as the son of Jesse liveth upon the ground, thou shalt not be established, nor thy kingdom. (1Samuel 20:31)

Jonathan was thus torn between God’s revelation and a father’s expectation.

He simply could not make a clean break between one or the other.

On the one hand, he defended and protected and encouraged David with everything he had while on the other hand still followed his father in his mission of killing the same David.

However, by sticking with his father, he was delaying what he knew was surely going to happen, since he knew that it came from God

I hope you are getting something here.

That was the cause of his death.

And that is why he was not able to accomplish his greatest dream of serving under God’s appointed king.

He was overtaken by events that he had prior knowledge of because he was not willing to take the plunge and walk with the revelation he had.

Do we do that?

All the time.

We are always faced with choices between God’s revelation and filial responsibilities.

This is because the same God who ordered us to honour our father and mother said that to follow Him we must hate them.

That balance between honour and hate is what caused Jonathan his life.

I do not mean that he ought to have hated on his father because even David, whose life Saul sought, never also hated him.

When loyalty to father conflicts with God’s revelation however, there is not much of a choice.

Of course it will be treated as betrayal. As if his relationship with David was not treated thus.

The lack of that clean break was the cause of Jonathan’s dilemma.

This is because he was already being treated as a saboteur by his father due to his relationship with David, at one time missing death by a whisker from his father for it.

Though defecting to David could have clearly indicated that he was taking sides, staying with his father yet maintaining a working contact with him was not any different.

Suppose he had defected to David?

Chances are that his father could have stopped looking to kill David because he couldn’t have risked killing his son in the process.

Reminds me of my father.

He was in the colonialist’s army, secretly serving the Mau Mau.

Until his only brother, and a younger brother at that, went to the forest.

The war then became personal because two brothers are on opposite sides of a single gun.

He simply couldn’t risk even accidentally killing his younger brother for the whole world and therefore joined him in the forest.

His defection may have even led Saul to repent because his rejection could then not be denied.

Jonathan therefore denied his father the chance to repent by supporting him in his rebellion.

But again, suppose that his father had died and left the crown prince alive.

How easy do you think it might have been for the army to allow him as the new king to submit to this imaginary anointed king that revelation had showed Jonathan? How easy could it have been for them to play second fiddle to these upstarts just because their new king said so?

If Abner, the general, raised someone so low in the line to be king instead of allowing David, yet he, like Jonathan, knew that David was God’s choice for king, do you think he could have allowed the crown prince to abdicate to an outsider, however revelational his anointing was?

It is possible that the army could have simply killed him before allowing the kingdom to go outside their tribe since that could have automatically lowered their positions as the new king would have to raise his own command.

The wisest and godly choice for Jonathan was to join the king he was convinced had been raised by God since it could have avoided so much pain and probably save so much time.

And we face those choices all the time.

How many believers stick with a fallen and unrepentant ‘father’ because of what they had done for them when they were living right? And in their folly, they are convinced they are doing God’s will.

How many believers are stuck in a church that abandoned the faith ages ago because of their fire generations ago?

How many stick to spiritual hearths that are devoid, not only of any coals, but even of ash that indicates a past presence of fire because that is their family culture?

How many believers stick to doctrines and practices they clearly know are unscriptural because they do not want to rock the boat that is their history?

How many know their Bibles enough to know that the way they pray and do religion is unscriptural yet cannot change it because past revivals did it?

How many stick to pretentious traditions that are clearly unscriptural because that the way things have been done?

You will wonder why someone should believe and presume to follow Christ yet refuse to leave their traditions, even ecclesiastical ones.

Jonathan died because he was not willing to make a clean break with what was blocking God’s king from reigning. We will die, and we are dying, because we are not willing to leave everything the word of God says we should leave. Or, we are not going the whole hog into where God calls on us to go.

Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen. (Matthew 28:20)

99% is not all.

Will we walk with all the revelation God releases to us?