The King Gives Victory

 The King Gives Victory

By Theodore Epp

      2 Samuel 5:1-10

      So impregnable did the Jebusites think their fortress to be that they jeered at David and his men, saying that the blind and the lame could hold it against David's army. "Nevertheless," we are told, "David took the strong hold of Zion: the same is the city of David" (2 Sam. 5:7). David then moved into the city and made it the headquarters for his government, and later on it became the central place of worship for God's people. Eventually Solomon's great temple was erected in Jerusalem. From this city the Lord Jesus Christ will rule in the Millennium and establish His New Jerusalem of which the Prophet Ezekiel spoke.

      There is a rich spiritual lesson for us here. Some habits of sin are so deeply entrenched in our minds and bodies that we have struggled in vain against them from the day of our new birth. We may have felt it was no use to try to overcome these habits and that we might as well give up. What we need, of course, is to let the King, the Lord Jesus Christ, lead us in the battle against this entrenched sin. We can never defeat the Enemy by ourselves. It must always be done through the strength of Christ.

      "What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?" (Rom. 8:31).

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Suddenness of Change

 Streams in the Desert

      Suddenness of Change

      

      "And immediately the Spirit driveth him into the wilderness" (Mark 1:12).

      

      It seemed a strange proof of Divine favor. "Immediately." Immediately after what? After the opened heavens and the dove-like peace and the voice of the Father's blessing, "Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." It is no abnormal experience. Thou, too, hast passed through it, O my soul. Are not the times of thy deepest depression just the moments that follow thy loftiest flight? Yesterday thou wert soaring far in the firmament, and singing in the radiance of the morn; today thy wings are folded and thy song silent. At noon thou wert basking in the sunshine of a Father's smile; at eve thou art saying in the wilderness, "My way is hid from the Lord."

      

      Nay, but, my soul, the very suddenness of the change is a proof that it is not revolutionary.

      

      Hast thou weighed the comfort of that word "immediately"? Why does it come so soon after the blessing? Just to show that it is the sequel to the blessing. God shines on thee to make thee fit for life's desert-places--for its Gethsemanes, for its Calvaries. He lifts thee up that He may give thee strength to go further down; He illuminates thee that He may send thee into the night, that He may make thee a help to the helpless.

      

      Not at all times art thou worthy of the wilderness; thou art only worthy of the wilderness after the splendors of Jordan. Nothing but the Son's vision can fit thee for the Spirit's burden; only the glory of the baptism can support the hunger of the desert. --George Matheson

      

      After benediction comes battle.

      

      The time of testing that marks and mightily enriches a soul's spiritual career is no ordinary one, but a period when all hell seems let loose, a period when we realize our souls are brought into a net, when we know that God is permitting us to be in the devil's hand. But it is a period which always ends in certain triumph for those who have committed the keeping of their souls to Him, a period of marvelous "nevertheless afterward" of abundant usefulness, the sixty-fold that surely follows. --Aphra White

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