Psalms 144

‘IF GOD BE FOR ME, WHO CAN BE AGAINST ME?’

‘Blessed be the Lord my strength, which teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight.’

Psalms 144:1

I am far from thinking that this sentence applies exclusively to what we designate spiritual conflicts. I should suppose whoever the writer of the Psalm was, gave thanks that he had been able to fight with the Philistines and the Ammonites. No one who had learned Jewish history by heart would attempt an artificial division between national wars and spiritual wars. The first supposed the last; the visible enemy was permitted to put forth his strength that the spiritual strength which was dormant might be called forth to withstand him. Man is made for battle. His inclination is to take his ease; it is God who will not let him sink into the slumber which he counts so pleasant, and which is so sure to end in a freezing death.

I. I have spoken of this thanksgiving as of universal application; there are some cases in which we shrink from using it, and yet in which we are taught by experience how much better we should be if we dared to use it in all its force and breadth. There are those who feel much more than others the power of that first enemy of which I have spoken. To withstand the lusts of the flesh is with them, through constitution, or education, or indulgence, such an effort as their nearest friends may know nothing of. What help then may be drawn from the words, ‘Blessed be the Lord God, who has taught my hands to war, and my fingers to fight’!

II. Violent desires or passions remind us of their presence.—The fashion of the world is hemming us in and holding us down without our knowing it. A web composed of invisible threads is enclosing us. It is not by some distinct influence that we are pressed, but by an atmosphere full of influences of the most mixed quality, hard to separate from each other. ‘Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, who stirs the hands to war, and the fingers to fight,’ for the Divine order which He has established, and not man. Blessed be that Lord God for not allowing His creature, His child, to lie buried under the weight of opinions, maxims, traditions, which is crushing him; for giving him visions of a city which has foundations, of which He is the Builder and Maker; for giving Him the assurance that he may, and that he must, beat down all obstacles that hinder him from possessing its glorious privileges.

III. Least of all is there any natural energy in us to contend against that enemy who is described in Scripture as going about seeking whom he may devour.—Is it not true that the time which boasts to have outlived the evil spirit is the one which is most directly exposed to his assaults? May it not be that our progress has brought us into a closer conflict with the spiritual wickedness in high places than our forefathers were ever engaged in? Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, who teacheth our hands to war, and our fingers to fight. Blessed be He for bringing us into immediate encounter with His own immediate enemies, that so we may know more than others did of His own immediate presence.

Rev. F. D. Maurice.