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Expositions of Holy Scripture

A >> Alexander Maclaren >> Expositions of Holy Scripture




So we put the two questions together. They limit one another, and they
suggest the _via media,_ the course between, and lead me to say
one or two plain things about that duty of Christian separation from an
evil world.

I. The first thing that I would suggest to you is the inevitable
intermingling, which is the law of God, and therefore can never be
broken with impunity.

Christ's parable about the Kingdom of Heaven in the world being like a
man that sowed good seed in his field, which sprung up intermingled
with tares, contains the lesson, not so much of the purity or nonpurity
of the Church as of the inseparable intertwining in the world of
Christian people with others. The roots are matted together, and you
cannot pull up a tare without danger of pulling up a wheat-stalk that
has got interlaced with it. That is but to say that Society at present,
and the earthly form of the Kingdom of God, are not organised on the
basis of religious affinity, but upon a great many other things, such
as family, kindred, business, a thousand ties of all sorts which mat
men together, and make it undesirable, impossible, contrary to God's
intention, that the good people should club themselves together, and
leave the bad ones to rot and stink. The two are meant to be in close
contact. 'Let both grow together till the harvest.' If any Christian
man were to do as the monks of old did, fly into solitude to look after
his own soul, then the question which came to Elijah would be suitable
to him, 'What doest thou here?' Is there not work enough for you out
there, in that wicked world? Is that not the place for you? Where is
the place for the 'salt'? Where the meat is in danger of putrefaction.
Rub it in! That is what it was meant for. 'Ye are the light of the
world.' That suggests the picture of a lamp upon a pedestal that it may
send out its rays, but itself remains apart. But the companion metaphor
suggests the closest possible contact, and such contact is duty for us
Christian people. Elijah ran away from his work. There are types of
Christian life to-day unwholesomely self-engrossed, and too much
occupied with their own spiritual condition, to realise and discharge
the duty of witnessing in the world. Wherever you find a Christian man
--whether he is a monk with bare foot, and a rope round his brown robe,
and shaven head, or whether he is in the garb of modern Protestantism--
that tries more to keep himself apart, in the enjoyment and cultivation
of his own religious life, than to fling himself into the midst of the
world's worst evil, in order to fight and to cure it, you get a man who
is sharing in Elijah's transgression, and needs Elijah's rebuke. The
intermingling is inevitable in the present state of things; and family,
kindred, business, social and political movements, all require that
Christian people should work side by side with men who are not
possessors of 'like precious faith.' If ever there have been
individuals or communities that have tried to traverse that law, they
have developed narrowness and bitterness and stunted growth, and a
hundred evils that we all know.

II. And now let me say a word about the second thing, and that is--the
imperative separation.

'What do these Israelites here?' is the question. Much of all our lives
lies outside these necessary connections with the world, of which I
have been speaking. And the question for each of us is, What do we do
when we are left to do as we like? Where do we go? When the iron weight
fastened by the bit of string is taken off the sapling, it starts back
to its original uprightness. Is that what your Christianity does for
you? When you are left to yourself, when you have done all the work
that is required, and you are free, where do you turn naturally? It is
of no use to lay down special regulations. There has been far too much
regulation and red-tape in our Christianity all along. Do not let us
put so much stress upon individual acts. Let us look at the spirit.
Whither do I turn? What do I like to do? Who are my chosen companions?
What are my recreations? Is my life of such a sort as that the world
will point to me, and say, 'What! you here I a professing Christian;
what are you doing here?'

I remember that in the autobiography of Mr. Spurgeon, there is a story
told about what he did when a child, and living with his grandfather,
the pastor of a little country church. There was a very prominent
member of that church who was in the habit of going into the public-
house occasionally; and the small boy stepped into the sanded parlour
where this inconsistent man was sitting, walked up to him, and said,
'What doest thou here, Elijah?' It was the turning-point of the man's
life. That is the question that I desire us all to ask ourselves--where
do we go, and what sort of lives do we live in the moments when our own
voluntary choice determines our action?

