Part 11

This is not merely poetic and artist's fancy. It is with no cloudy vagueness that the existence of a Spirit of Evil is revealed in the Holy Scriptures. There are many these days who are disposed to laugh at the account which tells us of man's temptation and fall in the Garden as a myth, an Oriental hyperbole, and to characterize the closing chapters of Revelation, which inform us of the Tempter's fall and fate, as allegory and romance. But there still remains scattered throughout the Bible, in connection with every prominent Bible character and Bible event, mention of a personal agent of evil, the foe of God and the foe of man, bent with restless activity and mastery of deceit upon the destruction of souls and the corruption of the creation of God.

Not a matter of speculation is this belief in the existence and power of the chief of fallen angels, and far wiser and prudent were it if, in place of talking of, people, in humble acceptation of God's Word, would recognize their foe, and seek the strength and means to contend with him.

What we need against the arch-enemy of our souls is the simple faith and the bold defiance that breathes forth in the life, the words, and the hymns of our great Reformer, a spirit which prompted him to do--what is perhaps only a tradition, yet fully characterizes the man--_viz._, that when his mighty imagination had conjured up before him the very form and face of the Wicked One, he took his inkstand and hurled it at him, leaving behind, as memento, an ugly spot upon the wall of his study.

It is of this conflict with the Prince of Darkness that the text speaks.

Three particulars would we note: _I. The foe to be encountered_; _II. the weapons employed_; _III. the victory achieved_, and as Moses was distinctly bidden by God in the 14th verse of the chapter from which our text has been taken: "Write these for a memorial in a book," let us write the words spoken for a memorial on the tablet of our hearts.

We meet the people of God in Rephidim engaged in a fierce encounter with the Amalekites. No doubt, the Lord could have led His people safely through the wilderness without any such conflicts if He had chosen to do so, but He had His own, wise designs in permitting them. And so with Satan's workings and attacks people may argue and speculate. Why did God ever permit such a dangerous foe to exert his malicious power and tempt mankind? Suffice it to answer: It thus seemed good unto Him, and is in perfect accordance with His almightiness and wisdom.

The Amalekites, the people with whom the Israelites were in conflict, were the descendants of Esau, Amalek having been his grandson, and as is wont to be with relatives, unfortunately, the hatred which Esau entertained toward his brother Jacob had become transplanted upon his children, yea, seems to have grown the more bitter, deeper, and malignant as time progressed. And the offspring of both multiplied into a great and prosperous people. The Amalekites at this time occupied a large tract of land extending from the confines of Idumea to the shores of the Red Sea. When, therefore, Israel crossed over and encamped at the Mount of Sinai, they were close upon their borders; but they offered them no injury nor provocation, and far from invading their territory, they were turning rapidly away from it when Amalek assaulted them, and that in a most dastardly manner; for, not daring to engage them in front, they smote the hindmost of them, even all that were faint and weary, who had lagged behind and were alike incapable of resistance or flight. When Moses became aware of the enemy, he issues command unto Joshua, the military leader: "Choose us out men, and go out, and fight with Amalek; to-morrow I will stand on the top of the hill with the rod of God in mine hand." "So Joshua did as Moses had said to him, and fought with Amalek; and Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill." And whilst the battle was raging in the valley, whilst the swords were clashing, the warriors grappling, the wounded groaning, and the fighting masses surging to and fro in fierce and bloody encounter, Moses was stationed upon the brow of Mount Sinai, lifting up his hands in prayer and intercession to the God of Battles. An encouraging sight! From that ancient battle-ground, a picture and pattern, we would direct our eyes unto ourselves.

Like as of old, we are warriors of the Lord, soldiers of Jesus Christ. We have our Amalek, the old evil Foe, who means deadly woe. Let us take our stand by the side of Moses in the mountain, and for a few moments look at the enemy. Foremost, the leader of the host, is that original tempter, deceiver, destroyer, and murderer, that Wicked One, the Father of Lies, the Prince of Darkness, the roaring lion that goes about seeking whom he may destroy. Marshaled around him, as their mighty captain, are legions of lesser spirit-beings which arithmetic cannot begin to calculate. Scripture tells us that Satan could spare seven devils to torment one poor sinner. What, then, must their number be? And as the Amalekites, they hate us with a perfect hatred. Having by their bad ambition and pride lost heaven and being hurled to the bottomless pit, they are now most bitterly and irreconcilably opposed to everything that stands in connection with the Redeemer and His redeemed. To think that we, who are equally fallen into sin, should be restored to grace, accepted to the very thrones they have lost, is more than their envy can endure. For this reason they pursue us through life, dog our every step, and press us to the very gate of death. What tactics does this spiritual enemy employ? As the enemy in the field, by false signals, feigned movements, masked batteries, and every strategic art, seeks to conceal his position, disguises his plan of attack, just so our spiritual enemies seek to beguile by a thousand stratagems and schemes to mislead the unwary and inexperienced and bring to fall the strongest.

