The Sword Bathed in Heaven

“For my sword shall be bathed in heaven.” — ISAIAH xxxiv. 5.

IN a magnificent passage of his prophecy, Isaiah is denouncing the anger of God against the enemies of His people and His purposes. Jehovah Him self speaks in the glowing verse. The imagery is tremendous. “Their slain shall be cast out and their stink shall come up out of their carcasses, and the mountains shall be melted with their blood.” How sharp and clear and definite is the Bible picture of the wrath of God! We, in these modern days, dwell most upon the inevitable issues which are involved in the very nature of things. The good moves against the evil and must in the end destroy it. It is a vehement, impetuous and fiery movement, but it is abstract. It is the fight of. principle with principle. The Bible is all different from that. “God is angry with the wicked every day.” It is a L and passionate Person, whose feeling fills the earth with tumult, who in rage and indignation sets riu;ht the evils of the earth and punishes the sons of men

for their wrong-doing.

We must be fully in the power of this intense personal conception of God before we can enter into the force of the words which I have chosen for my text this morning. God is about to smite the wickedness of the earth. His sword is in His hand. And then, as a part of the terrible announcement, there comes these words: “My sword shall be bathed in heaven.” What does that mean? It draws back the curtain which separates the visible world from the invisible. It reveals celestial regions in which there are also great struggles going on. - It lifts up our eyes to the grander movements of the vast world of spirits. And then it declares that the sword which is to be used in fighting what seems to be the petty wars of the Hebrews and the Edomites, is the same sword which has been used in these celestial conflicts; that the means and instruments of righteousness upon the earth must be the same with the means and instruments of righteousness in the heavens.

This is the meaning, I think, of the great words, “my sword shall be bathed in heaven.” Another glowing translation of the same words makes them read, “my sword has become intoxicated in heaven.” It is not an uncommon figure, this strong picture of the intoxicated instruments of war. Y’ou remember the song of Moses in Deuteronomy, where Jehovah is heard declaring, “I will make my arrows drunk with blood.” You remember how God in the prophecy of Jeremiah declares, “This is the day of the Lord God of Hosts, a day of vengeance, that he may avenge him of his adversaries, and the swt pr< I shall devour, and it shall be satiate and made drunk with their blood.”

Here then is God pictured as the mighty conquer or who on other fields has already subdued his enemies with the only weapons which it is possible for him to use, with the absolute righteousness and truth. With those same weapons, all ablaze and living and eager from the fight in which they had been engaged, he declares that he will fight his battles on earth. It shall be a sword bathed in heaven which shall “come down upon Idumea.”

We pause a moment and let ourselves think of this suggested vision of the universe all full of moral struggle. We can know nothing of what that struggle is in other worlds than ours. The fields of life are larger than we see, larger than all the history of man has told. Wherever there are beings of free will, there, whether it be in far-off stars or in the depths of space beyond the farthest star itself, there must be struggle, the possibilities of evil, the choice between the evil and the good. And in no part of His universe can God be passive. Everywhere He must be the foe of the evil and the friend of the good. Everywhere therefore throughout the great perplexed tumultuous universe, we can see the flashing of His sword. “His sword!” we say, and that must mean His nature uttering itself in His own form of force. Nothing can be in His sword which is not in His nature. And so the sword of God in heavenly regions must mean perfect thoroughness and perfect justice contending against evil and self-will, and bringing about everywhere the ultimate victory of righteousness and truth.

Out of this celestial, this universal struggle the sword of God, yet hot and fresh from the blows which it had struck, came down among the Jews to fight for them with Edom. That was the message which Isaiah brought. It was good both for Edom and for Israel that it should be clearly known to be the sword bathed in the heavens, the same force which was engaged in the eternal battles, which was to fight for the chosen people and against their enemy. The enemy needed to know it in order that they might be sure that the sword’s work would be thorough, that there would be no sparing as long as there was any wickedness to be destroyed. The chosen people needed to know it, that they might understand that even for them God could not and would not fight otherwise than as God; that there would be no mere favoritism, nor any tolerance of means or methods which were undivine. That ev ery struggle of the people of God against evil in this world must be fired with eternal principles, must be instinct with thoroughness and with justice; that is the plain prosaic meaning of the word of God to Isaiah which declared, “My sword shall be bathed in heaven.”

