Christianity has altered the perspective of human virtues, has thrown
the gentler ones into prominence altogether unknown before, and has
dimmed the brilliancy of the old heroic type of character; but it has
not struck those virtues out of its list. Whilst the perspective is
altered, there is as much need in the lowliest Christian life for the
loftiest heroism as ever there was. For in no mere metaphor, but in
grim earnest, all Christian progress is conflict, and we have to fight,
not only with the evils that are within, but, if we would be true to
the obligations of our profession and loyal to the commands of our
Master, we have to take our part in the great campaign which He has
inaugurated and is ever carrying on against every abuse and oppression,
iniquity and sin, that grinds down the world and makes our brethren
miserable and servile. So, then, in these words we have directions in
regard to a side of the Christian character, indispensable to-day as
ever, and the lack of which cannot be made up for by any amount of
sweet and contemplative graces.
Jesus Christ is the type of both. The Conqueror of Canaan and the
Redeemer of the world bear the same name. The Jesus whom we trust was a
Joshua. And let us learn the lesson that neither the conqueror of the
typical and material land of promise nor the Redeemer who has won the
everlasting heaven for our portion could do their work without the
heroic side of human excellence being manifestly developed. Do you
remember 'He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem'? Do you
remember that the Apostle whom a hasty misconception has thought of as
the gentlest of the Twelve, because he had most to say about love, is
the Apostle that more emphatically than any other rings into our ears
over and over again the thought of the Christ, militant and victorious,
the Hero as well as the patient Sufferer, the 'Captain of our
salvation'? And so let us recognise how both the gentler and the
stronger graces, the pacific and the warlike side of human excellence,
have their highest development in Jesus Christ, and learn that the
firmest strength must be accompanied with the tenderest love and
swathed in meekest gentleness. As another Apostle has it in his
pregnant, brief injunctions, ringing and laconic like a general's word
of command, 'Quit you like men I be strong! let all your deeds be done
in love!' Braid the two things together, for the mightiest strength is
the love that conquers hate, and the only love that is worthy of a man
is the love that is strong to contend and to overcome.
'Be strong.' Then strength is a duty; then weakness is a sin. Then the
amount of strength that we possess and wield is regulated by ourselves.
We have our hands on the sluice. We may open it to let the whole full
tide run in, or we may close it till a mere dribble reaches us. For the
strength which is strength, and not merely weakness in a fever, is a
strength derived, and ours because derived. The Apostle gives the
complete version of the exhortation when he says: 'Finally, my
brethren,' that Omega of command which is the Alpha of performance, 'be
strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.' Let Christ's
strength in. Open the heart wide that it may come. Keep yourself in
continual touch with God, the fountain of all power. Trust is strength,
because trust touches the Rock of Ages.
For this reason the commandment to be strong and of good courage is in
the text based upon this: 'As I was with Moses, so I will be with thee.
I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.' Our strength depends on
ourselves, because our strength is the fruit of our faith. And if we
live with Him, grasping His hand and, in the realising consciousness of
our own weakness, looking beyond ourselves, then power will come to us
above our desire and equal to our need. The old victories of faith will
be reproduced in us when we say with the ancient king, 'Lord! We know
not what to do, but our eyes are up unto Thee.' Then He will come to
us, to make us 'strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.'
'Wait on the Lord and He will strengthen thine heart; wait, I say, on
the Lord.'
But courage is duty, too, as well as strength. Power and the
consciousness of power do not always go together. In regard to the
strength of nature, courage and might are quite separable. There may be
a strong coward and a weak hero. But in the spiritual region, strength
and courage do go together. The consciousness of the divine power with
us, and that alone, will make us bold with a boldness that has no taint
of levity and presumption mingled with it, and never will overestimate
its own strength. The charge to Joshua, then, not only insists upon the
duty of strength, but on the duty of conscious strength, and on the
duty of measuring the strength that is at my back with the weakness
that is against me, and of being bold because I know that more and
'greater is He that is with me than are they that be with them.'
II. So much, then, for the first of the exhortations here. Now look
next at the duty of implicit obedience to the word of command.
That is another soldierly virtue, the exercise of which sheds a
nobility over the repulsive horrors of the battlefield. Joshua had to
be fitted to command by learning to obey, and, like that other soldier
whose rough trade had led him to some inkling of Christ's authority by
its familiarising him with the idea of the strange power of the word of
command, had to realise that he himself was 'under authority' before he
could issue his orders.
Courage and strength come first, and on them follows the command to do
all according to the law, to keep it without deflection to right or
left, and to meditate on it day and night. These two virtues make the
perfect soldier-courage and obedience. Daring and discipline must go
together, and to know how to follow orders is as essential as to know
how to despise dangers.
But the connection between these two, as set forth in this charge, is
not merely that they must co-exist, but that courage and strength are
needed for, and are to find their noblest field of exercise in,
absolute acceptance of, and unhesitating, swift, complete, unmurmuring
obedience to, everything that is discerned to be God's will and our
duty.
