1 Samuel 4

Chapter 4. Capturing the StrongholdsBut thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ. (2 Corinthians 2:14; compare with 2 Samuel 5:6-10)The remarkable passage which is found above is susceptible of two translations: “Thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph,” and “Thanks be to God who always causes us to triumph.” Together, they express a profound truth, namely, this: that the conqueror must first be himself subjected, and that it is when we have been led in triumph by our Lord and all our being laid in subjection at His feet, that we go forth in turn to be “more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Romans 8:37). Jebus This great truth is illustrated in the story of the capture of Jerusalem and the establishment of David’s throne in the ancient stronghold of the Jebusites. Its former name was Jebus, the down-trodden. Its permanent name was Jerusalem, the city of peace. Its story is remarkable. Naturally impregnable by its situation and its defenses, this ancient citadel had defied the conquests of Joshua, the Judges and even Saul. David himself had reigned for seven and a half years at Hebron, and still Jebus was in the hands of the enemy. It was held by a little tribe, many of whom were helpless cripples, but they dwelt so secure in their lofty fastness that they defied their more powerful adversaries. And so centuries had passed, the Land of Promise had been won, the throne of David had been established, and yet the most beautiful and the most important spot in all the land was held by the enemy. As soon as David, however, was put in possession of the throne of Israel he decided with great wisdom and force to change his capital from Hebron to Jerusalem—the natural center and metropolis of the land. He offered a splendid bribe to the man who should take it, and Joab was quick to answer the challenge. But so confident were the Jebusites of their absolute security that they laughed to scorn David’s peaceful proposition to them to surrender, and they added insult and defiance to their refusal by suggesting to him that the blind and the lame were all the defenders that they needed. With skillful strategy and heroic bravery, Joab had his men scale the lofty citadel by way of the aqueducts, it would seem, and soon planted the standard of David on the heights of Zion. David’s promise to Joab was redeemed, and he became henceforth the commander-in-chief of the armies of Israel. Moreover, the new citadel was immediately changed into a national capital. The loftiest height of Zion became the very stronghold of the city and the site of David’s splendid palace, and a few years later the neighboring hills were covered with splendid buildings, and before long the height of Moriah, a little further to the east, was crowned with the Temple of Solomon, the architectural wonder of the ages. The story of Jebus is full of spiritual lessons, and they are lessons of the deepest solemnity and lessons for the children of God at the most advanced stages of their Christian experiences.

Section I: the Stronghold of the Enemy

Section I—the Stronghold of the EnemyWe see in Jebus the picture of the Christian life where, notwithstanding many a spiritual blessing and many a real experience, some secret place, some place of pre-eminent importance, is still under the control of self, or sin, or Satan. The land may be subjected, but one critical point is still held by the enemy. A Feeble Foe

