Gooding, David: 2 - Introduction - Part 2

Book of Judges, chapter one and verse 1. It was passed after the death of Joshua that the children of Israel asked of the Lord, saying, Who shall go up for us first against the Canaanites to fight against them? And the Lord said, Judah shall go up. Behold, I have delivered the land into his hand. Judah said unto Simeon his brother, Come up with me into my lot, that we may fight against the Canaanites, and I likewise will go with thee into thy lot. So Simeon went with him. Judah went up, and the Lord delivered the Canaanites and the Perizzites into their hands, and they smote at them in Betzek, thousand men. They found Adamebezek in Betzek, and they fought against him, and they smote the Canaanites and the Perizzites. But Adonibezek fled, and they pursued after him and caught him and cut off his thumbs and his great toes. And Adonibezek said, three score and ten kings, having their thumbs and their great toes cut off, gathered their meat under my table. As I have done, so God has requited me. And they brought him to Jerusalem, and he died there. In our first study, we discovered that when God redeemed the nation of Israel out of Egypt, he took them across the wilderness of Sinai to an inheritance in the land of Canaan. And that inheritance he gave them. Nevertheless, although that inheritance was a free gift from God, Israel found that in order to enjoy that inheritance, they had to be prepared to fight in order to subdue and to expel the nations that were, uh, in the land when they themselves arrived. God, of course, promised and in fact gave to Israel his divine power to assist them in the expulsion of the Canaanites. On the other hand, God worked no magic. God did not wave some fairy wand over the land one night where- while Israel slept, and hey presto, when Israel woke up in the morning, all the Canaanites had run away. God never works magic, even though sometimes he works miracles. God indeed did grant the Israelites his divine power, but they had alongside of that to add all diligence, so that they might be themselves the vehicles of that divine power, and thus overcome the enemy, and so enter into the enjoyment of their inheritance. And in that historical event, we found a lesson for ourselves. We who have been redeemed have an inheritance given us of God, which presently, when the Lord comes, we shall enjoy to the full, but which we may begin already here and now to enjoy. Only our present enjoyment of it will depend in great part on our willingness to fight the battles of the Lord against all those enemies without and within that would keep us back from our enjoyment of our spiritual inheritance. Our fight is a spiritual fight, not to be fought with carnal weapons, but with spiritual weapons. But a fight it is, and we must see God's grace and courage in the power of his spirit to mortify, to put to death, as Paul would put it, to put to death those evil enemies within our hearts, and without us, that would prevent us enjoying our inheritance. So now we begin. And shall we notice lesson number one in this book of Judges, that when the Israelites at this period went up to fight the enemy, to drive out the enemy, and thus to enjoy their inheritance, they did not attempt to drive out all the enemies all at once. Nor, when they started, was it on a Tuesday, I don't know, or a Monday, did they expect all the enemy that night to be finished with? They were men of spirituality and also common sense. So they inquired of the Lord, and they said, who shall go first? Now, where shall we go first? It was going to be, in fact, a long, drawn-out campaign, even if every battle had been successful. And we shall see that not all the battles were successful, but even had they all been successful, it would still have been a long, drawn-out campaign. So Judah asked the Lord, Lord, which of us shall go up first? And the Lord said, Judah shall go up first. He didn't say, nonsense, Judah, you'll all go up and finish it off today. And I confess to you that I find in that little matter a great deal of encouragement. I too find that dealing with the innumerable enemies is not a matter of an afternoon, but a matter, in fact, of a lifetime. That should help us to get a balanced view of this thing, shouldn't it? Sometimes, being creatures of extreme, we do get just a little bit unbalanced. We hear of some who have had some overwhelming experience of the wonder of God, which has moved on their sanctification very remarkably. And then we fall to thinking, ah yes, that's the answer. If only I could have some experience of God like that, and all the enemies be dislodged and a- a- a- and uh, destroyed overnight, what a glorious thing a Christian life would be. And so we seek a kind of a once for all experience. Only to find it doesn't really work. Or if it does seem to, that's because we've deceived ourselves. And so there are other folks who say nonsense, none of these once for all experiences for me, none of these shattering revelations. I'm the slow plodding type. I deal with Amorite by Amorite, Kenianite by Perizzite, and thus with all the enemies day after day. But it is the fact, isn't it, that sometimes God does reveal himself to his people. Sometimes there come moments when the Holy Spirit, as Paul would put it, illumines the understanding, the eyes of our heart, and we have a new vision of the power of God that