'A man is known by the company he keeps,' says an old Latin proverb,
and I am bound to say that I do not think that it is a good sign of the
depth of a Christian professor's religion if he feels himself more at
home in the company of people who do not share his religion than in the
company of those that do. I do not wish to be strait-laced and narrow,
but I do not wish, either, to be so broad as to obliterate altogether
the distinction between Christian people and others. The fact of the
case is this, dear friends; if we are Christ's servants we have more in
common with the most uncongenial Christians than we have with the most
congenial man who is not a Christian. And if we were nearer our Master
we should feel that it was so. 'Being let go they went to their own
company.' Where do you go when you can make your choice?

I am not going to speak in detail about occupations or recreations. I
can quite believe that the theatre might be made an instrument of
morality. I can quite believe that a race-course might be a perfectly
innocent place. I can quite believe that there may be no harm in a
dance. All that I say is that there are two questions which every
Christian professor ought to ask himself about such subjects. One is,
Can I ask God to bless this thing, and my doing it? And the other is,
Does this help or hinder my religion? If we will take these two
questions with us as tests of conduct and companionship, I do not think
that we shall go far wrong, either in the choice of our companions, or
in the choice of our surroundings of any kind, or in the choice of our
recreations and our occupations. But if we do not, then I am quite sure
that we shall go wrong in them all. 'What communion hath light with
darkness?' 'What agreement hath the temple of God with idols? Come ye
out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord.'

The main question is, do I grasp the aim of life with clearness and
decision as being to make myself by God's help such a character as God
has pleasure in? If I do I shall regulate all these things thereby.

III. Now there is one last suggestion that I wish to make, and that is
the double questioning that we shall have to stand.

The lords of the Philistines said, 'What do these Hebrews here?' They
saw the inconsistency, if David and his men did not. They were sharp to
detect it, and David and his band did not rise in their opinion, but
decidedly went down, when they saw them marching there, in such an
unnatural place as 'behind Achish,' and ready to flesh their swords in
the blood of their brethren. So let me tell you, you will neither
recommend your religion nor yourselves to men of the world, by
inconsistently trying to identify yourselves with them. There are a
great many professing Christians nowadays whose mouths are full of the
word 'liberality,' and who seem to try to show how absolutely identical
with a godless man's a God-fearing one's life may be made. Do you think
that the world respects that type of Christian, or regards his religion
as the kind of thing to be admired? No; the question that they fling at
such people is the question which David was humiliated by having
pitched at his head--'What do these Hebrews here?' 'Let them go back to
their mountains. This is no place for _them_.' The world respects
an out-and-out Christian; but neither God nor the world respects an
inconsistent one.

But there is another question, and another Questioner--'What doest thou
here, Elijah?' God did not ask Elijah the question because he did not
know the answer; but because he wished to make Elijah put his mood into
words, since then Elijah would understand it a little better, and, when
he found the tremendous difficulty of making a decent excuse, would
begin to suspect that the conduct that wanted so much glozing was not
exactly the conduct fit for a prophet. And so let us think that God is
looking down upon us, in all our occupation of our free time, and that
He is wishing us to put into words what we are about, and why we are
where we are.

What do you think you would say if, in some of these moments of
unnecessary intermingling with questionable things and doubtful people,
you were brought suddenly to this, that you had to formulate into some
kind of plausibility your reason for being there? I am afraid it would
be a very lame and ragged set of reasons that many of us would have to
give. Well! better that we should now have to answer the question 'What
doest thou here?' than that we should have to fail in answering the
future question, after we have done with the world: 'What didst thou
there?'

Dear brethren, let us cleave to Christ, and that will separate us from
the world. If we cleave to the world, that will separate us from
Christ. I do not insist on details of conduct, but I do beseech you,
professing Christians, to recognise that you are set in the world in
order to grow like your Master, and that their tendency to help you to
that likeness is the one test of all occupations, recreations, and
companionships, by which we may know whether we are in or out of the
place that pleases Him. And if we are in it, that blessed hope which is
held forth in the parable to which I have already referred, will come
full of sweetness and of strength to us, that, yonder, men will be
grouped according to their moral and religious character; that the
tares will be taken away from the wheat, and, that as Christ says,
'Then shall the righteous flame as the sun in their heavenly Father's
Kingdom.'




