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Psalm 120:7: "I am for peace, but when I speak, they are for war."
We have seen in the sermon today that the church is an army, and our service to God and His kingdom is militant, as we deploy the weapons of righteousness, faith, salvation, the Word of God and prayer. We are to take our cues from the great heroes of the faith, who nobly fought of old – Ehud, Gideon, Samson, and David.
But we would mistake these men if we thought they were militant for the sake of militancy, if we saw them as delighting in conflict for the sake of conflict. Psalm 120 reflects the attitude we should have: We are for peace, not war, because we serve the Prince of Peace.
The church makes war because war is necessary to achieve peace. There are giants in the land. There are enemies at the gate. Many seek from inside the church and without to destroy the work of Christ and His kingdom. And so we must fight, and we must fight with vigor and joy. But we make war for the sake of peace. We fight God's enemies so that we can see the peace of His kingdom come, and His will done on earth as in heaven.
In the early chapters of 1 Kings, Solomon employs the sword against a number of David’s enemies. He executes justice and sheds blood to establish his kingdom. But the point of that is not simply to shed blood. The point of the war is to establish space for a feast. He protects the boundaries of the land so that there's room for a table.
Each week, at this table, we share in the feast of the coming kingdom, we eat and drink the marriage supper of the Lamb, and thereby we get a foretaste of the future state of peace. In the midst of our warfare, this table is a weekly reminder of why we fight, a weekly anticipation of the peace that will come when our wars cease.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Sunday, October 02, 2005 at 10:03 AM
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