is available for us. And in those moments, yes, we seem to make noticeable progress. Pity the man that had never had such experience. And some of us who were brought up in Christian homes, and who in consequence never had some brilliant conversion experience. We could never boast there afterwards that we were the wickedest folks in town, got drunk every night and beat up our wives, and therefore when we got converted, there wasn't all that much difference at any rate. Sometimes when the likes of us suddenly realize that we have been living very much self-centeredly. And our eyes are opened by God's Holy Spirit to the need to submit the whole of life to the lordship of Christ. Yes, there comes a crisis experience, like a second conversion. None would despise such a thing. How easy it is to be half and half, isn't it, in our devotion to the Lord? How wonderful to have one's eyes open, that the only sensible way of living the Christian life is to be one hundred percent abandoned to the Lord. Yes, but while all such experiences are wonderfully helpful and indeed necessary. Yet, uh, they will be followed by a constant warfare, flaring up here and breaking out there and positively to be su- pursued somewhere else. Never will there come a moment until the Lord comes, when by some sudden experience all our enemies have overnight been destroyed. And I say I find it comforting. For if I thought it was the biblical notion that I should go through some sudden experience and all my spiritual enemies disappear and I be well-nigh perfect, well, I should have given up a long time ago, for I haven't found it like that the last thirty-five years. And I have to say with Paul, in me, that is in my flesh, alas. There dwells no good thing. Courage up then, God's program is for steady, workmanlike, persistent... following on and keeping on, and bit by bit progression in the conquering of the end. Then as we follow Judah and his help meet Simeon, and it's always a help to have someone going along with you, isn't it? Sorry business for those who by force of circumstance, have to be loners in the Christian battle. Always a comfort to me that to know that somebody has the same kind of enemies as I have, so I don't think I'm the only one. I do think that's a wicked thing to get comfort from, but it does encourage me. As we follow them, we shall notice a number of God's principles of judgment, a number of experiences. Some were good, some were half good, some were three quarters bad, and some were wholly bad. The first principle I call your attention to is what happened with this old king called Adoni-Bete. Judah went up, they defeated him in battle, he fled away, but they caught up with him, and catching up with him, they cut off his thumb and great toe, his thumbs and great toes. And you might have thought that was a barbarous treatment to deal out to a prisoner of war, but listen to the interesting confession with all this old Canaanite king made. As God's judgment caught up with him, it began to get his conscience a-working and his memory. And he said, seventy kings with thumbs and toes cut off gathered their bread under my table. Of course, he'd been an old tyrant, hadn't he? What, oh, I shouldn't have liked to have been one of his guests. With seventy kings of groveling on the floor, under his table, thumbs and toes cut off. Perhaps he thought he was a tough guy, and as the years had rolled by, he'd been an exceedingly successful career man. By God's judgments, if slow, are determined. And under the sword of his judgment, wielded through Judah, this man's toes too and thumbs were cut off. As God brought home to him and made him feel what it's like to have your toes and thumbs cut off, brought home to him. The nature of his own sin. God not seldom does that. God, uh, calls upon us in his word to repent. And if we are wise people, we shall repent forthwith and agree with God that sin is sin and leave off sin before it be meddled with. And that's the easy way to learn. But if we won't learn the easy way, God will have to teach us the hard way and bring home to roost in our own lives what we ourselves have done, till by bitter experience we come at length to agree with God that sin is sin. Let me cite some examples. You will remember Jacob, surely. Cheated, didn't he? Being the younger son, he deceived his father and stole the blessing of the older boy and put himself the younger before the elder by telling lies and deceiving. And for the moment, he thought he got away with his deceit and seemed to prosper. But God hadn't forgotten he. Yes, he was going to bless Jacob, but on the other hand, Jacob should be brought to confession and repentance, and if so far he doesn't think, uh, deceit is cheating, well, he'll have to be shown that deceit is cheating, and cheating is sin. So when he got down to Laban's country, we read how he met a young lady and fell in love with her and proposed marriage, and his father-in-law to be said, quite so, Jacob, too, delighted to give you my daughter to wife. Uh, that night, Laban substituted Leah for Poor Rachel. Rachel. And Jacob was deceived and felt mad and bitter about it. Ah, well. When he reproached his father-in-law, said Laban, ah, but we don't put the younger before the elder in our country. Which set memories are going in Jacob's old brain? Now Jacob must find out by experience then, what it means to be cheated in something