1. It was a feeble enemy. The Jebusites constituted but a little tribe, and they might easily have been expelled had their individual strength been the only thing considered. Their very smallness led them to be perhaps overlooked and despised. They seem to have had a great many cripples among them, for the walls were garrisoned by the blind and the lame. They were rather a contemptible few, and yet they held the strongest position in all the Land of Promise, and they held it for centuries. Beloved, there are little foes that are working more harm in our Christian life than more formidable adversaries. There are little borers that perforate the vessel’s hull unseen, and in an unsuspected moment the ship founders in mid-ocean. There are little insects whose touch is almost impalpable, but whose sting is death. There are little ingredients, one drop of whose corrosive poison will destroy life itself in a moment. There are little foxes that only destroy the little buds, but with the buds they destroy the fruit and ruin the vines. There are little indulgences and little irritations, and little secret habits, and little dark corners in the heart, where Satan has just hold enough to have a partnership in our life. Like the petty Hindu landowner, who held one small lot in a splendid town and refused to sell it to a wealthy millionaire, who had built a place nearby and wanted to own the whole estate. But the little fellow held on to his corner in spite of the most splendid offers, and one day when he met his wealthy neighbor he looked in his face with an inexpressible glance of vindictive triumph and hissed in his ears the words, “Don’t forget, please, you and I own this town.” All the devil wants is to have his finger in it, and be a partner in the concern with God and you. It gives him a respectability that the world could not confer. He would rather wear a white necktie than an epaulet. He would rather have a pulpit than a politician’s seat. He would rather teach theology in a religious seminary than write the biggest novel of the age. He will let you put 99 parts in the pill and coat it with the finest sugar; only let him insert one grain of arsenic and he is satisfied. Look out for the little Jebusites, and be sure you don’t despise the lame ones. There is nothing you so need to fear as the harmless habits, as you call them, which you think you could easily overcome and which you toy with sometimes until they destroy you. An Ancient Foe
2. These Jebusites were the descendants of Lot and his degraded daughter. They were born in Sodom, and they retained the awful odor of the slime pits. They represent the natural carnal heart, the things that are born in us, and that come to us by that awful law of heredity which enters so truly into every human life. There are men and women who come into this world under the power of a transmitted curse. It is a frightful thing to be a frivolous, selfish and godless mother, and to transmit your heartlessness and selfishness and deep depravity to the helpless child born of your selfish passion. It is a fearful thing to be an intemperate and brutal father and pass on to another life the frightful disposition which had made you a blot and a bane to every life which you have touched. Surely, it ought to be enough to live your worthless life without repeating the tragic story in some other existence which cannot help the misfortune of being born with your transmitted wickedness burning like an unquenchable fire in the very veins. It is a sad and bitter thing to inherit from a drunken father the love of alcohol, and to drink in from a mother’s breast the duplicity, intrigue and heartlessness of a worldling’s life and find yourself with a thousand foes within you to strive for your will and your self-restraint until you are often forced to cry, like one of old, “Old Adam is too strong for young Melancthon.” God knows this fight to be true and this principle to be a real moral power, and He has the deepest sympathy for those who come into existence with a birthright of terrible temptation. It is vain and presumptuous for you to think that you can overcome such adversaries. You cannot without the omnipotent grace of God, and even this will mean a battle as strenuous and as stern as life and death. Recognize at its full weight the power of your adversary and take God alone for the victory. You have not only an aggravating foe around you, but you have an inveterate enemy within you coiled around your very heartstrings and interwoven with the fibers of your being. It is the race of the Amorite. It is the carnal mind which “is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so” (Romans 8:7). A Persistent Foe
3. This tribe of Jebus had stuck to its stronghold for more than 500 years. Joshua’s army had marched about, but the Jebusite still remained. Caleb’s heroic followers had captured Hebron, but still the enemy held Jerusalem. The sun stood still on Gibeon and the moon o’er the valley of Aijalon, but the lofty heights of Zion were still securely held by the Amorites. Gideon’s hosts swept on in victorious battle, Jephthah’s legions drove out the vaster hordes of the neighboring nations, Samson went to and fro with gigantic strides, Jonathan and his armorbearer smote the Philistines, Saul passed with his victorious armies from stronghold to stronghold and blotted out the whole tribe of Amalek, and even David was crowned king and had reigned for seven and a half years at Hebron—the type of Christ’s victorious reign—and yet there was Jebus with its defiant defenders laughing at them. Oh, how it speaks of some enemy that has hidden away in your heart through years of blessing and victories of grace! You have been converted, but still it has remained. You have seen yourself and your sin and yielded in sincere consecration and surrender up to all the light you had, and still that hidden foe was undisturbed. You have received the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and Christ has come to reign in the Hebron of your heart, and made it a place for His heavenly fellowship and love; yet, in the depths of your being there is a place where self and Satan still have enough control to assert themselves when they choose. Perhaps it is a little bit of the world still cherished. Perhaps it is a secret bitterness if not a forbidden love. Perhaps it is a friendship that God does not control. Perhaps it is a secret indulgence that you think as trifling as the blind and the lame of Jebus. Perhaps it is a habit that you have justified or ignored. Perhaps it is your cigar or your snuff-box, or your novel, or your love of music, art or the theater. Perhaps it is your sickness, which you finely cherish as an angel of light, and put the blind and lame on your fortifications as the defenders of your sanctification, and tell how much these things do to keep you humble and holy. Perhaps it is a little cherished misery or morbidness, just the faint right to pity yourself and feel bad sometimes; a little Jebusite just big enough for Satan to say, “Now, mind that you and I own this citadel.” A Dangerous Foe
4. They were an important and dangerous foe. The worst of all is that this subtle foe is usually enthroned in the most important center of our life. The Jebusites held the best position in the land. It was the very spot that God wanted for his capital. And so the thing which Satan seizes is always the best thing; and the place where self sits down is always the very throne of the heart. The devil does not want the offscourings of society. It is the noble, the beautiful, the gifted, the highborn, the men and women that should have been the very princes of the kingdom of heaven, that he selects as the instruments of his destructive sway, and the part of your being that he seeks to control is always the strategic point. It is your heart that he is aiming for; it is the singleness of your purpose toward God. It is your very spirituality that he will seek. And as an angel of light if he can sit down in the very secret of your being and make you serve him while you think you are doing God’s very will, he is satisfied. It is Jerusalem that he uses for his reign. God help us to understand him, to expose him, to expel him, and, like David, to make his seat the very throne of heaven and the very glory of our after life! Do not say, “I am not saved.” “I am not sanctified, because I have discovered this thing still within my heart.” I have been saved, I am utterly surrendered, but I have not known all the depths of Satan and the disguises of sin, but as I enter into the deeper light and larger opportunities I will have all “God’s… good, pleasing and perfect will” (Romans 12:2).

