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.
Posted on: Tue, 13 Aug 2013 21:37:24 +0000
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