Verses 1-45
Religious Explanation of Failure
Even that is a word of comfort. The comfort is not far to fetch, even from the desert of this stern fact. The comfort is found in the fact that the Lord will be with those who have not turned away from him. The law operates in two opposite ways. Law is love, when rightly seized and applied; and love is law, having all the pillars of its security and all the dignity of its righteousness to support it in all the transitions of its experience. The reason why we fail is that God has gone from us. Putting the case so, we put it wrongly. God has not gone from us: we have gone from God. What we want is more plain speaking to ourselves. Until a man can see the word CRIMINAL written in capital letters upon the very centre of his heart, and can spell the word, pronouncing each letter with tremulous deliberation, and uttering the whole word with broken-hearted-ness, he does not begin to touch the gate which opens upon the kingdom of heaven. He must not apply the word sinner to himself too familiarly, because it is a common name; it is an appellation written upon the whole belt of the world, and can therefore be used with vague generality. The term is right enough: it is a necessary term; but it must be so personalised and accentuated and driven home that there can be no mistake about the individuality of its application. When we see the sin, we will cry for the Saviour. The Church is nothing without its godliness; it is less than nothing: it is not only the negation of strength, it is the utter and most helpless weakness. Israel was the Church in the wilderness, and Israel was nothing without its God. The number might be six hundred thousand fighting men, and they would go down like a dry wooden fence before a raging fire, if the Lord was not in the midst. They were not men without him. The Church lives, moves, and has its being in God not in some high or deep metaphysical sense only, but in the plain and obvious sense of the terms: that it has no being or existence outside God. When it forgets to pray, it loses the art of war; when the Church forgets to put on the beautiful garments of holiness, though it be made up of a thousand Samsons, it cannot strike one fatal blow at the enemy. Let us understand this with some clearness. The Church is assembled, say, a thousand strong; but if every man in that thousand has turned from the Living God, what does the thousand account for in battle? For nothing! Ceasing to be godly, they cease to be men, in any sense significant of devotion, energy and successful application of resources. They were only made men by their goodness; it was only while they prayed that they stood upright; whilst the hymn was singing in their hearts and outpouring itself from their grateful lips, they were men who could fight and win, every stroke being a victory, but when they left off their religion, or their religious loyalty, they did not become as other men; it is impossible to fall back into the common quantity of human nature after having been in heaven: the fall is deeper than that. When Lucifer fell, he fell into a bottomless pit: wherever he is, he is falling now. So the Christian professor, having turned aside from God, does not become an ordinary man and take his old place in society, and be just as he used to be in the old times when he never prayed or confessed the holy Name. We do not fall back upon our old selves: we fall into perdition. The Church is not a club, nor is it so much physical force, nor is it, in any technical sense, a mere army of men drawn up in battle array, equal to the fight, whatever their principles may be. Again and again let it be said, till the densest heart responds to the tremendous appeal, the Church has no existence apart from its godliness. It is constituted upon divine foundations; it is animated by divine impulses; it is inspired by divine motives; it is protected by divine security. A Church that has lost its faith has lost itself. You cannot have an unbelieving Church, a faithless Church: when the faith has gone, the Church has gone. Were there not, then, a thousand men of Israel against a thousand men of Amalek? No; the thousand men of Israel had no existence but for God. They represented an idea, a kingdom, a divine purpose, a theocracy, a wholly new thought in the universe; and apart from that, they became minus quantities. A thousand men of Israel were a thousand men plus God. Men cannot lose their godliness and keep their character. A man who has once really prayed can never go back to the common speech of men and be as if he had never prayed when he goes back; the common speech becomes profanity in lips which have forsworn their own oath. You cannot take the statistics of the Church. You cannot be numbering men and saying, The Church is thus and so, as to quantity, force, and influence. The Church lives upon bread the world knoweth not of. Count the Church by the volume of its prayer; register the strength of the Church by the purity and completeness of its consecration. If you number the Church in millions, and tell not what it is at the altar and at the cross, you have returned the census of a cemetery, not the statistics of a living, mighty, invincible host. Genius is nothing, learning is nothing, organisation is a sarcasm and an irony, apart from that which gives everyone of them value and force the praying heart, the trustful spirit. The Church conquers by holiness. There is an answer to grammar; there is no reply to self-sacrifice. Men may smite theology of a formal and scientific kind, or may render its existence a perpetual risk; but there is no answer to the love which hopeth all things, endureth all things, love which is mightiest when the clouds are darkest, and most redeeming when the sin is most complete.