Section II: the Victory

Section II—the VictoryThe Courage of Faith

1. It takes a brave, victorious struggle. It was not an easy conflict. The height of Zion stands 300 feet above the valley of Hinnom, and up that cliff they had to climb and scale those rocks before they could drive out the enemy. And it is not easy for us to fight the good fight of faith, and refuse the insinuating wiles of self and Satan. Many a bitter tear, many a night of agony may have to intervene, and he who is not brave enough to suffer and to say “No” to himself can never enter into the heights of Zion and sit on the throne of David. “Better… a man who controls his temper than one who takes a city” (Proverbs 16:32). God help us to be brave enough to conquer self and to sit down with Christ upon His throne! The Strategy of Faith
2. It needs more than courage to win this conflict; it takes wisdom. We have the evidence of the deepest strategy as well as courage in the assault of Joab. David himself suggested the plan of the attack. It was to be by way of the “water shaft.” These water shafts seem to mean the water-courses or the aqueducts by which the city was supplied across the valley of the south, from the fountains on the heights of Bethlehem. But through these water-courses Joab’s men seem somehow to have waded or climbed, and then entered the unsuspecting city, carrying all before them. This suggests, too, not unnaturally, that we, too, must win our fight by holy wisdom. We are not strong enough to overcome our spiritual foes, but there is a way by which we, too, may climb through the water-courses and accomplish by divine power what we ourselves are unequal to. Water is always the symbol of the Holy Spirit, and it is the Spirit who lifts up the standard when the enemy comes in like a flood. There is a heavenly stream into which we may plunge, and it will bear us through the difficulties and over the obstacles that we never can surmount. A traveler tells a little incident which perhaps is in keeping with this thought and may illustrate this lesson. A little party descending one of the glaciers above the valley Chamouni, in Switzerland, suddenly found that the pass was closed by a heavy accumulation of ice and snow, and they could go no farther down. It was too late to go back, for the night was on, and it seemed at first that they must perish. But the guide looked carefully and noticed that the little stream, which they had been following, cut a channel in the ice, and he could hear it thundering on the other side of the mountain as it fell into the valley below. In a moment his resolution was made, and, bidding his companion follow him, plunged into the current and was followed by his dazed but obedient fellow-traveler. There was a sudden shock, a rush of waters, a moment of darkness, a strange terror and then a blaze of light, and they were thrown out on the other side of the mountain on the green, smooth bank of the little river in the valley of Chamouni. They had trusted themselves to the watercourse and it had carried them through all their obstacles and difficulties. Beloved, there are times when we fight in vain against our barriers and against our foes. There is a better way. Turn from self and Satan and everything inward and turn upward to Him. Receive the Holy Spirit, commit your way to God, wait on Him, be filled with the Spirit, plunge into the watercourse, the current of God’s mighty life and love, and you will forget your foes, you will forget yourself, and you will find yourself filled with God and lifted high above all your enemies and all your trials. Plunge into the watercourse and let God make you “more than conquerors” (Romans 8:37).

Section III: the Glorious Recompense

Section III—the Glorious RecompenseThe Captain

1. There were two splendid results that followed this victory: the first was Joab’s leadership over the armies of Israel, and all the victories that afterward followed. And so when we win the complete victory over ourselves, we shall henceforth become conquerors, too, and a life of triumph shall surely follow. Led in triumph we shall always triumph. Oh, beloved, the reason you are always failing is because you have not allowed God to overcome in the supreme test of your life. The Capital
2. The second result was the establishment of the city of Jerusalem as the throne of David, and later, the throne of God; for this is God’s chosen city. It is not only the capital of Israel, but it is the city of the great King; and in the coming days it is to be the center of the earth, and perhaps in the same sense, the metropolis of the universe. And so when we let God overcome and win for us the victory of our lives in the hardest place, God chooses that place and sets His heart upon it, and loves it and honors it and uses it. And so the men and women that have dared to be true, and that, in the supreme test of their lives, have yielded and died to self and become God’s bondslaves, God’s conquered ones and God’s conquering ones. Beloved, what is the lesson for your life? Is there still some hidden thing, some unconquered place, some refuge of the enemy tolerated in the kingdom of your heart? God help you to see it, and to meet the issue as David did of old. And so it comes to pass that we sometimes see a life that has seemed to be right and even eminently useful, at length go down like some noble ship at sea, and many have wondered and stood in awe. Ah, it was because there was a Jebus that had been left in the hands of the enemy, and in an unguarded hour the hidden foe arose and overcame the heart that had dwelt at ease. Transformations
3. And so, on the other hand, it comes to pass that we see a life that has gone on in comparative failure, and with little promise of strength or nobility, suddenly rise to the loftiest heights of heroism and spiritual power and become the glory and inspiration of some great movement; and we wonder. But when the secret is disclosed it will be found that it is the old story of Jebus, that the heart had found its secret foe, had risen as David rose against the Jebusites, had expelled the lingering enemy and had turned the place of subjection into the place of triumph. Oh, shall someone who reads these lines awake to righteousness today, and from this moment rise to be a conquered one and then a conqueror through Him that loved us—a conqueror, yes—and “more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Romans 8:37)?