Go ye up upon her walls, and destroy; but make not a full end: take away her battlements; for they are not the Lord’s.
Storming the battlements
I. I shall regard this text as spoken concerning the Church. The Church has very often gone to king Jareb for help, or to the world for aid; and then God has said to her enemies, “Go ye up against her; but make not a full end: take away her battlements; for they are not the Lord’s. She shall not have them. I am her battlement. She is to have none other.”
1. The Church of God has sometimes sought to make the government its battlements.
2. There are churches who make battlements out of the wealth of their members. Now, we do love to have wealth and rank in our own midst; we always thank God when we have brought among us men who can do something for the cause of truth; we do bless God when we see Zaccheus, who had abundance of gold and silver, giving some of his gifts to the poor of the Lord’s family; we like to see the princes and kings bringing presents and bowing before the King of all the earth:--but if any church bows before the golden calf, there will go forth the mandate, “Go ye upon her walls; but make not a full end: take away her battlements; for they are not the Lord’s.”
3. There are some other churches relying upon learning and erudition. The learning of their minister seems to be a great fort and castle. Never let it be said that I have despised learning, or true knowledge. Let us have as much as we can. We thank God when men of learning are brought into the Church, when God renders them useful. But the Church nowadays is beginning to trust too much to learning; relying too much on philosophy, and upon the understanding of man, instead of the Word of God.
4. But I think that the worst battlement the churches have now is an earthwork of great and extreme caution. It is held to be improper that certain obnoxious truths in the Bible should be preached; sundry reasons are given why they should be withheld. One is, because it tends to discourage men from coming to Christ. Another is, because certain persons will be offended on account of these rough edges of the Gospel. God’s Church must be brought once more to rely upon the pure truth, upon the simple Gospel, the unalloyed doctrines of the grace of God. Oh, may this Church never have any bulwark but the promises of God!
II. We shall now address the text to the Christian--the real child of God. The true believer also has a proneness to build up sundry “battlements,” which “are not the Lord’s,” and to put his hope, his affection, in something else besides the word of the God of Israel.
1. The first thing whereof we often make a fortress wherein to hide is--the love of the creature. The Christian’s happiness should be in God alone. He should be able to say, “All my springs are in Thee. From Thee alone I ever draw my bliss.” We fix our love on some dear friend, and there is our hope and trust. God says, “What though ye take counsel together, ye have not taken counsel of Me, and therefore I will take away your trust. What though ye have walked in piety, ye have not walked with Me as ye should. Go ye no against her, O Death! Go ye up against her, O affliction! Take away that battlement--It is not the Lord’s.”
2. Many of us are too prone to make battlements out of our past experience, and to rely upon that instead of confiding in Jesus Christ. There is a sort of self-complacency which reviews the past, and says, “There I fought Apollyon; there I climbed the hill Difficulty; there I waded through the Slough of Despond.” The next thought is, “And what a fine fellow am I! I have done all this. Why, there is nothing can hurt me. No. If I have done all this, I can do everything else that is to be accomplished.” What does God say whenever His people do not want Him; but live on what they used to have of Him, and are content with the love He once gave them? “Ah! I will take away your battlements.” He calls out to doubts and fears--“Go ye up upon his walls; take away his battlements, for they are not the Lord’s.”
3. Then again we sometimes get trusting too much to evidences and good works. We often get a pleasing opinion of ourselves: we are preaching so many times a week; we attend so many prayer meetings; we are doing good in the Sabbath school; we are important members of the Church; we are giving away so much in charity, and we say, “Surely I am a child of God. I am an heir of heaven. Look at me! See what robes I wear. Have I not, indeed,” a righteousness about me that proves me to be a child of God?” Then we begin to trust in ourselves, and say, Surely of your graces, Christians!
III. Now, to bring the text to the young convert, to the man in that stage of our religious history which we call conversion to God.
1. In the forefront of the city of Mansoul frowns the wall of carelessness--an erection of satanic masonry. It is made of black granite, and mortal art cannot injure it. Bring law, like a huge pickaxe, to break it: you cannot knock a single chip off. At last a gracious God cries out--“Take away her battlements, they are not the Lord’s.” And at a glance down crumbles the battlement. The careless man becomes tender-hearted; the soul that was hard as iron has become soft as wax; the man who once could laugh at gospel warnings, and despise the preaching of the minister, now sits down and trembles at every word.
2. The first wall is surmounted, but the city is not yet taken: the Christian minister, under the hand of God, has to storm the next wall--that is the wall of self-righteousness. How hard it is to storm this wall! it must be carried at the point of the bayonet of faithful warning; there is no taking it except by boldly climbing up with the shout of, “By grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.”
3. Thus the double rampart is passed, but another still opposes our progress--Christ’s warriors know it by the name of self-sufficiency. Oh! blessed day when God directs His shots against that.