We shall conquer the Amalek world when we have conquered our own hearts. God does not fight for nominal believers. Israel represented nominal religion. The Amalekite and the Canaanite would be represented as peoples of heathenish relations and conditions, and Israel would be represented as the people of God. But the Lord will not fight the battles of nominal believers. By the very righteousness which makes him God he prefers an honest idolater to a dishonest nominalist. That is a thought which should make us consider our position. An idolater may be honest; but a professing Christian, if not faithful to his profession, is not merely unfaithful: there is no term that can describe the turpitude of his wickedness. The Lord will make Amalek conqueror and send down the Canaanite to burn the dry stubble of prayerless Israel: "the Amalekites came down, and the Canaanites which dwelt in that hill, and smote them, and discomfited them, even unto Hormah" men that might have been beaten back by a hand that was true to Heaven. It is right that the heathen should conquer when the Church is unfaithful. It is solemnly right that the heathen should mock the land that sends out missionaries one day and doers of all evil the next, if not in the same ship. What wonder if the heathen laugh at the missionary when they see immediately behind him the man who is to undo all that the Christian evangelist attempts to accomplish? It may be rough logic it may be reason in which many a flaw can be found by penetrating minds; but it is. not to be wondered at, considering the nature of heathenism and the intuitions of common sense. You have no right to ask God to go with you merely as a convenience. Amalek is in sight, the Canaanite is on the alert, the walls are thick with the enemy Lord help us! that is a coward's prayer, and Heaven will be empty to that cry; the shout will dissolve in echoes, because the heart is not faithful towards God. Who does not make a convenience of his religion? What coward is there who does not pray when he wants fine weather for the wedding at which he will make a sot of himself? Or who does not pray because a spirit dim, spectral, black is in the air, and may any moment alight upon the roof or quench the household fire? But the prayers of the wicked are an abomination unto the Lord. The air is vexed with cries of atheistic distress which want to ennoble themselves into momentary prayer.
Moses told the people of Israel exactly how the case stood, "and the people mourned greatly"; and afterwards they said they would go up, and Moses replied, "Go not up, for the Lord is not among you; that ye be not smitten before your enemies. For the Amalekites and the Canaanites are there before you, and ye shall fall by the sword" your only safety is in not going up; but the people "presumed to go up unto the hill top." They thought they were still men, though they had turned away from God. Not one of us could live a moment but for the mercy of Heaven. We have no "selves" in any sense significant of independence and self-invigoration and self-renewal; we are God's offspring. As well let the little grass-blade leap up out of its green bed and say it will live, without rooting itself in the earth or warming itself at the sun, as for us to say we will live, in any profound and immortal sense, without dependence upon the mercy and redeeming help and grace of God. We are in danger of living lives of presumption. Surely, we think, God will not remember that we have not paid him our tribute of prayer. Surely, in all the streams of praise continually flying towards his throne as towards the centre of the universe, he will not miss our little rill of adoration and confession. So we deceive ourselves. We presume: we say we will take our chance: we will go out under all circumstances, and see what can be done, and, behold, we have put our sickle into a field of darkness, and if we bring back aught with us, we bring back sheaves of fog. There is no life without God, no true fighting without faith, no lasting conquest that does not express the righteousness that accomplished it.