THE SECRET OF COURAGE

'But David encouraged himself in the Lord his God.'--1 Samuel xxx. 6.


David was at perhaps the very lowest ebb of his fortunes. He had long
been a wandering outlaw, and had finally been driven, by Saul's
persistent hostility, to take refuge in the Philistines' country. He
had gathered around himself a band of desperate men, and was living
very much like a freebooter. He had found refuge in a little city of
the Philistines, far down in the South, from which he and his men had
marched as a contingent in the Philistine army, which was preparing an
attack upon Saul. But, naturally, the Philistine soldiers doubted their
ally, and he was obliged to take himself and his troops back again to
their temporary home.

When he came there it was a heap of smoking ruins. Everything was gone;
property, cattle, wives, children--and all was desolation. His
turbulent followers rose against him, a mutiny broke out--a dangerous
thing amongst such a crew--and they were ready to stone him. And at
that moment what did he do? Nothing. Was he cast down? No. Was he
agitated? No. 'But David encouraged himself in the Lord his God.'

Now the first thing I notice is

I. The grand assurance which this man gripped fast at such a time.

It is not by accident, nor is it a mere piece of tautology, that we
read 'the Lord _his_ God.' For, if you will remember, the very
keynote of the psalms which are ascribed to David is just that
expression, 'My God,' 'My God.' So far as the very fragmentary records
of Jewish literature go, it would appear as if David was the very first
of all the ancient singers to grapple that thought that he stood in a
personal, individual relation to God, and God to him. And so it was
_his_ God that he laid hold of at that dark hour.

Now I am not putting too much into a little word when I insist upon it
that the very essence and nerve of what strengthened David, at that
supreme moment of desolation, was the conviction that welled up in his
heart that, in spite of it all, he had a grip of God's hand as his very
own, and God had hold of him. Just think of the difference between the
attitude of mind and heart expressed in the names that were more
familiar to the Israelitish people, and this name for Jehovah. 'The God
of Israel'--that is wide, general; and a man might use it and yet fail
to feel that it implied that each individual of the community stood by
himself in a personal relation to God. But David penetrated through the
broad, general thought, and got into the heart of the matter. It was
not enough for him, in his time of need, to stay himself upon a vague
universal goodness, but he had to clasp to his burdened heart the
individualising thought, 'the God of Israel is _my_ God.'

Think, too, of the contrast of the thoughts and emotions suggested by
'My God,' and by 'the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob.'
Great as that name is, it carries the mind away back into the past, and
speaks of a historical relation in former days, which may or may not
continue in all its tenderness and sweetness and power into the prosaic
present. But when a man feels, not only 'the God of Jacob is our
Refuge,' but, 'the God of Jacob is my God,' then the whole thing
flashes up into new power. 'My sun'--will one man claim property in
that great luminary that pours its light down on the whole world? Yes.

'The sun whose beams most glorious are,
Disdaineth no beholder,'

as the old song has it. Each man's eye receives the straight impact of
its universal beams. It is my sun, though it be the light that lightens
all men that come into the world. 'My atmosphere'--will one man claim
the free, unappropriated winds of heaven as his? Yes, for they will
pour into his lungs; and yet his brother will be none the poorer.

I would not go the length of saying that the living realisation, in
heart and mind, of this personal possession of God is the difference
between a traditional and vague profession of religion and a vital
possession of religion, but if it is not the difference, it goes a long
way towards explaining the difference. The man who contents himself
with the generality of a Gospel for the world, and who can say no more
than that Jesus Christ died for all, has yet to learn the most intimate
sweetness, and the most quickening and transforming power, of that
Gospel, and he only learns it when he says, 'Who loved _me_, and
gave Himself for _me_.'

So do not let us be content with saying, 'the God of Israel,' and its
many thousands, or 'the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob,'
who filled the past with His lustre, but let us bring the general good
into our own houses, as men might draw the waters of Niagara into their
homes through pipes, and let us cry: 'My Lord and my God!' 'David
encouraged himself in the Lord his God.'