IV. I take this passage as it respects the ungodly and the sinner at last. How many there shall be at the last great day who will sit down very comfortably behind certain battlements that they have builded! There is one man--a monarch: “I am irresponsible, says he; “who shall ever bring anything to my charge? I am an autocrat: I give no account of my matters.” Oh! he will find out at last that God is Master of emperors, and Judge of princes; when his battlements shall be taken away. Another says, “Cannot I do as I like with my own? What if God did make me, I shall not serve Him. I shall follow my own will. I have in my own nature everything that is good, and I shall do as my nature dictates. I shall trust in that, and if there be a higher power He will exonerate me, because I only followed my nature.” But he will find his hopes to be visionary, and his reasons to be foolish, when God shall say, “The soul that sinneth it shall die”; and when His thundering voice shall pronounce the sentence--“Depart ye cursed into everlasting fire.” Again, there is a company of men joined hand in hand, and they think they will resist the Eternal, yea, they have a plan for subverting the kingdom of Christ. They say, “We are wise and mighty. We have fortified ourselves. We have made a covenant with death and a league with hell.” Ah! they little think what will become of their battlements at the last great day, when they shall see it all crumble and fall. With what fear and alarm will they then cry: “Rocks, hide us! Mountains, on us fall!” (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Man’s battlements or God’s battlements
These words show us that if we would ensure safety we must embrace God’s plan of salvation.
I. Man’s battlements.
1. Some build battlements without Christ as the corner stone. To read His history, admire His character, wonder at His miracles; but to leave out all the mystery of the Incarnation, to deny the efficacy of the bloodshedding, to substitute reason for faith, is to build battlements which are not “the Lord’s.”
2. Some build battlements with their own merits. As in the former case the foundation was faulty; so here is the superstructure. The “good heart” and the “good life” and the “good intentions” will not bear scrutiny. Salvation is of grace, and not of debt.
3. Others build battlements of external forms and ceremonies. They are like that foreign people who rear walls of painted canvas, guarded by painted sentinels, and armed with painted guns. There is no reality in such a religion.
II. What, then, are God’s battlements?
1. Repentance. No one strikes the penitent who confesses error, and asks forgiveness with many tears.
2. The second line of defence is Faith. Repentance does not save. We are saved by grace, through faith.
3. There is a third range, higher still, Holiness. A man may tremble behind the battlements of faith, even as the devils believe and tremble. That man only is safe and happy who is penitent, believing, and holy. (J. Batsman, M. A.)
The danger of false confidences
Oh, that England would learn that increased wealth and swollen fortunes and material prosperity are no signs of a nation’s strength. Pagan Rome was never richer than when she had scarce a freeman left. In the Middle Ages, Papal Rome stood raking into chests the countless gold of her jubilee, just before she suffered her most humiliating shame. Spain was dropping to pieces of inward decay when all the gold of the New World was flowing into the treasure of her kings. “Your glory,” said Oliver Cromwell, “is the ditch which guards your shores. I tell you your ditch will not save you if you do not reform yourselves.” Some nations have had a false ideal of absolutism, many, and especially modern nations, have had a false ideal of liberty. (Dean Farrar.)
The removal of false trusts and defences
It was a great mercy for our city of London that the great fire cleared away all the old buildings which were the lair of the plague, a far healthier city was then built; and it is a great mercy for a man when God sweeps all his own righteousness and strength, when He makes him feel that he is nothing and drives him to confess that Christ is all in all, and that his only strength lies in the might of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes in a house of business an old system has been going on for years, and it has caused much confusion and allowed much dishonesty. You come in as a new manager, and you adopt an entirely new plan. Now try if you can, and graft your method on to the old system. How it will worry you. Year after year you say to yourself, “I cannot work it; if I had swept the whole away and started afresh, clear from the beginning, it would not have given me one-tenth of the trouble.” God does not intend to graft the system of grace upon corrupt nature, nor to make the new Adam grow out of the old. Salvation is not of the flesh, but of the Lord alone. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
False refuges
I. Worthless refuges trusted in.
1. Infidelity. Such a rampart is nothing more than a deliberate closing of the eyes to danger. It is like the sand in which the foolish ostrich hides its head and thinks himself safe. It is like watching an avalanche descending upon us and consoling ourselves that we are only led by a fanciful vision.
2. Personal merit. There are those who exercise far higher thoughts of human nature and of their own particular abilities than the case justifies. And they estimate their good qualities so highly that they think they surely ought to obtain some recognition from the Almighty.
3. Divine Fatherhood. Some think that because God made man He is therefore a universal Father, and they assume that a Father could not, be so unkind to His children as to let justice overpower mercy.
II. Worthless refuges denounced. “Go ye up and destroy.”
1. The Author of this destruction. The immediate instrument may be man’s natural enemies, but the real author is God. He will cast down all false hopes and crush all evil anticipations.
2. The reason assigned--“For they are not the Lord’s.”
3. The limitation--“Make not a full end.” The object is not destruction of the soul, but the taking away the false hopes which lull it into fancied security. God takes away earthly hopes, so that He may bestow heavenly ones. He crushes worthless props, so that He may lay under us His eternal arms. (J. J. S. Bird, B. A.)