As in the case of the Amalekites, they attack you in your most vulnerable points and at a time when you are faint and weakest; and they are as vigilant as they are cunning. Always and everywhere they are on the watch for souls. If you come to the house of God, they are here before you; if you enter your room in prayer, you cannot shut them out. By day they compass your path, by night they surround your pillow. Wherever you are they are; whatever you say, they hear it; whatever you do, they perceive it. From our birth to our burial--a frightful thought!--we are perpetually watched by myriads of malignant eyes, unclean and accursed spirits, ready to avail themselves of every opportunity to do us harm and ruin all our hopes. Or need we any examples for what harm they have done? Behold that lovely pair fresh from the Creator's hand walking the groves of Eden, and behold again the outcasts--we know the cause. Observe Job, that perfect man of Uz, robbed of his property and his children, and smitten in body with a sore disease. Who was it that instigated Judas to betray the Lord, Peter to deny Him, all Jerusalem to clamor for His blood, the Roman governor to condemn Him to the cross? St. John said in his day that the whole world was lying in the bosom of the Evil One, and it is much the same to this present day. All men are more or less subject to his influences, and two-thirds of the human race controlled by this evil genius. This, then, is the foe with whom we are obliged to contend.

But how can the lamb cope with the lion? How can we expect to conquer that enemy who conquered our first parents in the strength of their original purity? Truly, "With might of ours can naught be done, soon were our loss effected." And yet we have nothing to fear. We have a precious ally, we battle under a valiant, an unconquerable Leader. The Lord of Hosts is with us, just so we are firm in the strife and rightly use the weapons He has furnished us. And which are these? Reading the 13th verse of our text, we find it distinctly mentioned: "And Joshua discomfited Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword." And which is our spiritual sword? For our enemy being spiritual, it is evident our weapon must be likewise. Saint Paul gives answer when he says in Ephesians: "Take the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God." Here, then, Christian warrior, is a weapon, better than Damascus blades. With this our Lord defeated Satan in the wilderness; with this St. Peter pierced the hearts of thousands on Pentecost; with this St. Paul made Felix tremble, and Agrippa, as he confessed to Paul, was almost persuaded by him to become a Christian; with this Martin Luther prevailed against the son of Belial and his besotted minions. Grasp it firmly, wield it vigorously. Or do you claim you do not know how? Then permit me to give you a few general directions. You are all familiar with the story of David and Goliath,--how the great champion of the Philistines daily came forth, cursing and challenging the people of God, until one day a shepherd lad of Bethlehem comes into the camp and with a stone from his sling stretches the huge form of the giant flat upon the ground. You, my beloved, are spiritual Davids; the smooth pebbles you have gathered up from the brook of God's Word are the holy Ten Commandments; learn to sling these aright, and you are invincible. Are you, for instance, tempted to speak the Lord's name irreverently, then place pebble, called the second, in your spiritual sling, which says: "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord, thy God, in vain," and your tempter will fall flat like Philistia's giant. Are you tempted to negligence, indifference in regard to the Lord's day and the Lord's house, take No. 3. Would Satan tempt a young Christian to disobedience, to indecency, or an old Christian to dishonesty, intemperance, coveteousness,--whatever the sin may be, select the proper pebble, and victory is yours. "This world's prince may still scowl fierce as he will, he can harm us none, he's judged, the deed is done, one little word can fell him." Then, too, let us remember that we are "more than conquerors through Him that loves us." In His strength let us battle. When the devil would deceive us, or seduce us into misbelief, despair, and other great shame and vice, let us cast ourselves upon Him who vanquished the Evil Foe. His cross is our strength. Let us hold that up before him, and he will skulk away in sullen retreat. The precious Gospel of Christ will quench all the fiery darts of doubt, unbelief, and despair which the hellish enemy would shoot into our hearts. Thus with the Law and the Gospel we can conquer him.

