When the arrows, by God's strength operating through Joash's arm, had
been shot, the prophet says, 'The arrow of the Lord's victory! ...
thou shalt smite ... till thou have consumed.' Yes, of course; if the
arrow is the Lord's arrow, and the strength is His strength, then the
only issue corresponding to the power is perfect victory. I would that
Christian people realised more than they do practically in their lives
that while men's ideals and aims may be all unaccomplished, or but
partially approximated to, since God is God, His nature is perfection,
and nothing that He does can fall beneath His ideal and purpose in
doing it. All that comes from Him must correspond to Him from whom it
comes. He never leaves off till He has completed, nor can any one say
about any of His work, 'He began to build, and was not able to
finish.' So, Christian people! I would that we should rise to the
height of our prerogatives, and realise the fact that perfect victory
is possible, regard being had to the power which 'teaches our hands to
war and our fingers to fight.' A great deal of not altogether
profitable jangling goes on at present in reference to the question of
whether absolute sinlessness is possible for a Christian man on earth.
Whatever view we take upon that question, it ought not to hide from us
the fact which should loom very much more largely in our daily
operative belief than it does with most of us, that in so far as the
power which is given to us is concerned, perfect victory is within our
grasp, and is the only worthy and correspondent result to the perfect
power which worketh in us. So there is no reason, as from any defect
of the divine gift to the weakest of us, why our Christian lives
should have ups and downs, why there should be interruptions in our
devotion, fallings short in our consecration, contradictions in our
conduct, slidings backward in our progress. There is no reason why, in
our Christian year, there should be summer and winter; but according
to the symbolical saying of one of the old prophets, 'The ploughman
may overtake the reaper, and he that treadeth out the grapes him that
soweth the seed.' In so far as our Christian life is concerned, the
perfection of the power that is granted to us involves the possibility
of perfection in the recipient.
And the same thing is true in reference to a Christian man's work in
the world. God's Church has ample resources to overcome the evil of
the world. The fire is tremendous, but the Christian Church has
possession of the floods that can extinguish the fire. If we utilised
all that we have, we might 'smite till we had consumed,' and turned
the world into the Church of God. That is the ideal, the possibility,
when we look at the Christian man as possessor of the communicated
power of God. And then we turn to the reality, to our own consciences,
to the state of our religious communities everywhere, and we see what
seems to be blank contradiction of the possibility. Where is the
explanation?
III. That brings me to my last point, the partial victory that is
actually won.
'Thou shouldst have smitten five or six times; then hadst thou smitten
the Syrians till they were consumed. But now thou shalt conquer but
thrice.' All God's promises and prophecies are conditional. There is
no such thing as an unconditional promise of victory or of defeat;
there is always an 'if.' There is always man's freedom as a factor. It
is strange. I suppose no thinking, metaphysical or theological, ever
has solved or ever will, that great paradox of the power of a finite
will to lift itself up in the face of, and antagonism to, an Infinite
Will backed by infinite power, and to thwart its purposes. 'How often
_would I_ have gathered ... and ye _would not.'_ Here is all
the power for a perfect victory, and yet the man that has it has to be
contented with a very partial one.
It is a solemn thought that the Church's unbelief can limit and hinder
Christ's work in the world, and we have here another illustration of
that truth. You will find now and then in the newspapers,
stories--they may be true or false--about caterpillars stopping a
train. There is an old legend of that fabulous creature the remora, a
tiny thing that fastened itself to the keel of a ship, and arrested it
in mid-ocean. That is what we do with God and His purposes, and with
His power granted to us.
A low expectation limits the power. This king did not believe, did not
expect, that he would conquer utterly, and so he did not. You believe
that you can do a thing, and in nine cases out of ten that goes
nine-tenths of the way towards doing it. If we cast ourselves into our
fight expecting victory, the expectation will realise itself in nine
cases out of ten. And the man who in faith refuses to say 'that beast
of a word--impossible!' will find that 'all things are possible to him
that believeth.' 'Expect great things of God,' and you will feel His
power tingling to your very fingertips, and will be able to draw the
arrow to its head, and send it whizzing home to its mark.
Small desires block the power. Where there is an iron-bound coast
running in one straight line, the whole ocean may dash itself on the
cliffs at the base, but it enters not into the land; but where the
shore opens itself out into some deep gulf far inland, and broad
across at the entrance, then the glad water rushes in and fills it
all. Make room for God in your lives by your desires and you will get
Him in the fullness of His power.
The use of our power increases our power. Joash had an unused quiver
full of arrows, and he only smote thrice. 'To him that hath shall be
given, and from him that hath not shall be taken.' The reason why many
of us professing Christians have so little of the strength of God in
our lives is because we have made so little use of the strength that
we have. Stow away your seed-corn in a granary and do not let the air
into it, and weevils and rats will consume it. Sow it broadcast on the
fields with liberal hand, and it will spring up, 'some thirty, some
sixty, some an hundredfold.' Use increases strength in all regions,
and unused organs atrophy and wither.
So, dear friends! if we will keep ourselves in contact with Christ,
and tremulously sensitive to His touch, if we will expect power
according to our tasks and our needs, if we will desire more of His
grace, and if we will honestly and manfully use the strength that we
have, then He will 'teach our hands to war and our fingers to fight,'
and will give us strength, 'so that a bow of brass is bent by' our
arms, and we shall be 'more than conquerors through Him that loved
us.'