You see then, I think, what it is of which I wish to preach to you this morning. It is the truth that all the true battles of the earth really are God’s battles, and »are to be fought only in God’s spirit and

God’s way. The old history of Israel andjSdom sinks back into a parable. All that history wap and elementary utterance of the great truth that there must ever be, so long as the world r< -mains imperfect and is struggling towards perfection. two parts of the world, one of which is God’s and one of which is not. The chosen people, the people of the covenant, have passed away. They have fallen from their high estate. They no longer stand above their fellow-men, throned in the favoritism of God. But what that chosen people represented is perpetual. There always is in the world some part, of the world consecrated to the struggle to make the world divine. It is not limited by the geography of a nation. It is not handed down to son from father. It is that part of the general humanity, that part of any race, nay, that part of any man — for even the individual life may be divided between God and the enemy of God — it is that part of human nature which is consecrated to God, and trying to do his will. That is the everlasting Israel. That in the Christian constitution is the correspondent of what Judaism, the idea of the chosen people, was under the system which the New Testament describes. In more spiritual ways therefore, with less formality, more flexibly and freely, alt that ia said of God’s relation to the Judaism of the Old Testament, must be the picture and the parable of the relation which God holds to all Hhu-ule after goodness, all effort of nolple and devoted life every where and always. It is in the light of this that such lexts as this out of Isaiah really become ours.

The first point, then, is that all good struggle in the world is really God’s battle, and ought to recognize itself as such. A young man sets out from college determined to do what he can to help set right the evils which are in the world. The ordinary careers which attract men have no attraction for him. He does not care to be rich, or perhaps he is rich already. At any rate, he takes his life in his hand and freely, genuinely, gives it to his fellow-men. What a tumult it is into which he casts himself, what a disorder, what a crossing and re-crossing of interests, what a snarl of difficult problems! It is like trying to push back the sea, which eludes you at every instant and with its fluid mass is as solid as the rock itself. But can we not see at once what a difference it will make to this young worker against evil if he is really able to think of the great fight in which he is engaged not merely as his fight but as God’s fight; as his fight because it is God’s fight and he is God’s? Suppose that he is large enough, religious enough, to look abroad and see God gradually occupying the earth with the eternal principles of his righteousness. Every special victory of human progress, the victory over slavery, the victory over superstition, the victory over social wrong, nay even the victory over tough matter, the subduing of the hard stuff of nature to spiritual uses, each of these is but a footstep in the great onward march of God taking possession of

His own. Must it not make a difference to the young reformer whether he is able to think of his struggle thus, or whether he is able merely to think of himself as the empirical student of political economy or social science, or as the expression of an instinctive human sympathy? The poor are God’s poor. The slave is God’s freeman. This oppressive institution is a blot on God’s earth. Surely if he catches that meaning in it all, his whole struggle must be intensified and purified. His struggle may still keep the other truths and motives, but it surrounds them all with this larger and loftier one. Especially two things must come as the result of such a consciousness — the spirit of thoroughness and the spirit of justice. The young man really counting his struggle God’s, must determine never to be satisfied until the victory is complete, and he must shrink from and refuse every temptation to use any weapons except the weapons of righteousness in a battle which belongs not merely to himself but to the Lord of all righteousness and truth.

Certain it is that in all ages this conviction has been at the heart of all the most earnest work that the world has seen. The reformers who have really done the work have been those who have dare«l to call their work a work of God. It has been the voice of God in their ears, it has been the sword of God flashing at their side which has made them courageous as fire and persistent as iron.

May not one plead with any generous youn 1 which thus is set upon the fight with sin and.

that it should lift itself up at the very outset, and dare to count its tight a fight of God. Do not satisfy yourself with mere considerations of economy or mere impulses of humanity. Both are good. But greater than both is the enthusiastic sense of confederacy with God. Fight your battle for Him, with Him. So you shall fight it most persistently, most purely. Fight it with the sword bathed in heaven, and so you shall make it victorious, and grow strong and great yourself in fighting it.