Nor is this all. Another powerful weapon is placed at our command. Most graphically does our text describe it when it says: "And Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill. And it came to pass, when Moses held up his hand, that Israel prevailed; and when he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed." The Israelites would not have conquered had they not fought. But the other is equally as true: they would not have conquered had Moses not prayed. The real decision in the matter seemed not so much in the conflict in the valley as with the man of prayer, the suppliant on the mountain. And here, my dear Christian, still rests your power. Much as people may sneer at prayer in these atheistic and skeptic times, prayer is the hand that moves the world. "Satan trembles when he sees the weakest saint upon his knees." Our Lord warning Peter addresses him, "Simon Peter, behold, Satan hath desired to have you that he may sift you as wheat; but I have prayed for thee"; and His constant exhortation in the sore hour of Gethsemane was, "Watch and pray lest ye fall into temptation." How many a one when he asks himself, How was it possible that I should have fallen so deeply and strayed so far from my God? will hear his conscience whisper: You had grown indifferent, neglectful in your devotion and your prayers, and hence came your failure. Prayer must be incessant and mutual. Two are better than one, and a threefold cord is not quickly broken. Moses, Aaron, and Hur, together they prevailed. Where man and wife join in sacred communion to the God of families, His blessing will rest upon them, and the Evil One be kept at bay. Where a congregation is strong in devout and earnest looking to God, it can accomplish wonders against the Prince of Darkness and the wickedness of the world. When the day closed and the sun had sunk beneath the battle-ground in Rephidim, the victory was won; Amalek was defeated. It was Israel's first achievement, but not their last. Amalek continued to harass them, and even Saul and David had to take up arms against them. Nor is it different with us. The spiritual campaign lasts "until we draw our fleeting breath, till our eyelids close in death"; hence, "from strength to strength go on, wrestle, and fight, and pray, tread all the powers of darkness down, and win the well-fought day." And if at times your hands would grow weary and your knees weak amidst the conflict in the valley, then look up like Israel of old to the mountain from whence cometh your help, to that blessed knoll where hangs our divine Moses with his arms extended,--look up to the cross. Amen.

SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT.

Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world.--_2 Tim. 4, 10._

There is nothing sadder, my beloved hearers, nothing more calculated to strike dread into the heart, than the punishment of a deserter in the army. The offender is led before his regiment, and after the rehearsal of his disgrace to his fellow-soldiers, his arms are pinioned, his eyes bandaged, and an open coffin stands ready to receive his lifeless body. The file of soldiers aim at the one fluttering heart, and the lightning-like death ends the dreadful scene.

And why is a deserter's doom made so awful? Simply because the crime of desertion is so great, its demoralizing effect which it would have on the army so fatal, that it must be punished in the most telling and fearful manner. History, both sacred and secular, has put no deeper brand of infamy than on deserters. Benedict Arnold stands forth as an instance of the one, Judas Iscariot as an instance of the other. American history holds up the one before us, bandaged, pinioned, shot through with the bullets of a nation's abhorrence and malediction, whilst the other, Judas, is a name detested as far as the Bible is read and to the day of doom.

In our text we read of another deserter. His name is Demas, and the Apostle Paul has set the mark of infamy upon him.

Who, we question, was this man Demas? And what was the nature of his offense? We know very little of his early career, but that little is most favorable. He had been an associate of St. Paul in the ranks of Christ's followers. Paul more than once makes honorable mention of his name. When he wrote his letter to the Church at Colossae, he coupled the name of Demas with that of St. Luke. He thus writes: "Luke, the beloved physician, and Demas greet you," which shows that he must have been favorably known in the Church, and that his greetings must have been highly thought of, else would the apostle not have forwarded them through his own letter.

And one more fact do we know of him. He not only professed love toward Christ, but he had once suffered for his Christian profession. He most likely had worn the honorable mark of prison chains in the name and for the sake of Christ. In his letter to Philemon, St. Paul, remembering his companions in suffering, writes: "There salute thee Epaphras, my fellow-prisoner in Christ Jesus; Marcus, Aristarchus, Demas, and Lucas, my fellow-laborers." So the apostle once wrote from a Roman prison of Demas, and it was from the same prison that he afterwards sadly penned these painful words: "Demas hath forsaken me." And why? Did his health fail? Did he go to labor elsewhere? Paul tells us: "Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world." There we have the reason, and it is one that we shall more clearly regard in our instruction these moments.

On the previous Lord's day we considered the first great enemy of our soul, Satan. To-day we come to the second, the world, reserving the third, the flesh, God willing, for next Sunday. To deal practically and directly with the matter, let us ask the questions: _I. What is worldliness, and how can I tell whether I am worldly or not?_ _II. How can I overcome my worldliness?_ And may God's wisdom and blessing attend our meditation!

If we read our Bible carefully, my beloved, we shall be impressed, overwhelmed by the number of Scripture passages which refer to God's people and their relation to this world. These passages are found in the Old Testament and in the New, and they are plain-spoken, their own interpretation. In the Old Testament they are such as these: "Deliver my soul from men of the world, who have their portion in this life." "And ye shall be holy unto me, for I, the Lord, am holy, and have severed you from other people, that ye should be mine."