that is sacred and near your heart. David fell into sin. And with the sword of the Ammonites, he had Uriah killed in battle. He confessed his sin, and God forgave him the penalty of the sin. Ah, but to make sure that David was quite convinced that sin was sin. When God promised David that the sword should not depart from his own house. Say, wasn't that being rather unkind of God? No. You see, God will forgive us. Of course he will, and every time we repent, God in his great magnanimity forgives. But But the the other side to it is that God, though he forgives our sin, God will not be content until we've come to the point where we see that sin is sin and agree with him. And so we watch God bring that old, hoary, old, cruel tyrant of a Canaanite king to repentance. And to fear of God. We gather, don't we, right at the outset of the book, that while this is going to be a delightful book, it shall tell us of God's mercies and of his great salvation and of his deliverances and compassions, yet it does remind us that God, when it comes to sin, is nothing less than one hundred percent serious. And his war against sin is a war to the death. Before I get home to heaven, God is going to convince me that sin is sin? Surely he is. For he doesn't want me, halfway through the millennium, to say, excuse me, God, I just want to go off to have a little thing. I do know I didn't get time when I was on earth to do all those lovely things called sins, and you know, I wish I hadn't got saved so soon. I wish I hadn't come to heaven quite so soon because there were a lot of interesting things I could have done. Yeah. Have you ever felt like that? I have. In my stupidity, I got saved, I think sometimes to myself, I got saved too soon. There's that man, he came for a meeting, and he told us of all the things he did before he got converted. Ooh, some of them sounded exciting. And I say to myself, well, he got both worlds, didn't he? He got that world, and then he got saved, and he got this one. Uh, fancy me getting saved so soon? I missed something. But you say that's stupid, talking like that. Yes, it is stupid. I hope you believe it's stupid. But did you never get a hankering after certain things that you know were wrong? Wish you could have a little time off from Christianity to do them. Well, God's going to kill that feeling before we get home to heaven and convince us, hook or by crook, that sin is sin. Let's learn it the easy way then. Let's God have to teach us that the hard way. The next lesson I take from verses eight to fifteen, a delightful little story to which we shall have to recur on another evening. So if I do not exhaust all its charms tonight, here's hoping there'll be another occasion. This is the story of Othniel, and how he came to his great victory, or shall I say victories? Because in his life you see the principle exemplified, to him that hath shall be given. Caleb, that doughty warrior, at one stage was moved to say, he that smites Kiryat Sefer and takes it, to him will I give Aksa, my daughter, to wife, which fired, uh, Othniel's imagination and heart as well. And spurred by the possibility of this great conquest of Caleb's daughter, he set forth on the conquest of the city of Kiryat Sefer, and he took the city and got the girl as well. Oh, great stuff. And it didn't end there. But having got the girl, he got the city, and then putting two heads together, which made better than one, they said, well, what about asking Caleb? Now we've got the bit of inheritance, what about asking him for a bit more? So Ax- her Axar, Caleb's daughter, on meeting her father one afternoon, says, Father dear, look here, you've given me a lovely inheritance down here in the south, but it's a bit dry. What's a good of giving me an inheritance a bit dry and no water on it? Dad, you'll have to give me the upper spring and the nether spring as well. You know how young ladies get round their heart, fathers, don't you? What ho? Aha. Well, it's, it's simple, isn't it, but it's good. Do you not see how one victory led to another victory, and then that victory led on to something else? And what Caleb yesterday, so to speak, would never have dreamed of asking. His victories have encouraged him to ask and get. What a lovely, encouraging story to put at the beginning. For that is God's word. It is the fact in spiritual life, to him that has shall be given. In my self-centered days, in my days of fifty percent Christianity, so to speak, should never dream of praying the great prayers that Paul prayed for illumination of God's spirit, to know his purpose, and to know his wealth, and to know his power. I think those things are limited to the great, uh, gray beards and hoary heads and the saints, you know, of whom one speaks with, uh, bated breath, but me? Yes, but that shows what low level I'm living at. I begin to take God seriously and go in for his. I shall find not only I get what are the lesser promises, but getting them, I, I make gone to go on for the bigger promises, and one thing borrows another. And thus it proceeds. To him that hath shall be given. And in this warfare, it's the only safe attitude, isn't it? Let God stir us. Let God excite our imaginations. All the possibilities of life. If we began to take God's promises at their face value. So Judah went on his way. Wasn't always easy. And the next paragraph running from verse sixteen to twenty one, is a story mixed