I like to trace how a great truth like this applies even to what we call the most common and least spiritual things. I have already suggested that it seems to me to apply even to man’s conflict with the obstinate world of matter, his battle with the stubborn stone and wood on which he has to exercise his skill. That is a never-ending conflict. The human mind is meeting the obtuse substance of the earth at every mechanic’s bench, in every artist’s studio, wherever the railroad is piercing the mountain or the steam ship plows the ocean. Is it not true of all art and of all artisanship that thoroughness and truthfulness are what we need; the refusal to slight work and the refusal to attempt any results except by legitimate, and honest, and appropriate means? And is it not true also that thoroughness and truthfulness in any work of art or artisanship must come not from economy but from principle, not from the sense that they alone can really produce the effect, but from the protound conviction that, whatever be the effect which they produce, they alone are right, and worthy for a man to use? This is the faculty of genius. And all religious action ought to hav« •. must have, some of the quality of genius in it. Every work of art, and every work of artisans! iip which has, as all artisanship ought to have, some thing of the spirit of art about it, must be kept pure, noble, unmercenary and ideal by its constant relation to and consciousness of first principles, which are indeed nothing but the ideas of God.

This is hardly more than suggestion. Think again of the more serious struggle, the struggle with ignorance and error and with wrong ideas and faiths. There are two different views which may inspire the combatant with error. He may think of error as mischievous, or he may abhor and dread error for itself, apart from its consequences, as an intrusion and a misery in a world whose vital atmosphere is truth. Is it not clear what a different thing his light will be, according as he takes one or the other of these views? If he takes the first view he will be liable to limit his fight with error by his perception of its mischievousness. The error which he does not happen to think mischievous he will tolerate or ignore. There is no thoroughness in that. And h<> will also be too apt to fight a mischievous error with what seems to be a less mischievous error, and to do evil that good may come. How much of that .tin- world has seen! “I know this fight of min«- is not conducted on the highest ground, but still this thing I am trying to set up, bad as it is, is not nearly so bad as what it seeks to destroy. Let me defeat this lie with a lesser lie, this sham with a less harmful sham.” There is no bathing of the sword in heaven there. To strike for absolute truth, to tolerate no falsehood, however useful for the time it seems, that is not possible unless the man counts his fight God’s fight and despises any method which it is not worthy of God and of the Son of God to use. The same is true of the fight with sin. Think of sin as a mistake, or as an inconvenience, and you stand in great danger, first, of compromising with it, and second, of using low and even sinful methods of opposing it. But think of sin as a frightful wrong in itself, a blot and curse in the universe of God, and you grow at once absolutely intolerant of it, and at the same time watchfully anxious about the nature of the weapons which you shall use to fight it with. How often has even the Christian Church fought sin with sin! How often has the selfishness which looked to an eternal luxury and privilege in heaven, been arrayed against the selfishness which was hungry for meat, or thirsty for drink, here upon the earth! How often has insincere profession been offered as the medicine for doubt! How many men have been transformed from cold indifference to hot partisanship, and thereby seemed to have been made religious! How many revivals have been sensational and superficial and demoralizing! The fury of persecution called in to kill out heresy — what is that but the sword bathed in hell, the sword drunk with the evil passions of the worst humanity! And everywhere it would be possible to show that such horrible misuse of weapons came from a misconception of the nature of the enemy. Only, my dear friends, when we see sin as God sees it, only then can we be sure of using no weapons that are net divine for its removal. Only when pity for it joins with horror at it in our hearts, as they join in the heart of God, each keeping the other strong and pure, only then can we go out to meet it with a per feet determination, bound never to lay down our arms so long as there is any sin left in the world; and at the same time, with an absolute conviction that no impatience to rid the world of sin must tempt us for a moment to use any means for its destruction which are not pure and just; an absolute conviction that it is better that sin should be left master of the field, than that it should be fought with sin.

Oh, how the history of brave men whose lives have been long fights with wickedness, have borne terrible testimony of what a hard thing it is to get that conviction and to keep it. 0 how full of faith the man must be who sees a giant evil stalking through the land, ruining human lives by the million, and knows how by some act or policy which is not true and sound and pure he might arrest that evil, and save precious lives, and yet withholds his hand and says, “I cannot.” There is no struggle for a man like that, no agony so deep, no test of lpravery so searching. The world stands by and plies its well-worn maxims, “Of two evils choose tinleast;’ “A half loaf is better than no bread.” M Nay. lput my sword must be bathed in heaven,” the ,-oul replies, and I will not stir until each blow may have in it the strength of a conscience void of offence.

