Psalm 31:24

Psalm 31:24

“Be strong and let your heart take courage, all you who wait for the Lord.”

I often communicate the different principles and precepts of the Christian faith through the analogy of fighting a war.  I find it most accurately reflects the practical function of each individual’s role in acting out the Christian life, the nature of our relationship with authority, and especially, the intensity of the struggle, both in the effort required and the danger involved in what is at stake.  It is interesting how many people I discover—Christians themselves—who disagree with or disapprove of considering the nature of the Christian walk in this light though it directly echoes the voices of the apostles who encourage us to ‘put on the whole armor of God’, to ‘prepare our minds for action’, to ‘resist the devil, who seeks whom he may devour’, and ‘to struggle against sin to the shedding of our blood’ (Eph 6:11; 1 Pet 1:13; 5:8; James 4:7; Heb 12:4).  Perhaps we do not like this analogy because it confronts us with the very real dangers of evil when all we wish to think about are the more palatable forms of love and goodness.  We relate war with violence and the gospel with peace. War has to do with death and the gospel new life.  War makes us despair, and the gospel brings hope.  But, for whatever reason we reject this analogy to instruct our faith, it all boils down to one simple reason: the idea of war calls to mind great fear.  The kind of violence we see occur in the depravity of human conflict humiliates us with its capacity to make cowards of us all.  It exploits our frailty and weakness causing us to recoil in defense of our lives, and so we would rather not think the calling of our Lord has anything to do with such a repulsive phenomenon.  But there would be no need for hope if we were not threatened with despair; no need for peace if we were not in the midst of great conflict; no need for life if we were not dying; no better life possible if we did not risk our present lives in search of the next.  In truth, this life has more to do with war than it ever did with our ideas of peace.  God says we have an enemy who wars against us.  Even worse, this enemy is compared to a powerful dragon, a roaring lion, and a slithering snake.  He commands cosmic powers and spiritual forces of evil.  He does not fight with the sword or the spear.  His weapons are subtler: lies, accusations, and temptations.  He is always searching for weakness, grasping for a foothold to find a way to destroy us, and if we are deceived we will be destroyed.  It is true there is much to fear in this world, and it is for this very reason God tells us, ‘fear not’.

            When we hear the phrase ‘fear not’, we might have the tendency to mistake it to mean we have ‘nothing to fear’. This is true in a sense, but not in the sense that what we should fear has disappeared and no longer threatens us.  It is a phrase we use when our fears have the greatest power to overcome us and give us over to despair.  It is what Moses cried when Israel stood between the Red Sea and the advancing Egyptian army.  It is what Joshua cried when the five kings of Canaan joined forces against them.  It is what Elijah said to the poor widow, who, at his command, fed him with the last of her food while the land was in perpetual drought.  We find it is not in the absence of what we fear that requires us to lay aside all conditions of it, but in the very presence of our fear that it is most important to act as though we had none.   The command to ‘fear not’ acknowledges the presence of danger by commanding us to face our fears when we most want to run from them, to stand when we would otherwise shrink.   It is why Paul exhorts us to take up the whole armor of God, not just to stand, but to stand and fight, so we may withstand the evil day.  The way to heaven is not with the current but against it, and so we must be strong and let our hearts take courage else we will shrink in the evil day and be overcome by it.  The Lord Jesus says to the seven churches in Revelation, it is to those who overcome who will not be hurt by the second death.  He will cloth in them in white garments and allow them to rule with Him, but to those who are lukewarm—who abstain from the present conflict—He will vomit from His mouth (Rev 2:7, 11; 3:5, 16).   It is to the end of strengthening our courage to overcome that the Lord Jesus bids us remember, when the evil day comes upon us, He has overcome the world.  Just because Jesus has overcome the world, however, does not make any of us unsusceptible to being overcome by evil.  If Jesus has overcome, He says it is only so that we, too, may overcome (Rev 3:21).

            To say God is our refuge, to say Jesus is our strong fortress, is a way of verbalizing the idea that our strength and protection lay with the Lord Jesus Christ much in the same way as the strength and protection of Israel lay for a time in the hand of King David.  It is a way of saying their fate is aligned with his fate, because their cause was aligned with his cause. To align one’s self with David’s cause—to take refuge in his camps—was not to allow David to fight for them (which he only did by leading them), but to fight for him in the battle he was leading them into.  Before David became king, God led him over and again into the midst of his fears, so that he learned to trust God for his deliverance.  As king—the strength and wisdom of the nation—he was able to inspire those who fought for him to do likewise as they fought with him, and the God who delivered David delivered those who followed David.  How much more, when we respond to the call of the Greater David—Jesus—can we expect to be delivered when we follow Him into battle?  Wisdom from God is not God fighting our battles for us.  Wisdom from God is faith that God is our deliverance when we fight for Him.  This is why Jesus is called wisdom from God.   Like Israel who followed David into battle because David was assured of the deliverance of God, we follow Jesus into battle because Jesus is deliverance from God.  To wait on the Lord means exactly this.  It is not a command to do nothing.  It is a military command given to an army from its leader not to move until he moves. Therefore, if Jesus is advancing into battle and compels us to follow, we either follow or defect.

Like it or not, this world is a conflict between the forces of good and evil, and if a man is not willing to fight then the spoils of heaven are not available to him.  If a man does not exist amidst some expression of this conflict, it is because he has chosen the side of evil, and his flesh—which is evil—comforts him for doing so.  A man cannot abstain from the inevitable conflict of this world, and to think so is to be deceived by the enemy or defeated by the flesh.  This is why we are exhorted, commanded by our King, to take heart—to have courage—because it takes courage to deny the flesh.  It takes courage to surrender our cravings for the indulgences of this world and its riches—the thorns that choke the seed.  It takes courage to rejoice when we are grieved by various trials and to believe the testing of our faith—the war we fight—will produce praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ who is our deliverance from so great a struggle.  It takes courage to resist the devil, not just to flee him, but to fight him.    For the sword in our hands—the word of God—is not for our intellectual amusement or rhetorical speculation, but for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and it takes courage to wield it in this manner—to rest in the defenses of the weapons God has given us for our warfare (2 Cor 10:3-5).  It takes strength to walk against the current of the world.  It takes diligence and discipline to discern between its wisdom and the wisdom of God, and it takes courage to deny its values when the world would compel us—force us—to accept them.  So let weak say I am strong, for we are strong in the Lord and the power of His might if we stand with the Lord who promises us we will not be ashamed. Be strong and let your heart take courage!

When Thomas doubted the resurrection of our Lord, Jesus showed him his hands and feet and said, “You have seen and therefore believe.  Blessed are those who have not seen and still believe.”  It takes courage to believe the word of the one whom we have not seen, that when we lay down our lives at his command, He will return to us what we have given Him.  His commands are not burdensome.  They are the relief of our burdens.  He seeks our surrender of only that which would otherwise destroy us.  But it takes courage to believe that everything we seek lay in the abandonment of all we desire—the mortification of the flesh—the slaying of the essence of self—death and violence—war.  But if the spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who lives in you.  Amen.