with triumph and with failure, bravery and cowardice. We're told at the beginning that the children of the Kenite, Moses' brother-in-law, went up out of the city of palm trees with the children of Judah into the wilderness of Judah, which is in the south of Arad. And then... and they went and dwelt with the people. Who do you say that's pretty poor stuff? What, didn't he, didn't he even move a little finger to fight? No. He gave up before he started. He just gave in. That was that. He went and dwelt with the people. Not Not nice much to to be. be said about that, is there? Just that. Mercifully, in later generations, by God's grace, those Kenites produced a very great and famous figure, and we'll meet her later on. But for the moment, it's a sad and sorry story. They began, went up from Jericho, and thereafter just gave in without fighting, s- without striking a blow. Judah. He went with Simeon, his brother. They smote the Canaanites here and there and utterly destroyed Zephath. And Judah took Gaza and Ashkelon and Ekron, the border thereof, and the Lord was with Judah, and he drove out the inhabitants of the hill country, for he could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley because they had chariots of iron. And what would you say of Judah? Criticizing? Unmercifully for not driving out these folks out of the plain? He also had driven them out, didn't he? But I do observe that God here, if he doesn't excuse it, at least gives the reason for it. He couldn't drive them out by a chariot of iron. I find it difficult to blame him, or criticize him for that matter. Or here was a tribe that had taken the initiative and gone a fighting. Here was a tribe that had achieved notable victories, and many of them. Here was a tribe that had, uh, fought and driven out the inhabitants of the hill country. But there was one lot they couldn't drive out. The very fact it says they couldn't implies they tried, doesn't it? Why couldn't they? Well, these people were uncommonly strong, and they got the latest inventions, chariots of iron, when the Israelites hadn't got any such chariots. Like facing, nowadays, facing tanks if you've only got a bow and arrow. And they didn't manage it. And God's spirit records the very big and almost impossible difficulty when he says, well, they didn't quite manage that bit. I find encouragement there too. There are some folks... they have a weakness, or shall we put it the other way around, they have an enemy that's strong. Some inner Conflict. complex. And they've tried to get rid of it for years. And it still bothers them. And many a time they've taken it to the Lord and sought the Lord's victory and sought the Lord's deliverance and sought the Lord's grace to overcome it, and still it bothers them. And they fought it for years, and they've groaned as they've been defeated many times, and they've cried to the Lord for victory, and still it bothered them. Be very careful how you criticize such folks, won't you? Not that they haven't tried. And look in some other directions, what victories they've wrought for God. You say, why didn't God give the Judahites then power to cast them out? Surely God is omnipotent. He is that. Yes, but while God is omnipotent, it's got to be us to use the power to do it. And sometimes God leaves us with an enemy a lifetime through. The great thing to get hold of, the great point at which to make the distinction is, am I trying? Am I fighting you? Sometimes God leaves the enemy, as we are presently to read one of these nights in the later chapter, he left some of the enemy. What for? So that they should learn how to The fight. fight. And what perhaps Judah didn't know was this, that every time he was having a go, he was learning more to fight and to fight. You say, why didn't God give the Judahites then power to cast them out? Surely God is omnipotent. He is that. Yes, but while God is omnipotent, it's got to be us to use the power to do it. And sometimes God leaves us with an enemy a lifetime through. It's a great thing to get hold of, the great point at which to make the distinction is, am I trying? Am I fighting you? Sometimes God leaves the enemy, as we are presently to read one of these nights in the later chapter. He left some of the enemy. What for? So that they should learn how to fight. And what perhaps Judah didn't know was this, that every time he was having a go, he was learning more to fight and to fight in the grace of continuance and constancy and determination and resolution was being built into him in a way that an instantaneous victory wouldn't have produced. I say that encourages me. And if I talk to somebody tonight in that same state, you've had a weakness for years. Well, my brother, don't let Satan discourage you over much about it, will you? So long as you're honestly before the Lord, you still recognize it as an enemy, and you're not trying to excuse it, and you're still fighting. Then don't suppose because you yet haven't got the victory that you must be some terrible failure. Perhaps God allows it to happen, to keep you fighting, and to teach you lessons of determination and endurance. I have known dear believers sunk in abysmal depths of melancholy and depression. Because preachers have said publicly that if only they did this or only they did that, they would be living in victory every day. So dear folks of God who've been struggling their years, faithfully