Evening and Morning
By Charles Haddon Spurgeon
June 8
Morning
"There fell down many slain, because the war
was of God."—1 Chronicles 5:22.
Warrior,
fighting under the banner of the Lord Jesus, observe this verse with holy joy,
for as it was in the days of old so is it now, if the war be of God the victory
is sure. The sons of Reuben, and the Gadites, and the
half tribe of Manasseh could barely muster five and forty thousand fighting
men, and yet in their war with the Hagarites, they
slew "men, an hundred thousand," "for they cried to God in the
battle, and He was entreated of them, because they put their trust in
Him." The Lord saveth not by
many nor by few; it is ours to go forth in Jehovah's name if we be but a
handful of men, for the Lord of Hosts is with us for our Captain. They did not
neglect buckler, and sword, and bow, neither did they place their trust in
these weapons; we must use all fitting means, but our confidence must rest in
the Lord alone, for He is the sword and the shield of His people. The great
reason of their extraordinary success lay in the fact that "the war was of
God." Beloved, in fighting with sin without and within, with error
doctrinal or practical, with spiritual wickedness in high places or low places,
with devils and the devil's allies, you are waging Jehovah's war, and unless He
himself can be worsted, you need not fear defeat. Quail not before superior
numbers, shrink not from difficulties or impossibilities, flinch not at wounds
or death, smite with the two-edged sword of the Spirit, and the slain shall lie
in heaps. The battle is the Lord's and He will deliver His enemies into our
hands. With steadfast foot, strong hand, dauntless heart, and flaming zeal,
rush to the conflict, and the hosts of evil shall fly like chaff before the
gale.
Stand up! stand up for Jesus!
The strife will
not be long;
This day the
noise of battle,
The next the victor's song.
To him that overcometh,
A crown of life shall be;
He with the King of
glory
Shall reign eternally.
Evening
"Thou shalt see now whether My
word shall come to pass unto thee or not."—Numbers 11:23.
God had made a positive
promise to Moses that for the space of a whole month He would feed the vast
host in the wilderness with flesh. Moses, being overtaken by a fit of unbelief,
looks to the outward means, and is at a loss to know how the promise can be
fulfilled. He looked to the creature instead of the Creator. But doth the
Creator expect the creature to fulfil His promise for
Him? No; He who makes the promise ever fulfils it by His own unaided omnipotence. If He speaks, it
is done—done by Himself. His promises do not
depend for their fulfillment upon the co-operation of the puny strength of man.
We can at once perceive the mistake which Moses made.
And yet how commonly we do the same! God has promised to supply our needs, and
we look to the creature to do what God has promised to do; and then, because we
perceive the creature to be weak and feeble, we indulge in unbelief. Why look
we to that quarter at all? Will you look to the north pole
to gather fruits ripened in the sun? Verily, you would act no more foolishly if
ye did this than when you look to the weak for strength, and to the creature to
do the Creator's work. Let us, then, put the question on the right footing. The
ground of faith is not the sufficiency of the visible means for the performance
of the promise, but the all-sufficiency of the invisible God, who will most
surely do as He hath said. If after clearly seeing that the onus lies with the
Lord and not with the creature, we dare to indulge in mistrust, the question of
God comes home mightily to us: "Has the Lord's hand waxed short?" May
it happen, too, in His mercy, that with the question there may flash upon our
souls that blessed declaration, "Thou shalt see now whether My word shall come to pass unto thee or not."