The Spurgeon Series 1859 & 1860. Charles H. Spurgeon

words of Jesus! you are now this day invited to come to the mountain of his church, on which stands his cross and his throne. You weary, heavy laden, sin-destroyed, sin-ruined souls, you who know and feel your need of Jesus, you who weep because of sin, you are bidden to come now to Christ’s cross, to look to him who shed his blood for the ungodly, and looking to him, you shall find peace and rest; so that when he comes with rainbow wreath, and robes of storm, you shall be able to see him, not with alarm and terror, but with joy and gladness; for you shall say, “Here he is, the man who died for me has come to claim me; he who bought me has come to receive me; my Judge is my Redeemer, and I will rejoice in him.” Oh! turn, you English heathens — turn to God! you inhabitants of London, some of you as vile as the inhabitants of Sodom; turn, turn to God! Oh Lord Jesus! by your grace turn every one of us to yourself! Bring in your elect; let your redeemed rejoice in you; and then let the fulness of the nations flow to you, and yours shall be the glory, for ever and ever.

      {a} Dromedary: A light and fleet breed of the camel, specially reared and trained for riding. Usually of the Arabian or one-humped camel, but the Bactrian camel may also be improved into a dromedary. OED.

      War! War! War!

      No. 250-5:201. A Sermon Delivered On Sunday Morning, May 1, 1859, By C. H. Spurgeon, At The Music Hall, Royal Surrey Gardens.

       Fight the Lord’s battles. {1 Samuel 18:17}

      1. We shall not take these words in their literal application, as coming from the lips of Saul, when he gave David his older daughter, Merab, for his wife; but shall accommodate the passage, and use it as an exhortation given to the church of Christ, and to every soldier of Jesus: “Fight the Lord’s battles.” If this exhortation is not found in the very same words, coming from the lips of Jesus, nevertheless the whole tenor of the Word of God is to the same effect — “Fight the Lord’s battles.”

      2. At the present crisis, the minds of men are exceedingly agitated with fearful prospects of a terrible struggle. We know not where this matter may grow. The signs of the times are dark and fearful. We fear that the vials of God’s wrath are about to be poured out, and that the earth will be deluged with blood. As long as there remains a hope, let us pray for peace, no, even in the time of war let us still beseech the throne of God, crying, that he would “send us peace in our days.”

      3. The war will be looked upon by different people with different feelings. The Italian will consider, all through the controversy, his own country; {a} the Sardinian will be looking continually to the progress or to the defeat of his own nation; while the German, having sympathy with his own race, will be continually anxious to understand the state of affairs. There is one power, however, which is not represented in the congress and which seems to be silent, because the ears of men are deaf to anything that it has to say. To that power all our sympathies will be given, and our hearts will follow it with interest; and all through the war, the one question that we shall ask, will be “How will that kingdom prosper?” You all know to which kingdom I refer — it is the kingdom of Jesus Christ upon earth; that little one which is even at this time growing, and which is to become a thousand, which is to break in pieces all the monarchies of earth, and to seat itself upon their ruins, proclaiming universal liberty and peace, under the banner of Jesus Christ. I am sure that we shall think far more of the interests of religion than of anything else, and our prayer will be, “Oh Lord, do what you will with the earthen pitchers of men’s monarchies, but let your kingdom come, and let your will be done on earth, even as it is in heaven!”

      4. While, however, we shall anxiously watch the contest, it will be quite as well if we become involved in it ourselves. Not that this nation of England should touch it; God forbid. If tyrants fight, let them fight; let free men stand aloof. Why should England have anything to do with all the coming battles? As God has cut us off from Europe by a boisterous sea, so let us be kept apart from all the broils and turmoils into which tyrants and their slaves may fall. I speak now, after a spiritual manner, to the church of Christ. I say, “Let us become involved in the fray; let us have something to do.” We cannot be neutral; we never have been. Our host is always hostile to sin and Satan. “My voice is still for war.” The senate of Christ’s church can never speak of peace. For thus it is written: “The Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation.”

      5. This will bring us to the text; and here I shall consider, first of all, the Lord’s battles; we are not to fight our own: secondly, the Lord’s soldiers; and thirdly, the King’s command , “Fight the Lord’s battles.”

      6. I. First, THE LORD’S BATTLES, what are they? Not the garment rolled in blood, not the noise, and smoke, and din of human slaughter. These may be the devil’s battles, if you please, but not the Lord’s. They may be days of God’s vengeance, but in their strife the servant of Jesus may not get involved. We stand aloof. Our kingdom is not of this world; otherwise God’s servants would fight with sword and spear. Ours is a spiritual kingdom, and the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but spiritual, and mighty through God, to the pulling down of strongholds.

      7. What are God’s battles? Let us here carefully distinguish between the battles of God, and our own. Oh, my brothers and sisters in Christ, it is not your business to fight your own battles, not even in defence of your own character. If you are maligned and slandered, let the slanderer alone. His malignity will only be increased by any attempt that you shall make to defend yourself. As a soldier of Christ you are to fight for your Master, not for yourself. You are not to carry on a private warfare for your own honour, but all your time and all your power is to be given to his defence and his war. You are not to have a word to speak for yourselves. Frequently, when we get into little strifes, and our blood is roused, we are apt to think that we are fighting the cause of truth, when we are really maintaining our own pride. We imagine that we are defending our Master, but we are defending our own little selves. Too often the anger rises against an adversary, not because his words reflect dishonour upon the glorious Christ, but because they dishonour us. Oh! let us not be so little as to fight our own battles! Depend upon it, the noblest means of conquest for a Christian in the matter of calumny and falsehood, is to stand still and see the salvation of God. Sheathe your own sword, put away all your own weapons, when you come to fight your own battle, and let God fight for you, and you shall be more than conqueror.

      8. Again, we must remember that there is such a thing as fighting the battles of our own sect, when we ought to be fighting God’s battles. We imagine that we are maintaining the church when we are only maintaining our section of it. I would always be very tender for the honour of the Christian body to which I belong, but I would rather see its honour stained, than that the glory of the entire church should be dimmed. Every soldier ought to love the peculiar legion in which he has enlisted, but better to see the colours of that legion torn to tatters, than to see the old standard of the cross trampled in the mire. Now I trust we are ready to say of our own denomination, “Let its name perish, if Christ’s name shall receive any glory by it.” If the extinction of our sect should be the conquest of Christ and the promoting of his kingdom, then let it be wiped out of the book of record, and do not let its name be heard any more. We should, I say, each of us defend the body to which we belong, for we have conscientiously joined it believing it to be the nearest to the old standard of the church of Christ, and God forbid that we should desert it for a worse standard. If we see a better one, then would we sacrifice our prejudices to our convictions, but we cannot leave the old standard as long as we see it to be the very standard which floated in the hand of Paul, and which was handed by him through various generations, through Chrysostom to Augustine, from Augustine to Calvin, and so on through the glorious race of mighty men who have not been ashamed of the gospel of Christ Jesus. But yet I say let our name, and let our sect, and let our denomination be absorbed, and let it sink, so that the battle of the Lord may only be well fought, and the time of Christ’s triumph hastened.

      9. “Fight the Lord’s battles.” Then what are these? These are battles with sin and battles with error, and battles with war, and battles with worldliness. Fight these Christian, and