II. Now note, secondly, the sufficiency of this one conviction and
assurance.

Here is one of the many eloquent 'buts' of the Bible. On the one hand
is piled up a black heap of calamities, loss, treachery and peril; and
opposed to them is only that one clause: 'But David encouraged himself
in the Lord his God.' There was only one possession in all the world,
except his body and the clothes that he stood in, that he could call
his own at that moment. Everything else was gone; his property was
carried off by raiders, his home was smouldering embers. But the
Amalekites had not stolen God from him. Though he could no longer say,
'My house, my city, my possessions,' he could say, 'My God.' Whatever
else we lose, as long as we have Him we are rich; and whatever else we
possess, we are poor as long as we have not Him. God is enough;
whatever else may go. The Lord his God was the sufficient portion for
this man when he stood a homeless pauper. He had lost everything that
his heart clung to; wives, children; Abigail and Abinoam were captives
in the arms of some Amalekites; his house was left to him desolate; his
heart was bleeding. 'But David encouraged himself in the Lord his God'
and the bleeding heart was stanched, and the yearning for some one to
love and be loved by was satisfied, when he turned himself from the
desolation of earth to the riches in the heavens. He was standing on
the edge of possible death, for his followers were ready to stone him.
He had come through many perils in the past, but he had never been
nearer a fatal end than he was at that moment. But the thought of the
undying Friend lifted him buoyantly above the dread of death, and he
could look with an unwinking eye right into the fleshless eye-sockets
of the skeleton, and say, 'I fear no evil, for Thou art with me.'

So for poverty, loss, the blasting of earthly hopes, the crushing of
earthly affections, the extremity of danger, and the utmost threatening
of death, here is the sufficient remedy--that one mighty assurance:
'The Lord is my God.' For if He is 'the strength of my heart,' He will
be my portion for ever.' He is not poor who has God for his, nor does
he wander with a hungry heart who can rest his heart on God's; nor need
he fear death who possesses God, and in Him eternal life.

So, brethren, in all our changing circumstances, there is more than
enough for us in that sweet, simple, strong thought. The end of sorrow
(that is to say, the purpose thereof) is to breed in us the conviction
that God is ours, to drive us to Him by lack of all beside; and the end
of sorrow (that is to say, the termination thereof) is the kindling in
our hearts of the light of that blessed assurance, for with Him we
shall fear no evil. You never know the good of the breakwater until
the storm is rolling the waves against its outer side. Light a little
candle in a room, and you will not see the lightning when it flashes
outside, however stormy the sky, and seamed with the fiery darts. If we
have God in our hearts, we have enough for courage and for strength.

I need not remind you, I suppose, how this darkest moment of David's
fortunes was the moment at which the darkness broke. Three days after
this _emeute_ of his turbulent followers, there came a fugitive
into the camp with news that Saul was dead and David was king. So it
was not in vain that he had 'strengthened himself in the Lord his God.'
Our 'light affliction which is but for a moment' leads on to a
manifestation of the true power of God our Friend, and to the breaking
of the day.

III. And now the last thing to be noted is the effort by which this
assurance is attained and sustained.

The words of the original convey even more forcibly than those of our
translation the thought of David's own action in securing him the hold
of God as his. He 'strengthened _himself_ in the Lord his God.'
The Hebrew conveys the notion of effort, persistent and continuous; and
it tells us this, that when things are as black as they were round
David at that hour--it is not a matter of course, even for a good man,
that there shall well up in his heart this tranquillising and
victorious conviction; but he has to set himself to reach and to keep
it. God will give it, but He will not give it unless the man strains
after it. David 'strengthened himself in the Lord,' and if he had not
doggedly set about resisting the pressure of circumstances, and
flinging himself as it were, by an effort, into the arms of God,
circumstances would have been too strong for him, and despair would
have shrouded his soul. In the darkest moment it is possible for a man
to surround himself with God's light, but even in the brightest it is
not possible to do so unless he makes a serious effort.

