For thus it is written: “The Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation.”
5. This will bring us to the text; and here I shall consider, first of all, the Lord’s battles; we are not to fight our own: secondly, the Lord’s soldiers; and thirdly, the King’s command , “Fight the Lord’s battles.”
6. I. First, THE LORD’S BATTLES, what are they? Not the garment rolled in blood, not the noise, and smoke, and din of human slaughter. These may be the devil’s battles, if you please, but not the Lord’s. They may be days of God’s vengeance, but in their strife the servant of Jesus may not get involved. We stand aloof. Our kingdom is not of this world; otherwise God’s servants would fight with sword and spear. Ours is a spiritual kingdom, and the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but spiritual, and mighty through God, to the pulling down of strongholds.
7. What are God’s battles? Let us here carefully distinguish between the battles of God, and our own. Oh, my brothers and sisters in Christ, it is not your business to fight your own battles, not even in defence of your own character. If you are maligned and slandered, let the slanderer alone. His malignity will only be increased by any attempt that you shall make to defend yourself. As a soldier of Christ you are to fight for your Master, not for yourself. You are not to carry on a private warfare for your own honour, but all your time and all your power is to be given to his defence and his war. You are not to have a word to speak for yourselves. Frequently, when we get into little strifes, and our blood is roused, we are apt to think that we are fighting the cause of truth, when we are really maintaining our own pride. We imagine that we are defending our Master, but we are defending our own little selves. Too often the anger rises against an adversary, not because his words reflect dishonour upon the glorious Christ, but because they dishonour us. Oh! let us not be so little as to fight our own battles! Depend upon it, the noblest means of conquest for a Christian in the matter of calumny and falsehood, is to stand still and see the salvation of God. Sheathe your own sword, put away all your own weapons, when you come to fight your own battle, and let God fight for you, and you shall be more than conqueror.
8. Again, we must remember that there is such a thing as fighting the battles of our own sect, when we ought to be fighting God’s battles. We imagine that we are maintaining the church when we are only maintaining our section of it. I would always be very tender for the honour of the Christian body to which I belong, but I would rather see its honour stained, than that the glory of the entire church should be dimmed. Every soldier ought to love the peculiar legion in which he has enlisted, but better to see the colours of that legion torn to tatters, than to see the old standard of the cross trampled in the mire. Now I trust we are ready to say of our own denomination, “Let its name perish, if Christ’s name shall receive any glory by it.” If the extinction of our sect should be the conquest of Christ and the promoting of his kingdom, then let it be wiped out of the book of record, and do not let its name be heard any more. We should, I say, each of us defend the body to which we belong, for we have conscientiously joined it believing it to be the nearest to the old standard of the church of Christ, and God forbid that we should desert it for a worse standard. If we see a better one, then would we sacrifice our prejudices to our convictions, but we cannot leave the old standard as long as we see it to be the very standard which floated in the hand of Paul, and which was handed by him through various generations, through Chrysostom to Augustine, from Augustine to Calvin, and so on through the glorious race of mighty men who have not been ashamed of the gospel of Christ Jesus. But yet I say let our name, and let our sect, and let our denomination be absorbed, and let it sink, so that the battle of the Lord may only be well fought, and the time of Christ’s triumph hastened.
9. “Fight the Lord’s battles.” Then what are these? These are battles with sin and battles with error, and battles with war, and battles with worldliness. Fight these Christian, and you shall have enough to do. The Lord’s battle is first of all with sin. Seek grace to fight that battle in your own heart. Endeavour by divine grace to overcome those propensities which continually push you towards iniquity. On your knees wrestle against your besetting sins. As habits appear endeavour to break them by the battle axe of strong resolution wielded by the arm of faith. Take all your lusts as they bestir themselves to the foot of the cross, and let the blood of Jesus fall upon those vipers and they must die. The blood of Christ shall spill the blood of sin. The death of Christ shall be the death of iniquity, the cross of Christ shall be the crucifixion of transgression. Labour with yourselves to drive the Canaanites out of your hearts. Spare none, let no petty lust escape. Put down pride, sloth, lust and unbelief and you now have a battle before you which may fill your hands, and more than fill them. Oh! cry to God your strength, and look to the hills from where comes your help, and then fight on again, and as each sin is overcome, each evil habit broken off, each lust denied, go on to the rooting up of another, and the destruction of more of them, until all being subdued, body soul and spirit shall be consecrated to Christ as a living sacrifice, purified by his Holy Spirit.
10. And while this battle is being fought, indeed, and while it is still fighting, go out and fight with other men’s sins. Strike them first with the weapon of holy example. Be yourselves what you would have others be; be clean you who bear the vessels of the Lord. Be clean yourselves before you can hope to be the purifiers of the world; and then, having first sought the blessing of God, go out into the world and bear your witness against sin. Let your testimony be unflinching; never let a sin pass under your eye without rebuke. Utterly kill young and old; do not let any escape. Speak sometimes sternly if the sinner is hardened in his sin; speak gently, if it is his first offence, seeking not to break his head but to break the head of his iniquity — not to break his bones or wound his feelings, but to cut his sin in two, and leave his iniquity dead before his eyes. Go forth where sin is the most rampant. Go down the dark alley; climb the creaking staircase; penetrate the dens of iniquity where the lion of the pit lies in his death lair, and go and pluck out of the mouth of the lion two legs and a piece of an ear, if that is all that you can save. Count it always your joy to follow the track of the lion, to corner him in his den, and fight him where he reigns most securely. Protest daily, hourly, by act, by word, by pen, by tongue, against evil of every kind and shape. Be as burning and shining lights in the midst of darkness, and as twoedged swords in the midst of the hosts of sin. Why, a true Christian who lives near to God, and is filled with grace and is kept holy, may stand in the midst of sinners and do wonders. What a marvellous feat Jonah did! There was the great city of Nineveh, having in it hundred twenty thousand souls that did not know their right hand from their left, and one man went against it — Jonah — and as he approached it he began to cry, “Yet in forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” He entered the city — perhaps he stood aghast for a moment at the multitude of its population, at its richness and splendour, but again he lifted up his sharp shrill voice, “Yet in forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” On he went, and the crowd increased around him as he passed through each street, but they heard nothing but the solemn monotony, “Yet in forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown”; and yet again, “Yet in forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” And on he went, that solitary man, until he caused a convulsion in the midst of myriads, and the king on his throne robed himself in sackcloth and proclaimed a fast, a day of mourning and of sadness. Yet on he went, “Yet in forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown,” “Yet in forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown,” until all the people bowed before him, and that one man was the conqueror of the myriad. Ah! believer, if you will go out and do the same, if you will go into the streets, the lanes, the byways, the houses, and into the private clubs of men, and still with this continued cry against sin and iniquity, say to them, “Look to the cross and live, look to the cross and live.” Though there should be only one earnest man in London who would continue that monotony of “Look to the cross and live,” from end to end this city would shake, and the great leviathan metropolis would be made to tremble. Go forth then, believer, and cry against sin with all your might.
11. And even so must we cry against error. It is the preacher’s business Sunday after Sunday, and weekday after weekday, to
