Verses 12-43
Five Modern Kings
WE are now travelling in the midst of wars and rumours of wars in our progress through these sacred pages. The reading is very exciting and distressing. Every page is a battlefield, and every sentence is like a stain of blood. Our distress can only be mitigated by taking in great breadths of time and viewing the course of Providence, not in detail, but in entirety, as a stupendous and well-composed unity. This is the law of just judgment in all life, so we are not creating a law for special application to exceptional circumstances. We do not fully know why this waste of human life was made. But why say "was" made, as if referring to an exhausted history? We need not speak in the past tense, but in the present, for this same waste of life is made, in some form or other, every day, and seems to be part of the very law of progress. We cannot understand it. We are not called upon to defend it. We must seriously stop and consider it. But there is the law: peace comes through battle, and life through death. Every garden is only a planted cemetery. Wherever you set your foot, you set it upon death. Who can understand the philosophy of destruction, the apparent wastefulness of God? It is a mistake to suppose that destruction is unnecessary. Every day slays its countless thousands. War is not a term definable by one word, nor is it confined to one set of circumstances; it is at the very heart of all imperfect and yet developing things. Life lives upon life. Blood is renewed by blood. A great mystery this and a tragedy that expresses infinite pain. But such is the devouring rapacity of life. It cannot live upon dead things. Life must live upon life, cannibalism, not regulated, directed, and brought under some law of sanctification, a great fact, a solemn and terrible thing! What a hunger it is that gnaws our being; it would soon develop itself into cruelty if civilisation did not limit it, and supply it with what it wants. No fire could deter it; no force could restrain it; it must be appeased from heaven. Which is to be uppermost? is the question of all life. What is to be uppermost? is the question of Heaven, and God has declared for the righteous. So righteousness will win, and purity will sit upon the throne that is everlasting. We know all this, in part, without the Bible. There are many bibles upon this subject Men have written revelations who never suspected what they were doing. They described their exercises by quite other and inferior terms, namely: they were observing, collating, laying down a basis of induction; but do what they may, they all end in law, and the law would seem to be: destruction necessary to life, the out-crowding of some by others, "the survival of the fittest." This is not the day of judgment upon which we can settle all these things, giving fully-matured opinions upon them and disposing of them decisively and finally. Thank God, we are permitted to speak as we think, that is to say, God permits speech to relieve thinking; so men publish immature books, speakers deliver immature speeches; but their books and speeches are not to be regarded as final and unchangeable. Revelation is a growing quantity. Biblical interpretation is a progressive science. The observation of human life expands and clears and enlarges. Who, then, shall bind any man to his own punctuation, or search the foregone pages to charge him with inconsistency? No man thinks two days alike. To-morrow is not responsible for this day, forasmuch as it will bring its own evil and its own good, its own light and its own darkness. It is needful to remember these things in reading the ancient books of Scripture, for they are full of terror and battle and cruelty and destruction and oppression and wrong, in many a detail, showing how easily the best men were tempted, how soon the noblest men fell into miserable humiliations, and how even women and children and innocent persons were borne down by a tremendous rush, as if the impulse were from heaven.
What use, then, can we make of these ancient instances? We can make great and profitable use of them if we be so minded. Before attempting to make some use of this incident, let us be thankful that the mystery of the sun standing still, and the moon being stayed until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies, has been cleared up. What battles have been fought about these words! How astronomy has been subpoenaed as a witness, and all nature been forced into court! It was quite needless as is much of the clamour and debate raging round strange things in the Bible. The writer himself asks, "Is not this written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day." It was written in a poetical book as a grand instance of sublime imagining. It was as if it had been so. It appeared as if this battle must be fought out before eventide, and as if, strangely, men had so fought and so won that the great issue was completed before the setting of the sun. The instance is specially referred to even upon this page as a quotation from a poetical book; so there need not be any solemn summoning of astronomic science to contradict what has never been asserted.