fighting, have concluded that they must be awful sinners, and that's no good, and they give up. There will be things wrong about us until we get home to glory, won't there? We shall have to fight every inch of the way. That isn't to say that we should go to the other extreme and say, well, it doesn't matter, you know, of course I'm in the flesh, and therefore I do put on my tantrums now and again. Well, that's the old man. Uh, I, I do incline to tell lies sometimes, but that's the old man, you know. I do cheat occasionally in business when I get a very tempting offer, but that's just the old man, you know. What are you to expect? No, no, we're not to get to that extreme either, are we? So the paragraph ends with the story of Benjamin. Sorry story, Benjamin. Look at him. And the children of Benjamin did not drive out the Jebusites that inhabited Jerusalem, but the Jebusites dwelt with the children of Benjamin in Jerusalem unto this day. And how did that come about? No excuse here, is there? No excuse whatsoever. For look what we were told in verse eight: And the children of Judah fought against Jerusalem and took it and smote it with the edge of the sword and set the city on fire. The city had already been taken once. And then Judah, in the course of his conquest, quests had moved on, and Benjamin had been allowed to settle in the city, and instead of retaining the ground that had been won, he let all the Jebusites come back and didn't tough them out. There's no excuse for that either. And it's possible. Oh, sometimes I have to bring myself up sharply and say, hello, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. What would you have said to yourself when you were a young Christian? I know you're slipping a bit, aren't you? Here I talk to the middle-aged. Remember, my brother, my sister, how keen you once were in certain directions when you were the whole of eighteen or twenty-one? Have you maintained the ground that you then took? Or with, uh, middle age spread and other such things, uh, um, has some of it slipped a bit? We must make distinctions then, between failures that, uh, well, while we can't excuse them, there are very good reasons for them. Failures that are acknowledged to be failures so far, and we go on fighting. And that other kind of failure is just sitting down and becoming flabby and giving up and just letting things drift. Thus far then, on the whole, Judah, with his help meet Simeon, and if you can call it Benjamin. And what about the other great half of the nation, the tribes that tended to unite around, uh, the house of Joseph, that's Ephraim and Manasseh? Well, they had some successes too. That'd be a funny tribe of Israel that never had any successes, wouldn't they? What? They had some s- successes too, but a bit more punctuated with, uh, failures and compromises. Well, let's look at them. First of all, we have what you might call the love technique. It wasn't very happy, really, though it got some success. The love technique. And you say, what is that? Well, the house of Judah, they also went up against Bethel, says verse twenty two, and the Lord was with them. And the house of Joseph sent to spy out Bethel. Now the name of the city before time was Luz. And the watchers saw a man come forth out of the city, and they said to him, show us, we pray thee, the entrance into the city, and we will deal kindly with thee. And he showed them the entrance into the city, and they smote the city with the edge of the sword, but they let the man go and all his family. And the man went into the land of the Hittites and built a city and called the name thereof Lahaz, which is the name thereof unto this day. So then how much did they accomplish? Well, they accomplished something. And what they accomplished was a very good thing and a very notable thing. God be praised, and the Lord was with them. Then there was a bit of a compromise, wasn't there? And while they took Mars and destroyed the most of it, the tactics they used allowed one man to escape and repeat loss all over again somewhere else. What I would call the last technique. Any lesson for us? Yes, a number of lessons, surely. We can't be foolish to say, ah, ha ha, you bad lot, and she letting that chap escape. Well, you must be tre- fretful. The Lord couldn't possibly be in any of that. But says the Lord was with them. And there was a big victory. That's all on the credit side, isn't it? But you know the fact that the Lord gave them victory, and the Lord was with them, and yes, it was a triumph. Oughtn't to shut our eyes, did he? That there was a compromise here, a compromise which had unfortunate results. Lesson number one then. We must be thankful for every victory that God gives us in his work and word. And when the Lord blesses us, we are to acknowledge it gratefully and thankfully, but the fact that the Lord blesses us does not mean that he approves of everything we do. Why, you can see that, can't you? The Lord has even blessed me from time to time. You wouldn't hold the Lord responsible for all I do, would you? And what a foolish man I should be if I concluded that because God in his mercy, his infinite mercy, condescended to use and bless me on occasions and give me a triumph here and there, that he necessarily approves therefore of everything I do. Oh, at last, what a mistaken deduction that would be. I I must. must have the grace to admit that when God