Now, the Old Testament says things like this: 'Fear not, Abraham; I am
thy Shield.' The psalmist invoked God, in a rapturous exuberance of
adoring invocations, as his fortress, and his buckler, and the horn of
his salvation, and his high tower. The same psalm says, 'The Lord is a
shield to all them that put their trust in Him'; and the Book of
Proverbs, which is not given to quoting psalms, quotes that verse.
Another psalm says, 'The Lord God is a sun and shield.'
And then Paul comes speaking of 'the shield of _faith_.' What has become
of the other one? The answer is plain enough. My faith is nothing except
for what it puts in front of me, and it is God who is truly my shield;
my faith is only called a shield, because it brings me behind the bosses
of the Almighty's buckler, against which no man can run a tilt, or into
which no man can strike his lance, nor any devil either. God is a
defence; and my trust, which is nothing in itself, is everything because
of that with which it brings me into connection. Faith is the condition,
and the only condition, of God's power flowing into me, and working in
me. And when that power flows into me, and works in me, then I can laugh
at the fiery darts, because 'greater is He that is with us than all they
that are with them.'
So all the glorification which the New Testament pours out upon the act
of faith properly belongs, not to the act itself, but to that with which
the act brings us into connection. Wherefore, in the first Epistle of
John, the Apostle, who recorded Christ's saying, 'Be of good cheer; I
have overcome the world,' translates it into, 'This is the victory that
overcometh the world'--_not_, our Christ, but--'even our faith.' And it
overcomes because it binds us in deep, vital union with Him who has
overcome; and then all His conquering power comes into us.
That is the explanation and vindication of the turn which Paul gives to
the Old Testament metaphor here, when he makes our shield to be faith.
Suppose a man was exercising trust in one that was unworthy of it, would
that trust defend him from anything? Suppose you were in peril of some
great pecuniary loss, and were saying to yourself, 'Oh! I do not care.
So-and-so has guaranteed me against any loss, and I trust to him,' and
suppose he was a bankrupt, what would be the good of your trust? It
would not bring the money back into your pocket. Suppose a man is
leaning upon a rotten support; the harder he leans the sooner it will
crumble. So there is no defence in the act of trust except what comes
into it from the object of trust; and my faith is a shield only because
it grasps the God who is the shield.
But, then, there is another side to that thought. My faith will quench,
as nothing else will, these sudden impulses of fiery desires, because my
faith brings me into the conscious presence of God, and of the unseen
realities where He dwells. How can a man sin when God's eye is felt to
be upon him? Suppose conspirators plotting some dark deed in a corner,
shrouded by the night, as they think; and suppose, all at once, the day
were to blaze in upon them, they would scatter, and drop their designs.
Faith draws back the curtain which screens off that unseen world from so
many of us, and lets in the light that shines down from above and shows
us that we are compassed about by a cloud of witnesses, and the Captain
of our Salvation in the midst of them. Then the fiery darts fizzle out,
and the points drop off them. No temptation continues to flame when we
see God.
They have contrivances in mills that they call 'automatic sprinklers.'
When the fire touches them it melts away a covering, and a gas is set
free that puts the fire out. And if we let in the thought of God, it
will extinguish any flame. 'The sun puts out the fire in our grates,'
the old women say. Let God's sun shine into your heart, and you will
find that the infernal light has gone out. The shield of faith quenches
the fiery darts of the 'wicked.'
Yes! and it does it in another way. For, according to the Epistle to the
Hebrews, faith realises 'the things hoped for,' as well as 'unseen.' And
if a man is walking in the light of the great promises of Heaven, and
the great threatenings of a hell, he will not be in much danger of being
set on fire, even by 'the fiery darts of the wicked.' He that receives
into his heart God's strength; he that by faith is conscious of the
divine presence in communion with him; he that by faith walks in the
light of eternal retribution, will triumph over the most sudden, the
sharpest, and the most fiery of the darts that can be launched against
him.