For the Christian soldier, then, God's law is his marching orders. The
written word, and especially the Incarnate Word, are our law of
conduct. The whole science of our warfare and plan of campaign are
there. We have not to take our orders from men's lips, but we must
often disregard them, that we may listen to the 'Captain of our
salvation.' The soldier stands where his officer has posted him, and
does what he was bid, no matter what may happen. Only one voice can
relieve him. Though a thousand should bid him flee, and his heart
should echo their advices, he is recreant if he deserts his post at the
command of any but him who set him there. Obedience to others is
mutiny. Nor does the Christian need another law to supplement that
which Christ has given him in His pattern and teaching. Men have
appended huge comments to it, and have softened some of its plain
precepts which bear hard on popular sins. But the Lawgiver's law is one
thing, and the lawyers' explanations which explain it away or darken
what was clear enough, however unwelcome, are quite another. Christ has
given us Himself, and therein has given a sufficient directory for
conduct and conflict which fits close to all our needs, and will prove
definite and practical enough if we honestly try to apply it.
The application of Christ's law to daily life takes some courage, and
is the proper field for the exercise of Christian strength. 'Be very
courageous that thou mayest observe.' If you are not a bold Christian
you will very soon get frightened out of obedience to your Master's
commandments. Courage, springing from the realisation of God's helping
strength, is indispensable to make any man, in any age, live out
thoroughly and consistently the principles of the law of Jesus Christ.
No man in _this_ generation will work out a punctual obedience to what
he knows to be the will of God, without finding out that all the
'Canaanites' are not dead yet; but that there are enough of them left
to make a very thorny life for the persistent follower of Jesus Christ.
And not only is there courage needed for the application of the
principles of conduct which God has given us, but you will never have
them handy for swift application unless, in many a quiet hour of
silent, solitary, patient meditation you have become familiar with
them. The recruit that has to learn on the battle-field how to use his
rifle has a good chance of being dead before he has mastered the
mysteries of firing. And Christian people that have their Christian
principles to dig out of the Bible when the necessity comes, will
likely find that the necessity is past before they have completed the
excavation. The actual battle-field is no place to learn drill. If a
soldier does not know how his sword hangs, and cannot get at it in a
moment, he will probably draw it too late.
I am afraid that the practice of such meditation as is meant here has
come to be, like the art of making ecclesiastical stained glass, almost
extinct in modern times. You have all so many newspapers and magazines
to read that the Bible has a chance of being shoved out of sight,
except on Sundays and in chapels. The 'meditating' that is enjoined in
my text is no mere intellectual study of Scripture, either from an
antiquarian or a literary or a theological point of view, but it is the
mastering of the principles of conduct as laid down there, and the
appropriating of all the power for guidance and for sustaining which
that word of the Lord gives. Meditation, the familiarising ourselves
with the ethics of Scripture, and with the hopes and powers that are
treasured in Jesus Christ, so that our minds are made up upon a great
many thorny questions as to what we ought to do, and that when crises
or dangers come, as they have a knack of coming, very suddenly, and are
sprung upon us unexpectedly, we shall be able, without much difficulty,
or much time spent in perplexed searching, to fall back upon the
principles that decide our conduct--that is essential to all successful
and victorious Christian life.
And it is the secret of all blessed Christian life. For there is a
lovely echo of these vigorous words of command to Joshua in a very much
more peaceful form in the 1st Psalm: 'Blessed is the man that walketh
not in the counsel of the ungodly, ... but his delight is in the law of
the Lord, and in His law doth he meditate day and night'--the very
words that are employed in the text to describe the duty of the
soldier--therefore 'all that he doeth shall prosper.'
III. That leads to the last thought here--the sure victory of such bold
obedience.
'Thou mayest prosper whithersoever thou goest'; 'Thou shalt make thy
way prosperous, and then shalt thou have good success,' or, as the last
word might be rendered, 'then shalt thou _act wisely_' You may not get
victory from an earthly point of view, for many a man that lives strong
and courageous and joyfully obeying God's law, as far as he knows it
and because he loves the Lawgiver, goes through life, and finds that,
as far as the world's estimate is concerned, there is nothing but
failure as his portion. Ah I but the world's way is not the true way of
estimating victory. 'Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world,' said
Jesus Christ when within arm's-length of the Cross. And His way is the
way in which we must conquer the world, if we conquer it at all. The
success which my text means is the carrying out of conscientious
convictions of God's will into practice. That is the only success that
is worth talking about or looking for. The man that succeeds in obeying
and translating God's will into conduct is the victor, whatever be the
outward fruits of his life. He may go out of the field beaten,
according to the estimate of men that can see no higher than their own
height, and little further than their own finger tips can reach; he may
himself feel that the world has gone past him, and that he has not made
much of it; he may have to lie down at last unknown, poor, with all his
bright hopes that danced before him in childhood gone, and sore beaten
by the enemies; but if he is able to say in the strength that Christ
gives, 'I have finished my course; I have kept the faith,' his 'way has
prospered,' and he has had' good success.' 'We are more than conquerors
through Him that loved us.'