blesses me, he blesses me because it is by grace and by his mercy. But I mustn't presume that therefore I'm a hundred percent correct. And I must be prepared to examine my methods and ways critically before God. We We sometimes sometimes do hear it. it argued, doesn't it? Well, the Lord has blessed so and so, therefore his methods must be right. That doesn't follow so. Because God's blessing in the last analysis is always by grace. But then what was wrong with the process? Well, let's take a, a, an example, uh, of one thing that looks similar and yet wasn't. That would help us to see. You will remember that when the spies came up from the wilderness to spy out the land in Moses' day, they were received by a harlot, Rahab, and hidden, and then she let them go. And they said, righto, and when we come and destroy this city, we'll save you. They made the agreement. Ah, yes. But that was right, wasn't it? The dear lady repented. And already had come over from the side of the Canaanites to the side of the people of God, yes. And when the armies came in and Jericho fell, uh, Rahab was preserved, but she didn't say thank you very much and s- go somewhere else and build another Jericho down the road. She got converted. It was right, therefore, that they used her. This man hadn't got converted by any chance, had he? Just out to save his skin. And it was a very sort of shrewd political move, but it was a compromise. Dare I trust you to listen to me with all good Christian charity? I think I dare. We take the broad view of Christendom down the centuries. We shall remember that Christendom, or the true Christian faith, has had its enemies, hasn't it? The true doctrine of salvation, of being born again, is that a man is born again by response to the Word of God. Born again by incorruptible seed, by the Word of God that lives and abides forever. That is the way of regeneration. Alas, from time to time and over some centuries, Christendom has been invaded by another scheme of salvation that has taught that regeneration is not by personal response to the word of God, but by the manipulations of sacraments. And what fearful darkness that has led to. How many folks it has bound, imagining themselves to be Christians, while they're not Christians at all. But from time to time, you will find men are great men of God. God knows in my heart I reverence their very name and memory. Men of whom it could be said that the Lord was with them, and by them the Lord great- granted great victories. I wish he'd have granted me as many and as big. But they have said, look, if we smite this old sacramentalism dead, we can't get the people. So let's use the sacramentalism, then we should get a big congregation, then we can preach the gospel, then we can really get them converted. And yes, they've got hundreds converted. But at the price of letting the sacramentalism remain, and presently will build itself up again, and find in darkness whole generations of people. Oh, do let us observe, when we ponder such complicated issues, that the issues are complicated. Sometimes in life, it's never either completely right or completely wrong, is it? These men, the Lord was with them and granted them a great victory. We must have the grace to see that God does not approve of that compromise. Another lesson. We've had the love technique. Now look at another thing. You'll read from time to time, we only need take one example of it. Verse, um, twenty seven and twenty eight. Manasseh did not drive out the inhabitants of Bethshean and her towns, nor Karnak and her towns, nor the inhabitants of Dor and her towns, nor the inhabitants of Ibleam and her towns, nor the inhabitants of Megiddo and her towns. But the Canaanites would dwell in that land. It came to pass, when Israel was waxed and strong, that they did put the Canaanites to taskwork and did not utterly drive them out. And I suppose you might say, well, that was the wisest thing to do in the circumstances, I suppose. You can't altogether boot them out, well, then you, you, you make slaves of them and make them do your donkey work. And that kept them down. At least it kept them from getting the upper hand. Yeah. Not ideal, though, was it? As now you'll think I'm facile. Well, all right. We'll have to think that many times as we go through these studies together. But let me suggest to you a possible lesson from that too. We have enemies within us. The ideal we should never forget is that we're supposed to get rid of them. Sometimes we don't. And are content just to use them as our servants. You say, how? Well, take a man, he's very ambitious and not a little proud. Before he gets converted, he was going to have the biggest sweet shop in all Belfast. Of course, he'd be second to none, his sweet shop. You know the go-ahead type. Advertisement on every page of the Telegraph. He's the man that makes a big splash. And he gets converted. Now he's going to be the biggest preacher that ever was. Ha. There's never going to be a preacher like him. Well, I'll tell you one thing, that man will get through a lot of Christian work, the Lord be praised. He'll be the go-ahead type, won't he? His brethren will find it uncomfortable now and again. He'll regard them as sticking the nugs, glued to their seats, never doing anything. He's pioneering the gospel all over the show. Good for him. Pardon Half minute. me. Dare I ask, is it altogether unadulterated, pure