Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1358
Delivered on Wednesday Morning, May 9, 1877
I HAVE taken two texts from two successive chapters of the book of Joshua. The first is from Joshua the seventh, at the third verse. The spies who were sent to Ai returned to Joshua and said to him, “Let not all the people go up; but let about two or three thousand men go up and smite Ai.” This policy led to a disastrous defeat and our other text gives us the Lord’s command concerning the new attack. You will find it in the eighth of Joshua and the first verse—“The Lord said unto Joshua, Fear not, neither be dismayed: take all the people of war with you, and arise, go up to Ai; see, I have given into your hand the king of Ai, and his people, and his city, and his land.”
The two texts may be condensed into—first, the advice of the spies, to employ only a part of the people in the assault upon Ai—“Let not all the people go up.” And, secondly, the command of God to let every fighting man go forth to the war—“Take all the people of war with you.” Brethren, like Israel, we are called to war and we have a greater than Joshua at our head, in whose name we conquer! There is an inheritance which as yet has been held by the adversary and in the name of God we have to drive him out. We are likely to experience difficulties very similar to those which were met with by the tribes and I doubt not that their history, (is it not written for our learning?), will prove exceedingly interesting to us if we have a mind to consider it.
We shall meet with the same defeats as they did if we fall into the same sins. And we shall win like victories if we are obedient to the commands which God has given us, which are very similar to those addressed to Israel of old. As in a glass we see ourselves in the 12 tribes, from the first day even until now, and in the texts before us there is a lesson for us, which may God, by His Grace, enable us to learn. I pray the Holy Spirit to illuminate our minds while we read in the book of the wars of the Lord and as soldiers of Christ learn from warriors of old time.
I. Let us consider THE ADVICE OF THE SPIES which led to such a shameful defeat. And here we shall have to deal with the error of supposing that only a part of the Church will be sufficient to perform the work of the whole—that a large proportion may be idle—and that the rest will be quite enough to fight the Lord’s battles. I feel it to be an error which, though not perhaps theoretically held by any of us, is practically to be seen abroad in our Churches and needs to be met and put to an end.
In Joshua’s day this error sprang up among the Israelites because, on account of their sins, God was displeased with them. The commencement of the chapter tells us that the Lord God was angry because the children of Israel had committed a trespass in the accursed thing. Because of the sin of Achan, the anger of the Lord was kindled against the people. That was the real reason of their defeat before Ai, but out of that secret cause grew the more manifest source of defeat—because God was displeased with them, they were left to themselves and, therefore, they adopted a fatal policy. When God is in the midst of a Church, He guides its counsels and directs the hearts of men to go about His work in the wisest manner.
Is it not an old saying that, “Whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad?” And is not the heathen proverb the shadow of the fact that men become foolish when they have broken the commands of God and thus they are chastened for one fault by being permitted to fall into another? Even upon the Lord’s own people a measure of judicial blindness may come. You may depend upon it that when it becomes a doctrine that only special classes of men are to be expected to work in the Church, there is some great wrong in the background!
It is that Church which most of all has fallen into this fallacy and has drawn the sharpest line between those called the clergy and the poor unfortunate laymen, who, perhaps, may do something for God, but who cannot be expected, or, indeed, allowed to do anything in particular. In that Church, I say, the deadliest errors have found a home! We, too, may take it for granted that when we begin to leave Christian work to be performed by a minister, or the visitation of the
poor to be solely done by a paid missionary, we have some Achan in the camp with a goodly Babylonian garment hidden in his tent.
There must be an accursed thing somewhere or other which has caused us to be left to so gross a folly! Either worldliness, or lukewarmness, or love of ease, or deep declension of heart must lie at the root of this slovenly and sluggish policy. It is not God’s mind that it should be so and He has evidently left us to ourselves when this fatal method is adopted. When the Holy Spirit rests upon the Church, this folly is practically avoided. No, it is not even thought of! God grant to the Churches represented here today that they may walk in such soundness of doctrine and have such spirituality of life that they may be full of the Divine Presence and never dream for a moment of sending only a portion of their members out to war and leave the rest to sit still! We cannot leave the battles of our Lord to be fought by mercenary troops! The whole army of men made willing in the day of the Lord’s power must go out under the command of our Divine Joshua to meet the foe!