In the New Testament we find the passages still more explicit and manifold. To begin with, there is nothing that Jesus teaches with greater frequency or with greater positiveness than this fact, that we are to be unworldly in our Christian life. "Ye are not of the world," He declares, "for I have chosen you out of the world." "Ye cannot serve God and mammon." "What shall it profit a man if he should gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"

And as the Master, so His apostles. "Be not conformed," exhorts Paul, "to this world." "Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers." "Come out from among them, and be ye separate." James writes: "The friendship of the world is enmity with God. Whosoever will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God." "True religion before God is to keep oneself unspotted from the world." And to finish our quotations with the words of St. John: "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any one love the world, the love of the Father is not in him." There is nothing uncertain about these statements. Their teaching is clear. They declare that there is a broad and ineffaceable line of demarcation between the people of God and the world. They are so far apart that no man can belong to both at the same time. To try to do so produces an absurd piety and a sham, is as foolish as trying to mix light and darkness, oil and water. They refuse to mix. It means either--or, one or the other. Either Christianity will have the sway, and it will conquer and eradicate the world, or the world will have the sway, and it will efface Christianity. The world proposes a compromise, it is true, but the compromise always means death; that is why it proposes it. How imperative, then, that we should analyze what worldliness is and plant an interrogation in our heart: Am I worldly?

What, then, is worldliness? There are some who have no difficulty whatever in defining it. "Worldliness," why, that's easily explained; going to races, theaters, balls, playing euchre and dressing flashily--that's it. No doubt it is; but worldliness does not confine itself merely to theaters and balls, cards and dress. There are hundreds of people who have never been inside of a ballroom, rarely or never attended a theater, and yet they may be intensely worldly for all that. Worldliness implies something vastly more and deeper. It is something which affects not only the external acts of a person, but the heart; something which is determined by the spirit with which we do things, and not so much by the things with which we have to do. It is not the earth, the objects and the people that fill this earth, that we may not love, but the way in which we love these objects and people that constitute the world. "Worldliness," I answer, is a condition of the heart.

Let us look into this a little closer. It has to do with the inner spirit of the man or the woman. Demas' mistake was that he loved the world. Did not Paul love the world? Did he not love it when he renounced ease, gain, promotion, and station, and threw his whole soul into the holy effort of saving a poor lost world for Christ? Do we not read that God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son? And that only-begotten Son, did He not love the world when He gave His heart's blood to redeem it? Yes, they loved it and showed their love by lifting it out of its sinful and guilty condition. In the same way you and I may love the world that we may do it good, and so give more of our time, money, talents, and energy to win it back to God.

But that was not the love that brought Demas to fall, and against which we are warned. No, something quite different,--the world's ways, maxims, aims, ease, pleasures, and fascinations. Tradition tells us that Demas afterwards became a priest in a heathen temple. If so, it was no doubt because he found more gain in silver and gold than in the service of Christ. How do you regard the things of the world in your heart, and how do you regard the people of the world? That is what determines worldliness. If you love pleasure better than your prayers, any book better than your Bible, any house better than God's, any person better than your Savior, you are worldly. You are surrounded by people who do not fear God, who do not keep His commandments, who have no treasure in heaven, no plans or purposes which extend beyond the grave, minus faith, minus hope, minus all spiritual life,--what is your attitude toward such? Do you make your choice of friends from these professed worldly men and women? If so, you are worldly. I assure you some of our worst foes are our ungodly friends.

Then, you may reply, we cannot go into society at all, we must live secluded lives. The Bible does not say that. What it says is that, when we go into society, we ought to take our Christianity with us. Our Lord went into society, and wherever He went, they felt the sacredness which was about Him. You go into society, what is the result? Do you influence it, or are you influenced by it? What effect has it upon your religious life and professions? Does it secularize you and make you unfit for prayer? Does it silence your testimony of Christ, and cool down your interest and enthusiasm for the Church? Know, then, that it is making you worldly. A woman who cannot be recognized in society as a Christian by her modest dress and her pure ways, and the tone and topic of her conversation, is a worldling. The man who can do business, and not be known as a Christian by his business scruples and methods and spirit, is a worldling. If a worldling can truthfully say of you, "He is no better than I am," you are a worldling. If you live as a worldling, you are a worldling. That needs no argument. But, after all, be it noted that, however it manifests itself in manner, dress, social companionship, and conduct, worldliness primarily is a temper, spirit, and disposition of the heart. "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." The world would have done Demas no harm if he had not loved it. It will do us no harm as long as we keep it out of our hearts. But here is where lurks the very danger,--it so easily, so silently, and very gradually insinuates itself into the heart. To use an illustration: In olden times the sailors, a race given to superstition, used to tell that somewhere in the Indian Ocean there was a magnetic rock that rose from the deep with power of attraction. Silently a ship was drawn towards this rock, nearer and nearer, and gradually one by one the bolts were drawn out of the vessel's side by the magnetic power. The end was that, when the doomed vessel had drawn so near that every bolt and clamp was unloosed, the whole fabric fell apart, and the crew and cargo would sink down into the waters.