Now we come to the slaying of the kings the king of Jerusalem, the king of Hebron, the king of Jarmuth, the king of Lachish, and the king of Eglon. They were immured in a cave; they were kept for further uses: they were hanged upon a tree; they were burnt and condemned. Are there not five kings yea, fifty, yea, countless hundreds with whom we can do this very same thing kill them, hang them, bury them? We have come to spiritual battlefields. The weapons of our warfare are not carnal; we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and spiritual powers invisible, but tremendous in strength, nor less tremendous in subtlety. We are not straining the instance by pausing to consider the meanings of the names of the places connected with the names of the king, such as the king of Jerusalem, the king of Hebron, the king of Jarmuth, the king of Lachish, the king of Eglon. The names of the places may help us to consider the nature of their respective kings.
"The king of Jerusalem." That such a king should have been slain works violently in our memory and whole thought, for "Jerusalem" means peace the city of peace, the restful city, the sabbatic metropolis, the home of rest. But is there not a false peace? If we could not bring some good words into our use and qualify them by bad names, the case of the wicked man would be simply intolerable: the little truth he does tell, makes way for the much falsehood he wishes to propagate. Is there, then, not a false peace? Do we not hear men crying, Peace, peace, where there is no peace? Is it not possible to daub the wall with untempered mortar? Do we not create a wilderness, and call it peace? By banishing all anxieties, by stifling the voices within us that call to righteousness and truth and purity, by occupying the mind with other things, do we not suppose that we have entered into peace enough and realised all the rest we need? Have we not shut out the light, and said, There is none? Have we not given an opiate to conscience, and then said our life is going forward without rebuke? Have we not declined to discuss certain things, and therefore imagined that the things are not open to discussion? We have wronged our own souls in this matter. It is pitiful, yea, heart-rending, to mark how prone we are to close our eyes and consider that, because we have excluded the sense of danger, we have destroyed its presence. The king of false peace must be slain. He has ruled over some of us too long. He has lived upon us, plundered us with both hands, and all the while flattered us, until we have lost all power to criticise his baleful sovereignty. When men are not real with themselves, the case is hopeless. And who is real with himself? Who can take out his very heart, as it were, and analyse it, sift its motives, cross-examine its purposes, and test its half-spoken words? On all subjects of this kind we can but ask the piercing question; it lies with every man to return the honest answer.
"Hebron" means conjunction, joining, alliance. Is not the king of false fellowship to be killed? What concord hath Christ with Belial? Why these ill-assorted marriages in life, not marriages of a merely human and social kind, but all kinds of unions, fellowships, alliances, partnerships, that are founded upon rottenness, and are meant to mislead and deceive? What fellowship hath light with darkness? Yet we are beguiled into such associations, and we enter into them so gradually and in some cases so unsuspectingly that we hardly realise our relation to the false and the abominable until it is completed and sealed. God has always been against unholy alliances. Many a man he has, so to say, arrested with the words, Why this conjunction? What right have you to be here, pledging your character to sustain a known dishonesty? Why do you throw your respectability over this rottenness? But who can be true to himself and to God in this matter? Because we unite at certain parts or points of character, therefore we imagine that we do not include the whole line, and we decline responsibility in proportion to the number of points which our closure does not include. This is trifling with life; this is making a fool of conscience; this is giving to the moral power within us a dread narcotic: and we know it, and to pray after it is to crown our profanity with a lie. "Come out from among them, and be ye separate," saith the Lord. It is very difficult to be associated with some men merely for a temporary purpose, and then to leave them as if the association had never existed. Oftentimes that cannot be done. A certain contagion has operated, and although the formal association may be dissolved, the results of it may abide and express themselves in many insidious, but emphatic ways. Here, again, detail is out of the question. It is only possible to put the inquiry sharply, unflinchingly, and to leave every man to find out where he is, and why he is there. You may pay too much for high fellowships. A man may pay his soul as the price of being allowed to go into a saloon; he may pay his manhood, he may pay his conscience. To spend a giddy half-hour in the gas-lighted saloon, he may be compelled to leave himself outside, that he may emptily and self-renouncingly play the fool in what he calls Society. That rule applies to all life, to all business, to all social fellowships, to all temporary associations. Have nothing to do with bad men, even though the purpose for which they seek your association is itself good. Do not believe any Scripture which the devil quotes to you. It ceases to be Scripture in his vile lips. He spoils all beauty, all loveliness, all honour. Take the same Scripture from the fountain, and carry it out; but do not say, He has quoted Scripture, and my relation to him is only that which ought to subsist between myself and a quoter of Scripture. We must have cleanness of conjunction, purity and reality of alliance, meeting on sympathetic ground. Even the Church of Christ, as constituted in some places, may be wrong in this particular.
