VICTOR IN LIFE’S BATTLE
‘Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder: the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet.’
Psalms 91:13
The definite promise, ‘Thou shalt tread upon the lion and the dragon,’ was a reference not only to reptiles and wild beasts of outward evil, but to evils in which the deadliness of vice is concentrated in our individual hearts: evil thoughts, and deeds, and habits which assail and hurt the soul. The fitness of the metaphor is shown by the fact that we find it also in the heathen mythology. The Greek type of a deliverer of the world was the hero Hercules. They saw, as we see, that he who would indeed conquer evil in the world must first conquer it in his own heart. The moral is finely conveyed in the legend of his conquest of the Nemæan lion. Every man’s Nemæan lion lies in the way for him somewhere. All future victories depend upon that. Kill it, and through all the rest of your lives what was once terrible becomes your armour; you are clothed with the virtue of that conquest.
I. In the first place, this lion is to be fought in the darkness, and in the cavern, and with no earthly weapons.—The lion is that inward sin, that special impulse and temptation to evil, which is most directed against your individual heart.
II. Observe the infinite superiority which Christ has granted to us in these days.—The Greeks had noble ideals, but their conduct fell as far short of these ideals as ours does. But often these ideals were grievously corrupt. Human strength and knowledge are at the best but perfect weakness. But it is the mercy of God that He has given us in the life of our Lord Jesus Christ an ideal not human, but Divine.
III. Notice that the more early this battle is undertaken, the more surely it is won.—He who strangles serpents in his youth slays monsters in his manhood. He who has early had strength to conquer temptations will not be so likely later to lose his self-reverence and his self-control.
—Dean Farrar.
Illustration
‘Suppose one says that this psalm is not literally true, because many of God’s children have suffered from various ills! The answer is simple enough. Before any one of these could be quoted as proving the failure of these promises it would have to be shown that the suffering child of God had definitely appropriated the protecting care of the Father. Also the question would be whether apparent evil were not really good. “Nothing can be evil which knits me more closely to God.” If the water which I have to drink, says one, is bitter, it is at least filtered water, out of which God has strained all the poison, though He may have left the bitterness, for bitterness is a tonic, and all things work together for good to them that love God.’