18. My Shield

IN the national hymn of the Netherlands the words are still sung by patriots in public assemblages, and in the streets: "My Shield and Confidence, Art Thou, O Lord, my God." And they but echo the utterance of the Psalmist's soul of thirty centuries ago: "The Lord is a Sun and Shield" (Psalm 84:11).

With us the shield no longer plays any part. A battle now is fought at a great distance, with cannon and rapid-firing guns, against which soldiers to protect themselves cover themselves in the ground or behind breastworks.

But in those days when David wrote his psalm, fighting was mostly done man to man, at close range, sometimes foot touching foot, the sword of one clashing against that of the other; a struggle that could not end until one of the two was bathed in his own blood.

And of course in such a struggle the shield was one's life. Without a shield, while in contest with another who had a shield, one was lost.

Hence among the nations of antiquity it was the main thing in fighting, even as to this day it covers the African savage.

The shield caught the arrow; it broke the blow of the lance, and parried the stroke of the sword.

Therefore when those thousands and thousands in Jerusalem who had handled the shield themselves, and owed their life to it, raised the song of praise in the outer courts of Zion, and gloried in Jehovah as "the shield of their confidence," they felt, in a way we can never fully know, what it means to rejoice in God as in one's Shield.

A shield was a cover for the body which, mark you, was not held in front of the combatant by another, but even in extremest danger was handled by the man himself.

The shield grasped by the left hand was held before the arm and was in fact nothing else than a broadening of the same. In case of assault one involuntarily raises his arm, and at the risk of having it wounded, tries to cover his face and his heart with it. In order in such encounters not to expose the arm and to cover the larger part of the body the passionate desire to save life invented the shield; first the long shield, which was as long as one was tall, and then the short shield or buckler, with which to parry the stroke of the sword.

But always in such a way that the man who handled the shield moved it himself now this way, now that, and held it out against the attack.

"The Lord is my Shield" does not say, therefore, that God protects us from afar, and covers us without effort on our part. "The Lord is my Shield," is the language of faith. It sprang from the sense that God is close at hand, that our faith lays hold on Him, that we use Him as a defence against the assailant, and that thus by faith, one with God, we know and feel that we are covered with His Almightiness.

In a time of mortal danger a mother can stand before her child, so as to cover her darling with her own body, and then it can be said that that mother is a shield to her child. And so God is still the shield of the little ones who as yet do not know Him, and can bring no faith in Him into action.

But this holy imagery did not come from this. It originated with the man who in hard and bitter struggle had handled the shield himself and had saved his life by it.

The shield is to the man what the wing is to the eagle. It belongs, as it were, to the body of the warrior. It is one with his arm, and his safe return from war hangs by his dexterous use of it.

And so the Lord God is a Shield to those who trust in Him, to those who believe, to those who in times of distress and danger know the never-failing use of faith, and who by reason of this faith understand that God Himself gives direction to their arm.

The shield points to battle and to struggle.

To the struggle against everything that rises up against us to destroy us in body and in soul.

He is our Shield against contagious disease, against the forces of nature, and against danger of death by accident. But, mark you, not in the sense that we should passively submit to it, and leave it to God to cover and protect us. The imagery of the shield allows no such interpretation. On the contrary, that God is a Shield against disease and pestilence, against flood and fire, implies that with utmost exertion we must use every means of resistance that God has placed within our reach; that by prayer we must steel our nerve to act; and that in this way by faith we have God for our Shield, a Shield that we ourselves must turn against the assailant.

And this is not different with our soul. No weak interpretation has a place here. We should not say that we must avoid sin, no, we must strive against it. We should know that in sin a hostile power turns itself against us; that back of this power lurks the planning spirit of Satan, who stealthily presses upon us and aims to kill the soul, and who, if we have no shield to lift up against him and no skill to handle it with dexterity, will surely overcome and throw us.

Truly, still more than in the struggle for the body, God is your Shield in the struggle to save your soul; but then this demands, that you yourself must fight for your soul; that you yourself must catch the eye of the assailant who aims to destroy your soul, lift up the sword against him and meanwhile cover your soul with your Shield.

That God is your Shield in the struggle for your soul means that you yourself must stretch out your hand to God, that you yourself must engage in this warfare with every spiritual means of resistance at your command, and that then you will find that God is your Shield, Who by faith you hold up against Satan.

We speak of an escutcheon (by which we mean a shield) on which the man who owns it has engraven his blazon. This is a sign of personal recognition to those who know him, telling who it is that hides behind it. Thus the shield expresses the person; it becomes something by itself; a personification; by it is known the greatness or smallness of the power of defence.

Thus God is the Shield of those who trust in Him, a Shield on which human pride has not engraven for itself a lion's or a bull's head, but one on which in deep humility, in trustful meekness, looking away from self, and in confidence in his Father Who is in heaven, he who believes puts nothing but the name of Jehovah.

To take the Lord as your Shield, is to hold before the forces of nature and of Satan the Name of the Lord; to show to the world in characters of flame that we belong to the hosts of the living God; that we do not fight by ourselves, but that the Hero who leads us is the Anointed of the Lord; a proclamation that ours is the highest power of every human soul, the invincible power of faith.

Thus you see how far this scriptural imagery reaches.

We saw it in the confession that God is our Sun, the Sun of our very life. Here you understand that God is our Shield and our Buckler in the struggle to save our life.

And then you also feel and know that it means nothing if exultingly you sing of God as your Shield, unless in every emergency, in every form of struggle, instead of leaving this Shield hanging on the wall, you put this sacred Buckler to use by a living, zealous and heroic faith.