And the king of Jarmuth. The word means high, that which is lifted up. And is not the king of false ambition to be slain and then hanged to have contempt added to murder? Contempt is never so well expended as upon false ambition. This false ambition is killing many people. They do not see how foolish it is to be living under king Jarmuth. Why live a strained life always trying to reach something that is just half an inch beyond your stretching power? If you were trying to seize the stars, men would simply smile upon you as imbeciles. It is the odd half-inch that deceives you, makes you think that, because it is only half an inch, surely you may reach it and use it. That is a false law of life. It means ruin. Whilst you are so stretching yourselves beyond your due proportion, men are robbing every pocket you have, and you do not know it; cutting the ground from under your feet, and you are not aware of it; and you yourselves are losing power to do the simple, real, needy business of life with both hands and undivided strength. The temptation to be just a little more than we are is the temptation we read of in the garden of Eden: Eat, says the serpent, of that tree, "and ye shall be as gods," ye shall go into another kind of society, into a saloon higher up, larger, and better lighted; put forth your hands, eat freely, and become "as gods." See if the serpent is not still deceiving society by this very suggestion. Who can live simply and lovingly within the lines of his own conscious strength, and do the work which God has obviously designed him to do? It is when the wish to do something else and something better comes in, that many a man is thrown down and loses what strength he has, much or little, as the case may be.
Then the king of Lachish. The word means hard to be captured, almost out of reach, or so defended that it will be almost impossible to get at the king. Is not the king of fancied security to be slain and hanged? We say it is impossible to penetrate to our hiding-place and dislodge us from our ramparts, not knowing that our ramparts, which are supposed to be made of granite, are constituted but of ice, and the rising sun shall not smite them, but dissolve them, and they shall stream away from us and leave us exposed to every dart and every stroke of the assailant. What is our security? Not money, I hope: for riches take to themselves wings and fly away. Not physical strength, I hope: for even Samson has had his energy drawn out of him, and has been left a giant in carcase, but a cripple in power. Not ancestry, I hope: for who would live upon the dead and wear the respectabilities of an exhausted generation? There is only one security, and that is harmony with God, peace with Heaven, identification with righteousness, the absorption of the little imperfect will with the infinite will of God. You have seen the wicked in great power, spreading himself like a green bay-tree: yet he passed away, and, lo, he was not, yea, you sought him, and he could not be found. The mystery was that there was no violence; there was no record of the decadence in the newspaper of the. day. It was a mystery. The man changed: his mental power deserted him: he put out his hands to take something when there was nothing to be seized; he spoke, as it were, upside down, in confusion that would have amused you if it had not too much distressed your sensibilities. He lost, he reeled, he groped at noonday, he went back to find his rampart, and, behold, it was gone! This we have seen in life in countless cases; but if we have only seen it, the sight will do us little good: such visions should be laid to heart.
King of Eglon. The word "Eglon" means pertaining to a calf, and may be taken as representing the whole system of false worship. A great mocking voice is heard in one of the minor prophets, saying, "Thy calf, O Samaria, hath cast thee off." It is the way of false gods: they betray their worshippers; they withdraw themselves when danger crowds the scene with innumerable hostilities; they will do in the sunshine that is to say, they will do when there is nothing to be done; but they have no biding pith, no staying power, no quality divine. Such is the difference between men. Under some circumstances the men are, as it were, equal equal in pleasantness, in cheerfulness, and willingness to assist; but some of them can bear no strain: so long as the whole business can be done by assurances that are without security, they are willing that the whole business should be completed. Men are known by their staying power. Many a man walks the first mile as if he were treading upon air. It is a kind of exercise in levitation, rather than in ponderous and literal walking. But there are ten miles to be walked. The second mile sees a difference; the third mile excites pity in the beholder: the man was never made for that task. So it is with false worship, with imperfect worship, with fancy worship. There are men who worship reason; but reason never worships them or trusts them: it does but coldly smile upon them and wonder at their philosophic insanity. And there are those who worship gold and fame and honour and ease; and these base deities cast them off at eventide. Be right in worship, if you would be right in character. Be right in religious conviction, if you would be right along the whole line of life and equally strong at every point.