as the driven snow, love for the Lord? Or is some of it that still old driving spirit of ambition and And pride. pride? Well, it's not for me to criticize him, whoever he is. But do you begin to see how it is possible sometimes to harness, even in our spiritual life, motive driving powers that really oughtn't be there at all? I suppose if you can't get rid of them, that's the best thing to do with them. But it would be better to repent of it, wouldn't it, and seek the Lord's grace to be delivered from you. Here's a woman. Could be a man, couldn't he? Absolute perfectionist. Oh, she not only dusts the, dusts the sideboard once in six months, she dusts it every morning and afternoon as well. Yeah. Please come out to the meeting if she hasn't dusted the sideboard in case the Lord will come in the meantime and find the sideboard wasn't dusted or something. Cool, it shines like one of them. Absolute perfectionist she is. You ask her to do something for the Lord. No, she couldn't. She couldn't do it well enough. She'd do it twice as well as anybody else. No, no, no, no, she couldn't do it well enough. Her standards are so impossibly high. Perhaps deep down under a fear of being rejected, maybe, that's driving her to impossible standards of perfectionism. When you can persuade her, and I hope you will, to do something in, in your church for the Lord, she'll do it with minute perfectionism. God bless the dear soul. She'll stay up half a night in order to do it. You have to be very careful what you say to her, because she's a very, very good and valuable servant of the Lord, isn't she? Sometimes, as you see her at her work, you say, well, surely God isn't such a hard pass master as there. And you say, you know, what's driving that dear woman? Yes, it's love for the Lord, of course. But underneath as well, there's just a little bit of anxiety complex, maybe. That's pushing, pushing, pushing, and making God's service itself a veritable bondage. You say, oh, that God somehow would deliver her from that. Her work would still be good. But you've got a difficult job sometimes to get her to believe that the thing that keeps moving and impelling her to such excessive standards of excellence is not necessarily pure, unadulterated love for the Lord, though she may think it is. But perhaps a bit of anxiety complex or inferiority feeling. Oh, you will be kind with that one, won't you? You can sit on the other brother I mentioned. Yeah, he'll rise again, but not on this dear soul. Try and get through to her something of the love and acceptance of Christ, and tell her, you know, and get her to feel that even if Christ were to come and there was still some dust on the sideboard, he wouldn't mind. Yeah. And I'm not saying this to make us, might be on the time, make us morbid and introspective. And yet, if we would drive out our enemies, we've got to come to recognize them, haven't we? To know what they are. If we can't drive them out, at least let's keep them under. And it's not altogether a bad thing, is it, for that dear good woman I was talking about just now, all pent up with her complex, yes. A good thing that she gets some outlet for it. And if it's channeled into God's work, well, that's good. That isn't the best that could be. While we are yet in this imperfect world and before the Lord comes, my dear brethren, we shall have to recognize that life is like that. It's not one long, unqualified victory with all planes failing, with every issue black or white. No, it isn't. Of course it isn't. Human personality is an exceedingly complex thing. Oh, God, give us something of his grace and his mercy. To know when to recognize its downright inexcusable cowardice and failure and slackness. To know when it is failure, ah yes, but as a result of many struggles and the heart that's still going on, struggling still, and to grant credit for the struggle even when victory has not yet come. And wisdom and compassion with one another as with others. As we recognize the need, from a practical point of view, to be satisfied today with things that are less than victory, in the hope that tomorrow God will lead us somewhat further towards the ultimate God. Shall we pray? O God, when thy word begins to bring to our minds how complicated a thing life is, we do praise thee for thy understanding of us. Thou knowest our frames, thou rememberest that we are just. Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him. We thank thee for thy patience with us, for thy determination to go on with us, for thy understanding of our struggle. We praise thee for thy promise that thou wilt never leave us nor forsake us. For the victories thou hast given us. And thou hast brought victories indeed in every heart that loves the Savior. For those victories, we praise thee. Help us, Lord, who are middle-aged, not to lose the ground that earlier we won. Help us all, Lord, to be patient and pursuing and persevering and continuing. And help us, Lord, to distinguish things that differ. That by our coming to understand more closely ourselves and thy word and thine ultimate standards, we may be able to distinguish things that look alike but being different, are now a mixture less than ideal. And so we may, by thy spirit, purge out yet what is unworthy, till that day dawn when faith is found unmixed and pure gold, and our enjoyment of our inheritance one hundred percent. through Jesus Christ our Lord.