Slay the Enemies of Your Soul

After the stone sunk into his forehead, Goliath fell to the ground. David then took Goliath’s sword and finished him off by removing his head (1 Sam. 17:48-51). After Saul came back from war, in disobedience he spared king Agag and the best of the livestock. The Scripture says that Samuel took his sword and “hacked” Agag to bits (1 Sam. 15:32-33). Joshua, after the five Amorite kings were brought out of the cave, told his men to place their feet on the neck of each king. He then told them that God would do this to all their enemies. They then killed the kings and hung each of them on a tree (Joshua 10:22-27). Do these seem radical and over-the-top? A little on the fanatical side? A bit too bloody and messy for our day and age? Well, yes, if we were talking about the neighbor down the street that we couldn’t get along with or an annoying telemarketer. In these cases from the Old Testament, however, what we see is a holy hatred toward that which God hates and a zeal and fervor for what God commands. When it came to an enemy of God, God’s enemies were their enemies. God’s enemies (and as a result, Israel’s enemies) were people who were a threat to Israel’s physical and spiritual vitality. They brought oppression, idolatry, and many other things that threatened God’s purposes for Israel. When in battle with God’s enemies, in zeal and fervor, these faithful men of Israel made sure the job was done whole heartedly and completely.

Our battle today as Christians isn’t a physical battle against men but a spiritual one. We have enemies that advance on God’s territory and seek to capture us. These enemies, if not fought zealously, will eventually destroy us and as a result bring reproach to our God. Some of our enemies are external and some are internal (Eph. 6:12, Rom 8:13). External enemies would be the spiritual forces that are portrayed in Ephesians 6:12. These would include Satan and his forces and the general spirit of the age in which we now live. It also includes the world system that bears it’s weight upon us in order to conform us to it’s mold. Internal enemies would be the things that make up the law of sin (Rom.7:21) that still dwells within us. A list of some of these is in Galatians 5:19-21. These enemies that we fight are to be fought with the same zeal, the same fervor, the same hatred as David approaching Goliath or Samuel approaching king Agag. We are to show no mercy and no pity. The stakes are too high.

“Let no man think to kill sin with few, easy, or gentle strokes. He who hath once smitten a serpent, if he follow not on his blow until it be slain, may repent that ever he began the quarrel. And so he who undertakes to deal with sin, and pursues it not constantly to the death” said John Owen the early puritan preacher and theologian. He also said, ” be killing sin or it will be killing you.” As we approach the enemies of our soul, let us pray that we hate them as God hates them. Second, let’s seek to kill them (mortify the deeds of the flesh) with a holy zeal and fervor that God intends. To do otherwise means that it will soon overtake me or it has already.

The start of our battle must be a holy hatred of the thing… God’s hatred towards it. The next is I must go about my task with a holy violence. I don’t want to see the thing just “whimper” but I need to kill it. Each time an enemy of my soul appears taunting me and my God, I must approach it in the name of the Lord my God, draw my sword, and start hacking!