Joshua, having slain these kings, goes upon his conquering way. Joshua said, in effect, There are not only five kings to be killed, but more and more, a line of kings, far as the eye can see. So, soldier-like, captain of God, he passed on from Makkedah to Libnah, from Libnah to Lachish, from Lachish to Eglon, from Eglon to Hebron; and there we lose sight of him for a moment. His sword is up, his eyes aflame, and he is the captain of the Lord towards all "devoted" things. And on, too, we must go on from evil to evil, until the last bad king is slain: on from habit to habit till the whole character is purified: on until the whole life is cleansed; and this sweet old earth, so debased, so ill-used, shall become, in every land, in every clime, beautiful as a palace built for God.
Prayer
Almighty God, we pray with our hearts because thou hast taught us to pray, and we know that in heart-prayer the answer is found in the very petition itself. We are cleansed by this exercise; our mouth is purified and our lips are made clean. How can we speak the name of God, and then speak any other name that is not related to it by pureness or by love? How can we lift up our eyes unto heaven to behold the revelation of light, and then turn them downwards to look upon anything which that light has not created and approved? So thou dost make us better by our praying; we feel the stronger after we have spoken to God. Thou dost draw nigh unto those that address thee; thou dost put out thine hand towards them, and in thine hand is the sceptre of gold. We come by the way of the Cross. We have tried other ways, and they end in cloud and nothingness: but the way of the Cross is a way straight up to heaven; we meet angels upon the road and the spirits of the just made perfect, a sweet and innumerable companionship of souls: all the dear friends we have lost, and the brave comrades, and the crowned ones of every name and quality whom we have known and with whom we have consorted; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. So we form one host: part of it in heaven, part of it on earth; still, we are one family in Christ, and we shall all be brought together into the larger house, and stand night and day in thy presence, whose look is heaven, whose breath is peace. For religious hopes we bless thee: they sing in the soul like angels from heaven; they make the night as the morning, and the morning they make as sevenfold noontide in the summer-time. We thank thee for them; they drive away dejection and fear and solitariness and all evil. We pray thee to multiply these hopes; increase not only their number, but their radiance, and in their light we shall work industriously and hopefully, and every hour shall create its own heaven. The days are few with many now before thee, because the pilgrims are hastening quickly to the end. The end may be tomorrow; the end may be to-night; the end cannot be far off, by reason of natural weakness and the increase of days. Some are young, and full of hope and high life and hot blood, brave and chivalrous when good, but desperate and evil-minded when under the inspiration of the devil; the Lord send a message to such a great gospel of love that shall seize the attention, attract the confidence, and save the soul. Help the young man in his struggle; it goes hardly with him sometimes. Now and again he is quite down, and but for thy touch he would remain there a dead man. Save him in the time of peril! Kill the tempter that sits beside his ear to speak as he may be able to receive the bad communication. Some are engaged in good service: the Lord help them; their heaven is in Christian toil; their delight expresses itself in sacrificial labour. Give them courage and good cheer, and may they be able again to draw together their whole strength, in the name of Christ and for the sake of his Cross, and to go out and do valiantly for the Son of God. The Lord hear us when we pray, and be patient with us in our best endeavours. Pity our littlenesses and vanities and mean conceits. Pity us wherein we carry diseases, distresses of mind or body, brought upon us by no blame of our own; when the evil rises within us, consider our estate, we beseech thee, and remember whence we sprang and through what course we have come in all the ages gone. Take us into thine arms; give us rest awhile from storm and strife; quiet us with thy peace, thou tranquil one; and all this and more immeasurably do thou accomplish for us, because we pray in the name which must prevail. Amen.
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