That effort must consist mainly in two things. One is that we shall
honestly try to occupy our minds, as well as our hearts, with the truth
which certifies to us that God is, in very deed, ours. If we never
think, or think languidly and rarely, about what God has revealed to
us, by the word and life and death and intercession of Jesus Christ,
concerning Himself, His heart of love towards us, and His relations to
us, then we shall not have, either in the time of disaster or of joy,
the blessed sense that He is indeed ours. If a man will not think about
Christian truth he will not have the blessedness of Christian
possession of God. There is no mystery about the road to the sweetness
and holiness and power that may belong to a Christian. The only way to
win them is to be occupied, far more than most of us are, with the
plain truths of God's revelation in Jesus Christ. If you never think
about them they cannot affect you, and they will not make you sure that
God is yours.

But we cannot occupy ourselves with these truths unless we have a
distinct and resolute purpose running through our lives, of averting
our eyes from the things that might make us lose sight of them and of
Him. David had his choice. He could either, as a great many of us do,
stand there and look, and look, and look, and see nothing but his
disasters, or he could look past them; and see beyond them God. Peter
had his choice whether he would look at the water, or whether he would
look at Jesus Christ. He chose to look at the water; 'and when he saw
the wind boisterous he began to sink'--of course, and when he looked at
Christ and cried: 'Lord, save me!' he was held up--equally of course.
Make the effort not to let the sorrowful things, or the difficult
things, or the fearful things, or the joyous things, in your life,
absorb you, but turn away, and, as the writer of the Epistle to the
Hebrews says, in another connection, 'look off unto Jesus, the Author
and Finisher of faith.' David had to put constraint upon himself, to
admit any other thoughts into his mind than those that were pressed
into it by the facts before his eyes; but he put on the constraint, and
so he was encouraged because he encouraged himself.

There is another thing which we have to make an effort to do, if we
would have the blessedness of this conviction filling and flooding our
hearts. For the possession is reciprocal; we say, 'My God,' and He
says, 'My people.' Unless we yield ourselves to Him and say, 'I am
Thine,' we shall never be able to say, 'Thou art mine.' We must
recognise His possession of us; we must yield ourselves; we must obey;
we must elect Him as our chief good, we must feel that we are not our
own, but bought with a price. And then when we look up into the heavens
thus submissive, thus obedient, thus owning His authority and His
rights, as well as claiming His love and His tenderness, and cry: 'My
Father,' He will bend down and whisper into our hearts: 'Thou art My
beloved son.' Then we shall be 'strong, and of a good courage,' however
weak and timid, and we shall be rich, though, like David, we have lost
all things.




AT THE FRONT OR THE BASE

'As his part is that goeth down to the battle, so shall his part be
that tarrieth by the stuff.'--1 Samuel xxx. 24.


David's city of Ziklag had been captured by the Amalekites, while he
and all his men who could carry arms were absent, serving in the army
of Achish, the Philistine king of Gath. On their return they found
ruin, their homes harried, their wives, children, and property carried
off. Wearied already with their long march, they set off at once in
pursuit of the spoilers, who had had a long start of them. When they
reached the brook Besor, two hundred of them were too weary and
footsore to ford it, and so had to be left behind. But these were not
useless, for the heavy baggage was left in their charge, and the other
four hundred were thus enabled to march more lightly, and therefore
more swiftly. They picked up a sick slave, whom his Amalekite master
had heartlessly abandoned to die on the 'veldt.' He was almost dead, so
they fed him, and when he was able to answer, questioned him. He
undertook to guide David and his band, and thus, as twilight was
beginning to fall and the Amalekites were 'spread abroad over all the
ground, eating and drinking and feasting because of all the great spoil
that they had taken.' the four hundred burst on them, routed them
utterly, and won back all their goods and much more.

Then came a quarrel. The four hundred who had gone to the fight
insisted that the booty was theirs, and that the two hundred who had
had no hand in winning it should have no share in the distribution. But
David over-ruled this and laid down a principle of distribution which
was adopted as the standing law of Israel--that the soldiers who were
actually in the fight and those who stayed behind guarding the baggage,
looking after 'the base of operations,' should share alike. It was fair
that they should do so, for the two hundred would willingly have been
in the thick of battle, and, further, though they did not fight, they
helped the fighters, and by guarding the heavy baggage contributed to
the victory as really as if they had been in the fray and come out of
it with swords dripping with Amalekite blood.

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