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The sermon presents God as the One who dismantles every defense that is not founded on Him, whether those defenses belong to a church, a believer, a convert, or an unrepentant sinner. It strongly warns against church dependence on government, wealth, status, or scholarship, and against personal dependence on relationships, virtue, or self-righteousness. Conversion involves the gracious overthrow of carelessness and self-trust. The positive doctrine is assurance grounded entirely in Christ’s blood and righteousness, covenant mercy, and the faithful preservation of God.
Theological center: Salvation and the church’s security rest wholly on God’s grace in Christ, not on human merit, political power, religious status, or created comforts.
Applications: Reject worldly church securities · Guard against idolatrous affections · Return to Christ alone · Submit to conviction and conversion
Primary texts: Jeremiah 5:10 · Psalm 125:2 · Colossians 3:2
“Go ye up upon her walls, and destroy; but make not a full end: take away her battlements; for they are not the LORD’S.” Jeremiah 5:10 WE have been talking very freely during this last week of “glorious victories,” of “brilliant successes,” of “sieges,” and of “stormings.” We little know what the dread reality is of which we boast. Could our eyes once behold the storming of a city, the sacking of a town, the pillage of the soldiery, the barbarous deeds of fury, when the blood is up and long delay has maddened their souls. Could we see the fields saturated with blood and soaked with gore, could we spend one hour amongst the corpses and the dying. Or if we could only let the din of battle and the noise of the guns reach our ears, we should not so much rejoice, if we had anything of fellow feeling for others as well as for ourselves. The death of an enemy is to me a cause of regret as well as the death of a friend. Are not all my brethren? and does not Jesus tell me so? Are we not all made of one flesh? and has not God “made of one blood all nations that dwell upon the face of the earth”? Let us, then, when we hear of slaughtered enemies and of thousands that have fallen, cease to rejoice in their death. It would betray a spirit utterly inconsistent with the Christian religion, more akin to Mohammedanism or to the fierce doctrines of Buddha, but not in the least to be brought into compatibility with the truths of the Gospel of the glorious God. And yet with all that, far be it from me to check any gladness which this nation may experience, now that it hopes that the incubus of war may at last be removed. Clap your hands, O Britons! Rejoice, you sons of Albion! There is hope that your swords may yet be sheathed, that your men shall not be mown down as grass before the scythe, that the desolation of your hearths shall now be stayed, that the tyrant shall be humbled, and that peace shall be restored. With this view of it, let our hearts leap for joy and let us sing unto God who has gotten us the victory, rejoicing that now earth’s wounds may be staunched, that her blood need not flow any longer, and that peace may be established, we trust upon a lasting footing. This, I think, should be the Christian view of it. We should rejoice with the hope of better things, but we should lament over the awful death and terrible carnage—the extent of which we know not yet, but which history shall write amongst the black things. My earnest prayer is that our brave soldiery may honor themselves as much by moderation in victory, as by endurance of privation, and valor in atta…