Job 39:21: “He goeth on to meet the armed men.”
The warhorse is not afraid of confrontation. He expects it and willingly marches on to meet it. He knows that confrontation and battling it out with the enemy is what he was born for.
Immediately following Jesus’ baptism, the Holy Spirit led Him into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil (Matthew 4:1-11). Verse 2 says: “And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights.” Spiritual warfare requires the discipline of the spirit and this is where prayer and fasting is very important.
Prayer and fasting deny the flesh its appetites and tune the spiritual senses to high alert. Fasting and prayer make us not only more alert, but also more aware of the enemy’s strategies. They save us from being caught off-handed by some surprise attack or broad-sided by the enemy.
The devil hit Jesus at His physically weakest moment: “He was afterward hungry.” However, through fasting and prayer Jesus was well prepared for the devil’s armed attack. An unarmed enemy is called a “soft target,” but strangely enough, in this instance, the enemy (the devil) was armed with Scripture as well as darts of doubts as to Jesus being the true Son of God. We are living in a time when many of God’s people are deceived by preachers and teachers, who like the devil, twist the Scriptures and quote them out of context. The true doctrine of Scripture is not what one Scripture on its own has to say, but rather what all the Scriptures have to say on a particular subject.
I am sure the discipline of Jesus’ fasting and prayer would have given him a far greater advantage to respond with a powerful impact of what the Scriptures really had to say. Jesus said: “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (Job 8:32). Jesus did not know a little truth; He knew all the truth because He is the truth (John 14:6).
When Jesus was about to face the battle of all battles-- the “armed men” of Jerusalem, He fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah 50:7: “For the Lord GOD will help me; therefore shall I not be confounded: therefore have I set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed.”
Luke 9:51 tells us: “And it came to pass, when the time was come that he should be received up, he STEADFASTLY SET HIS FACE to go to Jerusalem.” Like the warhorse going on to meet the armed men in Job 39:21, nothing in all the world could possibly deter Him.
Men, as we face the armed men in our lives, we must also set our faces like a flint. Flint is hard rock. It is unbendable. This should be out attitude as we go out to meet the armed men who come against us.
Be encouraged.
Colin Campbell