The picture is most graphic. There was only a hill between Israel and the land of promise. One stony mountain or range of hills. Surely, the space being so small some concession will be made to Israel? If God could concede one inch to the bad man, he could concede all heaven. No concessions are made to unbelief. This religious life is not a matter of proportions; we do not come into fraction and decimal here, and throw things in as if they were of no consequence. A ship may go down within ten feet of the shore; the vessel that has come proudly over the main may be wrecked in the channel. There is to be no intermission of service; no space is to be accounted trifling; no action is to be regarded as of but secondary consequence. There are no days off duty. May not a man pray six days and do what he will on the seventh? It is morally impossible. The law is one, goodness is one, loyalty is one. This is not a theological mystery: this is a simple matter of daily experience and personal proof. We cannot love our friend six days out of the seven and disregard him on the seventh. If it is impossible in human relations, how can it be possible in divine relations? Love makes all the week into a Sabbath day. Faithfulness accounts that every moment of time is due to those with whom we have covenanted as to its duties and its remuneration. Find a man who can say, This is but one hour taken from the service which I have pledged and for which I have been paid and you find a thief. Find a man who will take ten minutes to do a piece of work which he could easily have done in five, and will receive payment for it, or set up a right founded upon it, and you find a felon the deadlier that the magistrate cannot lay hold upon him. These are the truths we must trust; this is the standard by which we must measure ourselves. Measuring ourselves by ourselves, who is not respectable passable at least? who is not upon something like an equality with his brother? But measuring ourselves by the divine standard, who would not run away into the darkness, finding his heart-ache intolerable, and his self-reproach like a scorching fire? "What I say unto one I say unto all," said Christ, "Watch!" "Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour." After a long life of devoted labour, see that ye be not lost at the very last by a remission of discipline, by lightening of duty, and by the curtailment of prayer. Having come proudly, as to divine reliance, over a thousand miles of water, see that there be no collision at the last for want of watchfulness, no breakdown for want of self-criticism. We must complete the journey; we cannot get off a few miles before the appointed landing-place. We are called to discipline. We can keep our learning, our genius, our intellectual energy, our marvellous mental capacity, and can do all kinds of conjuring with the imagination and with the tongue, and may appear unto men to be as we have ever been (society is easily deceived) but if we have put out the altar fire which no eye can see if we have let the temperature of love go down if we begin to calculate where once we were delighted to serve if we begin to set up an argument where once we built a cross, we may go out to fight Amalek, but the heathen will laugh at us, and the men against whom we are pitted will have us in derision. We are nothing without God; but we can do all things through Christ, which strengtheneth us.
Prayer
Almighty God, we cannot do the whole law. We have tried. One man said unto thee, All these things have I done from my youth up. We have not done one of them; we have spoiled the whole law. We have done what we liked, and we have left undone that which we disliked. We have been partially good, but not good in the root of us, in the inner heart, in the place where the true life lives. We have a chamber of imagery in our hearts; we know the way down to it, though no other man knows of its existence. The whole head is sick; the whole heart is faint; both hands are criminals; and as for our feet, they have been swift to run in the evil way. We are clever in wickedness: we have great ability in serving the devil; but to serve God rightly, truly, constantly who hath found it possible? God be merciful unto us sinners! Yet it is something to know that we have been ill-behaved, it is worth knowing that we have done the things we ought not to have done. We would be contrite really brokenhearted; we would come without plea, defence, excuse extenuation of any kind and say, We have done the things we ought not to have done; we have left undone the things we ought to have done, and there is no health in us. Have mercy, thou living Christ of God! Thou hast shown us how we may begin again; thou art always giving the soul new opportunities. If we confess our sins, thou art faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. We will try to confess not with our lips, for that is worthless, but with our hearts; we will let our souls talk; we will call upon our spirits to accuse themselves, and to deny their claim to any virtue, or comeliness, or beauty. There is none righteous, no not one. All we like sheep have gone astray: we have turned every one to his own way. We have been mistaken altogether; we have lived in ill-reasoning, and we have perpetrated innumerable mistakes. Beside all this, our heart is wrong: we are rotten at the core. The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. The work must be done in the heart, and thou alone canst do it. We will not marvel that thou sayest, Ye must be born again. We know it; that is right; we answer thy declaration with a great shout of acquiescence, full of tears and sobs. Lord, give us the Holy Ghost! spare not the gift divine! Not by works of righteousness which it is possible for us to do, but according to thy mercy must thou save us, by the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Ghost. This is God's doing; this is the miracle of the Holy Spirit Encourage us. Thou couldest overwhelm us with despair, and so the enemy might get great advantage over us; but even in our faraway wandering, and in our obstinacy of heart, send some message after us saying the house-door is still open and Christ is mighty to redeem. Amen.
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