Thank God, if the waiting and inaction has indeed been of this noble sort, the time is sure to come when the long delay is more than justified. The time comes when, without a hesitation or misgiving, the soldier of God sees that he may strike, and may call every good power to witness that he does right in striking. Then it is evident that his plunging of his sword in the eternal righteousness has not merely made it powerless for evil but has made it fiery for good. Then men who called him coward because he would not strike at the wrong time, stand by in amazement as they see him harvesting the field with every great sweep of his unhesitating arm. For now he is a true Sir Galahad.

“His strength is as the strength of ten
Because his heart is pure.”

O my dear friends, never let yourselves do evil that good may come. If you do, you hinder the coming of the real, the perfect good in its due time. Never try to set a wrong right by another wrong. You are only putting off the day when the true right shall be established. Never plot villany against a villain; never comfort affliction with a falsehood; never try to silence error with an argument which you do not be lieve; never fight God’s battle with any weapon of the devil. Far rather would He have you stand aside useless, and let Him fight His own battle. It is not necessary for Him that you should help Him. But it is necessary for yourself that you should !>».• true. Nothing but a clear faith that the battles which we are fighting are God’s battles, can make us strong enough for all this.

We look up to the summit of our humanity, where Jesus stands, and there we see the fire of this faith burning in perfect light. Behold him in the Gospels. Men came to him and said, “Do this! Do that!” “Speak to my brother that he divide the inheritance.” “Restore the kingdom to Israel,” and how he waved them asida “Who made me a ju< !-•» or divider over you?” “Put up thy sword into its sheath.” “My hour is not yet come.”

One of the marvellous things about Jesus is the union of fire and patience. He saw his Father’s House turned into a place of merchandise, and instantly the whip of small cords was in his hands and he was cleansing the sacred place with his impassioned indignation. And yet he walked day alter day through the streets of Jerusalem and saw the sin and let the sinners sin on with only the remonstrance of his pure presence and his pitying gaze. Base and blind is the man who lets himself misread that patience. Base and blind is he who excuses his easy tolerance of wickedness, his comfortable carelessness about the sin of the world, by quoting to himself the fact that Jesus did not call down the lightning out of he.iven to destroy the wicked city of the Jews. I’ut blind also is he who does not learn the true 1 of that divine patience, the truth which the Lord himself put into His parable of th ih< truth that only in God’s own time and God’s own way can the battles of the Lord be fought. The general holds his army till the right moment for launching them upon the foe. It is heroism to stand still and wait under fire as truly as it is heroism by-and-by to rush upon the guns of the enemy. It is disobedience and weakness to be self-willed and fight wrongly, as truly as it is to run away and refuse to fight at all. There is no self-will in Jesus. He is one with His Father and lives by his Father’s will. Every act that he did came forth, therefore, out of the eternal nature. His sword was always bathed in heaven. The devil said to Him, “Worship me and you shall have this world you want so much, and save it to our heart’s content.” “Not so,” said Jesus. “It is not just to save the world, but to save it righteously. To save it unrighteously is not truly to save it at all. Get thee behind me, Satan!” 0 for a courage like this, growing out of a faith like his!

I have spoken of the battles against sin as if they were altogether battles with the world’s sins, with sin outside ourselves. Let me, before I close my sermon, speak to you in a few words about that harder battle which goes on in a man’s own soul, his battle with his own sins, and see how the truth of which I have been preaching applies especially to it; how there most of all the sword must be bathed in heaven. To know first of all and deepest of all, that that battle which goes on within us is God’s battle, is of supreme importance. What are our sins? What is your selfishness, your untruthfulness, your cruelty? Ig it something which hurts and hi:. you? Indeed it is. But beyond that it is something

which usurps a kingdom which belongs to God. It is His enemy. And ev<-ry movement of your conscience, ever sense of usurpation and of incongruity, is not merely the revolt of your own outraged soul. It is also the claim of the true King upon his Kingdom. It is the sound of the monarch’s trumpet summoning the rebellious castle to surrender. Believe this, and what a dignity enters into the moral struggle of our life. It is no mere restless fermentation, the disturbed nature out of harmony with itself. It is God, with the great moral gravitation of universal righteousness, dragging this stray and wayward atom back into Himself. 0 deep divine mysterious process, that goes on wherever in silent chamber or in crowded street the humbled penitent lies prostrate in the dust, or the resolute struggler stands wrestling with his temptation!

But if the battle be God’s battle, then it must be fought only with God’s weapons. That must follow in our struggles with our sins as well as in our struggles with the world. You want to get rid of your selfishness. You must not kill it with the sword of another selfishness, which thenceforth shall rule in its place. Have we not all known men who in their youth were profligate and reckless? They flung- t he gold of health, and purity, and good esteem into the mire of licentiousness. By-and-by they saw how foolish and how fatal all that was. They were killing themselves with this which they call life. Then they reformed. They took care of their health. They nursed their reputation. They grew even to be very patterns of propriety. The town has 110 such censors of wickedness to-day as they are. They are as uncharitable as they once were unscrupulous. And they are just as selfish to-day, as they were twenty years ago when they were living in the furious indulgence of their appetites. They have killed one selfishness with the sword of another selfishness. It is the old story of the Book of Kings. Sennacharib king of Assyria is slain by his sons, as he is worshipping in the house of Nisroch his God. And Esarhaddon his son reigns in his stead. And so the Assyrian despotism goes on still!

Or think of the way in which the man who finds himself indifferent about truth, and wants to conquer his indifference, betakes himself to partisan intolerance, and grows narrow and bitter on principle. Think of how the skeptic, by-aud-by, weary of skepticism, shuts his eyes upon the light and calls his wilful blindness faith. The instances are numberless. The killing of sin by sin, of selfishness by selfishness, of death by death!

But he who dares to count the battle of his soul God’s battle, must rise to loftier and purer methods. For him selfishness can only be cast out by self-forgetfulness and consecration; and false liberality and license can only be overcome by larger and truer liberty; and skepticism, which is the glamor of the twilight, must never dream of going back into the darkness, but must press forward to the noonday.

Here only is there any real enthusiasm and hope. Sometimes I know it must have seemed to some «.{’ you as if the prospect of life were very doleful, be cause it offered nothing but the “wearisome monotonous alternation and exchange of sin for sin. V hen the sins of recklessness could be no longer indulged in, then should come the sins of prudence; when the vices of youth were over, then welcome the other vices of old age. 0 my dear friend, there is some thing better than that. It is possible to bring down to the earth the perfect standards of the heavens, to stop thinking about safety and comfort and salvation altogether, and to be splendidly inspired with the consciousness that we are soldiers under God; to think of our own sins not as the things which are going to condemn us to eternal torture, but as the enemies of Him, the hindrances that stand in the way of His victorious designs; to see their badness not in their consequences, but in their nature, not in their quantity but in their quality; and so to bring to bear upon the very least of them the intense hatred and intolerance which the very nature of sin must always excite in him who has attained a true passion for holiness.

Can you imagine Jesus discovering in the robes of his spotless holiness, one single spot of sin? Be hold him as he gazes on it! Is there any question in him as to whether it is great or small? The positive horror of its being there swallows up all questions of its size. Is there any question as to what

Its enJl<ci|MenCC Will be? Tile present h”lT<»r i* enough. The future is not thought of. Only, all the Godhood that is in Jesus is instantly summoned to destroy this spot of sin. All the ocean of the divine power and holiness is implored to pour in and wash this speck of wickedness away.

So it is possible for us to deal with every sin, little or great, that we discover in our hearts. To count it God’s enemy and to fight it with all His purity and strength; that is what it means for us that our sword should be bathed in heaven! Courage can only come with thoroughness. But with absolute thoroughness, courage must come. Resolve to-day that every strength of God which it is your right to invoke, because you are His child, and which prayer and consecration can bring into you from Him, shall be devoted to the overcoming of your sin, and then your sin shall certainly be overcome. May He whose enemy that sin is, as well as yours, grant that victory to you, and win it for Himself!